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Abstract

Conflicts over shifting social hierarchies, expression and repression, the moralists’ ongoing love affair with the things they hate, are represented within the artefacts, photos, magazines, posters, tabloid headlines, early 20th century stag films, pulp fiction covers, vintage gay pornography, and S&M equipment that make up the debut exhibition of New York’s new museum of sex NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America. The museum establishes a historical context for the development of debates that continue to come up again and again over the rise and demand for sexual materials vs the moralist attack. Yet, by putting sexual culture on display in a museum, it successfully and critically establishes that sex is a complicated issue defined by various discourses.

Keywords

Anthony Comstock moralist attack obscenity reaction formations Sex Wars sublimation War on Sex

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Sex and Worldmaking: A Review of New York’s Museum of Sex

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