• DOI:10.1353/sex.2012.0057
• Corpus ID: 58760692

Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology (review)

@article{Lupton2012UnderWA,
  title={Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology (review)},
  author={Mary Jane Lupton},
  journal={Journal of the History of Sexuality},
  year={2012},
  volume={21},
  pages={578 - 581}
}

• Mary Jane Lupton
• Published 22 August 2012
• Medicine
• Journal of the History of Sexuality

might tell magistrates that they were enticed into indiscretions by men of low character or entrapped by duplicitous working-class constables. Upchurch’s attempts to counter the chronological myopia of historians of male same-sex desire in modern Britain are welcome indeed, as are his assertions about the need to interrogate more fully what sexual relations between men might tell us about shifting class dynamics. Similarly, Upchurch’s exploration of same-sex desire within the context of broader nineteenth-century political and intellectual developments (such as liberalism) illustrates how studies of the queer past can be productively incorporated into the historical “mainstream.” It is this very desire to link different historical agendas, though, that produces some difficulties for Upchurch. In a few cases, his discussions of major political moments do not always connect effectively with his dissection of the fascinating cases he has uncovered. This has the effect of producing several substantial sections that function more as narrations of mainstream political and legal developments than as integrated and systematic examinations of same-sex desire and intimacy. And Upchurch’s admirable attempts at linking multiple historical threads often lead him to pay a little less attention than he otherwise might to the sexual subjectivities of the very historical actors who form the core of his study. Ultimately, however, these are minor criticisms of what is really a very fine book. Upchurch’s sophisticated work instructively points scholars in new chronological and methodological directions and illustrates how the study of topics ostensibly on the margins might serve to inform our understandings of an ever-shifting center.