With the differing concepts of race and racial identity through this period, ranging from the Renaissance into the Early Modern Era, how much did that play into concepts of sex and pornography?

How do you feel, either /u/vertexoflife or /u/TFrauline, about the implication that you can understand a lot about a culture based upon the domestic pornography? Do you feel it is apt in the time period you study?

The question is based off of an essay in International Exposure about how Russian masculinity is shown throughout pornography of the post-Soviet Union.

Here, let me get us started with one.

/u/TFrauline, what was it that attracted you to libertine literature specifically? Was there a particular book, or text, or person?

For /u/TFrauline:

What's the deal with Marquis De Sade? Looking over the list of key authors you study, why is he such an outlier in terms of, well, sadism? Was there a literary precedent for the sexual violence in his writings? Did these (not his political work) find any defenders at the time? When did they start to become the kind of stuff you could have lying about when you had company over? Do you personally agree with philosophers that find deeper meaning in such transgressive writings and do you think that the Marquis was thinking about the nature of freedom and the values of the Enlightenment when he wrote Juliette and Justine? Or was he just writing to satisfy his sexual needs, in other words, was it to him just porn the way we think of porn today?

For either of you: I read some historical porn on Gutenberg where the first person the main character sleeps with- his governess- has an enlarged clitoris that becomes erect when she's aroused. Are there other descriptions of what we would call intersex people in the porn of your speciality place/era? How are they generally portrayed?

Thank you for setting time aside to do this AMA.

You're spanning an interesting period of transition in masculinity with your time frame up there! Do either of you have any porn/literature that you think is particularly exemplary of attitudes about masculinity for the time it was published? Or any general observations about men of the time and what the pornography they produced and consumed says about their attitudes about their own sexuality, I'd be interested in hearing.

How much did the underground scene of what we now call the LGBT spectrum play into the literature, culture, and pornography of the time?

How "underground" was it really?

How prevalent was anal?

How were women treated within libertine literature? Was it a liberating or restricting influence?

What are some characteristics that define the 'decline' of libertine literature? Does that mean a decline in quantity, quality, or shift in subject matter? Or external forces?

What differences, if any, are there between subject matter and audience? For instance, did libertine literature talk about aristocrats, and its readership was aristocrats? I guess I am asking you to reflect on the extent that it was fiction for its readers, or if it was meant to be... a fantasy with which they could identify?

I feel like I need to admit I know nothing about this topic, so excuse my questions if they are simple!

Silly question, but is "Fanny Hill" intentionally a pun on "mons venus", or am I just reading to much into that?

More serious question, how class-restricted was the consumption of pornographic/obscene material in this era?

-Given that literacy was not that widespread in the lower levels of society, am I right in assuming that in regards to literary works, these were mostly just read in the realm of the upper classes?

-Would most people even be aware of de Sade or Cleland?

-Was there much of an image based industry that was accessible to the average man on the streets?

How did the various factions and groups who participated in the French Revolution interact with or impact the libertines?

I know this may be outside of your area, but I'm interested in the erotic themes in the writing of Mechthild von Magdeburg. Is this considered pornography in your area? Did this type of religious/erotic writing continue and to what extent?

I seem to recall a significant body of pornography directed at the person of Marie Antoinette, textual and graphic, as a political statement about her mores (but not the readers', apparently). By the late 1700s, or even before, how close were the political and the pornographic? Was it intended to titillate, or solely to violate? Political use seems like a particularly complex purpose for deployment of pornographic material, so I'd be interested in hearing more about the intersection between pornography and politics in the early modern era.

Is the sex life of porn academics any different from ours?

Could you tell us some about "Molly Houses"?

One thing I've come across in art history is the apotropaic role of sexual imagery. Can we trace any of this in early modern pornography?