The destroying angel : sex, fitness, and food in the legacy of degeneracy theory, Graham Crackers, Kellogg's Corn Flakes & American health history

J. Money

A study of the historical genesis and present-day persistence of antisexualism in American healthcare and social/legal policy. It discusses how, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the theory of sexual degeneracy monopolized American medicine. Health reform in the nineteenth century, explains Money, included not only a concern for food and fitness but also a campaign against masturbation. This antisexualism as such is crucial to understanding America's obsession with pornography today.