American singer-songwriter  Madonna  has been considered a  sexual icon . Many have considered Madonna's  sexuality  as one of the focal points of her career. The  Oxford Dictionary of English  (2010) even credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. Her sexual displays have drawn numerous analyses by scholars,  sexologists ,  feminists , and other authors. Due to her constant usage of explicit sexual content, she faced censorship for her videos, stage performances and other projects.


The criticism of Madonna's overt sexuality would become a constant through her career. She decried a double-standard in some opportunities, for which commentators such as  Lilly J. Goren ,  Alina Simone  and  David Gauntlett  have supported some of her statements. She further polarized views about overtly sexuality in an aged woman in media. During the AIDS crisis, Madonna had also promoted  safe sex  as a means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, and she has advocated for women's sexuality.


Reviews transcended her own career, as her impact in the entertainment industry was documented by different publications and authors. Depending on the reviewer's point of view, she is credited to reinforce or open up a variety of things in mass media culture, both positive and negative. American historian Lilly J. Goren commented that Madonna perpetuated the public perception of women performers as feminine and  sexual objects , but also found that industry exploited her concepts of using sexuality to "gain power" ( empowerment ) and sell more  records . An editor defined that "her sexuality never rested on the idea of being attractive", while in  101 Albums That Changed Popular Music  (2009), author pointed out that performers like Madonna used "their sexuality as a weapon to gain equal footing the male-dominated rock world". Her influence on others was also quoted; the earliest reviewers noted an influence on her  fandom , including the  LGBT community  and young female audiences, called  Madonna wannabes . Another group explored her influence on other female artists, with feminist scholars  Cheris Kramarae  and  Dale Spender  describing her dominant influence by saying "she created an illusion of sexual availability that many female pop artists felt compelled to emulate".


Due to her mainstream sexual-brand, she was called variously. Named by an author in the mid-1990s as the "most arcane and sexually perverse female of the twentieth century", she was further negative called a  Medusa , a  succubus  and a  Whore of Babylon . She was both praised and criticized by some industry fellows, including  Steve Allen  and  Morrissey , who both compared her to a  prostitute . Both her impact and  sex appeal  were recognized in  listicles , topping the lists of  Toronto Sun ' s 50 Greatest Sex Symbols in history (2006) and  VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists  (2002).


Madonna has been referred to as a sexual icon or  sex symbol ; [ 1 ]  media outlets such as  American Masters , suggest that the singer continued to be a sexual icon as "she's gotten older". [ 2 ]  The  Oxford Dictionary of English  (2010) credited her image as a sex symbol as a source of her international stardom. [ 3 ]  In 2011, author Glenn Ward said that it was "often been implied" that Madonna's status was produced in part from the way she willfully deployed images of sexuality. [ 4 ]


Her status as a sex symbol was compared to others contemporary and earlier entertainers. [ 5 ]  Although  Sara Mills  cites a commentator saying in early 1990s, that "write off Madonna as 'just another sex symbol' is to fail to understand her massive appeal". [ 6 ]  In  The Thirty Years' Wars  (1996),  Andrew Kopkind  regarded Madonna as "the premier sex symbol of the decade" (1990s). [ 7 ]  Author Stuart Jeffries in  Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern  (2021), deemed Madonna as the leading sex symbol of the  postmodern era , and a different one from  Marilyn Monroe , who he defined as the leading sex symbol of the modern era. [ 8 ]  Similarly,  Dylan Jones  felt and referred to her as "the most famous sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe". [ 9 ]


In  Record Collecting for Girls  (2011), Courtney Smith documented that most people associate Madonna with sex. [ 10 ]   Vulture ' s Meaghan Garvey summarized at least in her first 20 years of career, "no one talked about Madonna without talking about sex". [ 11 ]  By the late 1980s, physicist  Stephen Hawking  even  name-checked  the singer by joking: "I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex". [ 12 ]  That perception was stronger in the 1990s;  Mark Bego  reflected "since her arrival on the scene ten years ago, Madonna has become so synonymous with sex (and publicity) that it may be hard to remember that she started as a musical phenomenon." [ 13 ]   The 1996 edition of the  Hutchinson Encyclopedia  even referred to her as a "U.S. pop singer and actress who presents herself on stage and in videos with an exaggerated sexuality". [ 14 ]  In 2000, Brian McCollum from  Knight Ridder  made a comparative in  AlltheWeb 's results using the phrases "Madonna and music" which garnered 235,000 hits and "Madonna and sex" landing more than 333,000 results. [ 15 ]


Her sexuality also became a tabloid-fixture at some stage; in  Profiles of Female Genius  (1994), author Gene Landrum describes that Madonna's libidinal energy and sexuality become in her major attraction for the media and "it has become the focal point for her whole career". [ 16 ]   Madonna herself noted the "bad press" about her sexuality as early as 1985. [ 17 ]  Historian  Andrea Stuart  cited a tabloid headline where Madonna was called a "man-eater" and how "she used sex to climb to the top". [ 18 ]  Author Adam Sexton called some press pieces as a "creepy moralism" decrying that "reading articles about Madonna, you could get the idea that it was the habit of pop journalists to marry the first person they slept with". [ 19 ]  In the compendium  The Madonna Connection  (1993), scholars even wrote that "it is no surprise, then that rumors of Madonna testing  HIV-positive  have been incredibly persistent". [ 20 ]  They wrote that certain segments of our culture find comfort in identifying her as a carrier of the AIDS virus—a disease perceived by some as a punishment for immoral behavior— and making Madonna HIV-positive establishes her moral guilt and provides for her ultimate containment by death. [ 20 ]


The  Madonna studies  saw a framework of its developments in theories about  sexuality , [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ 23 ]  although Rosemary Pringle from  Griffith University , wrote in  Transitions: New Australian feminisms  (2020), that "there has been much controversy in the academy about the cultural and sexual politics of Madonna". [ 24 ]  Her notoriety, was commented on by  Chuck Klosterman  in  Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs  (2004): "Whenever I hear intellectuals talk about sexual icons of the present day, the name mentioned most is Madonna". [ 25 ]


Citing Steven Anderson's views on Madonna in 1989, qualifying her as "a repository of all our ideas" on topics such as sex, Deborah Jermyn in  Female Celebrity and Ageing  (2016) wrote Madonna still functions as a repository of all of these ideas, except now she plays with these in an aging body. [ 26 ]  In 2018, sexologist Ana Fernández Alonso from  Miguel de Cervantes European University , taught in a Madonna's class in the  University of Oviedo  that she is an "important" icon for women and for the way of understanding  human sexuality  in general, and  sexual relations  in particular. [ 27 ]


Madonna had promoted  safe sex  awareness in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis as a means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, and continued to do the same in the next years, as reported  Jason Mattera . [ 29 ]  In  Madonna as Postmodern Myth  (2002), French scholar Georges-Claude Guilbert concurred saying she often reminds her public during interviews and concerts to use condoms. [ 30 ]   Frances Negrón-Muntaner , commented in  Boricua Pop  (2004), she used her concerts to promote safe sex as a "remember the dead, and affirm the living". [ 31 ]  Editors of  History+ for Edexcel A Level  (2015), summed up that "she talked a great deal about sex, promoted safe sex in her interviews, distributed condoms at her concerts and performed at AIDS benefits". [ 32 ]  Upon the publication of her first book,  Sex  (1992), Madonna stated that if people "could talk about [sex] freely, we would have more people practicing safe sex, we wouldn't have people sexually abusing each other". [ 33 ]


Madonna donated a percentage of " Papa Don't Preach " (1986) profits to programs advocating sexual responsibility, [ 34 ]  although it was  Planned Parenthood  of New York that initially requested it. [ 35 ]  In a 1988 advertisement for schoolkids, Madonna told "avoid  casual sex  and you'll avoid  AIDS " and "stay away from people who shoot drugs". [ 29 ]  In the early 1990s,  Sire Records  had a 900  hotline  (900-990-SIRE) that featured a safe-sex message from Madonna. [ 36 ]  During this decade, she also mentioned about unsafe sex: "I'm not going to sit here and say that from the time I found out about AIDS, I've always had intercourse with a man with a  condom  on". [ 37 ]  American professor and critic,  Louis Menand  called her "a leading spokesperson for safe sex" in his book  American Studies  (2003). [ 38 ]  In 2015, sexologist Ana Fernández Alonso deemed Madonna as a "sexologist" herself due her to body of work or public statements. [ 27 ]


In 1991,  New Internationalist  regarded Madonna as a "hotly debated sexual icon". [ 41 ]  Deborah Bell from  University of North Carolina , wrote in  Masquerade  (2015), that "much has been written about Madonna and  sexual identity ". [ 42 ]  British media sociologist,  David Gauntlett  asserts Madonna's image as a sexual free spirit has been "emphatically defined". [ 43 ]


Aware of other precursors, by 2002, Australian professor  Jeff Lewis  commented "more than any other single female figure, [she] has self-consciously 'explored' and displayed  women's sexuality ". [ 44 ]  Scholar of sexuality studies  John Paul De Cecco  and Grant Lukenbill, considered she was "one of the first major performers to blanket America with sexual code-code used specifically to appeal to the entire panorama of sexual expression". [ 45 ]  In  Madonna, Bawdy & Soul  (1997), Canadian scholar  Karlene Faith  noted her far-reaching audience saying she "has inscribed her sexual identities on the psyches of millions of children, adolescents, and adults in dozens of nations, on half a dozen continents". [ 46 ]  Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernandez wrote in  Madonna's Drowned Worlds  (2004) that she symbolized " sexual liberation " for women in many cultures. [ 47 ]  On the other hand, Donald C. Miller, in  Coming of Age in Popular Culture  (2018), described that she consistently intertwined sexuality with  religion , feeling it was something that set her apart from earlier female performers. [ 48 ]


Shortly after her debut, Madonna's sexuality offered a challenge view to definitions of  femininity  and  masculinity , according to author John Price. [ 50 ]  He continued saying that Madonna was a leading female figure who represented to many young women across the world, an "empowering figure" in control of her own body. [ 50 ]  American philosopher  Susan Bordo , explains that the singer demonstrated  her wannabes , the possibility of a female  heterosexuality  that was independent of  patriarchal  control. [ 51 ]  Meaghan Garven from  Vulture  magazine explained "her sexuality never rested on the idea of being attractive". [ 11 ]


Different reviewers and academics in popular culture, further emphasized this stage of her career, with Gauntlett arguing that her sexual assertiveness "has been one of the most distinctive elements of her life and work". [ 43 ]  In  Girl Heroes  (2002), Susan Hopkins held she didn't only sell sexuality, but power, or rather "sexuality as power". [ 52 ]  Similarly,  Camille Paglia  described her "sexual persona" as "her power", [ 53 ]  while academic  Marcel Danesi  made also a remark on it. [ 54 ]  In  100 Entertainers Who Changed America  (2013), Robert Sickels believes that in her 1980s-works, Madonna portrayed herself as the "modern woman": Comfortable in and gratified by her own sexuality, but still a powerful female. She took the idea further in her next decade, Sickels says. [ 55 ]  In  Contesting Feminist Orthodoxies  (1996), authors explained that the singer not only represented herself as a sexual subject/ object , but expressly proposed sexuality as a praxis of and towards artistic freedom,  women's liberation , and indeed,  gay liberation . [ 56 ]  Psychiatrist and author  Jule Eisenbud  commented that she reached a level "equivalent to masculinity" and "has allowed her to maintain her status as a sex symbol". [ 57 ]  Psychologist  Jonathan Young , expressed: "[...] through sexually muscular scenarios of  female domination , Madonna turns feminine sexuality as it is conventionally defined inside out: she reveals the hidden fantasy within women's [...]". [ 58 ]


The way she deployed her sexuality while aging continued to draw commentaries. Hopkins commented that she was "ageing before the world [...] but she keeps presenting herself as a kind of 'sexual revolutionary'". [ 59 ]  In 2008,  Blender ' s editor-in-chief, Joe Levy commented about her entrance into the  middle age , that "she is trying to go somewhere no one has gone before" with the possible exception of  Cher . [ 60 ]  In 2018, music scholar Freya Jarman at the  University of Liverpool  felt Madonna was "demonstrating a new kind of relevance". [ 61 ]  In 2024, Eric Cabahug from  The Post , says that her sexuality deployment shifted to against of "the ageist machine". [ 62 ]


Madonna is "... ultimately the epitome of women's sexuality ... at best ambiguous in the end"


Madonna has been often criticized due her deployment of sexuality, [ 48 ] [ 64 ]  by different spheres, including academics and mainstream media. In early 1990s,  Pennsylvania State University 's Lisa Henderson elaborated that it became one of the reasons why some segments of society hate the singer, for challenging the sexual status quo. [ 63 ]  Media scholars  Charlotte Brunsdon  and  Lynn Spigel , explained that she "inverted" or at least "challenged", America's notions of sex, gender and power exploring taboos. [ 65 ]  Essayist  Hal Crowther  described: "I think of Madonna as Roboslut, an alien programmed to conquer the earth by attacking our reproductive psychology". [ 66 ]


She received attention of groupings like feminists. Some defined her sexuality as  antifeminism , [ 22 ]  while different  third-wave feminists  who emerged in the 1990s, embraced Madonna as a symbol of  female sexuality . [ 22 ]  Commenting about her divisive feminist reception, researcher Brian McNair held that "pro and anti-porn feminist made of her a symbol of all that was good or bad (depending on their viewpoint)". [ 67 ]  Notable supporters included Paglia, whom decried Madonna's feminist critics at some stage by saying "the simplistic feminism of those 'hangdog dowdies and parochial prudes' that critici[z]e Madonna's brash sexual image is inadequate to explain the impact of this pop icon on million of woman and girls. [ 68 ] [ 69 ]


During the height of her popularity, reactions and reception amid the youth culture, especially from young females were also addressed. Author Roy Shuker describes that her "transgressions of sexuality" was perhaps viewed as "extremely disturbing", but as a source of much "pleasure" for a portion of  her fandom . [ 71 ]  Similarly,  James Naremore  reported in the 1990s, that adolescent girls construct relevance between Madonna's sexuality and their own conditions of existence. [ 72 ]  English musicologist  Sheila Whiteley  observed a substantial portion of positive reactions, citing that she was viewed by others as "acting responsibly" in bringing sex to the fore, so forcing the media, schools and parents alike to confront the "inconsistencies inherent" in the public attitude towards female sexuality. [ 73 ]  Providing a retrospective, Stephanie Rosenbloom from  The New York Times  explains: "Never had we seen someone so bold, so powerful, so sexually aggressive who was not a man". [ 74 ]  Mixing audience reaction with his owns, Daryl Deino from  The New York Observer  asserted retrospectively in 2017:


...Madonna has never presented herself as an object of men's sexual desires; she presents herself as the conductor of her own—something that has always bothered heterosexual men. The provocateur helped take something that males controlled for centuries and turned it on them. Because of Madonna, women are allowed to want to "get laid". This was something completely looked down upon just 25 years ago. [ 75 ]


In the 1990s, by many her works "confirmed" and "intensified" her status as a sexually assertive and in-control woman. [ 67 ]  However, for others like biographer  J. Randy Taraborrelli  she sounded only like a lusty  porn star  no one could take seriously. [ 76 ]  Australian professor  Graeme Turner  said that Madonna can be seen as a figure who "exaggerates" (and therefore makes ridiculous) male expectations of female sexuality. [ 77 ]  In  Grrrls  (1996), Amy Raphael also criticized that "taking the concept further than any other female artist before her, Madonna sold herself almost exclusively in terms of her sexuality". [ 78 ]


She further polarized views by using an open sexuality while aging, most notoriously when she entered into her 40s with a response by audience with commentaries like "desperate", "cringey" and "give it up", according to  Grazia  magazine. [ 79 ]  Scholar Deborah Jermyn argues that Madonna for new audiences and her experimentation with sexuality, suggests and has come to mean "nothing" if the trolling of Madonna's aging body is fundamentally misogynistic and gaining online followers by the thousands. [ 26 ]  Authors in  Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture  (2017) concludes that Madonna's refusal to retreat into silence in middle age and her repeated assertion of an overt sexuality are "demonized", especially in the context of a demonstration for women's equality. [ 80 ]  Writing for  PinkNews  in 2023, Marcus Wratten noted commentaries from British tabloid  The Daily Mail , saying her "aggressive sexuality" is now "threatening to compromise" her "uncompromisable legacy". They called her for being "desperate". [ 81 ]


[...] artists like Linda Ronstadt and Madonna used their sexuality as a weapon to gain equal footing in the male-dominated rock world.


The body of criticisms Madonna faced was also a subject of interpretations by others, albeit she was herself a challenge figure (deemed by some as radical [ 83 ] ). Some reviewers felt a double-standard in her industry. For instance, Gauntlett compared the sexuality deployment between male and female artists. On the point, he compared male artists such as  Elvis Presley  and  Mick Jagger  explaining they were called "sex gods" due their sexual display and appeal. But, in the context of Madonna and women, scholar further adds this role was "unexpected" and "challenging". [ 43 ]  In 1993, scholar  E. Ann Kaplan  compared how male pop stars from Presley to Michael Jackson and Prince "have gotten away exploring male sexuality", but a female icon like Madonna "creates disturbance". [ 84 ]  In  Madonnaland  (2016),  Alina Simone  wrote that the sexual double standard becomes clear, when compare Madonna to "famously  libidinous " artists like  Jim Morrison  or Jagger. [ 85 ]  In 2016,  Emily Ratajkowski  uses Madonna and Jagger to compare  sexism  in the industry, because she receives commentaries such as "desperate" or "a hot mess" contrary to him. Since both are performers with similar artistic sexuality brands, she asked: "So why does Madonna get flak for it while Jagger is celebrated?". [ 86 ]  However, related to comparison of sexism, Melanie Sjoberg from Australian conservative outlet  Green Left  labeled an almost identical question as "the obvious feminist question". [ 63 ]


American author  Sharon Lechter  described Madonna as a woman who was able to appreciate, value, and express her sexual energy. For Lechter, "sexual energy" can create "financial fuel for women as well as men". [ 87 ]   Pete Hamill  commented that "she is the triumphant mistress of her medium: The sexual imagination". [ 88 ]  On the other hand, in 1990,  Caryn James  paid tribute to Madonna's "honesty about using sexuality to gain control and power". [ 89 ]  About an aged Madonna, at the 2021 International Conference on Human Aspects of Information, participants found as disgusting the criticism of the aging nature of sexuality. They took the Madonna's case, as the "misogynistic rhetoric" targeting her highlights it, by "ridiculizing her sexual agency and humiliating it" by using comparison with younger stars, as a way to shame Madonna. [ 90 ]


Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis, a Greek adjunct lecturer at  University of Patras , wrote that "Madonna responses vary when openly provokes the public with overt sexuality". [ 91 ]  Madonna addressed criticism of "setting women back 30 years" in a 1984 interview with MTV, saying "I don't think that I'm using sex to sell myself, I think that I'm a very sexual persona and that comes through in my performing, and if that's what gets people to buy my records, then that's fine. But I don't think of it consciously, 'Well, I'm going to be sexy to get people interested in me' It's the way I am, the way I've always been". [ 85 ]  Simone, said that in other words, Madonna was being nothing if not authentic when she stripped down or dance lasciviously. [ 85 ]  The singer once expressed "her desire to push the boundaries of America's puritanical sexual codes" which are grounded in patriarchy. [ 92 ]  Commenting about her industry in 2016, after receiving the  Billboard  Women of the Year , Madonna reflected: "I made my  Erotica  album and my  Sex  book was released. I remember being the headline of every newspaper and magazine. Everything I read about myself was damning. I was called a whore and a witch. One headline compared me to  Satan . I said, 'Wait a minute, isn't  Prince  running around with fishnets and high heels and lipstick with his butt hanging out?' Yes, he was. But he was a man". [ 93 ]  For historian  Lilly J. Goren , Madonna "correctly argued" that it is a double standard to criticize her for using sexuality to gain power but not to criticize Presley or Jagger for employing the same tactics. [ 94 ]


An impact (both negative and positive), was further discussed by different authors and publications. In 2006,  Ottawa Citizen ' s Dunlevy T'cha, said that "many critics" seen her "variously", including embodying the "contradictions of a society fascinated by fame, ambivalent about sexuality, hostile toward women". [ 95 ]


Madonna set the trend for promoting a highly sexualized form of femininity, that was challenging, and transformed popular culture.


In 2000, British magazine  New Statesman  said that Madonna "irrevocably changed the media image of female sexuality". [ 96 ]


Some credits relies she brought to the mainstream awareness various issues, as researcher Brian Longhurst from  University of Salford  summed up that "it is argued that her videos and books, bring forms of sexual representation, which had been hidden, into the mainstream". [ 97 ]  To scholar Brian McNair, Madonna's figure announced the arrival of a new phase in Western sexual culture. [ 67 ]


Other group similarly explored how she pionereed or introduced to the mainstream new connotations in sexuality and other areas. [ 98 ]  Some called her a "trailblazer". [ 55 ]  Semiotician  Marcel Danesi  believes Madonna introduced a new form of feminism, liberating women to express their sexuality on "their own terms". [ 99 ]  Professor  Patrice Oppliger , held "Madonna pioneered a more powerful, if crass, version of women's sexuality". [ 100 ]  In  Queer in the Choir Room  (2014), Michelle Parke goes further saying "Madonna single-handedly accelerated the battle between opposing ideas of appropriate expression of female sexuality". [ 101 ]  British journalist  Matt Cain  argued Madonna brought female sexuality "front and centre". [ 102 ]  In Gauntlett's view, Madonna did not invent  sexiness  in pop, but she could be credited with bringing a female desiring gaze to centre stage. [ 43 ]  To Simone, "Madonna's sexiness was different, more brutal. And it would only become more so as time went on". [ 85 ]  The staff of  The New Zealand Herald  regards Madonna as a "pioneer" of intelligent sex appeal. [ 103 ]  Editors of  Controversial Images  (2012), credited that "the unprecedented visibility of sexuality" which Madonna embraced, has also contributed to the creation of the pop music  diva —a powerful female music performer who explores sexuality openly and purposefully. [ 104 ]   E. San Juan Jr.  commented "she is credited too with the exercise of 'gender-free sex', blurring the male/female boundaries by flirting with bisexuality, multiple partners and cross-dressing" among other things. [ 105 ]  In 2012,  Sara Marcus  devoted an article in  Salon  as "a celebration of the way she changed  sexual mores ". [ 40 ]  Paglia even praised her for "having changed the way millions of young women" of her generation think about sexuality. [ 106 ]


Madonna's impact was also discussed alongside the pornographic theme, mainly in the 1990s. With her  Sex  book alone, McNair believes she strongly influenced the sexual culture and politics at that time, because it broke a number of taboos. [ 67 ]  Her influence was also perceived in prostitution culture; Cheryl Overs, a spokesperson of the pro-prostitution organization  Network of Sex Work Projects , understands Madonna to have aided in the normalization of prostitution in  malestream  culture. She then credits Madonna with making their work very much easier in the 1980s. [ 107 ]


Madonna promoted the costume and practices of prostitution as a model for girls and women and contributed to the cultural normalisation of prostitution.


Credits to Madonna were dismissed by others giving her a less-centered role. Others, for instance, gave her a prominent negative cultural role over others. In  Sex Symbols  (1999), editor explained that Madonna "has pushed the boundaries that most women do not wish to broach". [ 57 ]  In  The Happy Stripper  (2007), author said that some feminist critics said Madonna "degraded" womanhood, calling her "vulgar, sacrilegious, stupid, shallow [and] opportunistic". [ 109 ]


Professor Mandy Merck from  Royal Holloway  in  Perversions: Deviant Readings by Mandy Merck  (1993), reminding said that "the story of the sex goddess can never be entirely her own", because despite Madonna may seem to be "the most self-authored sexual artifact of this (or any other) time", her career coincides with long-held positions on pornography, fashion and sexual conduct. [ 110 ]  In  Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice  (2011), Chris Barker said that Madonna is a significant point of reference in the  raunch culture . [ 111 ]  According to  Hypebot ,  Cher  and Madonna were the mothers of  pop-porn chic . [ 112 ]


Alaina Demopoulos, an editor from  The Guardian  reminds some criticisms from Black community after the singer gave self-credit on her role, while Demopoulos ironized Madonna "would like to remind us all that she invented sex". [ 113 ]  Tony Hicks, a music critic from  Riff  magazine about similar criticisms related to the  African American  culture, said "it's true, to a certain extent", but he argues "Madonna's barrier-smashing really was different" and also suggests despite she polarized views, "she was necessary". [ 114 ]  In the 1990s, Madonna's critic  bell hooks  charged the singer because she felt many black women who are disgusted by Madonna's flaunting of sexual experience are enraged due she is "able to project and affirm with material gain has been the stick the society has used to justify its continued beating and assault on the black female body". [ 115 ]


The music industry exploited Madonna's concept of using sexuality to gain power by ensuring that other female performers were perceived as sexual objects as a means of selling albums during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.


In 2009, historian  Lilly J. Goren  commented that Madonna perpetuated the public perception of women performers as feminine and sexual objects. And this have an effect for women musicians who wanted to be taken seriously by the public, due to the "damaging" Madonna's usage of her sexuality. [ 94 ]  In 2004,  Shmuley Boteach  criticized her by saying that for more than two decades, she has been allowed to "destroy" the female recording industry by erasing the line that separates music from pornography. As before Madonna, it was possible for women more famous for their voices than their cleavage. Boteach further adds, that in the post-Madonna universe, artists feel the pressure to expose their bodies in order to sell albums. [ 117 ]  Feminist scholars  Cheris Kramarae  and  Dale Spender  explained "Madonna may have preached control, but she created an illusion of sexual availability that many female pop artists felt compelled to emulate". [ 118 ]


Conversely, Goren also explored how others taken benefit of Madonna's sexuality. She found that the music industry exploited Madonna's tactics "in order to increase sales". She further explains, the singer "challenged how sexuality and sex should be portrayed on MTV", later arguing: "With the popularity of Madonna and through the medium of MTV, the music industry worked to produce solo acts such as Debbie Gibson, Pebbles, and Tiffany. The use of the media to market sexuality and thereby sell records has only increased in recent decades". [ 94 ]  About the whole entertainment industry, editors of  The Twentieth Century in 100 Moments  (2016), considering many examples and how today celebrities are open in ways "unimaginable a hundred years ago" to latter attribute her a notable role, saying "perhaps more than anyone else, Madonna swayed American culture in that direction at the tail end of the twentieth century". [ 119 ]


Some industry fellows like  Joni Mitchell  blasted Madonna, as Joe Taysom from  Far Out  says, before her, "it wasn't a particularly popular route of expressions for female musicians at the time". [ 120 ]  Although, she wouldn't out it "all on Madonna", American singer  Sheryl Crow  granted her a more serious role than others for damage the image of women using sex as a "form of power" in their "business form". [ 75 ]  Some others praised Madonna's path, such as  Tove Lo , [ 116 ]  or  Christina Aguilera . [ 121 ]  Lo said: "Madonna broke down barriers to allow female artists to express their sexuality. Madonna paved the way— she did all this hard work for us". [ 116 ]  In similar remarks,  Louise Redknapp  praised her, by saying "without Madonna so many of us wouldn't have been doing what we were doing". [ 122 ]  Madonna herself, responded to Mitchell's commentaries that "women in pop are sexually exploited", saying "we are exploring our sexuality". [ 123 ]  More negative were  Steve Allen  and  Morrissey  as both similarly described and compared the singer and her sexuality to a prostitute, with the latter expanded: "I mean the music industry is obviously prostitution anyway". [ 124 ] [ 125 ]


Many young women have followed in her path, including Ms. Aguilera and Pink. And by making overt sexuality part of her act, she even paved the way for  hip-hop  artists like  Lil' Kim , who made waves by going nearly topless to the MTV awards.


A number of academics and other commentators, discussed Madonna's influence on other performers, with professor  Arthur Asa Berger  recognizing her usage of sexuality has been imitated by other females. [ 23 ]


Kyra Belán, an art historian wrote in her 2018 book  The Virgin in Art  that Madonna has opened the doors for other women artists as she established a "new frontier" for female sexuality through a variety of popular vehicles and technologies. [ 129 ]  Another supporter is professor Robert Sickels, who describes her sexuality have been "vastly influential in paving the way" for not only the sexual expression of future female musicians, but also the acceptance of different forms of sexuality of countless of artists. [ 55 ]  Sociologist  David Gauntlett  is also of the idea that future female artists from post Madonna-era, have accessibility to express their own sexuality largely thanks "after her". [ 43 ]  In 2012,  The Advocate  said that her career was based in pushing sexual boundaries, paving the way, and "everyone since [...] has walked that path". [ 130 ]  By 2017, Sergio del Amo, editor of Spanish newspaper  El País  commented that Madonna paved the way for several artists to express themselves in terms of sexuality and without receiving a piece of the criticism that Madonna faced in the past. [ 131 ]  Madonna herself, supported  Miley Cyrus  against criticism for her highly sexualised image in the mid-2010s. [ 123 ]


Ambiguity and contradictory perspectives:  Treva B. Lindsey, a professor of  Ohio State University  writing for  NBC News  in 2022, doesn't give "too much" credit to Madonna, but to  Blues  singers of the mid-20th century, whom says them influenced more in popular culture and on others while mentioning the cases of female rappers such as  Lil' Kim ,  Mary J. Blige  or  Missy Elliott  among many others. [ 132 ]  However, back in 2019, Australian magazine  The Music  commented "Madonna's corporeal feminism impacted on female rappers" such as  Cardi B  or Lil' Kim among many others female rappers. [ 127 ]  Some of them, publicly recognized Madonna's influence, including Lil' Kim who held she modeled her own career in that of Madonna. [ 128 ] [ 133 ]  Others like the author of  Someone like-- Adele  (2012) whom describes the "trail blazed by Madonna", explained that some artists did not followed it and proposes a "turning point" in consumer music culture contextualizing the case of  Adele . [ 134 ]  By this time, authors of  Future Texts  (2012), also explained that some millennial pop divas such as Britney Spears or Lady Gaga, used it without "any of the subversive elements that made Madonna's work the subject of feminist inquiry". [ 135 ]


In early 2000s, Guilbert brought the example of producers and distributors having used her image to serve their interests, [ 136 ]  mentioning the case of  Columbia Pictures  when they gave away with magazine  Hollywood Avenue  an audio cassette that helped to promote  A League of Their Own , saying that the tape sold sex and exploited Madonna's sexual image as well. [ 136 ]  Regarding an aged Madonna posting provocative photos on social media,  Grazia  magazine discussed it in an article titled "Why Is It Okay For The World To Sexualise Madonna, But She Can't Sexualise Herself?". [ 79 ]


Inspired in Madonna, Netherlands-based company VDM International started to sell condoms in the late 1990s, throughout Europe and Japan, receiving a "high demand". Named the "Madonna Condoms", it featured the singer's face on the boxes and internal package, taken from her nude photos shoot by  Martin Schreiber  in 1979 whom sold them the license. The US rights were bought by CondoMania, a Hollywood-based company. Its president and founder Adam Glickman, stated that "he's using the 'Madonna Condom' to help educate people about safe sex". According to  Los Angeles Times , CondoMania began selling the condoms on August 25 in 2001, and sold more than 1,000 boxes in its first three days. [ 137 ]  During 2004 and 2005, thousands of Madonna Condoms were donated to organizations such as The Douglas County AIDS Project,  Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center  and New York's  Gay Men's Health Crisis . [ 137 ]


In her first decades, aside to being named a sexual icon or  sex symbol , either press or academic publications called her variously regarding her sexuality. In  Girl Heroes  (2002), Susan Hopkins called her "Queen of Sexual Politics". [ 52 ]   Esquire  named her the "Sex Queen of America" in 1994. [ 37 ]  Others similarly called her a "Sex Queen" and a "Porn Queen". [ 138 ] [ 139 ]  In late 1990s,  Boze Hadleigh  felt and expressed she "become a sex goddess for all generations and genders". [ 140 ]  Madonna was suggested as an "icon of sex appeal" by art historian  David Morgan . [ 141 ]  Madonna was long considered the "Poster Girl" for "sexy" according to  Grazia  magazine. [ 79 ]  In 1991, psychologist  Joyce Brothers  echoed: "Madonna is a sexy person for our time". [ 142 ]  Similarly, in  Chris Moyles 's book  The Gospel According to Chris Moyles  (2014), a young Madonna is cited as "one of the sexiest women on the planet". [ 143 ]  In 1987,  Rolling Stone  magazine crowned her as the sexiest female artist. [ 79 ]  Author  Brian D'Amato  called Madonna,  Marilyn Monroe  and the  Mona Lisa , as the three sexiest women ever being with the letter " M ". [ 144 ]


Negatively, back in the 1990s, an author described Madonna as "the most arcane and sexually perverse female of the twentieth century". [ 145 ]  Critics like  Achille Bonito Oliva  have cited that for some "Madonna restored the [image of]  Whore of Babylon , the pagan goddess banned by the last book of the Bible". [ 146 ]  Others similarly argued that she became synonymous with the " Bimbo  of Babylon". [ 145 ]  In the compendium  The Madonna Connection  (1993), scholars considering criticisms she has faced, it was concluded that "another mythical feminine monster summoned up to make sense of Madonna is the  succubus ". [ 147 ]


Madonna has been also featured on related pop culture lists. She was voted as the World's Hottest Woman by readers of woman's magazine  Cosmopolitan  in 2000. [ 148 ]  Similarly, in 2002  VH1  ranked her as the  Greatest Sexiest Artist . She was included once again, in their 2013 updated list, with the staff saying: "You can say many things about Madonna, but you can't ever say she's not sexy". [ 149 ]  In 2006, Madonna topped the rank of  Toronto Sun ' s 50 Greatest Sex Symbols in history, as "acknowledgment of her extraordinary aptitude for using sex to provoke and promote". They also reported: "While others have been sexier, none has been more cunning in needling and nudging popular tastes to their own commercial again". [ 150 ]  In 2012, Madonna was placed at number 9 in  Complex  list of the "100 Hottest Female Singers of All Time". [ 151 ]  In 2020,  Men's Health  included Madonna in their "100 Hottest Sex Symbols of All Time", with staff declaring: She "has captured the world's heads, hearts, and hormones with startling consistency". [ 152 ]


In  Rethinking the Frankfurt School  (2012), Madonna is described as a "highly controversial" because of her exploitation of sexuality. [ 154 ]  She generated controversies and faced censure by her sexual-oriented performances, public addresses or demonstrations in her  videos . [ 32 ]  Some notable censure, include by  MTV  during the release of the music video for " Justify My Love " in 1990. [ 32 ]  Media outlets like  BBC  also banned the song. [ 155 ]  An author noted she was perhaps the "main target" of concerns about sexuality by the  Parents Music Resource Center  (PMRC), citing Susan Baker, a founding member of the PMRC, complaining about Madonna "teaching" young girls "how to be porn queens in heat". [ 32 ]  In the  book industry , sexologist  Robert T. Francoeur  noted how her first book  Sex  faced  censorship  in various locations as well. [ 156 ]  Artists like  Donna Summer  and Madonna were notably  censured by Soviet Union 's government at some point, for their sexual-oriented works. [ 157 ]  Madonna's performance at the  2006 Grammy Awards  was  censured in Malaysia . [ 158 ]  In May 2024, the Brazilian House Social Security and Family Committee, approved "motion of censure" for her  free concert  at Copacabana. [ 159 ]


Madonna's popularity further worried others. For instance, a  child pornography  expert cited by  UPI  was concerned when magazines  Playboy  and  Penthouse  leaked nude photos of the singer in 1985. [ 160 ]  Writing for  Harlan Daily Enterprise  in 2003,  Diana West  also remarked her popularity and influence on other "pop descendants", saying the sexualization of childhood became "pretty irreversible" after Madonna, although it didn't start with her. [ 161 ]


Within this root, authors of  Popular Texts in English: New Perspectives  (2001) interpreted her display of sexuality "can be understood as politically subversive". [ 68 ]  Paglia stated she has used images of pornography and prostitution to provoke "strong reactions", including sectors of political, religious conservatives and feminists. [ 106 ]  A Christian author decries "she has sold literally tens of millions of  records  on the theme of pornography", [ 162 ]  while another Christian author expressed: "she has helped to plunge untold millions into sexually transmitted diseases, and the destruction of hell". [ 163 ]  Speaking about her visual works, in  Performance and Popular Music  (2007), Ian Inglish referred that she served as a "paradigmatic case of the  sluttification  of women in music video, rock music and popular culture". [ 164 ]  Scholars and authors of  Cool  (2015), agreed that "the contested nature of female sexuality was nowhere more polarizing than in the images created by Madonna". [ 22 ]  Similarly, in  Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music  (2010), author Rupert Till wrote:


Madonna is perhaps the most extreme example of how sexuality that is considered taboo or outside of what is acceptable to mainstream in public, is deeply enmeshed within the fabric of popular music culture and cults. [ 165 ]


Medieval female sexuality  is the collection of sexual and sensual characteristics identified in a woman from the  Middle Ages . Like a modern woman, a medieval woman's sexuality included many different aspects. Sexuality does not only refer to a woman's sexual activity, as sexual lives were as social, cultural, legal, and religious as they were personal.


Sexuality for the medieval woman began before marriage as a young virgin, mainly among elites whose mothers would  arrange marriages . Marriage between  nobles  was often primarily an economic institution, traditionally based on politics, material wealth, and social status. [ 1 ]  However, it was not unheard of for young men and women to create relationships for themselves with sexual attraction in mind. Women displayed their availability for marriage through their hair, which would have been a great symbol of sexuality in the Middle Ages and was often kept hidden after marriage. Medieval women allowed their hair to grow throughout their lives. Married women would have kept their long hair tied up in braids beneath a head covering of some sort. Single women would allow their hair to fall freely over their bodies signaling that they were available for marriage. [ 2 ]


The medieval values on virginity was a  social construction , and  memories  of virgins was commonplace in popular stories, lyrics, romances, and poems, as well as biblical drama, sermons, and  illuminated manuscripts . [ 3 ]  There are large swaths of secular records that reveal medieval society's conflicting attitudes towards fornication outside of marriage, where "losing ones virginity" was in certain instances harshly punished, especially when resulting in pregnancy: "John the son of Nicholas the clerk fornicated ridiculously with Julia Redes. Both appear, confess, and are whipped once in the usual way through the market. The woman is pregnant." [ 4 ]


A similar passage speaks of one William Trumpour, who fornicated with Joan de Gyldesum in 1363:


She confessed the article and abjured the sin on penalty of six whippings. She has three whippings for her confession. The woman said that the man betrothed her and promised to marry her as his wife. The man denied this on oath and immediately after promised on oath that if he should henceforth know her carnally, he would thereafter have her and hold her as his wife. The woman likewise promised that if hereafter she should allow him to know her carnally, she would have him as her husband. [ 5 ]


However, it seems that such drastic measures to ensure public morality were rarer in this period than later times; premarital sex was tolerated publicly to a far greater level than adultery. According to  The Decameron Web,


"...[I]t appears that unrestrained sexual activity was quite common throughout Europe during these times. In fact, most did not believe fornication was a sin at all, and many were taken by surprise at confession when priests informed them that they had indeed sinned by committing certain sexual acts. St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) claimed that by age fifteen, all young men had lost their virginity...although premarital sex was obviously considered sinful by the church, in reality, once couples were betrothed, they often slept together during a sort of "trial period" before the wedding. That way, if one or both were not satisfied with the results, they might still attempt to release themselves from future consent to marry (sometimes by becoming godparents of the same child, a relationship which would lead to an incestuous union)."


Much popular medieval literature lampooned the supposed moral laxity of the lower and middle classes, especially the peasantry; revealing that such antics were considered amusing and not usually severely frowned upon. The common belief was that "rural populations were much more accepting of illicit sexual behavior, and that country folk were viewed as much more "free" sexually than urban dwellers." For instance, Geoffrey Chaucer’s  The Canterbury Tales  includes many such passages that still have the ability to shock today and would have been extremely taboo in the more recent Victorian Era.


Still, the emphasis on virginity existed to a far greater degree for women than it did men. It was certainly possible for a woman to lose her virginity and be considered holy, as evident through the proliferation of “Saintly Queens” during the High Middle Ages: these women often were praised for dedicating their lives to good works and charity. An outstanding example is Queen Matilda of Scotland, first wife of King Henry I, who was described as "a woman of exceptional holiness, in piety her mother's rival, and in her own character exempt from all evil influence."  However, if a woman was not a virgin she was less likely to be considered for sainthood. [ 6 ]


Once married, the importance of fidelity directly related to a woman's honor and her acknowledgment of male control of her sexuality. [ 7 ]  A man was supposed to transform his wife from a virgin to a woman by  consummating  the marriage, ideally with a pregnancy. While an unconsummated marriage was subject to annulment, once a woman lost her virginity to her husband, the consummated marriage was permanent.


Sexual problems within a marriage, especially in explanation to an unconsummated marriage, existed in a woman's claim of her husband's  impotence  and inability to penetrate her or in a man's claim that his wife's vagina was too narrow or that it was somehow blocked. [ 8 ]  According to accepted  Hippocratic  thought in medicine, conception could only happen if a woman felt pleasure during sex, so the law tended to equate pleasure with consent.


Laws on sex within marriage were skewed against women, and they were generally also written by the Church. Concerning consent, once a man and woman were married for two months, “ecclesiastical authorities would uphold the husband's right to consummate the marriage.” So, exchanging consent between spouses was enough to legally bind a marriage according to the Church. While parental consent, the presence of a witness, and/or an officiating priest was important to declaring marriage complete, it was really sexual consent that mattered. [ 9 ]  However, the German  Schwabenspiegel  allowed a woman over twenty-five to engage in sexual activity without her father's consent or threat of the loss of inheritance. [ 7 ]  To complicate this matter,  Salic Law  prevented women from inheriting land, reign, and property from the baseline in many kingdoms around Western Europe.


Consent was assumed and declared forever after two months of the marriage, so it was impossible for a married woman to be legally raped by her husband. Rape in the eyes of the law was a huge problem for women who were assaulted. According to a Yorkshire Peace Session in 1363, Elias Warner of Malton feloniously raped Ellen Katemayden of Malton “and lay with her against her will and assaulted her and so battered her that she died within the next three days (…) Elias, brought by the sheriff, came before the justices. The jurors (…) say on their oath that the aforesaid Elias is in no way guilty of the aforesaid felony… Therefore it is judged that the aforesaid Elias is acquitted thereof, etc.” [ 10 ]  This is but one example of medieval men being acquitted for rapes, kidnappings, and assaults. Secular and Church courts did little to protect women when it came to sexual violence, especially if the woman became pregnant.


In the Christian medieval world, some theories held that women received far more pleasure from a sexual encounter than men, and had much greater sexual appetite. As a result, some churchmen taught that men took more responsibility for sexual sin than women, since women were "weaker" and less biologically capable of resisting their urges. However, this could also be used as a reason to keep women under stricter control than men. Women commonly dealt with a double standard in how their sexuality was treated in comparison to men. [ 7 ] [ 11 ]


Medieval Christian philosophy told women that, as the daughters of Eve, they are responsible for the fall of mankind due to their innate sin, and this generalized scorn seeped into every facet of their lives, including sexuality. Moreover, religious prejudice against women and female sexuality seeped into legal, intellectual, and medical knowledge. [ 12 ]


Medical knowledge of the time drew on the ideas on third-century writer  Galen , and held that women's wombs were "cold," and required the heat of men's seed both to conceive and for general health. The weakness of women in resisting their physical desires was an obstacle in conception, since they would ignore the ideal conditions to conceive, and over-indulgence in sex could inflame female desire so that women were insatiable. [ 13 ]  It was important to have sex in moderation to ensure health and fulfillment of its reproductive purpose. It was believed that unmarried women should find a husband as quickly as possible, or risk serious health consequences. Unmarried women who were hindered by their lust were told to exercise regularly and take medicines. Failing this, they should find a midwife who would lubricate her fingers with oil, insert them into her vagina, and "move them vigorously about." [ 12 ]


Medieval Christian writers recognized women's sexual pleasure and many thought that in order to conceive a child, a woman had to achieve orgasm. This belief came from the  Galenic model of reproduction , which held that conception occurred due to the union of male and female "seed," both of which were emitted in response to sexual pleasure. [ 14 ] [ 15 ]  This meant that the sexual satisfaction of women was considered important. However, because of this belief, the conception of a child due to rape was often taken as evidence that the woman enjoyed the assault. Some other writers disagreed, maintaining that physical pleasure could occur even when the mind was not consenting. [ 16 ]  Largely, the woman's consent was not what defined rape, however, but rather whether the perpetrator had stepped outside of the boundaries that entitled him to sex; a married woman could not be raped by her husband, because as her husband he had a right to sex with her.


The laws of the  Catholic Church  and the secular laws of the medieval period mixed into, generally, one united front. Whatever would have been a concern for the Church, was automatically reflected in the concern of the secular court. The ultimate purity for the Church was for one to maintain virginity throughout one's life, but if one must have a sexual life, it would then only be legitimate for procreation through marriage. [ 17 ]  The sin of women's sexual immorality, love of extravagant dress, and petulant nature were common themes of medieval sermons. [ 7 ]


Many restrictions theoretically limited the circumstances in which sexual activity was permissible to engage in. For example, sex was a forbidden activity during the following times: Sundays, sometimes Fridays and Wednesdays, the feast days of the saints, periods of fasting such as  Lent  or  Advent , and during a woman's life when she was considered to be impure. Impurity was believed to be during menstruation, pregnancy, the first forty days after giving birth, and while nursing. Since the goal for a woman was to give birth to as many children as possible and nurse them all into good health, a woman, given the set restrictions, would not have had much time to engage in sexual activity. [ 17 ]


The sexual activities considered moral in the Christian world were those that were believed to facilitate conception. The normative sexual encounter positioned the man on top, though the woman did not necessarily have to be supine. [ 18 ]  Non-procreative sexual acts were considered  sodomy ; the charge of sodomy was so serious that it would have been tried in the secular court and possibly been subject to a death sentence. [ 8 ]


However, evidence of practices that were likely to prevent or terminate a pregnancy demonstrate that contraception was understood and commonly used. Women used potions, amulets, and concoctions of herbs and spices to prevent pregnancies. Some handbooks giving advice on how to ensure fertility are so detailed in their descriptions of what should be avoided for a woman that wants to conceive, that they may have been surreptitiously providing contraceptive advice. [ 19 ]


The positions of Medieval theologians and church officials on the issues of contraception and abortion were not uniform; in fact, they often held opposing views. Some church leaders, such as  John Chrysostom , the Archbishop of Constantinople, condemned the use of contraceptives and even compared the practice to murder. However, a common position held by religious authorities and theologians was that of toleration. Some determined that embryos could not be recognized as individuals until further in development when they begin to develop “recognizable human features.” [ 20 ]  The period between conception and these later developments of the fetus was considered an appropriate time to induce an abortion. In some canon law, the motivation behind the practice of using contraception or inducing an abortion was an important factor in determining the degree of sin the woman was committing. A woman who had an abortion due to the inability to properly care for the child was not considered to be as sinful as a woman who was using the abortion to hide evidence of adultery or premarital sex. [ 21 ]


Another large piece of female sexuality of concern for the courts was that of  prostitution . A woman selling sexual services during the Middle Ages was, in theory, frowned upon by the Church as committing a sin, but in principle and in practice, the authorities believed that prostitution was a necessary evil and a public utility for preventing men from worse sins. [ 11 ]


There was no singular approach to prostitution in Medieval Europe; the manner in which it was addressed varied by town. Each town usually addressed prostitution either by making it illegal, regulating and taxing the exchange of sexual services, or institutionalizing it by establishing municipal brothels. These brothels would usually have strict regulations for the owners, employees (such as bookkeepers), and the prostitutes. These regulations included laws which determined the business hours of the brothel, the amount of pay prostitutes were entitled to, when they were allowed to leave, and who they were allowed to have personal relationships with. Some laws, however, worked in the prostitutes’ favor, such as laws that protected them from violence committed by the brothel owners.


The establishment of these brothels was justified using the argument that it was the "lesser evil." By giving men the option of engaging in sex with a prostitute, it was believed to be saving esteemed women from corruption, rape, and sodomy. It was also believed that making attractive women available for men to have intercourse with would curtail homosexual practices. Essentially, the regulation and legalization of prostitution was not for the benefit of the prostitutes' well-being, but for the good of the townspeople. [ 22 ]


The history of Medieval women's sexuality and lesbianism is not well-documented and seldomly acknowledged due to lesbianism being underplayed or ignored compared to male homosexuality in the Medieval time period. More often, Medieval physicians discussed male homosexuality in greater detail than lesbianism in handbooks that detailed religious confessions, and many theologians also overlooked same sex relations between women as well. According to historian Joan Cadden, this “invisibility” of women's same sex relations is in part due to the subordinate place of all women in the Middle Ages, who are seen as lesser and easily overlooked compared to their male counterparts. [ 23 ]


There are many examples of queer sexuality among medieval women, and its evidence traditionally comes from Canonical and secular law codes. While they do not reveal the lived experiences of medieval lesbian and lesbian-like women, they give insight into norms on gendered sexuality and homosexuality.  Gendered sexuality  in the middle ages came from Greco-Roman views of male and female sexuality. The most important aspect of this difference lays within a sexual hierarchy:


If a man submitted to a passive role in lovemaking, particularly by allowing penetration in a homosexual encounter. (It was perfectly acceptable to be the active partner in a homosexual relationship, since that preserved the all-important gender definition equating activity with masculinity. Oral sexuality with a female partner was much condemned since it, too, inverted the social hierarchy. [ 24 ]


Lesbian relationships challenged this sexual hierarchy, but it was not considered as dangerous as male homosexuality. Many male writers, often within the church, found sex without male genitalia hard to imagine. So, they often assumed lesbian sex could only exist if women used sexual instruments like dildos; only then would they be challenging the sexual hierarchy. In a letter from  Saint Augustine  to a community of nuns around 423CE, Augustine condemned sex and distinguishes between homoerotic activity and homosocial relationships that could be viewed in a more positive light:


The love between you, however, ought not to be earthly but spiritual, for the things which shameless women do even to other women in low jokes and games are to be avoided not only by widows and chaste handmaids of Christ, living under a holy rule of life, but also entirely by married women and maidens destined for marriage. [ 25 ]


The  Penitential of Theodore  punished lesbian activity, but they did not have the words to describe lesbian identities: “If a woman practices vice with a woman, she shall do penance for three years. (…) If she practices solitary vice, she shall do penance for the same period.” [ 26 ]  Both of these pieces of canonical rhetoric and practice reveal that lesbian women existed and were known, but they did not possess the language to describe it. There were not many explicit definitions of lesbianism, especially as an identity, but these sources do reveal its existence. An interesting prescriptive source on convent life by  Donatus  (d. 355) shows how some clerics feared that affection would lead to lesbian sexual expression. He declares through a rule on how nuns ought to sleep:


Each should sleep in a separate bed and they should accept bedding according to the arrangements of the couches as the mother directs. If possible all should sleep in one place (…) Lights should burn in each chamber until day-break. They should sleep clothed, their girdles bound and always ready for divine service with gravity and modesty. (…) Nuns were to sleep together, with a complete lack of privacy, while at the same time they should sleep alone, without an occasion to touch a sister, or see a sister naked. [ 27 ]


A record from sixteenth-century  Seville  warned that lesbian women in prison who used dildos and hard language on other women (again, lesbian sex was not considered sex if there was not an instrument) could receive up to 200 lashes and be exiled. [ 28 ]  Lesbianism was punished, but records of this punishment prove its existence and lesbian experiences as valid in the greater context of human history.


Although much of what is known about Medieval lesbianism comes from law codes, there is some additional evidence of romantic relationships between women during this period which provide a closer look into their personal lives. One such source is a collection of poems written by a woman to her female lover which were recovered from a twelfth-century manuscript from the monastery of Tegernsee. John Boswell, a historian of Medieval sexuality, considers this poem to be “perhaps the most outstanding example of medieval lesbian literature.” One of the poems discusses themes of awaiting her woman lover's return, recalling intimate moments, and grieving her absence daily. It also depicts the author and her lovers’ relationship as a physically intimate one, not just an emotional bond. [ 29 ]


Monte delle doti  was a public fund established by the government of the  Republic of Florence  in 1425. Its purpose was to provide suitable  dowries  to  Florentine brides.


In medieval Italy, the size of the bride's dowry reflected her family's social status, making it increasingly more desirable to provide dowries as large as possible. In the decades following the  Black Death  the decline in population and consequent decrease in the number of eligible bachelors led to heightened competition among families for good husbands for their daughters; this led to an inflation in the value of dowries. Due to this trend, marrying off a daughter was a financial burden to a Florentine citizen, leading many fathers in the early 15th century Florence to decide not to arrange marriages for their daughters. In order to prevent serious demographic problems and promiscuity (as well as bring a much-needed injection of funds into the communal treasury, which had been severely depleted by a succession of costly wars with neighbouring states [ 2 ] ), the state came up with  Monte delle doti . When a girl was on average about five years old, her father made the first payment into the fund. The  deposit  matured and the fund accrued at a guaranteed 11 to 12 per cent  interest rate . The terms were fixed at seven and a half or fifteen years. Investing in the  Monte delle doti  was meant to prevent the impoverishment of the family by avoiding excessive dowries. [ 3 ]


At first, investing into the fund involved risk: if the girl died before marriage, the deposit could not be claimed back, and sometimes it turned out to be  insolvent . There were only two depositors in the year of the fund's establishment and none between 1426 and 1429. The institution only became successful in 1433, however, when the minimum deposit period was lowered to five years and when fathers were allowed to retrieve their capital in the event of their unmarried daughter's death. The establishment of the fund also led to the abandonment of the tradition of paying the dowry on the day of the wedding. The regulations of  Monte delle doti  allowed the payment of the dowry only once the marriage had been  consummated . This, in turn, led to a new tradition - namely, consummating the marriage at the bride's family home right after the exchange of the rings, enabling the groom to claim the dowry before taking his bride to his home. [ 1 ]


Female sexuality  was the basic premise of the legislation that enabled the fund, which said that the government was "determined to shore up the frailty of the female sex" and that, "provided with dowries, however small, women will be certain to lead virtuous and praiseworthy lives". Only five years earlier, the government of the  Republic of Venice  introduced a law limiting the size of dowries in order to spare families of the "shame and danger" of having single adult daughters living with them. [ 4 ]


Molho, Anthony (1994)  Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence . Harvard Historical Studies 114. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.


" The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm " is a  feminist  essay on  women's sexuality  written by American  radical feminist  activist  Anne Koedt  in 1968, [ 1 ]  and published in 1970. [ 2 ]  It first appeared in a four-paragraph outline form in the  Notes from the First Year [ 3 ]  which resulted in an extended article in  Notes from the Second Year [ 4 ]  journals published by the  New York Radical Women [ 5 ]  and was partially based on findings from  Masters and Johnson 's 1966 work  Human Sexual Response . [ 6 ]  It was then distributed as a pamphlet in its full form, [ 7 ]  including sections on evidence for the  clitoral orgasm , female anatomy, and reasons the "myth" of vaginal orgasm is maintained. [ 1 ]


Koedt wrote this feminist response during the  sexual revolution  of the 1960s. The goal of this response is to address both the "myth of the vaginal orgasm", create awareness and education for women and men about female sexual pleasure, and to counter previous thought about the female orgasm. Koedt reflects in her writing, "It was  Freud 's feelings about women's secondary and inferior relationship to men that formed the basis for his theories on female sexuality. Once having laid down the law about the nature of our sexuality, Freud not so strangely discovered a tremendous problem of  frigidity  in women. His recommended cure for a woman who was frigid was psychiatric care. She was suffering from failure to mentally adjust to her 'natural' role as a woman." [ 1 ]  Koedt breaks societal barriers of what is considered acceptable to discuss and her article played a vital role in the feminist sexual revolution, [ 8 ]  and draws on research done by  Alfred Kinsey , among others, about  human sexuality  to support her claims. [ 1 ]


History


It wasn't until 1998 when urologist  Helen E. O'Connell , and her team dissected 10 female cadavers and found that the clitoris we see outside of the body is only the tip of the iceberg. The clitoris extends back in into the body surrounding the vaginal muscles and is a few inches in length. This then proved that there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm, and orgasms are in some shape or form, clitoral. [ 9 ]


In Media


Pornography  greatly perpetuations this narrative, causing many women to question whether what they are experiencing is an orgasm or not. Porn often portrays a man's orgasm being the center for pleasure and the woman as a submissive participant helping him get there; hers is a consolation prize. The idea of women asking for what they want in order to orgasm was not the "sexy" part of porn, so when it's not included the viewers, often young people watching to learn, take away that they should not be asking for more. This inequitable representation can be directly linked to the  orgasm gap  and how it plays a role in sex.  [ 10 ]


An  othermother  is a woman caring for children who are not biologically her own.


Othermothers are women, including mothers, who provide care for children who are not biologically their own. The practice has been documented in Africa and the  African diaspora , including in the United States and the  Caribbean  region. Rooted in West African tradition, othermothering can including child-rearing outside of the home, including in educational settings. It is also commonly multigenerational, with multiple othermothers for a single child. [ 1 ]


In some regions, othermothering is known as "child fostering," though not in the strictly legal sense of  foster care . [ 2 ]


In Canada, othermothers are often found in multigenerational households or organizations and emphasize community approaches to caretaking. Canadian othermothers help introduce new members of the African diaspora to their surroundings and get people involved in Afrocentric community activism. [ 3 ]


Black students in Canadian universities seek out othermother figures within the faculty, especially to serve as academic advisors for Afrocentric research, meaning Black women faculty members become responsible for students' intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being. [ 4 ]


Although the term "othermother" is most commonly associated with Black women, the concept is also found in Latin America and its diaspora, which includes people of African heritage. [ 5 ]  In the Caribbean, the terms  macoumere / MaComère  and  comadre  are used in non-Anglophone communities. [ 6 ]


Othermother characters are common in Caribbean literature, where they help provide multigenerational views of women's experiences. [ 7 ]  Othermother characters are also used to explore different types of motherhood and how mothering is affected by colonialism. [ 8 ]


In Caribbean film, othermothering is used to critique U.S. approaches to family units and parenting, especially the idealized " nuclear family " that lacks the Caribbean region's "more complex structural relationships such as the concept and practice of the extended family or community involvement in parenting practices." [ 9 ]


The institution of othermothers was a common practice in African-American communities in America since early as  slavery  and has roots in the traditional African world-view. "Care" could be in the form of providing a meal, essentially adopting the child, or simply supplying guidance. Othermothers believed that "good mothering" comprises all actions, including social activism, which addressed the needs of their biological children as well as the greater community.


Stanlie M. James  defines the concept of the community othermother as the women in African-American communities who assist blood mothers in the responsibilities in child care for short to long-term periods, in informal or formal arrangements. [ 10 ]  James finds that othermothers are usually over the age of 40 because they must have a sense of the community's culture and tradition before they can exercise their care and wisdom on the community. Othermothers are politically active in their community, as they critique members and provide strategies to improve their environment. [ 11 ]


A study by  sociologist   Cheryl Gilkes  examines women leaders in a Northern, urban community. Gilkes suggests that community othermother relationships can be essential in stimulating black women's decisions to become social activists. Many of the black women community activists in her study became involved in community organizing in response to the needs of their own children and of those in the neighborhood. [ 12 ]


Patricia Hill Collins  discusses the othermother relationship and references Gilkes study. Patricia Hill Collins explains othermothers as women who held the family infrastructure together by their virtues of caring, ethics, teaching, and community service. They can be sisters, aunts, neighbors, grandmothers, cousins, or any other woman who steps in to relieve some stress of intimate mother-daughter relationships. They are considered to be the backbone of the black race and give anything that they can to communities, and often what they cannot. Collins also discusses the "mothering the mind" relationships that can develop between black othermothers and other females who effectively become their students. These relationships move toward the mutuality of a shared sisterhood that binds black women as community othermothers. Community othermothers have made dramatic contributions by creating a new type of community in often hostile political and economic situations. Collins concludes by stating that othermothers' participation in activist mothering demonstrates a rejection of  individualism  and adapts a different value system where ethics of caring and personal accountability move communities forward. [ 13 ]


Today, the concept of the othermother is present within the urban elementary schools, and African-American female educators play an integral role in fulfilling the psychological and educational needs of the urban child.


The  ovulatory shift hypothesis  holds that women experience  evolutionarily   adaptive  changes in subconscious thoughts and behaviors related to  mating  during different parts of the  ovulatory cycle . [ 1 ] [ 2 ]  It suggests that what women want, in terms of men, changes throughout the menstrual cycle.  Two  meta-analyses  published in 2014 reached opposing conclusions on whether the existing evidence was robust enough to support the prediction that women's mate preferences change across the cycle. [ 3 ] [ 4 ]   A newer 2018 review does not show women changing the type of men they desire at different times in their fertility cycle. [ 5 ]


The theory proposes that women's behavior may change during the most  fertile  time in their ovulatory cycle. At high fertility, the theory holds that women may become more physically active and  [ 6 ]  avoid male relatives. [ 7 ]


The hypothesis separately proposes that  hormonal  changes across the cycle cause women, when they are most likely to get  pregnant , to be more attracted to traits in potential short-term male  sexual partners  that indicate high  genetic  quality, leading to greater  reproductive success . [ 3 ]  It has been proposed that genetic traits like compatible  major histocompatibility complex  gene profiles are considered more attractive. [ 8 ]   Newer studies do not support female changes in desired reproductive partners when more fertile. [ 5 ]


Most female  mammals  experience reproductive  fertility  cycles. They typically consist of a long period of low fertility, and a brief period of high fertility just prior to and including  ovulation . In humans, this is called the ovulatory cycle, or  menstrual cycle . The period of high fertility is also called the fertile window, and is the only time during the cycle when  sex  can result in  conception . [ 9 ] [ page needed ]


Females of most mammalian species display hormonally-induced physical and behavioral signals of their fertility during the fertile window, such as  sexual swellings  and increased motivation to mate. [ 10 ] [ page needed ]  Some species will not—or cannot—engage in sex at all outside of this window. [ 9 ] [ page needed ]  This phase of sexual receptivity and proceptivity,  estrus , is often referred to as being "in heat".


Human females, however, engage in sex throughout their ovulatory cycles, and even beyond their reproductive years. Additionally, they do not show obvious physical signals of high fertility. This has led many researchers to conclude that humans lost their estrus through evolution. [ 11 ] [ page needed ]  It has been hypothesized that this could be due to the adaptive benefits of  concealed ovulation  and  extended sexuality . [ 12 ] [ page needed ] [ 13 ] [ page needed ]


However, research has shown that human females may in fact experience subtle but distinct physiological, behavioral, and cognitive changes during the high-fertility phase of their ovulatory cycle, [ 2 ] [ 3 ]  and that both men and other women can detect signals that indicate high-fertility in a woman, [ 14 ]  which may indicate that humans have retained an estrus-like state. [ 15 ]


Estrus evolved to facilitate  reproduction  and maximize  reproductive success , or the success of passing on one's  genes  by producing  offspring  that are most likely to survive and reproduce themselves. [ 16 ] [ 17 ]  The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that motivation and desire to mate should increase during the fertile window, and that females should seek and attract the best possible mate at their highest fertility. [ 1 ]  An ideal mate could have many qualities: resources to care for offspring, the physical ability and  social status  to protect a mate and offspring, a compatible personality for a long-term  pair bond , etc.  Evolutionary theory  and  sexual selection theory  suggest that an organism's top priority should be to maximize survival and reproductive success. [ 17 ] [ page needed ]  Thus, the ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that women possess a dual sexuality, where during the fertile window, a woman should prioritize attracting and choosing a mate with the best genetic quality, or “ good genes ”, since this is the only time she can become pregnant and pass on  heritable  genetic qualities to her offspring. However, at low-fertility, a woman should prioritize a mate with "good parenting" traits, such as willingness and ability to invest in parenting, resources to devote to offspring, and compatibility for a long-term partnership. [ 16 ]  These differing traits are sometimes referred to as the "sexy cad" vs. the "good dad". [ 18 ] [ 19 ]


It has also been hypothesized that high-fertility preferences should be strongest when evaluating a short-term sexual partner, but low-fertility preferences should be strongest when evaluating a long-term relationship partner. [ 3 ] [ 20 ]  A woman can gain the benefits of good genes through only a single sexual encounter, and good dad traits are only relevant for a long-term pair bond.


Some researchers have suggested that over evolutionary time, women may have maximized reproductive success by seeking good genes from an  extra-pair copulation —cheating on their partner—at high fertility, while also maintaining a long-term pair bond with a partner who provides parenting resources for the offspring, sometimes called the dual strategy hypothesis. [ 21 ] [ 13 ] [ page needed ]  Of course, an optimal partner is one with both sexy cad and good dad traits, but such a man is statistically unlikely to be common. Thus,  natural selection  may have designed ancestral women to be opportunistic. If successful, a woman could gain the benefits of both high-quality genetics and high-quality parenting to give her offspring the best chance of survival. However, natural selection would not have favored men who desire to provide for offspring that do not share their genes, so this would have been a risky strategy. [ 22 ]


Ovulatory cycle shifts are hypothesized to be regulated by  sex hormones , primarily  estradiol  and  progesterone , which become elevated at different times across the cycle. In particular, high levels of estradiol and low levels of progesterone, which peak at high fertility just prior to ovulation, have been shown to be correlated with several mating-related psychological changes. [ 23 ] [ 24 ]  However, some studies have only found correlations with changes in estradiol. [ 25 ] [ 26 ]  It is well-established that estradiol can act in the brain to produce other psychological and behavioral changes, [ 27 ]  and animal studies tend to show a link between sexual behavior and estrogen concentrations. [ 28 ]  Other hormones such as  testosterone ,  follicle-stimulating hormone  (FSH),  luteinizing hormone  (LH), and  prolactin  have been studied as possible correlates, but most have produced little to no effect. [ 25 ]


Numerous studies have demonstrated ovulatory cycle shifts in women's mating-related motivations, preferences, thoughts, and behaviors. [ 3 ]  The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that these shifts are designed by  natural selection  as  evolutionary adaptations  for selecting and attracting specific types of mates with high genetic quality when a woman is most likely to get pregnant.


Some of the earliest studies on human ovulatory shifts explored whether women engage in more instances of  sexual activity  during high fertility, as this could indicate a human estrus-like state. While some studies have found increases in frequency of sexual activity at high fertility, [ 29 ] [ 30 ] [ 31 ]  larger studies have concluded that there is generally no difference in frequency of sexual activity across the ovulatory cycle, [ 32 ]  possibly due to the multitude of factors that affect the ability to engage in sex (e.g., access to a partner, partner's desire, time for engaging, etc.).


Researchers have subsequently explored whether  sexual desire , rather than frequency of sexual activity, changes across the ovulatory cycle, as this would not be affected by practical barriers to engaging in sex. Several studies in this area have shown that women's sexual desire and  masturbation  behaviors do increase during the fertile window, [ 33 ] [ 34 ]  although results have been mixed [ 35 ]  and depend on the type of sexual desire measured. For example, desire for uncommitted sex does not appear to track fertility. [ 36 ]


While some studies have shown that fertile-phase women might be more attracted to,  flirt  more, and initiate sex more often with men who are not their partner, [ 2 ]  newer studies do not support the hypothesis that females change who they consider desirable reproductive partners when more fertile. [ 5 ]


Women in relationships may tend to be more  assertive  and independent during the fertile phase. [ 37 ]


The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that women at high fertility should be most  attracted  to short-term sexual partners with physical and behavioral features that likely signal genetic  fitness , or good genes.


Having  symmetrical  features may indicate that an individual possesses high-quality genes related to health, and that they developed in a stable environment with little disease or trauma. [ 38 ]  Studies have found that women rate faces of more symmetrical men as more attractive during high fertility, especially when evaluating them as short-term partners. [ 20 ] [ 39 ]  It has also been demonstrated that women at high fertility are more attracted to the  body odors  of men with more facial and bodily symmetry. [ 1 ] [ 40 ]  Although many studies and one  meta-analysis  have shown that fertility-moderated shifts in attraction to facial and bodily symmetry occur robustly, [ 3 ]  other reviews have concluded that the effect is small or non-existent. [ 41 ] [ 4 ]


In many species, more  masculine  and  dominant  males experience greater reproductive success. [ 42 ]  Masculine traits are produced during puberty by increasing amounts of  testosterone . Testosterone is a known  immunosuppressant , thus traits that reflect high levels of testosterone may indicate that a man possesses high-quality genes which allowed him to develop masculine features without experiencing any deleterious effects of high testosterone levels. [ 43 ]  Masculine traits include facial features like a strong jawline, [ 44 ]  bodily features like height, muscularity, and body hair, [ 45 ]  and vocal features like a deeper voice. [ 46 ]  While many studies have shown that women tend to be attracted to more masculine characteristics at high fertility, [ 47 ]  results have been mixed, [ 48 ]  and two meta-analyses have concluded that the effect is not robust. [ 41 ] [ 3 ]


Charles Darwin first proposed that music, lacking a functional evolutionary explanation by natural selection, may be an instrument of  sexual selection , just like a male  peacock 's extravagant feathers, which serve to attract a female. [ 49 ] [ page needed ]  Similarly, humans may use artistic expressions as a display of good genetic qualities like  creativity  and  intelligence . [ 50 ] [ page needed ]


The  major histocompatibility complex  (MHC) is a suite of genes responsible for  adaptive immune response  and  histocompatibility  in an organism's cells. In animals, including mammals and other primates, MHC has been shown to play a role in  MHC sexual selection , where organisms mate selectively with individuals who possess MHC alleles that are more dissimilar from their own. [ 51 ]  MHC has been shown to be responsible for changing the  pheromone  compositions of mice, causing mice with dissimilar MHC genes to have more attractive body odors. [ 52 ]  It has been hypothesized that this is a mechanism for creating  genetic diversity , avoiding  inbreeding , and creating offspring that are more resistant to  pathogens . Some studies have shown that humans tend to form long-term partnerships with individuals who have more dissimilar MHC, [ 53 ]  and find the scent of MHC-dissimilar individuals more attractive, especially at high fertility. [ 54 ] [ 55 ]  However, other studies have found little or no effect of MHC on mate preferences, and some have even shown a reverse effect, that people prefer partners with more similar MHC to their own. [ 56 ]  Several reviews and one meta-analysis on the human and primate literature regarding MHC have concluded that the effects of MHC similarity on attraction are not robust, [ 57 ] [ 8 ]  but that humans are reliably attracted to individuals with more  heterozygous , or diverse, MHC genotypes, regardless of whether they are similar to their own. [ 8 ]  However, it is unclear whether attraction to MHC heterozygosity changes across the ovulatory cycle.


The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that women's behavior during the fertile phase should also reflect evolutionary adaptations for reproductive success. Fertile-phase women also spend more time on their appearance and tend to wear accessories like jewelry, makeup, or hairstyles that are perceived as trying to look more attractive. [ 58 ] [ 59 ]  Additionally, several studies have demonstrated that women tend to purchase more products related to enhancing their appearance, attractive clothing, shoes, or accessories, during the fertile window. [ 60 ] [ 59 ]


One of the earliest studies on ovulatory shifts found that female lab rats tend to run on their exercise wheels more during their fertile window. [ 61 ] [ page needed ]  Subsequent research showed that a variety of species experience an increase in the frequency of spontaneous activity and  motor behavior  during estrus. [ 62 ] [ 63 ]  Some studies on humans have shown a similar pattern: women walk more steps, as counted by a  pedometer , during the high-fertility phase of their cycle. [ 64 ] [ 65 ]  However, other research has found no difference in locomotion patterns across the ovulatory cycle, and many studies on activity across the cycle have small sample sizes and substantially differing  methodologies , making it difficult to draw definitive conclusions. [ 66 ] [ 6 ]  Despite a possible increase in activity, many studies have found that women consume fewer  calories  during their fertile phase. [ 6 ] [ 67 ] [ 59 ] [ 68 ]  Some researchers have suggested that these changes in activity and food consumption may indicate that during estrus, women are motivated to focus more of their energy on mating-related behaviors like going out to meet new potential mates, instead of survival-related behaviors like seeking food. [ 6 ] [ 68 ]


Parental investment theory  posits the idea that natural selection designed each sex to have different mating strategies based on how much investment the sex is required to devote to offspring for their survival. [ 69 ] [ page needed ]  The sex that invests more in offspring should be more  intersexually selective , or picky when choosing a sexual partner, because they have more time and resources to lose if they make a poor choice. The other sex should be more  intrasexually competitive , or competitive with members of their same sex, in order to access and attract the more selective sex. [ 69 ] [ page needed ]  In humans, as in all mammals, females are the sex that invests more in parenting, simply through the lengthy and taxing process of pregnancy and lactation, whereas males need only to contribute one act of sexual intercourse to pass on their genes. Thus, females are expected to be the more selective sex, and males are expected to be more competitive. However, unlike many species where males do not contribute to parenting at all, humans have highly dependent offspring, and a complex social structure that allows males to make significant and important investments in parenting effort. According to parental investment theory, this indicates that natural selection may have designed women to be somewhat competitive with other women for access to the best mates and potential fathers for their offspring. [ 70 ]


Some studies have indicated that women engage in more competitive behaviors with other women when they are at high fertility. During the fertile window, women not using hormonal contraceptives self-report increased feelings of intrasexual competitiveness, describe other women as less attractive, and use more dehumanizing terms when talking about women, but not men. [ 71 ] [ 72 ]  Women's choices to purchase more attractive or revealing clothing at high fertility are also increased when they are first shown a photograph of an attractive woman, but not photographs of men or unattractive women, suggesting clothing may not be chosen to attract men, but rather as a competitive display for other women. [ 60 ]  Additionally, some studies have used  economic games  to show that women are less likely to share resources or engage in cooperative bargaining with other women during the fertile window. [ 73 ] [ 74 ] [ 75 ]  Some researchers have noted that the reason why women should be more competitive during the fertile window is unclear. [ 75 ]


The ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that women should be seeking short-term sexual partners at peak fertility, but men can effectively have multiple sexual partners, so competition over one high-quality man should not be necessary. If women were competing for a long-term partner, there is no reason why they should be more competitive during the fertile window than any other time in their cycle. [ medical citation needed ]


Hassleton and Gildersleeve (2011) wrote that both men and women can subconsciously detect cues to women's fertility that change across the ovulatory cycle. [ 14 ]  Some researchers have suggested that natural selection designed women to signal their fertility in order to attract a mate. [ 76 ]  Other researchers have proposed that women evolved to have  concealed ovulation  but they still "leak" subtle cues of their fertility, and men have evolved to detect these cues. [ 12 ] [ page needed ] [ 13 ] [ page needed ] [ 15 ]


During estrus, many species produce  pheromones , or body odors that indicate to potential mates that one is in the fertile phase. While no specific human pheromones have been identified, humans may exhibit similar scent changes at high fertility. [ medical citation needed ]  Body odors of high-fertility women not using hormonal contraceptives are rated in some studies as more attractive by both men and women. [ 77 ] [ 24 ] [ 78 ]  Vaginal odors from high-fertility women are also rated as more attractive than odors from the same women at low-fertility. [ 79 ]  Some studies have shown that men exposed to high-fertility body odors of women exhibit increases in  testosterone , [ 76 ] [ 80 ]  a feature associated with mating motivation and behavior, although other studies have failed to replicate this effect. [ medical citation needed ]


Studies using facial photographs found that both men and women rate physical features of women at high fertility more  attractive  than when they are at low fertility and that facial attractiveness increases in fertile phase women. [ 81 ] [ 82 ]  It has been hypothesized that this shift may be due to subtle changes in soft tissue symmetry that increase during high-fertility. [ 83 ] [ 84 ]


Studies have found that fertile phase women speak with a slightly higher  vocal pitch . [ 85 ]  One study reported that recordings of women's voices in the fertile phase are rated, by both men and women, as more attractive than recordings by the same women during low fertility. [ 86 ]  However, these effect sizes are relatively small compared to other cues of ovulation. [ 14 ]


Several studies have found that men in a relationship tend to be more protective and possessive of their partner when she is at peak fertility, as well as more  jealous  of any advances their partner might make on other men. [ 35 ] [ 37 ]  One study found that after interacting with their partner during the fertile phase, men shown a photograph of an attractive man exhibit increased testosterone, which may be a competitive response. [ 87 ]


Since it has been proposed that changes in hormone levels across the ovulatory cycle are the primary mechanisms that causes cycle shifts, some studies have explored the effects of  hormonal contraception , like  the pill , on both women's cycle shifts and other people's ability to detect cycle shifts. [ original research? ]


Studies have reported that hormonal contraceptives weaken or eliminate cycle shifts entirely. [ 88 ]  It has been proposed that the synthetic hormones present in hormonal contraception that suppress ovulation also suppress the subsequent cognitive and behavioral changes found in naturally-cycling women. Other studies have stated that changes in synthetic hormones produce cycle shifts similar to effects produced by the real hormonal changes in naturally-cycling women. [ 89 ]


While the ovulatory shift hypothesis proposes that  adaptive  changes in mating-related cognition and behavior occur  within  each ovulatory cycle, some researchers have posited a  between -cycle shift theory. Many women experience regular  anovulatory cycles , or non-fertile cycles where ovulation does not occur, therefore hormonal changes between ovulatory cycles may be a more reliable indicator of true fertility, as higher levels of  estradiol  are more likely to produce a fertile ovulatory cycle. [ 90 ] [ page needed ]  Thus, some researchers have proposed that hormonal changes between cycles, primarily in elevated estradiol levels, are responsible for changes in mating-related cognition and behavior. [ 26 ] [ 91 ] [ page needed ] [ 33 ]  Within-cycle shifts may be simply a byproduct of between-cycle shifts caused by elevated estradiol. [ 15 ]


One  meta-analysis  and a review of the literature have been conducted on both published and unpublished data that support the claim of the ovulatory shift hypothesis that women experience changes in attraction preferences at high fertility. [ 3 ] [ 20 ]  However, another meta-analysis and subsequent commentary concluded that the effect is not actually significant and may be a result of some studies using imprecise measurements of when women are in the fertile window, as well as  publication bias . [ 4 ]   A review subsequently published also does not show women changing the type of men they desire at different times in their fertility cycle. [ 5 ]  Another study found no correlation between current fertility status and sociosexual attitudes and desires. [ 92 ]


Secreta mulierum , also known as  De secretis mulierum , is a  natural philosophical  text from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century frequently attributed to  Albertus Magnus , although it is more likely written by one of his followers. [ 1 ]  Originally written in Latin, the title translates as The  Secrets of Women  or  Of the Secrets of Women . Drawing on  Hippocratic ,  Galenic , and Aristotelian theories, this text discusses sexuality and reproduction from both a medical and philosophical perspective. Over eighty manuscript copies of the treatise have been identified, and it has been translated into multiple different languages over several centuries. [ 2 ]  This suggests that the ideas expressed in this work were hugely popular and influential. It was added to the  Index librorum prohibitorum  in 1605. [ 3 ]


Owing to both the medical and philosophical nature of the text, a variety of topics are discussed by pseudo-Albert. While some of the thirteen chapters are strictly medical, such as those on the signs of conception, the period of gestation, and the nature of the menses, others are largely theoretical. For example, the author discusses at length how the planets and constellations can affect a developing fetus. It can come as no surprise that the author's philosophical discussions are more in-depth and developed considering natural philosophy was more significant than medicine in the sources, such as  Aristotle , from which the author drew his information. Therefore, the nature of  Secreta Mulierum  is more accurately categorized as cosmological or philosophical in focus and not medical. In fact, the author demonstrates a lack of basic medical knowledge, even for the time period. For example, the author states in his discussion of menses that  urine  and  menstrual blood  are expelled from the body through the same opening. [ 1 ]  Scholars have concluded the writing may have been designed to be used as an instructional text on human reproduction for the religious community due to its nature, rather than for medical training. [ 1 ]


Like many philosophers of this time, the author reasons that human embryos are made from the seed of the father and the menses of the mother. [ 1 ]  It was believed that menstrual blood was surplus food that had not been used by the woman's body. The author states that the menses comes once a month due to the cold and humid nature of women and is the color of blood except in corrupt women. It was thought that women who had been corrupted by bad or viscous  humors  would have menses the color of lead. [ 1 ]  When conception occurs, the womb "closes up like a purse on all sides" and therefore menstruation stops. [ 1 ]  However, the author suggests that the woman is still taking in excess food during her pregnancy that is not being purged and therefore claims  pregnant  women have a greater desire for sexual intercourse.


The author suggests that  women keep themselves away from men during their monthly flow . The author believes that menstrual flow is poisonous and can even harm the eyes of children if they are looked upon by the woman. [ 4 ]  When menstruation stops at menopause, the retention of menses builds up and results in an excess of evil humors, which can escape through the eyes and infect the air, polluting the world. [ 4 ]


The formation of the fetus is a key topic in the text, and the influence of celestial bodies on the fetus is important to the author, as they endow the fetus with certain abilities. [ 1 ]


Saturn : gives the fetus the ability to reason and discern, as well as consolidates the seed that makes the child, giving it the power of growth and motion in the first month.


Jove  (Jupiter): grants generosity and passion in the second month