Nimbi FM, Tripodi F, Simonelli C, Nobre P. Sexual dysfunctional beliefs questionnaire (SDBQ): translation and psychometric properties of the Italian version. Sexologies. 2019;28(2):e11–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2018.09.003. Inside the 2010 EMIS survey, almost 13,000 UK MSM described what constitute the best sexual life for them [ 55]. Most of men reported a desire for sex within committed relationships, followed by the need of emotionally and intimately connected sexual experiences. Many MSM expressed a desire for variety and a high frequency of sexual activities in their lives, and some men reported gaining the most sexual and emotional satisfaction out of casual sex contexts (e.g., hook-up, one-night stand) [ 56]. Other gay men reported a high desire for adventurous and exploratory sexual experience, free from social, psychological, and physical harm [ 55]. Interestingly, older men were less likely to idealize relationships or emotional connections than younger ones. Moreover, older men were more likely to ask for the sexual practices they wanted [ 55], as a result of a greater experience and consciousness about their own sexual desire and pleasure. Perera PADMP, Abeygunasekera N, Gunewardhana CU, Kumarasinghe NH, Mohedeen SB. Potential sexual addiction (PSA) among men who have sex with men (MSM) who attended STD clinic, Kalubowila: a descriptive cross-sectional study. Sri Lanka J Sexual Health HIV Med. 2018;4:6–10. https://doi.org/10.4038/joshhm.v4i0.75. Weinstein A, Katz L, Eberhardt H, Cohen K, Lejoyeux M. Sexual compulsion—relationship with sex, attachment and sexual orientation. J Behav Addict. 2015;4(1):22–6. https://doi.org/10.1556/JBA.4.2015.1.6.

Schmitt DP, Alcalay L, Allik J, Ault L, Austers I, Bennett KL, et al. Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2003;85(1):85–104. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.1.85. Sitting in meetings with her at the prominent literary agency where we both worked left me feeling weak. Usually never short of things to say, in her presence, I’d marvel at her ability to drain all quips from my mind, leaving my mouth bone-dry. But I knew the cliché and I refused to succumb to the stereotype of being the young, ambitious 25-year-old who screws the boss. Kurdek LA. Differences between partners from heterosexual, gay, and lesbian cohabiting couples. J Marriage Fam. 2006;68(2):509–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00268.x.Ronson A, Wood JR, Milhausen RR. Current research on sexual response and sexual functioning among lesbian women. Curr Sex Health Rep. 2015;7(3):191–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-015-0056-8.

However, Traub also admits that there is a profound gulf between Katherine Philips and a ‘Boston marriage’ in regard to ‘the freedom to advocate for female intimacy as a political alternative to patriarchal marriage.’[99] Peixoto M. Sexual satisfaction, solitary, and dyadic sexual desire in men according to sexual orientation. J Homosex. 2019;66(6):769–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1484231. Hirshfield S, Chiasson M, Wagmiller R, Remien R, Humberstone M, Scheinmann R, et al. Sexual dysfunction in an internet sample of U.S. men who have sex with men. J Sex Med. 2010;7:3104–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01636.x.Mary Wroth (1587 – 1651/3) was the first English woman to write a sonnet sequence in English, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621), one of the first plays, Love’s Victory and the first English woman to have a work of fiction published, The Countess of Montgomeries Urania (1621). [62] The Countess of Montgomeries Urania is deliberately reminiscent of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia but while Sidney’s Arcadia is about the ‘alienation of men from the idyllic world to which they have retreated,’[63] Wroth writes about the alienation of women through primogeniture and patriarchal dominance, which leads to domestic and sexual violence. The castle and royal palace in Urania ‘are spaces of incarceration and domestic abuse, prefiguring the Gothic inversion of the domestic into a space of terror, and the negative utopia.’[64] Opening with Urania discovering that the shepherds who brought her up were not her parents: ‘Of any miserie that can befall woman, is not this the most and greatest which thou are falne into? Can there be any neare the unhappiness of being ignorant, and that in the highest kind, not being certaine of my owne estate of birth?’[65] Urania’s quest to find her family origins symbolizes the quest for feminine identity: ‘[w]ithout the patriarchal parameters of “estate or birth” to define her identity, Urania must locate a separate position both from which to speak and from which to identify her kindred.’[66] By setting the adventures of the male knights alongside the spiritual quests of women, Wroth emphasizes how seventeenth-century women, however talented, were devalued and subordinate to men. While the women in Urania follow the traditions of earlier romances by relying on men, Wroth ‘redefines the traditional female figure of romance.’[67] Wroth has respect for women’s capabilities and her characters are not chaste, passive or obedient. Indeed, some of the women characters are talented hunters and fighters. Additionally: ‘Wroth changes the subject of Renaissance representations of desire through her treatment of women’s approaches to questions of identity and sexual difference, emphasizing bonds between women.’[68] Wroth is brave enough to write about women loving other women. Pamphilia and Antisia have an intense romantic relationship spanning two generations and Celina and Lady Rossalea have an amorous relationship. Also, Veralinda loves Loenius when he is cross-dressed as a woman, although in the end their love is validated because Loenius is actually a man. The characters Pamphilia and Urania articulate female desire as they: ‘forge developing conceptions of their identities based increasingly on affinities with other women rather than on social conventions of female sexuality.’[69] While Wroth paints her male characters as inconstant and unreasonable, Pamphilia, who possibly is appears to be based on Elizabeth I, is described as constant, selfless and virtuous. Moreover, like Elizabeth I, Pamphilia never officially marries,[70] but devotes herself to her people. Urania criticizes Pamphilia’s constant devotion to Amphilanthus suggesting that ‘the virtue of constancy is not absolute, but rather culturally constructed.’[71] While accepting that most women in the seventeenth century were dependent upon men, Wroth clearly considered that marriage was more for the benefit of family and politics than women. In the work of both Wroth and Lanyer the female communities they write about ‘promote a naturally feminocentric (and courtly) society based on virtue, constancy, female friendship and companionate marriages.’[72] The Civil War (1642 – 1651) did in fact give women a degree of freedom; the State had lost control of the press and this allowed women as well as men access to print.[81] Women preached, prophesied, wrote and published. They travelled the country testifying to their faith and published autobiographical and religious texts. Conversion narratives became particularly popular giving accounts to the public about how they found their religious faith. One such narrative Heaven Realised by Sarah Davy, printed in 1670, is described in Her Own Life, Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen as not simply describing Davy’s religious peace and salvation but also expressing rage at her mother, guilt over her brother’s death and falling in love with a woman: Downey JI, Friedman RC. Internalized homophobia in lesbian relationships. J Am Acad Psychoanal. 1995;23(3):435–47.

While Spenser uses the hermaphroditic form to describe the sexual union of Amoret and Scudamour, he is also describing ‘a golden mean between masculine and feminine forms of dominance and the consummation of an ideal Christian marriage.’[143] The idea of the hermaphrodite representing equality between men and women is something that would have undoubtedly appealed to Behn. Kaplan HS. The new sex therapy: active treatment of sexual dysfunctions. New York: Brunner/Mazel; 1974. Murray SH, Milhausen RR, Graham CA, Kuczynski L. A qualitative exploration of factors that affect sexual desire among men aged 30 to 65 in long-term relationships. J Sex Res. 2017;54(3):319–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1168352. Tortora C, D’Urso G, Nimbi FM, Pace U, Marchetti D, Fontanesi L. Sexual fantasies and stereotypical gender roles: the influence of sexual orientation, gender and social pressure in a sample of Italian young-adults. Front Psychol. 2020;10:2864. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02864 This article compares gender and sexual orientations regarding erotic fantasies and gender role expressions.Unable or unwilling to fulfil the social expectations of her time by marrying and bearing children Collins’s work enables her to redefine and rethink what it is to be a woman. The subversion in Collins’s work comes from the fact that she finds complete satisfaction by withdrawing from the world through her writing, and in her relationship with Christ, rather than advocating that women should be obedient to their fathers or lost within the identity of their husbands: The poem sets up three points of a triangle: Sylvia, the young maid, the authorial voice, an older woman, and men. Behn then satirizes the carpe diem poems so beloved by?of male poets writing that : “The swift pac’d hours of life soon steal away’ and: The first element that this dissertation identifies as occurring throughout women’s writing of the seventeenth century is feminized pastoral spaces. In Women, Space and Utopia, 1600-1800 Nicole Pohl quotes from Lucy Irigaray: