09.27.06
Director’s Cut
As part of my site updates, I’m rolling out — partly as preview, partly as adjunct to the book as it will be when it is published — a set of pages that I’m calling Virgin on the Cutting-Room Floor. It consists of a number of more or less standalone excerpts from the original, thousand-and-one-page draft of Virgin: The Untouched History.
There are still a handful of excerpts that I have yet to put up and link. Those should be on the way tomorrow. But for now, there are 17 excerpts available, on topics ranging from how difficult virginity is to define (and what techniques get used to do it) to the medieval pope who sent all the nuns in Europe to their rooms permanently, and well beyond — 20th-century judges chastising young women for hanging out in Chinese restaurants because it presented a danger to their morals? Victorian lawsuits filed by wronged women against the men who promised them marriage in order to get into their pants? Christopher Columbus, kidnapper, rapist, and pimp? Kristy MacNicholl movies?
(Yeah, it’s a pretty diverse book. And this is the stuff I left out. Just wait until you see what I left in.)
Anyhow, go check it out if you have a chance. I’m actively soliciting translations of these excerpts, incidentally, and am posting them under a limited-use Creative Commons license for that purpose. If you’re inclined to do a translation of something, let me know — I’m happy to host your translations online if you don’t have a stable site of your own, too.