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Barry Reay

The University of Auckland

Barry Reay is a professor of history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His latest book, together with Nina Attwood and Claire Gooder, is Sex Addiction: A Critical History (2015).

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Written by Barry Reay

A painting of a man in 19th-century clothing on a chaise longue holding a handkerchief, described as ‘representing mental and bodily exhaustion from onanism or self-pollution’.

essayVirtues and vices

A handy history

Condemned, celebrated, shunned: masturbation has long been an uncomfortable fact of life. Why?

Barry Reay