Timely and politically pertinent, this collection of essays links the fields of women's studies and cultural studies, examining women's desires and women as objects of desire. Working in diverse disciplines and time periods, the contributors address the common theme of 'perversion' as a cultural, often linguistic, construct. Analysing texts and images from medieval times to the twentieth century, the volume affords the reader modernist and postmodernist perspectives on the connected issues of erotics, pornography, and perversion.