Novelists in pre-Revolutionary France were fascinated by what has come to be called compulsory heterosexuality', ritualized public performances of male/female relations as the ultimate human bond. Plots of seduction and betrayal glamourized by the Liasons Dangereuses demonstrate how complicated and treacherous these performances were. French Dressing scrutinizes the ancien regime's practices of unsafe sex, the scenarios of libertinage in which both sexes were equally stylish antagonists. It also shows that women paide unequally, sometimes fatally, for the power games of libertine experiments....