 Commentators have recently brought attention to issues of sex and gender in Shaftesbury’s work. Shaftesbury frequently contrasts female with male characteristics, almost always with the purpose of elevating the latter and lowering the former (see C 1.24, 1.75, 1.149, 1.193–5, 1.214–5, 2.16, 2.35, 2.154, 2.161, 2. 186, 2.191; Second Characters 225). Trumbach argues for a “homosexual reading” of Shaftesbury’s Askemata (1998: 441). Klein says Shaftesbury’s letters suggest “homosexual longings and attachments” that social convention and obligation kept him from acting on (Klein 2004). Branch (2006: 264) also finds suggestions of homosexuality in his writing. Klein (2004) and Tierney-Hynes (2015) both emphasize the “homosocial” character of Shaftesbury’s view of elevated human society, such as in the friendship between Theocles and Philocles of The Moralists. Tierney-Hynes also detects in Soliloquy extended comparisons of writing and sex-acts, exploring in particular a comparison between the self-reflection Shaftesbury recommends to writers and masturbation. Barker-Benfield and Branch find in Shaftesbury’s writings “a repression of male behavior” (Barker-Benfield 1992, 112) that leads to “an aggressive sexualization of philosophy,” culminating in “a metaphorical sexual assault on the ‘Deity’” (Branch 2006, 10). Müller (2010b) seeks to discredit all these readings by arguing that they misinterpret key passages by failing to take into account the surrounding features of Shaftesbury’s own texts, the early eighteenth-century context in which Shaftesbury was writing, and the ancient Greek subjects (such as Plato and Socrates) Shaftesbury was discussing. Voitle’s view of Shaftesbury’s letters accords with Müller’s reading (Voitle 1984: 242-244). 