[2][3] As a musician, she was a Fellow of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and was the 1991 recipient of the George Whitefield Chadwick medal for work as a proponent of contemporary art music.

[6] She is a former associate editor of Sojourner: The Women's Forum, and has also written sex columns for The Boston Phoenix and Good Vibes Magazine.

"[13] A review from Publishers Weekly states, "Blank, an independent scholar, has pieced together a history of how humans have constructed the idea of virginity (almost always female and heterosexual) and engineered its uses to suit cultural and political forces.

"[14] In a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Blaisdell writes, "Though scholarly, Hanne Blank's "Virgin: The Untouched History" treats her topic with a writer's, not an academic's, interest.

"[15] Ellen D. Gilbert writes for Library Journal it is "a very good book", but "The reader in search of a chronological or carefully delineated thematic approach to the subject will be disappointed.

"[19] George de Stefano writes in a review for the New York Journal of Books that Blank's approach to the topic "will be familiar to anyone who has read Michel Foucault or any of his many intellectual progeny" and the book "is indebted to Jonathan Ned Katz, whom she cites, and if she adds little to Katz's account besides more recent references and a personal perspective on the topic, Straight nonetheless is accessible and engaging, often witty and penetrating in its insights.

"[21] In The Baltimore Sun, Laura Dattaro writes, "Because heterosexuality is presumed "normal," it often escapes the sort of examination to which homosexuality is subjected", and "Blank calls the accepted state into question, and in doing so undermines its relevance.