When The Dance of Deception was published, Lerner discovered that women were not eager to identify with the subject. "Well, I don't do deception" was a common resonse.

We all "do deception", often with the intention to protect ourselves and the relationships we depend on. The Dance of Deception unravels the ways (and whys) that women show the false and hide the real -- even to our own selves. We see how relationships are affected by lying and faking, by silence and pretending and by brave -- but misguided -- efforts to tell the truth.

Truth-telling is at the heart of what is most central in women's lives. It is at the foundation of authenticity and creativity, intimacy and joy. Yet in the name of "honesty", we can bludgeon each other. We can approach a difficult issue with such a poor sense of timing and tact that we can actually shut down the lines of communication rather than widening the path of truth-telling.

Sometimes Lerner's advice takes a surprising turn -- for example, when she asks us to engage in a bold act of pretending in order to discover something "more real"; or when she tells us not to parachute down on our family to bring up a "hot issue" without laying the necessary groundwork first.

Whether the subject is affairs, family secrets, sexual faking or the challenge of "being oneself", Lerner helps us to discover, speak and live our own truths.

This is the first edition ever of the Queen's correspondence in Italian. These letters cast a new light on her talents as a linguist and provide interesting details as to her political agenda, and on the cultural milieu of her court. This book provides a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence concerning Elizabeth's learning and use of Italian, and of the activity of the members of her 'Foreign Office.' All of the documents transcribed here are accompanied by a short introduction focusing on their content and context, a brief description of their transmission history, and an English translation.

This book investigates the extent of gender inequality in the division of labor in the modern household. Through comparisons of the time allocations of single couple families without children, couple families with children and lone parents, a comprehensive account of the evolution of gender inequality over a typical lifecourse is presented.

Coming of Age in Times of Crisis is an anthropological study of the intersecting roles of gender and schooling in the lives of rural Venezuelan youth as they make the transition to adulthood during times of national political and economic crisis. Strongly grounded in local detail while speaking to larger comparative issues and the crises that surround globalization, the study enables us to see how gender roles and social class are reproduced in a culture experiencing profound upheaval, and to see how rural Venezuelans have managed to reproduce and change their culture in these circumstances. This book is based on two-and-a-half years of ethnographic field research Hurtig conducted in the Andean region of Venezuela between 1991 and 1993, and again briefly in 1996.

Men Can Wear Dresses Too is an engaging, compelling and challenging account of my life as catie maye a heterosexual male to female cross dresser. However it is not just another story about a 'guy in a dress'. This book is totally unique, in that, unlike any other work in this genre it not only describes a very personal, engaging and sometime traumatic life journey but essentially incorporates the results of the most influential cross dressing surveys carried out in modern times. The results are integrated, reviewed and fully explained within the story to support and Validate the events of my life, to challenge social opinion and ultimately to destroy many of the erroneous myths that surround those men who cross dress.

In eighteenth-century Spain, just as in Britain and France, the term "Enlightenment" implied both a spirit of criticism and the dissemination of new scientific and philosophical modes of thought. But in Spain this new way of thinking also required the incorporation of ancient epistemologies, in particular practices and ideas concerning the healing, training, and experience of the body. In Embodying Enlightenment, Rebecca Haidt investigates this distinctly Spanish fascination with the cultural construction of bodies during the Enlightenment, particularly masculine bodies. Haidt interlaces a host of disciplines in her analysis of key works of eighteenth-century literature and art, including medical treatises, visual imagery, poetry, and erotica. She then traces the classical knowledge that informed the literature of the gendered, medicalized, and politicized male body in eighteenth-century Spanish culture. What results is an original and revealing study of the body in Spanish culture and thought, and a new look at the Spanish Enlightenment from a very unique angle.

Ambivalence in Hardy challenges the Hardy canon through the analysis of two "minor" novels: The Hand of Ethelberta and Two on a Tower, and with the help of manuscript evidence a revolutionary re-reading of The Woodlanders is offered. Generous references to Hardy's letters, autobiography, literary notebooks, marginalia, and the letters of his two wives, seek to blend a biographical approach with a feminist reading. Parallelisms between Hardy's fiction and that of contemporary women writers, especially his protégés and his "scribbling" wives, are discussed in unprecedented detail. An analysis of the short stories makes a case for Hardy as the champion of "Woman as Victim," while his changing responses to the Suffrage movement suggest a deep-rooted ambivalence that makes any glib appropriation of Hardy under the feminist banner too simplistic. This book thus highlights the tensions and contradictions between Hardy and the apologist for women and Hardy the alleged misogynist.

This timely study offers a radical rereading of Conrad's work in light of contemporary theories of masculinity. Drawing on feminism, gay studies, film theory and literary theory, the author shows that Conrad's fiction, even as it reflects certain assumptions of its day about gender roles, offers striking insights into the instability of the "masculine." The book explores the relationship of masculinity with imperialism, modernity, the visual and the body in a wide range of Conrad's less-known fiction.

"Queer Masculinities: A Critical Reader in Education "is a substantial addition to the discussion of queer masculinities, of the interplay between queer masculinities and education, and to the political gender discourse as a whole. Enriching the discourse of masculinity politics, the cross-section of scholarly interrogations of the complexities and contradictions of queer masculinities in education demonstrates that any serious study of masculinity-hegemonic or otherwise-must consider the theoretical and political contributions that the concept of queer masculinity makes to a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of masculinity itself.

The essays adopt a range of approaches from empirical studies to reflective theorizing, and address themselves to three separate educational realms: the K-12 level, the collegiate level, and the level in popular culture, which could be called 'cultural pedagogy'. The wealth of detailed analysis includes, for example, the notion that normative expectations and projections on the part of teachers and administrators unnecessarily reinforce the values and behaviors of heteronormative masculinity, creating an institutionalized loop that disciplines masculinity. At the same time, and for this very reason, schools represent an opportunity to 'provide a setting where a broader menu can be introduced and gender/sexual meanings, expressions, and experiences boys encounter can create new possibilities of what it can mean to be male'. At the collegiate level chapters include analysis of what the authors call 'homosexualization of heterosexual men' on the university dance floor, while the chapters of the third section, on popular culture, include a fascinating analysis of the construction of queer 'counternarratives' that can be constructed watching TV shows of apparently hegemonic bent. In all, this volume's breadth and detail make it a landmark publication in the study of queer masculinities, and thus in critical masculinity studies as a whole.

This book investigates the gender revolution in urban planning and public policy. Building on feminist urban studies, it introduces the concept of genderfication as a means of understanding the consequences of post-Fordist gender notions for the city. It traces the changes in western urban gender relations, arguing that in the post-Fordist urban landscape gender is used for urban planning and public policy - both to rebrand a city's image and to produce space for gender-equal ideals, often at the cost of precarious urban populations. This is a topic that remains largely unexplored in critical urban studies and radical geography. Chapters cover how Jane Jacobs' perspectives provide an alternative to the patriarchal modernist city for contemporary planners and using Rotterdam as a case study Van Den Berg discusses why new urban planning methods focus on attracting women and children as new urbanites. Topics include: forms of place marketing, gender as a repertoire for contemporary urban Imagineering and the concept of urban re-generation. The final chapter investigates how cities aiming to redefine themselves imagine future populations and how they design social policies that explicitly and particularly target women as mothers. Scholars in all fields of urban studies will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Drawing on the writings of Foucault, this book explores the politics and power-dynamics of family life, examining how everyday obligations such as attending school, going to work and staying healthy are organized through the family. The book includes an essay by Foucault, Les desordres des familles , translated here in English for the first time.

Westerners believe that love makes life worth living; that sex is a natural desire different in kind from love; and that only cynics reduce our love life to a calculation of economic or genetic factors. In this volume, essays explore these and other assumptions about the relationship between romantic love and sex. This represents the first interdisciplinary social science study of love and sex. Contributors ask and answer questions such as: Is love just sex idealized, or is it a transcendent and divine emotion? Is love a cultural construct that is shared by members of the same culture, or is it a matter of personal taste? What keeps promiscuous people from using condoms even when they know they are at risk? Are black professional men so "rare" that their conceptions of love and sex differ from those of white professional men? Are brutal sexual fantasies an exclusively male domain, and are they always excluded from love fantasies among "normal" adolescents? Is divorce a culturally induced response to evolutionary reproductive strategies that compel individuals to maximize their genetic legacy? Are marriages or relationships less satisfying or stable when an actual mate falls short of the fantasy of the ideal mate? Is there a universal core to love and sex that is camouflaged by other cultural norms such as modesty and sexual segregation? Is rape perceived as more "acceptable" when the rapist says he was motivated by "love"? What do cult movements and romantic love have in common? As they attempt to answer these and other questions, the authors extend our understanding of the variety of ways that love and sex are conceptualized, connected, or separated.

This book is about the struggles of female and male descendants of Indian indentured migrants in Trinidad in the first half of the twentieth century, each desiring to preserve some aspects of the gender system brought from India between 1845 and 1917, which were important to their continued definition of ethnic identity and community in Trinidad. At the same time the situation of migration allowed for challenges to the caste system of Hinduism and, for women and some men, new opportunities to confront the more restricting aspect of Indian patriarchy which followed them across the seas from India.

The research for this book was prompted by a combination of events, in particular the election of Mary Robinson as President of Ireland (November 1990) and the X case which rocked Irish society (February 1992). The book is an exploration of the dynamics between the Irish and European Courts, the legislators and the Irish citizens in relation to certain socio-sexual questions: divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality. Spanning the 73 years since the creation of the Irish State, it questions the nature of the moral order regulating Irish society and the concept of democracy underlying it: from a moral order based on the natural law and Victorian ideology, to a moral order based on the fundamental rights of individuals. The book examines the fragile balance struck between tradition and modernity, and is an indirect tribute to the work of former President Mary Robinson as a constitutional lawyer and senator.

This book is a rare find, sharing all the joys, stresses, desires, and challenges Samantha faced throughout her first three years of transition. Not always easy to read or glamorous, it details one woman's desire to live fully in this world as her true self. It is a shining example of the resilience of the human spirit and is sure to inspire hope in all who read it. --Kris Keniray, Sexuality Educator Sometimes the greatest adventure a human being can go on is not the discovery of a far-off, distant land. Sometimes the greatest adventure is discovering the secrets that lie within. Through the Jungle: A Traveler's Guide chronicles the story of Samantha's discovery of her true self. Sometimes happy and enlightening, often dark and disturbing, her journey takes you through three years of her life told as it happened through her personal diary. This story gives the reader a glimpse into a world very few people will ever experience first hand, the world of a transsexual male to female.

The link between gender and corruption has been studied since the late 1990s. Debates have been heated and scholars accused of bringing forward stereotypical beliefs about women as the "fair" sex. Policy proposals for bringing more women to office have been criticized for promoting unrealistic quick-fix solutions to deeply rooted problems. This edited volume advances the knowledge surrounding the link between gender and corruption by including studies where the historical roots of corruption are linked to gender and by contextualizing the exploration of relationships, for example by distinguishing between democracies versus authoritarian states and between the electoral arena versus the administrative branch of government-the bureaucracy. Taken together, the chapters display nuances and fine-grained understandings. The book highlights that gender equality processes, rather than the exclusionary categories of "women" and "men", should be at the forefront of analysis, and that developments strengthening the position of women vis-a-vis men affect the quality of government.

In Chinese societies where both "money" and "gender" confer power, can a woman's economic success relative to her husband's bring about a more equal division of household labor? Lui's qualitative study of "status-reversed" Hong Kong families, wherein wives earn more than their husbands, examines how couples re-negotiate household labor in ways that perpetuate male dominance within the family even when the traditional gender expectation that "men rule outside, women rule inside" (nanzhuwai, nuzhunei) is challenged. Going beyond the dyadic negotiation of household labor, this important study also explores the role of "third parties," namely the couples' children and parents, who actively encourage couples to conform to traditional gender norms, thereby reproducing an unequal division of household labor. Based upon the experiences of families with stay-at-home dads, Lui further identifies a new mechanism of deconstructing gender, by which couples concertedly construct new norms of "work" and "gender" that they maintain through daily interactions to fit their atypical relative earnings. As a result, there are sparks of hope that both men and women can be liberated from a set of traditional social norms. Re-negotiating Gender: Household Division of Labor When She Earns More than He Does is essential reading in the fields of family and gender studies, sociology, psychology, and East Asian studies.

This book sheds light on how sexuality and gender intersect in producing heteronormativity within the school system in Iceland. In spite of recent support for progressive policies regarding sexual and gender equality in the country, there remains a discrepancy between policy and practice with respect to LGBTQ rights and attitudes within the school system. This book draws on ethnographic data and interviews with LGBTQ students in high schools across the country and reveals that, although Nordic countries are sometimes portrayed as queer utopias, the school system in Iceland has a long road ahead in making schools more inclusive for all students.

From award-winning author Alex Gino comes a groundbreaking novel for children about how important the past can be those trying to create a different future. Sam is very in touch with their own queer identity. They're nonbinary, and their best friend, TJ, is nonbinary as well. Sam's family is very cool with it ... as long as Sam remembers that nonbinary kids are also required to clean their rooms, do their homework, and try not to antagonize their teachers too much. The teacher-respect thing is hard when it comes to Sam's history class, because their teacher seems to believe that only Dead Straight Cis White Men are responsible for history. When Sam's home borough of Staten Island opens up a contest for a new statue, Sam finds the perfect non-DSCWM subject: photographer Alice Austen, whose house has been turned into a museum, and who lived with a female partner for decades. Soon, Sam's project isn't just about winning the contest. It's about discovering a rich queer history that Sam's a part of - a queer history that no longer needs to be quiet, as long as there are kids like Sam and TJ to stand up for it. For fans of MELISSA and RICK Featuring two non-binary protagonists A powerful story to empower kids to think about the history they are traditionally taught and what it means to be included!

This book explores the nature of intimacy by revealing how the influence of individual, interpersonal and wider social factors create variations in self-disclosure, intimacy games and relationship habits. It describes how the dynamics of power and control in relationships give rise either to mutual satisfaction or to the unraveling of intimacy.

This book provides a fresh and contemporary take on the study of men and masculinity. It highlights new and exciting approaches to sexuality, desire, men and masculinity in East Asian contexts, focusing on the interconnections between them. In doing so, it re-examines the key concepts that underpin studies of masculinity, such as homophobia, homosociality and heteronormativity. Developing new ways of thinking about masculinity in local contexts, it fills a significant lacuna in contemporary scholarship. This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies, cultural studies and the wider social sciences.

Emphasizing Frances Burney's professionalism and her courage, Janice Farrar Thaddeus shows the many-sided writer who recognized her abilities and exercised them, always carefully shaping her career. Though she often depicted herself as retiring, even fearful, Burney forced on her readers themes they were scarcely ready for, flamboyantly mixing genres, writing comically about intimate violence. Not content in old age to be merely a literary icon, she privately recorded with increasing clarity the moments when the world lacerates the self.

Women buy the weekly shopping, home insurance, household appliances, soft furnishings, holidays and more. CEO's and Marketers need to acknowledge that women really are the Boss when it comes to buying. They also need to understand the many psychological and behavioral characteristics of women that affect their relationships with brands. This book identifies the key biological and brain differences between women and men, then defines more effective marketing approaches based on these insights.

Gendered Policies in Europe examines the policy process, focusing on the shifts in equal opportunities legislation towards measures to help parents combine employment and family life. The authors track the inputs of members states and pressure groups to European policy formation and analyse outputs and outcomes at national levels as they impact on gender issues in law and practice. They draw on examples of the implementation of reconciliation policies to illustrate how the policy process operates in different national contexts.