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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Sexual behaviour
Mema's house is in the poor quarter Nezahualcoyotl, a crowded urban
space on the outskirts of Mexico City where people survive with the
help of family, neighbours, and friends. This house is a sanctuary
for a group of young homosexual men who meet to chat, flirt, listen
to music, and smoke marijuana. Among the group are sex workers and
transvestites with high heels, short skirts, heavy make-up, and
voluminous hairstyles; and their partners, young, bisexual men,
wearing T-shirts and worn jeans, short hair, and maybe a moustache.
Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual
men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the
community and conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived
there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in
touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the
transvestites in their daily activities - at their work as
prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets
and in discos, on visits with their families and even in prisons, a
story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit. Prieur analyzes the
complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of
them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking
bisexual men, asking why these particular gender constructions
exist in the Mexican working classes, and how they can be so
widespread in a male-dominated society, the very society from which
the term "machismo" stems. Weaving empirical research with theory,
Prieur presents new analytical angles on several concepts: family,
class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of
differences among men.
Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about
the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the
Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them
to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more
sexually open, the supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as
backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views
developed in the West, in "Desiring Arabs" Joseph A. Massad reveals
the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To
this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic
writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to
chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab
notions of cultural heritage and civilization.
A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad's chronicle of
both the history and modern permutations of the debate over
representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world
is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently
oversimplified and vilified culture.
"A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected
topic. . . . I know of no other study that can even begin to
compare with the detail and scope of [this] work."--Khaled
El-Rouayheb, "Middle East"" Report""" "In "Desiring Arabs,"
[Edward] Said's disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor's
thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing. . . .
[Massad] brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist,
internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present."--"Financial
Times"
"This history is . . . the first fully-fleshed story of African
Nairobi in all of its complexity which foregrounds African
experiences. Given the overwhelming white dominance in the written
sources, it is a remarkable achievement."--Claire Robertson,
"International Journal of African Historical Studies "
"White's book . . . takes a unique approach to a largely unexplored
aspect of African History. It enhances our understanding of African
social history, political economy, and gender studies. It is a book
that deserves to be widely read."--Elizabeth Schmidt, "American
Historical Review "
A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect
Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social and literary
pursuits, all the while keeping a secret -- from himself and the
rest of the world. Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a
straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian
travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul
Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dream of "the thing
I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing."
Searingly honest, witty, and humane, "Becoming a Man" is the
definitive coming-out story in the classic coming-of-age genre.
Eine empirische Untersuchung uber Unternehmerinnen und die von
ihnen gegrundeten und geleiteten Unternehmen. Ausgangspunkt ist die
These, dass zentrale grundungs- und unternehmensrelevante
Ressourcen geschlechtsspezifisch unterschiedlich verteilt sind."
The bestselling author of My Secret Garden exposes the wild and
sexy fantasies that many of us have but are afraid to share.
For over thirty years, Nancy Friday has written about eros,
love, beauty, and seduction. Now she returns to the territory she
pioneered during the sexual revolution--exploring our most taboo
sexual desires. Fans of Fifty Shades of Grey will love this
provocative collection of real fantasies from dozens of women--and
for the first time, men. Friday knows that forbidden sex "gets us
higher faster" and explores love, lust and power through erotic
tales of domination, masturbation, S&M, threesomes, and
more.
Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age
shows that our forbidden fantasies are not compensation for a
lackluster sex life, but are a critical component of our fullest
selves--and how our secret desires can lead to exhilarating and
satisfying sexual freedom.
Praise for Nancy Friday
"YOU'LL BLUSH, YOUR PULSE WILL RACE."--The New York Times
"Delicious... women can share in their sisters' secrets and not
feel that they are alone."--Los Angeles Times
"Nancy Friday's work... demonstrate s] beyond doubt that the
emancipation of women's bodies begins with the emancipation of our
minds." --Faye Wattleton, former president, Planned Parenthood
Federation of America
What's Next in Love and Sex is a comprehensive examination of
contemporary academic findings relating to all matters of the mind,
body, and heart. Inspired by questions asked by students, the book
covers cutting-edge topics so new that they are rarely addressed in
current sexuality texts, providing insight into modern trends such
as hookup culture, virtual pornography, robots, apps, and online
dating as they evolve in this day and age. Written by one of the
pioneers of love and sex research, Elaine Hatfield, along with
historian Richard Rapson and social psychologist Jeannette Purvis,
this book uses contemporary scientific findings to provide an
updated and relevant explanation for why we do the things we do
when we're in love, searching for love, making love, or trying to
keep a faltering relationship together. Combining rigorous
scholarship with an accessible and entertaining style, no other
book will give college students and academics alike such a
developed understanding of contemporary love and sex.
Unmastered is groundbreaking, incisive and moving. Exploring desire
and pleasure, grief and pain, it underlines the importance and
difficulties of speaking desire as a woman. How do we explore
sexuality on our own terms, and find language for our desires, when
desire and language are always social? Applying an unflinching gaze
to her own life, Katherine Angel has created, in prose both stark
and lyrical, a searching and erotic work shifting in meaning and
resonance even as it is read.
Is our sexuality determined primarily by our genes? Or is it shaped
by the social norms and expectations we happen to be born into.
This Very Short Introduction provides an accessible, thoughtful and
thought-provoking introduction to major debates around sexuality in
the modern world, highlighting the social and political aspects of
sexuality. It critically explores different ways of defining and
thinking about sexuality and shows that many of our assumptions
about what is "natural" in the sexual domain have, in reality,
varied greatly in different historical or cultural contexts. The
volume also examines ways in which governments have tried to
regulate citizens' sexualities in the past-through policies and
laws concerning public health, HIV/Aids, prostitution, and sex
education-paying special attention to the particular zeal with
which women's sexuality has been policed. The volume concludes by
discussing political activism around sexuality more widely,
focusing on the ways in which feminists, lesbians and gay men, as
well as religious fundamentalists have transformed our ways of
thinking about sexuality in the past few decades.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and
style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of
life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the
newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about
the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from
philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
This volume explores the history and effects of so-called
conversion "therapy" on LGBT people. Although the practice has been
widely discredited, it remains legal in most states and continues
to be practiced with lesbian, gay, and bisexual children and
adolescents. Furthermore, as the past 20 years have seen an
increase in gender nonconforming and transgender individuals, there
has been a similar rise in efforts to socially reprogram gender
nonconforming children and adolescents. What motivates individuals
to seek these harmful treatments, either for themselves or for
their children? What does the record show about the efficacy and
effects of SOCE and GICE? This book synthesizes findings from a
vast literature base to answer these and other important questions.
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