'I learned something new on every page of this totally essential book' Sathnam Sanghera In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe. 'By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.' In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Travelling to the world's earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are. Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini ends by asking what part we all play - women included - in keeping patriarchal structures alive, and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

Shannon McSheffrey studies the communities of the late medieval English heretics, the Lollards, and presents unexpected conclusions about the precise ways in which gender shaped participation and interaction within the movement.

"An original, liberating interpretation . . . should become a standard of cultural and psychoanalytical studies."
--"The Guardian"

The aura of passivity that has for centuries surrounded female sexuality in popular culture, psychology, and literature has, in recent years, dissipated. And yet fetishism, one of the most intriguing and mysterious forms of sexual expression, is still cast as an almost exclusively male domain. Most psychoanalytic thought, for instance, excludes the very possibility of female fetishism.

The first book on the subject, "Female Fetishism" engagingly documents women's involvement in this form of sexuality. Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen describe a wide array of female fetishisms, from the obsessional behavior of pop fans (and pop performers such as Madonna) to fetishism in advertising to women's involvement in the world of dress clubs and fetish magazines. The authors provide provocative evidence of food fetishism among women, arguing that many eating disorders are best understood from this perspective.
A latter portion of the book includes a discussion of how feminists have treated the political and cultural significance of female fetishism.

In this ground-breaking work, leading Austrian sexologist Ernest Borneman describes each phase of the psychosexual development of children from conception to age eight. Based on extensive research, Childhood Phases of Maturity overturns the prevalent assumption that children are asexual innocents, for whom sexuality is an inconceivable aspect of life until the onset of puberty. In fact, Borneman argues, the opposite is true: sexuality is indisputably a fact of human development from conception; it manifests itself in children in various ways, including their games, rich fantasy life, need for skin contact, and masturbation. Research shows that the natural expression of sexuality in childhood is vital to the later healthy development of adult sexuality. Borneman divides his discussion of each successive age group into two sections: the first describes healthy sexual development at a particular age; the second examines the pathologies resulting from aberrations in sexual growth at that age. Borneman demonstrates that the roots of adult neuroses and paraphilias can often be traced back to disturbances in sexual development during childhood. Perhaps the most important influence on a child's psychosexual well-being is the parents' attitudes toward their own sexuality. Childhood Phases of Maturity is an authoritative, clearly written reference book, which will serve parents, educators, and health-care professionals as a valuable source of information on the sexual developmental psychology of children.

This pathbreaking compilation, long out of print, is a survey of sexual fantasies from early folklore to the bawdy tales of the prolific Victorians to a very modern version of "Little Red Riding Hood." Here, among other selections, are vignettes from Poggio, Rabelais, and the "Divine" Aretino, instructive dialogues from the seventeenth-century Whore's Rhetorick, nineteenth-century flights of invention like Gynecocracy, Prince Cherrytop, and Les Tableaux Vivants, and a "superman" fantasy by Alfred Jarry--excerpts from the entire spectrum of Western erotica.
In their frank and fascinating commentary, the Drs. Kronhausen mine these "mental aphrodisiacs" as a valuable source of psychological and cultural insight. As they point out, it is the element of fantasy that distinguishes human sexuality from that of other species. In a spirit of respect for the play of the human imagination in all its forms, they commend their volume to their fellow professionals and to anyone "with literary interests, a sense of humor, and the moral courage to look at his own unknown psyche and that of his fellow men."

A bestselling author of books on women's psychology explores the journey toward complete womanhood--"conscious femininity". Woodman (Addiction to Perfection) demonstrates the striving of contemporary women for inner balance and wholeness in a patriarchal society that resists the process. 6 halftones.

'A brilliant display of fireworks, attacking the widespread and banal notion that "in the beginning" sexual activity was guilt-free and delicious, being repressed and blighted only by the gloom of Victorianism' Spectator We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated? The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure. 'A wealth of insights, original conceptualizations and provocative ideas' The Times Literary Supplement

"Thoughtful, probing, and caring. . . Destined for distinction as one of the best books of the year."
--Janice G. Raymond
author of "Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women's Freedom" and "A Passion for Friends"

""Changing Our Minds" is a brave, invigorating, and important book. . . essential reading for anyone in, or anyone who studies, the helping professions; it is even more essential for any woman in distress who wants 'help'."
--Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D.
author of "Women and Madness, About Men," and "Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody"

"A wide-ranging, hard-hitting analysis of psychology and its dangers. "Changing Our Minds" should be compulsory reading for all psychologists and deserves a place on every feminist's bookshelf."
--Sue Wilkinson
editor of "Feminism & Psychology: An International Journal"

Women today are being instructed on how they can raise their self-esteem, love their inner child, survive their toxic families, overcome codependency, and experience a revolution from within. By holding up the ideal of a pure and happy inner core, psychotherapists refuse to acknowledge that a certain degree of unhappiness or dissatisfaction is a routine part of life and not necessarily a cause for therapy. Lesbians specifically are now guided to define themselves according to their frailties, inadequacies, and insecurities.

An incisive critique of contemporary feminist psychology and therapy, "Changing our Minds" argues not just that the current practice of psychology is flawed, but that the whole idea of psychology runs counter to many tenets of lesbian feminist politics. Recognizing that many lesbians dofeel unhappy and experience a range of problems that detract from their well-being, "Changing Our Minds" makes positive, prescriptive suggestions for non-psychological ways of understanding and dealing with emotional distress.

Written in a lively and engaging style, "Changing our Minds" is required reading for anyone who has ever been in therapy or is close to someone who has, and for lesbians, feminists, psychologists, psychotherapists, students of psychology and women's studies, and anyone with an interest in the development of lesbian feminist theory, ethics, and practice.

The policing of pornography remains the subject of widespread and ongoing controversy. This book provides a history of this policing which is geared towards understanding the current debate. The authors demonstrate that obscenity law cannot be understood negatively as censorship and must instead be seen as part of the positive administration of a particular practice of sexuality. They also argue that pornography itself should be described negatively as a mere representation of real sex but positively as a real practice of sex using representations. This history indicates that obscenity law is not, as liberals claim, a mistaken attempt to police moral ideas, but rather forms part of the legitimate governmental regulation of a problematic social conduct. At the same time it asks whether feminists might not be mistaken in attributing this conduct to the nature of the male imagination.

"Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn," Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man. Turning from female to male and from teaching scientist to theatre performer, Link documents the extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal processes involved in a complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well-known feminist writer and teacher, observes the process as both an "astonished" parent and as a professor who has studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this collaborative memoir, which travels between women's experience and men's lives, explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and . . . clown school. Combining personal experience and critical analysis, the book is an unusual-and unusually fascinating-reflection on gender, sex, and the art of living.

"Based on impressive research in a wide variety of sources, including popular literature, advertisements, true confession and physique magazines, advice columns, sex surveys, vice investigation reports, and personal letters, "The First Sexual Revolution" offers a provocative interpretation of the impact of the sexual revolution on men. White's boldly-stated criticism of sexual liberalism is sure to arouse controversy. Yet his view of men confused by new expectations of attractiveness and sexiness, threatened by women's demands for sexual satisfaction, yet essentially still in control, is compelling."
--Leila J. Rupp Ohio State University, Co-author of "Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s,"

In the early 1900s, a sexual revolution took place that was to define social relations between the sexes in America for generations. As Victorian values gradually faded, and a commercialized consumer culture emerged, the female figure of the flapper came to embody early-twentieth century femininity. Simultaneously, masculine ideals were also undergoing radical change. Who then was this New Man to accompany the New Woman? Who was the flapper's boyfriend?

In this remarkable book, Kevin White draws on a vast array of sources to examine the ideology--spread through movies, advertisements, sex confession magazines, social hygienists, sex manuals, and Freudian popularizers --that has defined modern American manhood. Examining attitudes toward masturbation, homosexuality, violence against women, feminism, free love, and the emerging dating system, "The First Sexual Revolution" shows how American men in the Jazz Age were subjected to a barrage ofinformation and advice about their sexuality that stressed not character but personality and sex appeal. Repression was out; sexual expression--performance--was in.

This New Man was more egalitarian and more sexual than the Victorian patriarch. But the diffusion to the middle class of the Victorian underworld ethos of primitivism and violence against women, and the flight from commitment to relationships, heralded instability and tensions that continues to define American sexual relations. To illustrate this point, Dr. White takes a close look--through letters and diaries--at the successes and failures of nine marriages involving actively feminist women, demonstrating the pressures that this revolution in values caused. Dr. White concludes that the return to primitivism characterized by the men's movement marks the most recent aftershock of the revolution that has shaped us all.

"Gender Outlaw" is the work of a woman who has been through some changes - a former heterosexual male and one-time Scientologist and IBM salesperson, Kate Bornstein is now a lesbian woman writer and actress who makes regular rounds on the TV talk shows. This book covers: the "mechanics" of her surgery; everything you've always wanted to know about gender (but were too confused to ask); the place and politics of the transgendered; and the questions of those who give the subject little thought. It takes on various communities: gay, lesbian, straight, S/M and transgender, along with society at large. This work also includes Bornstein's play, "Hidden: A Gender".

A "common woman" in medieval England was a prostitute, distinguished as such less for taking money for sex than for belonging to all men in common. Karras's book tells the story of these women, their experiences, relations, and treatment under the law, and concludes that prostitution was central to the medieval understanding of feminity.

"Written in the Flesh" is a history of sexual desire - a startling and provocative history of what people yearn to do sexually. It is the story of the whole body's need for sexual attention rather than simply the genitalia and their procreational function.

The desire for sexual pleasure and total body sex - that is, the expansion of sexuality from a limited focus on the face and genitals to include the entire body - is certainly not a new phenomenon: the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese, amongst others, were quite familiar with eroticism that went beyond the strictly heterosexual and procreational. In the long centuries of Christian Europe, when miserable conditions of life and religious repression conspired to minimize the expression of sexual longing, desire was driven underground. Yet in the late nineteenth century, increasing privacy, prosperity, and good health again permitted the underlying biological urge for total body sex to express itself, and encouraged a shift of erotic pleasure toward new and unexplored body zones: the mouth, nipples, anus, and further.

This new work by renowned medical historian Edward Shorter demonstrates that desire is hard-wired into the brain, expressing itself in remarkably similar ways in men and women, adolescent and adult, and in gays, lesbians, and straights alike. Drawing from a wide array of sources, including memoirs, novels, collections of letters, diaries, and indeed a large pornographic corpus, Shorter explores the widening of Western society's sexual repertoire.

"Written in the Flesh" is a history of what people like to do in bed and how that has changed. The change is relentless: human sexuality continually seeks new means of liberation in its expression of pleasure.

Through the research on which this book reports, we have been given the unique opportunity to explore the complex nature of two of the most important issues in the lives of adults: identity and intimacy. It is with deep gratitude that we give credit to the 80 individuals in our sample who allowed us to explore these processes in their lives. Our purpose in writing this book was, in some ways, a modest one. Both of us believed that research on the Eriksonian concept of intimacy was deficient in that it was limited to the reports of individuals about them selves. We maintained that this kind of research could provide only a narrow, and probably biased, view of the intimacy development of individ uals. By obtaining complementary responses to the intimacy interview from both partners in a marital relationship, we hope to pave a new path that fu ture researchers in this area will follow. Beyond this methodological advance, we intended that this book's theoretical focus could put a new perspective on the well-trodden path of research on marriage. This more ambitious gaal is one that we faced with some trepidation. The literature on marital adjustment and satisfaction is vast and potentially overwhelming."

What can psychology teach us about sex? How do different bodies and brains respond sexually? How can we prevent people being stigmatised for their sexuality? The Psychology of Sex takes you on a tour through the different ways that psychologists have created and sustained certain understandings of sex and sexuality. Bearing in mind the subjective nature of sex, the book explores cultural concerns around sexualisation, pornography, and sex addiction, as well as drawing on research from sexual communities and the applied area of sex therapy. When so much of our relationship to sex happens in the mind, The Psychology of Sex shows us how important it is to understand where our ideas about sex come from.

The Oxford Handbook of Close Relationships provides the best, most in-depth, and most comprehensive summary of the study of close relationships. The book is divided into eight sections: introductory comments, major theoretical approaches to relationships, attraction in relationships, models of relationship functioning and processes, daily relationship functioning, psychological and physical well-being in relationships, relationships across development and time, and concluding comments. The 37 chapters showcase the most important classic and contemporary theories, models, and empirical research that have been conducted across three dozen major topic areas within the field of close relationships. Chapter topics range in scope from evolutionary approaches to understanding relationships, the "battle between the sexes," cultural influences on relationships, female sexuality, personality in relationships, intimate partner violence, relationships and health, social development, and adult relationship outcomes. Each chapter is structured around three themes: (1) the most important and foundational principles, ideas, and findings on each chapter topic, (2) the most important and novel emerging themes and issues relevant to each topic, and (3) the newest and most promising directions for future research. Current, comprehensive, and with heretofore unmatched breadth and depth, this volume will serve as a roadmap for future theory and research in the study of close relationship during the next decade.

Building off the idea that when we are happier, we tend to be healthier, Robins explains the phenomenon of how our intuitive knowing fosters healthy relationships that contribute to our physical, mental, and emotional health. Readers learn to utilize a variety of pathways that will change their responses to others and will produce lasting, more rewarding, and closer relationships in all areas of their lives. This book is designed to aid readers in looking inward and experiencing how their intuitive sixth sense informs their ability to be intimate without the negative triggers of past experiences. Through a considered and thoughtful approach, Robins offers insight into cultivating a truly integrated self so that one may lead a more fulfilling and healthful life.

This text offers a broad range of topics relating to the philosophy of sexuality. These include: morality; adultery; sex and gender differences; romantic love; gender-based speech; marriage; family and parenthood; feminism; and others.

A worldwide subculture that influences everything from fashion to advertising, sadomasochism has a long and lively history. A Lover's Pinch tells the story of consensual sadomasochism, from a controversial religious practice to a secretive sexuality branded a perversion. The origins of kink and fetish culture have been shrouded in secrecy and myths, until now. Here, Peter Tupper reveals the true story of sadism and masochism, dominance and submission. From the ancient Christian flagellants to the Fifty Shades trilogy, the history of consensual sadomasochism is a story of fascinating individuals, unlikely connections and strange twists and turns. Meet Arthur Munby, the Victorian gentleman who secretly married Hannah Cullwick, his maid of all work, and called her his slave; and Jack McGeorge, the UN weapons inspector who was outed as a BDSM club leader just before the Iraq war. Explore the links between Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom's Cabin and modern BDSM pornography, and between fetish fashion and anti-Catholic propaganda. Learn how the 19th century middle-class household nurtured dominant-submissive sexuality. Discover the secret history of a hidden world.

This book presents an integrative, growth-oriented approach to therapy with couples that demonstrates the dynamic interplay between partners' emotional issues and their sexual difficulties. It offers a model for relational and sexual enhancement that focuses as much on partners' present, nonverbal body-to-body communications as on their words. Dr. Stella Resnick draws on research from interpersonal neurobiology, sexology, positive psychology, and Gestalt therapy, and shares a rich assortment of therapy vignettes to demonstrate the transformative power of pleasure and how a focus on body-to-body intimacy can heal emotional wounds from the past and encourage greater presence, empathy, authenticity, playfulness, and sexual pleasure between intimate partners. The therapeutic process is explored in four related spectrums: the Problem-Transformation Spectrum, the Attachment-Sexuality Spectrum, the Pain-Pleasure Spectrum, and the Cognitive-Somatic-Experiential-Behavioral-Spectrum. Part I lays the theoretical foundation for the work. Part II examines the early attachment bond between parent and child and its effects on adult capacity for emotional closeness and sexual pleasure. Part III offers methods for resolving painful emotional issues underlying many sexual difficulties. Finally, Part IV describes the procedure for moving from a cognitive reframing of the problem to a somatic focus on the body and tracking present-moment emotional interactions to the repair of relational injuries that nurture transformational change. Also included is a series of process-oriented exercises and a handout that therapists can use in their own practice. Body-to-Body Intimacy will enable couples and sex therapists to expand their practices and enrich their clients' sexual and relational dynamics. This book also contains valuable information that will be appreciated by anyone interested in a greater understanding of a growth-oriented therapeutic process for couples and what can be achieved together by gaining a deeply loving and sexually fulfilling intimate love relationship.

The revised edition of this award-winning book offers thirty-three Neuro Updates, which provide evidence-based data to help you recognize and explain the deeply transformational nature of the work. Expanding the Practice of Sex Therapy looks beyond behavioral treatments, pharmaceutical interventions, and performance goals to a comprehensive picture of what your clients want and need when they enter sex therapy, and offers creative ways to engage your clients in their own therapeutic process, whether or not you are trained as a sex therapist. Central to Gina Ogden's approach is her Four-Dimensional Wheel of Sexual Experience, an innovative template that recognizes the full range of sexual issues: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The text is organized into five practice-oriented sections that introduce the 4-D Wheel; show you how you can use it with individuals, couples, and groups; and encourage you to explore it on your own.