Until now, sexuality has been treated as a specialist topic or area of specialist social work practice. This book cuts across all areas of the discipline. It examines the relationship between sexuality, sexual identities and intimacies and the life course, and showcases a range of issues pertinent to social work through these lenses. It opens up new possibilities for better understanding sexuality in social work, and contains empirical work and theorising about sexuality, intimacy and gender not currently found in a traditional course on life course theory and practice. The chapters position new areas of scholarship in sexuality including trans perspectives, masculinities, bisexuality and the voices of other gender and sexual minority populations within a life course trajectory. Empirical research picks up on the broader public health and well-being agenda with a strong focus on challenging normative theories to promote human rights and justice for marginalised individuals and groups. Sexuality, Sexual and Gender Identities and Intimacy Research in Social Work and Social Care will significantly enhance any core texts on life course theory and practice, anti-oppression and anti-discriminatory theories for professionals. It should be considered essential reading for academics, practitioners and undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Many scholars in Biblical and Revelation studies have written at length about the imperial and patriarchal implications of the figure of the Whore of Babylon. However, much of the focus has been on the links to the Roman Empire and ancient attitudes towards gender. This book adds another layer to the conversation around this evocative figure by pursuing an ideological critique of the Great Whore that takes into account contemporary understandings of sexuality, and in so doing advances a de-moralization of apparent sexual deviancy both in the present and in the past. Offering an emancipatory reading of Revelation 17-18 using Foucauldian, postcolonial and queer historiographies, this study sets out alternative paths for identity construction in Biblical texts. By using these alternative critical lenses, the author argues that the common neglect of the ethical and political impact of Biblical texts in the present can be overcome. This, in turn, allows for fresh reflection on the study of the Bible and its implications for progressive politics. Situated at the intersection of Revelation Studies, Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics, as well as Contextual/Liberationist Theologies and Queer and Postcolonial Criticism, this is a cutting edge study that will be of keen interest to scholars of Theology and Religious Studies.

Originally published in 1977. For centuries myth, misinformation and taboo have distorted our vision of our sexual nature. This book examines such cultural phenomena: from Greek dualistic thought to Buddhist philosophy; from the attempt of early Christian sects to promote total chastity to homosexual practices among the Arabs. It explains Victorian theories about masturbation and madness, sexist dogmas limiting feminine potential, social attitudes towards abortion over time; and much more. Extensively researched, this fascinating classic work is a comprehensive summary of our knowledge of past sexual attitudes as well as an appraisal of the causes and direction of sexual revolution.

Originally published in 1979. This is at once a look at the realities of homosexuality in history and an examination of the myths that have grown up around it. The record of practices and prejudices moves from biblical and classical through early and medieval Christian, Renaissance, and Victorian times, to our own era of dramatic changes. It looks at prominent figures who were homosexuals, the theories that have flourished and faded, the differing attitudes toward male and female homosexuality, persecution, and contemporary changes. This classic work is a fascinating historical perspective of all the factors that have shaped and changed our attitudes from ancient times to the present.

Originally published in 1979. This highly detailed study of illicit sex amongst the peasantry of Somerset between 1601 and 1660 recreates the atmosphere of the period and questions a number of previously accepted hypotheses. Based on the depositions presented to the county and regional courts during this period, it sheds as much light on prevailing village attitudes as it does on the specific discussion matter. Outlining the precarious existence of the peasant and the supervision of sexual morality, the book looks at pre-marital sex, pregnancy, prostitution, masturbation, contraception, rape, homosexuality and incest, along with the prevailing punishments of the time. This extensively researched work combines both demographic and literary-based analyses, with analytical and anecdotal approaches to the subject. It presents a rich source of social history, examining and questioning the role of Christian morality as an important factor in influencing the sexual habits of the peasant.

This book focuses on the complexities of the bisexual umbrella-the phrase that is often used to describe a wide range of sexual identities, attractions, and behaviors that indicate attraction to more than one gender. As a consequence, the bisexual umbrella groups together a very heterogeneous group of people. The writers in this book each grapple with how the bisexual umbrella is applied to a variety of communities, people, and experiences, and discuss the benefits and costs of these applications. Topics include exploration of the similarities and differences between two-spirit people and bisexuals, including how their health concerns overlap and diverge, detailing personal and empirical experiences of sexual fluidity, descriptions of how bisexual, pansexual, and queer people conceptualize sexual identity, and explorations of pansexuality. Through these writings, the diversity underneath the bisexual umbrella is revealed. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

This book provides an overview of the Japanese sex industry in the years of Japan's postwar economic boom. It argues that the origins of gender inequality in contemporary Japan resulted from the policies put in place during this period, when there was instituted a "sexual contract" which provided male salarymen whose work was arduous, underpaid and subject to military-like organisation with easy access to women's bodies, through workplace getaway trips to hot springs resorts, hostess bars, and prostitution tourism to South Korea, as sexual inducement to acquiesce to their own exploitation. Japan's economic growth, the book thereby contends, came at the price not just of environmental and labour degradation, but also gender inequality.

A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities presents a comprehensive collection of original essays relating to aspects of gender and sexuality in the classical world. * Views the various practices and discursive contexts of sexuality systematically and holistically * Discusses Greece and Rome in each chapter, with sensitivity to the continuities and differences between the two classical civilizations * Addresses the classical influence on the understanding of later ages and religion * Covers artistic and literary genres, various social environments of sexual conduct, and the technical disciplines of medicine, magic, physiognomy, and dream interpretation * Features contributions from more than 40 top international scholars

This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I. Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple's changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values. By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships. This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple's sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.

This book paints a vivid picture of women's active involvement in reshaping intimate and public sexual life in East Asia. In bringing together exciting new feminist research on sexuality from East Asia and making it available to a wider audience, East Asian Sexualities unsettles stereotypes, rectifies lack of awareness and demonstrates that East Asia matters. The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.

In this book, Meenakshi Gigi Durham outlines and advances a progressive feminist framework for digital ethics in the technosexual landscape, exploring the complex and evolving interrelationships between sex and tech. Today we live in a "sexscape," a globalized assemblage of media, transnational capital, sexual practices, and identities. Sexuality suffuses the contemporary media-saturated environment; we engage with sex via cellphone apps and airport TVs, billboards and Jumbotron screens. Our techniques of sexual representation and body transformation - from sexting to plastic surgeries - occur in relation to our deep and complex engagements with mediated images of desire. These technosexual interactions hold the promise of sexual liberation and boldly imaginative pleasures. But in the machinic suturing of technologies with bodies, the politics of race, class, gender, and nation continue to matter. Paying acute attention to media's relationship to the politics of location, social hierarchies, and regulatory schemas, the author mounts a lucid and passionate argument for an ethics of technosex invested in the analysis of power.

Juxtaposing contributions from geneticists and anthropologists, this volume provides a contemporary overview of cousin marriage and what is happening at the interface of public policy, the management of genetic risk and changing cultural practices in the Middle East and in multi-ethnic Europe. It offers a cross-cultural exploration of practices of cousin marriage in the light of new genetic understanding of consanguineous marriage and its possible health risks. Overall, the volume presents a reflective, interdisciplinary analysis of the social and ethical issues raised by both the discourse of risk in cousin marriage, as well as existing and potential interventions to promote "healthy consanguinity" via new genetic technologies.

The Age of Consent; Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship addresses the contentious issue of how children's sexual behaviour should be regulated. The text includes: *A unique history of age of consent laws in the UK, analysed via contemporary social theory *A global comparative survey of age of consent laws and relevant international human rights law *A critical analysis of how protectionist agendas shaped new age of consent laws in England and Wales in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 *In-depth theoretical discussion of the rationale for age of consent laws *An original proposal to reduce the age of consent to 14 for young people who are less than two years apart in age Responding to contemporary concerns about young people's sexual behaviour, sexual abuse and paedophilia, this book will engage readers in law and socio-legal studies, sociology, history, politics, social policy, youth and childhood studies, and gender and sexuality studies; and professionals and practitioners working with young people.

The term 'kink' evokes a variety of cultural responses ranging from curiosity and arousal to disgust and fear. Many of these responses are based on assumptions about its practices and participants, due to often inaccurate and ever-more-frequent representations in popular culture. These selected authors challenge those assumptions and emphasize how a number of non-normative sexual activities and ways of being can be empowering and liberating rather than deleterious or 'deviant', helping to bring the world of kink out of the shadows. They illuminate past and present kinky phenomena by exploring BDSM, experimentation, fetishism, gender bending, performativity, and sexual role-playing, as experienced in a variety of domains and represented in literature, film, and television. Contributing to revised notions of inclusivity and acceptance, this interdisciplinary work deftly identifies both historical and current approaches to understanding and analyzing kink, and pinpoints avenues for future research. It is an important addition to the emergent areas of BDSM and kink studies.

Drawn from the City Journal, these cogent essays add up to the deepest, most informative appraisal we have of how and why the sexual revolution has failed and how we might begin to reconstruct the relations between the sexes in ways that reconcile freedom with humanity.

The problem of prostitution, sex work or sex for sale can often be misunderstood, if we do not take into consideration its spatial, temporal and political context. Understanding Sex for Sale aims to understand how prostitution, sex work or sex for sale are delineated, contested and understood in different spaces, places and times; with a particular focus on identifying how the relation between sex and money is interpreted and enacted. Divided into three parts, this interdisciplinary volume offers contributions that discuss ongoing theoretical issues and analytical challenges. Some chapters focus on how prostitution, sex work, or sex for sale have been regulated by the authorities and on the understandings that regulations are built upon. Other chapters investigate the experiences of sex workers and sex buyers, examining how these actors adjust to or resist the categorisation processes, control and stigma they are subjected to. Finally, a third group of chapters discuss contemporary definitional issues produced by various actors tasked with controlling prostitution or offering social services to its participants. Advancing and placing analytical tools at the forefront of the discussion, Understanding Sex for Sale appeals to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers interested in fields such as, sociology, anthropology, criminology, history, human geography and gender studies.

The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo. That taboo could be theological and involve the marriage of monks and nuns, or refer to social misalliances as when commoners and princes (or princesses) wed. Equally transgressive were unions that crossed religious boundaries, such as marriages between Catholics and Protestants, those that violated ethnic or racial barriers, and those that broke kin-related rules. Taking as a point of departure Martin Luther's redefinition of marriage, the contributors to this volume spin out the multiple ways that the Reformers' attempts to simplify and clarify marriage affected education, philosophy, literature, high politics, diplomacy, and law. Ranging from the Reformation, through the ages of confessionalization, to the Enlightenment, Mixed Matches addresses the historical complexity of the socio-cultural institution of marriage.

Silvia Bermudez's fascinating study reveals how Spanish popular music, produced between 1980 and 2013, was the first cultural site to engage in critical debate about ethnicity and race in relation to the immigration patterns that have been changing the social landscape of Spanish society since the late 1970s. In Rocking the Boat, Bermudez examines the lyrics of songs by both renowned and up and coming artists to illuminate how these new migrants challenged Spain's notions of homogeneity, boundaries, accommodation, and incorporation. Bermudez observes that immigration has had such a significant influence on Spanish society that the tattered boats, seen to this day on the shores of Spain and throughout the Mediterranean Sea, have become inverted emblems of the ships that were once symbols of great power and economic development. Rocking the Boat is a nuanced account of how popular urban music shaped the discourse on immigration, transnational migrants, and racialization in Spain's new social landscape.

Who and how we love may be changing but our desire to be in a relationship endures. This book presents an incisive account of how couples experience, understand and sustain long-term relationships, exploring the emotional, practical and biographical resources that couples draw on, across the life course.

The idea of citizenship and conceptions of what it means to be a good citizen have evolved over time. On the one hand, good citizenship entails the ability to live with others in diverse societies and to promote a common set of values of acceptance, human rights, and democracy. On the other hand, in order to compete in the global economy, nations require a more innovative, autonomous, and reflective workforce, meaning good citizens are also those who successfully participate in the economic development of themselves and their country. These competing conceptions of good citizenship can result in people's participation in activities, such as profit-driven labor exploitation, that contradict human rights and democratic tenants. Thus, global citizenship education is fundamental to teaching, learning, and redressing sociopolitical, economic, and environmental exploitation around the world. Detailing the historical development of this field of study to achieve recognition, Global Citizenship Education: Challenges and Successes provides a critical discourse on global citizenship education (GCE). Authors in this collection discuss the underpinnings of global citizenship education via contemporary theories and methodologies, as well as specific case studies that illustrate the application of GCE initiatives. Editors Eva Aboagye and S. Nombuso Dlamini aim to motivate learners and educators in post-secondary institutions not only to understand the issues of social and economic inequality and political and civil unrest facing us, but also to take action that will lead to equitable change in both local and global spaces.

This book illustrates how intimate workers in different socio-cultural contexts negotiate the commercial uses of their sexuality, identity, affect, and bodies, thereby often defying inequality, impoverishment, and resource depletion in their regions. The studies shed light on the multi-faceted experiences of subjects involved in intimate economies, oscillating between personal empowerment and agency, as well as the required subjection to the demands of the current market regime, entailing participation in precarious employment, often involving bodily risk, economic exploitation and stigmatization. The contributions demonstrate the interrelatedness of market intimacy, family economies, and transnational care arrangements, and thereby challenge Western notions of the subject and the free market.

The starting point for this book is the question of how we research sex for sale and the implications of the choices we make in terms of epistemology and ethics. Which dilemmas and ethical aspects need to be taken into account when producing qualitative data within a highly politicised and moral-infected realm? These two questions are exactly what Spanger and Skilbrei aim to unpack in this unusual interdisciplinary methodology book, Prostitution Research in Context. The book offers contributions from a number of scholars who, based on their reflections on their own research practice and the existing knowledge field, discuss ongoing methodological issues and challenges representative of international research on sex for sale. Some chapters deal explicitly with methodological dilemmas in research; others thematise the encounter between prostitution research and general texts on epistemology. Other chapters again actively engage with the ethical dilemmas that research on the topic of sex for sale can entail. The authors represent different disciplines, but share an interest in engaging in reflexive research practices informed by feminism and feminist epistemologies. An authoritative contribution to the field, this innovative volume will appeal to international scholars and students from across the social sciences and humanities in areas such as sociology, anthropology, criminology, media studies, feminist studies, human geography and history.

Informal folk narrative genres such as gossip, advice, rumor, and urban legends provide a unique lens through which to discern popular formations of gender conflict and AIDS beliefs. This is the first book on AIDS and gender in Africa to draw primarily on such narratives. By exploring tales of love medicine, gossip about romantic rivalries, rumors of mysterious new diseases, marital advice, and stories of rape, among others, it provides rich, personally grounded insights into the everyday struggles of people living in an era marked by social upheaval.

A practical workbook from the New York Times-bestselling author of Come As You Are that will radically transform your sex life.

In Come As You Are, sex educator Dr Emily Nagoski revealed the true story behind female sexuality, uncovering the little-known science of what makes us tick and, more importantly, how and why.

Now, in The Come As You Are Workbook, she offers practical tips and techniques that will help women to have the mind-blowing sex that they deserve (and that men have been having all along).

This collection of worksheets, journaling prompts, illustrations, and diagrams is an engaging companion for anyone who wants to further their understanding of their own bodies and sexuality.

A sweeping survey of sexuality in Europe from the Greeks to the present, Desire: A History of European Sexuality follows changing attitudes to two major concepts of sexual desire - desire as dangerous, polluting, and disorderly, and desire as creative, transcendent, even revolutionary - through the major turning points of European history. Chronological in structure, and wide ranging in scope, Desire addresses such topics as sex in ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, sexual contact and culture clash in Spain and colonial Mesoamerica, new attitudes toward sexuality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and sex in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany. The book introduces the concept of "twilight moments" to describe activities seen as shameful or dishonorable, but which were tolerated when concealed by shadows, and integrates the history of heterosexuality with same-sex desire, as well as exploring the emotions of love and lust as well as the politics of sex and personal experiences. This new edition has been updated to include a new chapter on sex and imperialism and expanded discussions of Islam and trans issues. Drawing on a rich array of sources, including poetry, novels, pornography, and film, as well as court records, autobiographies, and personal letters, and written in a lively, engaging style, Desire remains an essential resource for scholars and students of the history of European sexuality, as well as women's and gender history, social and cultural history and LGBTQ history.