In the Caribbean, sexuality is omnipresent; that is, it is seen but not heard. The Caribbean region can be characterised as a dualistic society. On the one side, sexuality is embraced and highly visible, manifesting itself in the culture of the music, dance, and the popular Carnival. The other side presents a society that is conservative and inhibiting, one that is heavily influenced by religion. There is a lack of communication regarding sexuality, both within schools and homes, making it very challenging for parents to be open with their children on the subject matter. Let's face it, many parents do not feel comfortable talking to their children about sexuality for a variety of reasons. In this respect, sexual education offered in schools helps open the discussion. However, it is not a panacea. Parents should not leave this important topic to the schools. Rather, parents should work together with the schools and the information that is disseminated to ensure the values and beliefs of the family, community and society are integrated. In this book, we present recent research on sexuality, alcohol, drugs and violence from the Caribbean region.

The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave eroticism its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education.

This volume marks the first sustained study to interrogate how and why issues of sexuality, desire, and economic processes intersect in the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siecle. At the end of the nineteenth-century, the move towards new models of economic thought marked the transition from a marketplace centred around the fulfilment of 'needs' to one ministering to anything that might, potentially, be desired. This collection considers how the literature of the period meditates on the interaction between economy and desire, doing so with particular reference to the themes of fetishism, homoeroticism, the literary marketplace, social hierarchy, and consumer culture. Drawing on theoretical and conceptual approaches including queer theory, feminist theory, and gift theory, contributors offer original analyses of work by canonical and lesser-known writers, including Oscar Wilde, A.E. Housman, Baron Corvo, Vernon Lee, Michael Field, and Lucas Malet. The collection builds on recent critical developments in fin-de-siecle literature (including major interventions in the areas of Decadence, sexuality, and gender studies) and asks, for instance, how did late nineteenth-century writing schematise the libidinal and somatic dimensions of economic exchange? How might we define the relationship between eroticism and the formal economies of literary production/performance? And what relation exists between advertising/consumer culture and (dissident) sexuality in fin-de-siecle literary discourses? This book marks an important contribution to 19th-Century and Victorian literary studies, and enhances the field of fin-de-siecle studies more generally.

Winner, Ruth Benedict Prize, Association for Queer Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2020 Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association, 2020 Honorable Mention, Sara A. Whaley Book Prize, 2020 Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 2008 and 2009, a time of intense drug violence, Sarah Luna met and built relationships with two kinds of migrants, women who moved from rural Mexico to Reynosa to become sex workers and American missionaries who moved from the United States to forge a fellowship with those workers. Luna examines the entanglements, both intimate and financial, that define their lives. Using the concept of obligar, she delves into the connections that tie sex workers to their families, their clients, their pimps, the missionaries, and the drug dealers-and to the guilt, power, and comfort of faith. Love in the Drug War scrutinizes not only la zona and the people who work to survive there, but also Reynosa itself-including the influences of the United States-adding nuance and new understanding to the current Mexico-US border crisis.

Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century includes twenty-seven chapters organized into five sections: Gender, Sexuality and Social Control; Pornography; Sex and Social Media; Dating, Desire, and the Politics of Hooking Up; and Issues in Sexual Pleasure and Safety. This anthology presents these topics using a point-counterpoint-different point framework. Its arguments and perspectives do not pit writers against each other in a binary pro/con debate format. Instead, a variety of views are juxtaposed to encourage critical thinking and robust conversation. This framework enables readers to assess the strengths and shortcomings of conflicting ideas. The chapters are organized in a way that will challenge cherished beliefs and hone both academic and personal insight. Gender, Sex, and Politics is ideal for sparking debates in intro to women's and gender studies, sexuality, and gender courses.

The second half of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth century saw a growing preoccupation with sexual perversion: in particular homosexuality, sadism, masochism, fetishism, voyeurism and exhibitionism. Charting the intellectual history of the construction of the perversions in German, French and English sexology in this period, Anna Schaffnerexplores the decisive role played by literary representations of deviant sexualities in the formation of sexological knowledge. Just as sexologists, including Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Alfred Binet, Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch and Sigmund Freud, relied upon the literary, so major modernist writers such as Georges Bataille, Franz Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were in turn influenced by sexological conceptions. Focusing on the interdisciplinary exchanges between literature and sexology, Schaffner illuminates the pivotal role these modernists played in re-evaluating the perversions and paving the way for the transformation of the idea of sexual deviance into that of sexual difference

How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in India During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals-philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics-deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. In Indian Sex Life, Durba Mitra shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society. Bringing together vast archival materials from diverse disciplines, Mitra reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. Mitra demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world. Reframing the prostitute as a concept, Indian Sex Life overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

America through Transgender Eyes provides an opportunity for readers to look at American society through the eyes of transgender people at a time when movements for and against transgender people permeate socio-political discussions throughout the nation. This book provides readers with important insights into the beauty and struggle of transgender people, identities, experiences, and relationships. At a time when political, religious, and scientific traditions update their arguments in relation to growing recognition of transgender lives and histories, America through Transgender Eyes offers an opportunity to visualize the way such traditions appear through the eyes of some of the people often left out of them. As political battles about the rights of transgender Americans grow throughout the nation, this book provides an important introduction to this population for voters, leaders, activists, and scholars seeking to make sense of the shifting gender dynamics of contemporary America.

At the height of the Victorian era, a daring group of artists and thinkers defied the reigning obsession with propriety, testing the boundaries of sexual decorum in their lives and in their work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed his dead wife to pry his only copy of a manuscript of his poems from her coffin. Legendary explorer Richard Burton wrote how-to manuals on sex positions and livened up the drawing room with stories of eroticism in the Middle East. Algernon Charles Swinburne visited flagellation brothels and wrote pornography amid his poetry. By embracing and exploring the taboo, these iconoclasts produced some of the most captivating art, literature, and ideas of their day. As thought-provoking as it is electric, Pleasure Bound unearths the desires of the men and women who challenged buttoned-up Victorian mores to promote erotic freedom. These bohemians formed two loosely overlapping societies the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes to explore their fascinations with sexual taboo, from homosexuality to the eroticization of death. Known as much for their flamboyant personal lives as for their controversial masterpieces, they created a scandal-provoking counterculture that paved the way for such later figures as Gustav Klimt, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Genet. In this stunning expose of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Deborah Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, revealing how they uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric: the struggle for women s emancipation, the dissolution of formal religions, and the pressing need for new forms of sexual expression."

Human sexuality involves sexual attraction to another person, which for the most part is to the opposite sex (heterosexuality), some to the same sex (homosexuality) or some having both (bisexuality) or not being attracted to anyone in a sexual manner (asexuality). Human sexuality is determined by many factors, like cultural, political, legal and philosophical aspects of life, but also morality, ethics, theology, spirituality and religion. Sexuality is as old as mankind and interest in sexual activity is very much related to the onset of puberty and the period of schooling. In this book, we have gathered papers from around the world in order to discuss issues of sexuality from an international perspective.

In this headline-making book, Daniel Bergner turns everything we thought we knew about women's desire on its head. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with renowned behavioural scientists, sexologists, psychologists and everyday women, Daniel Bergner asks: - Do women really crave intimacy and emotional connection? - Are women more disposed to sex with strangers or multiple partners than either science or society have ever let on? - And is 'the fairer sex' actually more sexually aggressive and anarchic than men?

In his "Problemata," Aristotle provided medieval thinkers with the occasion to inquire into the natural causes of the sexual desires of men to act upon or be acted upon by other men, thus bringing human sexuality into the purview of natural philosophers, whose aim it was to explain the causes of objects and events in nature. With this philosophical justification, some late medieval intellectuals asked whether such dispositions might arise from anatomy or from the psychological processes of habit formation. As the fourteenth-century philosopher Walter Burley observed, "Nothing natural is shameful." The authors, scribes, and readers willing to "contemplate base things" never argued that they were not vile, but most did share the conviction that they could be explained.From the evidence that has survived in manuscripts of and related to the "Problemata," two narratives emerge: a chronicle of the earnest attempts of medieval medical theorists and natural philosophers to understand the cause of homosexual desires and pleasures in terms of natural processes, and an ongoing debate as to whether the sciences were equipped or permitted to deal with such subjects at all. Mining hundreds of texts and deciphering commentaries, indices, abbreviations, and marginalia, Joan Cadden shows how European scholars deployed a standard set of philosophical tools and a variety of rhetorical strategies to produce scientific approaches to sodomy.

'An important reappraisal of a decade that changed us, for good and ill' Sunday Times No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and vilified than the 1960s. And at the heart of all that controversy - the music, drugs, fashion, hopes, dreams and political movements - is sex. But were the 1960s really a great time of liberation, joyful experimentation and celebrations of youth? Growing Up takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the sexual revolution. In this wide-ranging and eye-opening survey of the sexual landscape of the 1960s, Peter Doggett has assembled a dozen little-known stories that reveal how the sexual revolution transformed people's lives - for better or worse. 'Fascinating...shows rather conclusively that the sixties was not a sexual paradise' Evening Standard 'Creates an account of the 1960s that, unlike most popular histories, does not edit out the grim bits' Mail on Sunday

In this book, the authors explore the psychological implications, social expectations and role of sexuality in marriage today. Topics presented from across the globe include the nature of the sexual relationship in marriage and during transition to parenthood; gender attitudes in marriage and the division of unpaid family work; health concerns of transnational marriage of immigrant women in Taiwan; couple generativity in relation to familial and social bonds; the marriage and health association; and the social structures that influence marriage and divorce.

Men and Sex provides a comprehensive yet accessible account of male sexuality by using the theoretical concept of the 'sexual script' to illuminate different aspects of men's sexual behaviour. Graham begins by discussing different theories of sexuality, before providing a more detailed description of sexual script theory. This proposes how male sexual behaviour can be explained as a result of cultural influences modified by individual experience and personality as well as by interaction with others. Individual chapters detail the development of sexual scripts in childhood and adolescence, masturbation, cultural influences on sexuality, heterosexual behaviour, variations and problems in sexual functioning, homosexual behaviour, transsexualism, procreative sex, coercive sexual behaviour, the impact of physical and mental health problems on sexuality, and sexuality and pornography. The concluding chapter looks at the future of male sexuality. The book makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on masculinity studies.

'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' OLIVIA LAING What can freedom really mean? In this invigorating, essential book, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about the concept in ways that are responsive to our divided world. Drawing on pop culture, theory and the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, she follows freedom - with all its complexities - through four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate. On Freedom offers a bold new perspective on the challenging times in which we live. 'Tremendously energising' Guardian 'This provocative meditation...shows Nelson at her most original and brilliant' New York Times 'Nelson is such a friend to her reader, such brilliant company... Exhilarating' Literary Review * A New York Times Notable Book * * A Guardian and TLS 'Books of 2021' Pick *

The History of Sexuality in Europe: A Sourcebook and Reader is a dynamic introduction to the latest debates in the history of Sexuality in Europe. It begins with an introduction, "The Magnetic Poetry Kit of Sex," that surveys the field of sexuality and introduces the new concept of sexual grammar. The Reader focuses on the modern age, but has three chapters on the ancient and medieval world to demonstrate their very different cultures of sexuality. Each section of the Reader pairs the latest chapters and articles by experts with primary sources, addressing questions such as: Why did ancient Greek philosophers and medieval Islamic poets celebrate men's desire for each other? Was Jesus a queer eunuch? Were Victorians sexually repressed? How did nonwestern cultures change some Europeans' ideas about sex? Does regulating prostitution protect or punish women who sell sex? How did sexologists learn from feminists, and men and women who desired those of the same sex? Were 60s feminists pro or anti sex? An essential collection for all students of the history of sexuality.

The Gender of Sexuality serves as a fun and informative guide on how to approach the topics of gender and sexuality-two areas fraught with stereotypes and misinformation. The second edition of this book features significant new material on the changing status of gender, same sex marriage, and transgender. After introducing key concepts in gender and sexuality, the authors explore topics such as sexual desire, the role of biology, sexual behavior, uncommitted sexual relationships and "hooking up," marriage and cohabitation, and the politics of sexuality. Examples from popular culture, film, and media invite readers to engage with key concepts. This is an ideal book for courses on gender, sexuality, marriage and family, or social problems.

An instant best-seller and now the leading book for the course, Wade and Ferree's Gender is a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to sociological perspectives on gender. Drawing on memorable examples mined from history, pop culture and current events, Gender deftly moves between theoretical concepts and applications to everyday life. New discussions of #metoo, toxic masculinity and gender politics in the Trump era help students participate in today's conversation about gender.

Why is it so hard to talk about sex and sexuality? In this crisp and compelling book, Amin Ghaziani provides a pithy introduction to the field of sexuality studies through a distinctively cultural lens. Rather than focusing on sex acts, which make us feel flustered and blind us to a bigger picture, Ghaziani crafts a conversation about sex cultures that zooms in on the diverse contexts that give meaning to our sexual pursuits and practices. Unlike sex, which is a biological expression, the word sexuality highlights how the materiality of the body acquires cultural meaning as it encounters other bodies, institutions, regulations, symbols, societal norms, values, and worldviews. Think of it this way: sex + culture = sexuality. Sex Cultures offers an introduction to sexuality unlike any other. Its case-study and debate-driven approach, animated by examples from across the globe and across disciplines, upends stubborn assumptions that pit sex against society. The elegance of the arguments makes this book a pleasurable read for beginners and experts alike.

Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's "Sex with Kings" takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them.

Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped none other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.

The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken.

True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions -- some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels, and palaces. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court was a scorpion's nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition. Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Manywould suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends and were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her "sins."

From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman's trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, "Sex with Kings" is a chapter of women's history that has remained unwritten -- until now.

Money, sex, and love: Are they merely

What do we know about early modern sex, and how do we know it? How, when, and why does sex become history? In Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, Valerie Traub addresses these questions and, in doing so, reorients the ways in which historians and literary critics, feminists and queer theorists approach sexuality and its history. Her answers offer interdisciplinary strategies for confronting the difficulties of making sexual knowledge. Based on the premise that producing sexual knowledge is difficult because sex itself is often inscrutable, Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns leverages the notions of opacity and impasse to explore barriers to knowledge about sex in the past. Traub argues that the obstacles in making sexual history can illuminate the difficulty of knowing sexuality. She also argues that these impediments themselves can be adopted as a guiding principle of historiography: sex may be good to think with, not because it permits us access but because it doesn't.

When we talk about sex, we talk about women as mysterious, deceptive, and - above all - untrustworthy. Women lie about orgasms. Women lie about being virgins. Women lie about who got them pregnant, about whether they were raped, about how many people they've had sex with and what sort of experiences they've had - the list goes on and on. Over and over we're reminded that, on dates, in relationships, and especially in the bedroom, women just aren't telling the truth. But where does this assumption come from? Are women actually lying about sex, or does society just think we are? In Faking It, Lux Alptraum tackles the topic of seemingly dishonest women; investigating whether women actually lie, and what social situations might encourage deceptions both great and small. Using her experience as a sex educator and former CEO of Fleshbot (the foremost blog on sexuality), first-hand interviews with sexuality experts and everyday women, Alptraum raises important questions: are lying women all that common - or is the idea of the dishonest woman a symptom of male paranoia? Are they trying to please men, or just trying to trick and trap them? And what affect does all this dishonesty - whether real or imagined - have on women's self-images, social status, and safety? Through it all, Alptraum posits that even if women are lying, we're doing it for very good reason--to protect ourselves ("My boyfriend will be here any minute," to a creep who won't go away, for one), and in situations where society has given us no other choice.