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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Family & relationships > Sexual relations
Society tells us what is right and what is wrong based on unrealistic expectations. In the end, though, no matter how unique our experiences seem, they aren't wrong: they simply are.
The Keeping It Under Wraps anthology series provides a safe space to change the narrative, to speak openly about individual experiences, and in the end to understand that while each experience is different, we are not so different from each other.
Let's start the conversation. What better place to start than with sex?
Sexual health, sexual preferences, and sexual experiences: no stigma, no shame, no more keeping it under wraps.
Lynne Huffer's ambitious inquiry redresses the rift between
feminist and queer theory, traversing the space of a new,
post-moral sexual ethics that includes pleasure, desire,
connection, and betrayal. She begins by balancing queer theorists'
politics of sexual freedoms with a moralizing feminist politics
that views sexuality as harm. Drawing on the best insights from
both traditions, she builds an ethics centered on eros, following
Michel Foucault's ethics as a practice of freedom and Luce
Irigaray's lyrical articulation of an ethics of sexual
difference.
Through this theoretical lens, Huffer examines everyday
experiences of ethical connection and failure connected to sex,
including queer sexual practices, sodomy laws, interracial love,
pornography, and work-life balance. Her approach complicates sexual
identities while challenging the epistemological foundations of
subjectivity. She rethinks ethics "beyond good and evil" without
underestimating, as some queer theorists have done, the persistence
of what Foucault calls the "catastrophe" of morality. Elaborating a
thinking-feeling ethics of the other, Huffer encourages
contemporary intellectuals to reshape sexual morality from within,
defining an ethical space that is both poetically suggestive and
politically relevant, both conceptually daring and grounded in
common sexual experience.
The sexual revolution is justly celebrated for the freedoms it
brought--birth control, the decriminalization of abortion, the
liberalization of divorce, greater equality between the sexes,
women's massive entry into the workforce, and more tolerance of
homosexuality. But as Pascal Bruckner, one of France's leading
writers, argues in this lively and provocative reflection on the
contradictions of modern love, our new freedoms have also brought
new burdens and rules--without, however, wiping out the old rules,
emotions, desires, and arrangements: the couple, marriage,
jealousy, the demand for fidelity, the war between constancy and
inconstancy. It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships
today are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical.
Drawing on history, politics, psychology, literature, pop
culture, and current events, this book--a best seller in
France--exposes and dissects these paradoxes. With his customary
brilliance and wit, Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation
back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love's supreme
paradox, epitomized by the 1960s oxymoron of "free love": the
tension between freedom, which separates, and love, which attaches.
Ashamed that our sex lives fail to live up to such liberated
ideals, we have traded neuroses of repression for neuroses of
inadequacy, and we overcompensate: "Our parents lied about their
morality," Bruckner writes, but "we lie about our immorality."
Mixing irony and optimism, Bruckner argues that, when it comes
to love, we should side neither with the revolutionaries nor the
reactionaries. Rather, taking love and ourselves as we are, we
should realize that love makes no progress and that its messiness,
surprises, and paradoxes are not merely the sources of its
pain--but also of its pleasure and glory.
Technology is rapidly advancing, and each innovation provides
opportunities for such technology to mesh with the human enactment
of physical intimacy or to be used in the quest for information
about sexuality. However, the availability of this technology has
complicated sexual decision making for young adults as they
continually navigate their sexual identity, orientation, behavior,
and community. Young Adult Sexuality in the Digital Age is a
pivotal reference source that improves the understanding of the
combination of technology and sexual decision making for young
adults, examining the role of technology in sexual identity
formation, sexual communication, relationship formation and
dissolution, and sexual learning and online sexual communities and
activism. While highlighting topics such as privacy management,
cyber intimacy, and digital communications, this book is ideally
designed for therapists, social workers, sociologists,
psychologists, counselors, healthcare professionals, scholars,
researchers, and students.
In 1998, Sweden passed ground-breaking legislation criminalising
the purchase of sexual services which sought to curb demand and
support women exiting the sex industry. Grounded in the reality of
the violence and abuse inherent in prostitution -- and reeling from
the death of a friend to prostitution in Spain -- Kajsa Ekis Ekman
exposes the many lies in the sex work scenario. Trade unions arent
trade unions. Groups for prostituted women are simultaneously
groups for brothel owners. And prostitution is always presented
from a womans point of view. The men who buy sex are left out.
Drawing on Marxist and feminist analyses, Ekis Ekman argues that
the Self must be split from the body to make it possible to sell
your body without selling yourself. The body becomes sex. Sex
becomes a service. The story of the sex worker says: the Split Self
is not only possible, it is the ideal. Turning to the practice of
surrogate motherhood, Kajsa Ekis Ekman identifies the same
components: that the woman is neither connected to her own body nor
to the child she grows in her body and gives birth to. Surrogacy
becomes an extended form of prostitution. In this capitalist
creation story, the parent is the one who pays. The product sold is
not sex but a baby. Ekis Ekman asks: why should this not be called
child trafficking? This brilliant expose is written with a
razor-sharp intellect and disarming wit and will make us look at
prostitution and surrogacy and the parallels between them in a new
way.
The Gender Revolution and New Sexual Health: Celebrating Unlimited
Diversity of the Human Sexuality Hypercube deconstructs the gender
binary and introduces students to the mathematics of unlimited
human sexual diversity. The book bridges academic sexual science
and real-world application of knowledge to improve personal
satisfaction. It also prepares future healthcare providers, as well
as those in other helping professions, to assist clients in a way
that helps them increase their own personal comfort, confidence,
and knowledge related to gender and sexual health. The text
provides students with practical approaches to overcome the various
challenges individuals face related to gender and sexuality. The
chapters explore topics including sexual literacy, gender
dysphoria, the history of sex education, health, and attitudes in
the United States, sexual identity and orientation, the health
benefits of sexual expression, gender fluidity, and more. The text
features questionnaires that can be used to measure personal
satisfaction, success stories from the field, and a glossary to
assist with new terms and concepts. The Gender Revolution and New
Sexual Health is an excellent resource for courses in sexual
health, women's health, gender studies, psychology, psychiatry,
nursing, counseling, and sociology.
Sexuality Concepts for Social Workers is a research-informed,
reader-friendly guide that helps practitioners address
sexuality-related issues with a variety of clients. Topics covered
include the role of values in sexuality, sexual health and
reproduction, relationships, sexual orientation, gender and gender
identity, sexuality and the lifespan, sex work and sex workers,
sexuality in the ill or disabled, and being a sexually healthy
adult. Chapters feature discussion questions, implications and
applications for real-world practice, case examples, and opinion
pieces from each of the authors to enhance learning, reflection,
and critical thinking. The second edition features updated QR codes
to direct students to additional resources, a new chapter called
"Sexuality, Spirituality, and Social Work," updated discussion
questions, fresh author opinion pieces, and new topics, including
racial preferences when dating, conversion therapy, and sexuality
policies in retirement and assisted living facilities. Sexuality
Concepts for Social Workers helps practitioners build their
sexuality literacy to better assist patients. It is ideal for
advanced undergraduate and foundational graduate courses on human
behavior, sexuality diversity, and human sexuality for social
workers.
A provocative and probing argument showing how human beings can for
the first time in history take charge of their moral fate. Is
tribalism-the political and cultural divisions between Us and
Them-an inherent part of our basic moral psychology? Many
scientists link tribalism and morality, arguing that the evolved
"moral mind" is tribalistic. Any escape from tribalism, according
to this thinking, would be partial and fragile, because it goes
against the grain of our nature. In this book, Allen Buchanan
offers a counterargument: the moral mind is highly flexible,
capable of both tribalism and deeply inclusive moralities,
depending on the social environment in which the moral mind
operates. We can't be morally tribalistic by nature, Buchanan
explains, because quite recently there has been a remarkable shift
away from tribalism and toward inclusiveness, as growing numbers of
people acknowledge that all human beings have equal moral status,
and that at least some nonhumans also have moral standing. These
are what Buchanan terms the Two Great Expansions of moral regard.
And yet, he argues, moral progress is not inevitable but depends
partly on whether we have the good fortune to develop as moral
agents in a society that provides the right conditions for
realizing our moral potential. But morality need not depend on
luck. We can take charge of our moral fate by deliberately shaping
our social environment-by engaging in scientifically informed
"moral institutional design." For the first time in human history,
human beings can determine what sort of morality is predominant in
their societies and what kinds of moral agents they are.
This book examines the intricacies of emergent sexual citizenship.
Designed for academics and broader audiences alike, the collection
covers the theorization of sexual citizenship, the exploration of
case studies in law, the relationship between sexual citizenship
and bio-politics, and finally the erotic dissidence of sexual
outlaws. The borders of sexual citizenship are traced, as authors
investigate what it means to be 'inside,' as erotic subjects, or
outside, as 'sexual outlaws.' The issues of inclusion and exclusion
are approached through diverse methodological and analytical
lenses: some articles are theoretical and philosophical, others are
empirically based, presenting the findings of sociological and
ethnographic research projects; some are textual analyses, of
religious texts, film texts, and of legal discourse. Contributors
are Abidemi Fasanmi, Rene Hirsch, Elene Lam, Jaclyn Lanthier, Todd
G. Morrison, Nick J. Mule, Elly-Jean Nielsen, Serena Petrella,
Olivia Schuman and Deww Zhang.
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