Civil War soldiers enjoyed unprecedented access to obscene materials of all sorts, including mass-produced erotic fiction, cartes de visite, playing cards, and stereographs. A perfect storm of antebellum legal, technological, and commercial developments, coupled with the concentration of men fed into armies, created a demand for, and a deluge of, pornography in the military camps. Illicit materials entered in haversacks, through the mail, or from sutlers; soldiers found pornography discarded on the ground, and civilians discovered it in abandoned camps. Though few examples survived the war, these materials raised sharp concerns among reformers and lawmakers, who launched campaigns to combat it. By the war's end, a victorious, resurgent American nation-state sought to assert its moral authority by redefining human relations of the most intimate sort, including the regulation of sex and reproduction-most evident in the Comstock laws, a federal law and a series of state measures outlawing pornography, contraception, and abortion. With this book, Judith Giesberg has written the first serious study of the erotica and pornography that nineteenth-century American soldiers read and shared and links them to the postwar reaction to pornography and to debates about the future of sex and marriage.

Sexuality is a complex and multifaceted domain - encompassing bodily, contextual and subjective experiences that resist ready categorisation. To claim the sexual as a viable research object therefore raises a number of important methodological questions: what is it possible to know about experiences, practices and perceptions of sex and sexualities? What approaches might help or hinder our efforts to probe such experiences? This collection explores the creative, personal and contextual parameters involved in researching sexuality, cutting across disciplinary boundaries and drawing on case studies from a variety of countries and contexts. Combining a wide range of expertise, its contributors address such key areas as pornography, sex work, intersectionality and LGBT perspectives. The contributors also share their own experiences of researching sexuality within contrasting disciplines, as well as interrogating how the sexual identities of researchers themselves can relate to, and inform, their work. The result is a unique and diverse collection that combines practical insights on field work with novel theoretical reflections.

According to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, more than 50% of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20th birthday. This data demonstrates a dire need for caregivers, educators and providers to have a better understanding of youths experiencing gender dysphoria (and gender non-conforming youth, who are often mistaken for transgender youth). Presently, our binary society makes the lives of transgender youth more challenging than they need be. Childhood and adolescence mark the start of our gender identity development, our sexual orientation development, and our racial identity development. Those intersections create enough interpersonal and intrapersonal challenges without the added stress of rejection for belonging to a minority group in one or more of those three developmental areas. These transgender youth are growing into transgender adults who own businesses, become politicians, join the military, and become parents. They are a natural and needed part of our society. This book was created to give a voice to these individuals as they are being silenced by some of their caregivers, school officials, religious leaders, and politicians. Transgender Youth: Perceptions, Media Influences and Social Challenges is about the experience of child development, adolescent development and gender identity development as well as societys positive and unnecessary negative responses. Transgender youth have some experiences that their 1950s and 1960s counterparts did not encounter or have access to hormone blockers, celebrity role models, and social media. This book brings readers closer to empathy for transgender youth and transgender young adults with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for these exceptional children and adolescents. The book introduces the topic of gender dysphoria and explains various terms important to this conversation regarding gender identity. It describes the challenges transgender adolescents experience to include barriers and obstacles not faced by their cisgender counterparts. Some parents and their transgender Christian children discuss gender dysphoria, gender identity development, their families response to their gender expression, and their experiences within their faith communities. We review the literature on transgender youth and the use of sexual activity as commerce. The audience gets to read narratives of individuals who identify as transgender or transsexual. There are discussions about transgender youth within the foster care system, transgender youth athletes, and the issues they face in school-based and intramural sports programs. Readers are offered suggestions to implement and support transgender youth in their schools and communities.

In the 1970s a group of pioneering feminist entrepreneurs launched a movement that ultimately changed the way sex was talked about, had, and enjoyed. Boldly reimagining who sex shops were for and the kinds of spaces they could be, these entrepreneurs opened sex-toy stores like Eve's Garden, Good Vibrations, and Babeland not just as commercial enterprises, but to provide educational and community resources as well. In Vibrator Nation Lynn Comella tells the fascinating history of how these stores raised sexual consciousness, redefined the adult industry, and changed women's lives. Comella describes a world where sex-positive retailers double as social activists, where products are framed as tools of liberation, and where consumers are willing to pay for the promise of better living-one conversation, vibrator, and orgasm at a time.

This book draws on interviews with women who left relationships with women to begin relationships with men, and uncovers how the women make sense of who they are. The women who leave female partners to begin relationships with male partners have the capacity to redefine their sexual identity. They can essentially call themselves whatever they want. However, their capacity for such a creative process is limited. In the process of framing their decision in a way that renders their claim to a stable identity legitimate, the women communicate their understandings of notions of identity, community, and belonging. The women also show a nuanced regard for sexual categories. They stretch the boundaries of some categories, while preserving and even policing the boundaries of other categories. This book is in no way an ex-gay narrative. It is entirely the voices of feminist, queer women who find themselves viewed by society as heterosexual, but who themselves, with two exceptions, do not identify as such. This book is a rich collection of wonderfully human stories about what it means to be "true" to oneself.

This book reviews research studies on the perceptions, discrimination and acceptance based on sexual orientation. The first chapter begins with an overview of social reaction, etiological perceptions and spiritual perspectives in LGBTQ Mormons. Chapter Two studies an attempt to integrate theoretical models and provides a review of the empirical evidence of impression formation of applicants differing in sexual orientation. Chapter Three compares the mental health of those who live in neighborhoods with relatively high concentrations of sexual minorities to that of those who live in neighborhoods with relatively low concentrations. Chapter Four tests the initiation of a self-regulatory cycle for avoidance of future homonegative behavior.

This book provides a philosophical analysis of adult-child sex and pedophilia. This sex intuitively strikes many people as sick, disgusting, and wrong. The problem is that it is not clear whether these judgments are justified and whether they are aesthetic or moral. By analogy, many people find it disgusting to view images of obese people having sex, but it is hard to see what is morally undesirable about such sex: here the judgment is aesthetic. This book looks at the moral status of such adult-child sex. In particular, it explores whether those who engage in adult-child sex have a disease, act wrongly, or are vicious. In addition, it looks at how the law should respond to such sex given the above analyses.

Seeing Straight introduces students to key concepts in gender and sexuality through the lens of privilege and power. After an accessible overview, the book asks students to examine the privilege inherent in approaching heterosexual and cisgender identities as "normal," as well as the problems of treating queer gender and sexuality as "abnormal." Compelling real-life examples illustrate theory and empirical research, revealing phenomena that shape not only students' own lives, but also their communities, their country, and the field of gender studies itself. The book addresses tough topics like hate, violence, and privilege, and it also considers institutionalized heteronormativity through the military, law, religion, and more. The book ends with a chapter called "It's Getting Better" that presents evidence for queer hope and courage. Filled with compelling true stories, this book is an ideal introduction to gender and sexuality that encourages students to question their own assumptions.

It is generally recognized that antebellum interracial relationships were "notorious" at the neighborhood level. But we have yet to fully uncover the complexities of such relationships, especially from freedwomen's and children's points of view. While it is known that Cincinnati had the largest per capita population of mixed race people outside the South during the antebellum period, historians have yet to explore how geography played a central role in this outcome. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers made it possible for Southern white men to ferry women and children of color for whom they had some measure of concern to free soil with relative ease. Some of the women in question appear to have been "fancy girls," enslaved women sold for use as prostitutes or "mistresses." Green focuses on women who appear to have been the latter, recognizing the problems with the term "mistress," given its shifting meaning even during the antebellum period. Remember Me to Miss Louisa, among other things, moves the life of the fancy girl from New Orleans, where it is typically situated, to the Midwest. The manumission of these women and their children-and other enslaved women never sold under this brand-occurred as America's frontiers pushed westward, and urban life followed in their wake. Indeed, Green's research examines the tensions between the urban Midwest and the rising Cotton Kingdom. It does so by relying on surviving letters, among them those from an ex-slave mistress who sent her "love" to her former master. This relationship forms the crux of the first of three case studies. The other two concern a New Orleans young woman who was the mistress of an aging white man, and ten Alabama children who received from a white planter a $200,000 inheritance (worth roughly $5.1 million in today's currency). In each case, those freed people faced the challenges characteristic of black life in a largely hostile America. While the frequency with which Southern white men freed enslaved women and their children is now generally known, less is known about these men's financial and emotional investments in them. Before the Civil War, a white Southern man's pending marriage, aging body, or looming death often compelled him to free an African American woman and their children. And as difficult as it may be for the modern mind to comprehend, some kind of connection sometimes existed between these individuals. This study argues that such men-though they hardly stand excused for their ongoing claims to privilege-were hidden actors in freedwomen's and children's attempts to survive the rigors and challenges of life as African Americans in the years surrounding the Civil War. Green examines many facets of this phenomenon in the hope of revealing new insights about the era of slavery. Historians, students, and general readers of US history, African American studies, black urban history, and antebellum history will find much of interest in this fascinating study.

In 2010, Thea Cacchioni testified before the US Food and Drug Administration against flibanserin, a drug proposed to treat low sexual desire in women, dubbed by the media the "pink Viagra." She was one of many academics and activists sounding the alarm about the lack of science behind the search for potentially lucrative female sexual enhancement drugs. In her book, Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love, Cacchioni moves beyond the search for a sexual pharmaceutical drug for women to ask a broader question: how does the medicalization of female sexuality already affect women's lives? Using in-depth interviews with doctors, patients, therapists, and other medical practitioners, Cacchioni shows that, whatever the future of the "pink Viagra," heterosexual women often now feel expected to take on the job of managing their and their partners' sexual desires. Their search for sexual pleasure can be a "labour of love," work that is enjoyable for some but a chore for others. An original and insightful take on the burden of heterosexual norms in an era of compulsory sexuality, Cacchioni's investigation should open up a wide-ranging discussion about the true impact of the medicalization of sexuality.

Popular wisdom might suggest that jealousy is an inevitable outcome of non-monogamous relationships. In Love's Refraction, Jillian Deri explores the distinctive question of how and why polyamorists - people who practice consensual non-monogamy - manage jealousy. Her focus is on the polyamorist concept of "compersion" - taking pleasure in a lover's other romantic and sexual encounters. By discussing the experiences of queer, lesbian, and bisexual polyamorous women, Deri highlights the social and structural context that surrounds jealousy. Her analysis, making use of the sociology of emotion and feminist intersectionality theory, shows how polyamory challenges traditional emotional and sexual norms. Clear and concise, Love's Refraction speaks to both the academic and the polyamorous community. Deri lets her interviewees speak for themselves, linking academic theory and personal experiences in a sophisticated, engaging, and accessible way.

Few people these days would oppose making the public realm of space, social services and jobs accessible to women and men with disabilities. But what about access to the private realm of desire and sexuality? How can one also facilitate access to that, in ways that respect the integrity of disabled adults, and also of those people who work with and care for them? Loneliness and Its Opposite documents how two countries generally imagined to be progressive engage with these questions in very different ways. Denmark and Sweden are both liberal welfare states, but they diverge dramatically when it comes to sexuality and disability. In Denmark, the erotic lives of people with disabilities are acknowledged and facilitated. In Sweden, they are denied and blocked. Why do these differences exist, and how do both facilitation and hindrance play out in practice? Loneliness and Its Opposite charts complex boundaries between private and public, love and sex, work and intimacy, and affection and abuse. It shows how providing disabled adults with access to sexual lives is not just crucial for a life with dignity. It is an issue of fundamental social justice with far reaching consequences for everyone.

Few people these days would oppose making the public realm of space, social services and jobs accessible to women and men with disabilities. But what about access to the private realm of desire and sexuality? How can one also facilitate access to that, in ways that respect the integrity of disabled adults, and also of those people who work with and care for them? Loneliness and Its Opposite documents how two countries generally imagined to be progressive engage with these questions in very different ways. Denmark and Sweden are both liberal welfare states, but they diverge dramatically when it comes to sexuality and disability. In Denmark, the erotic lives of people with disabilities are acknowledged and facilitated. In Sweden, they are denied and blocked. Why do these differences exist, and how do both facilitation and hindrance play out in practice? Loneliness and Its Opposite charts complex boundaries between private and public, love and sex, work and intimacy, and affection and abuse. It shows how providing disabled adults with access to sexual lives is not just crucial for a life with dignity. It is an issue of fundamental social justice with far reaching consequences for everyone.

Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? Is it possible for women to enjoy sensuality and pleasure with men that does not increase male power? Lynne Segal's unflinching examination of feminist thinking on sexuality over the past twenty-five years tackles these questions head on. Only two decades ago, politically aware women often declared themselves both sexual liberationists and feminists - their right to sexual fulfillment symbolized their right to selfhood. However, the most positive women's writing on female sexuality in recent years has come primarily from the lesbian community. Segal addresses the silence of heterosexual feminists on questions of sex and love and notes the shift toward sexual conservatism. She looks at the trends that followed Sixties radicalism: sex as a subversive activity, the "liberated orgasm," sex advice literature, gender uncertainties, Queer politics, antipornography campaigns, and the rise of the moral right.

In 2003, Lebanese writer Rashid al-Daif spent several weeks in Germany as part of the "West-East Divan" program, a cultural exchange effort meant to improve mutual awareness of German and Middle Eastern cultures. He was paired with German author Joachim Helfer, who then returned the visit to al-Daif in Lebanon. Following their time together, al-Daif published in Arabic a literary reportage of his encounter with Helfer in which he focuses on the German writer's homosexuality. His frank observations have been variously read as trenchant, naive, or offensive. In response, Helfer provided an equally frank point-by-point riposte to al-Daif's text. Together these writers offer a rare exploration of attitudes toward sex, love, and gender across cultural lines. By stretching the limits of both fiction and essay, they highlight the importance of literary sensitivity in understanding the Other.

Rashid al-Daif's "novelized biography" and Joachim Helfer's commentary appear for the first time in English translation in What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin. Also included in this volume are essays by specialists in Arabic and German literature that shed light on the discourse around sex between these two authors from different cultural contexts.

Who decides where "normal" stops and "perverse" begins? In Vicarious Kinks, Ummni Khan looks at the mass of claims that film, feminism, the human sciences, and law make about sadomasochism and its practitioners, and the way those claims become the basis for the legal regulation of sadomasochist pornography and practice. Khan's audacious proposal is that for film, feminism, law, and science, the constant focus on taboo sexuality is a form of "vicarious kink" itself.

Rather than attempt to establish the "truth" about sadomasochism, Vicarious Kinks asks who decides that sadomasochism is perverse, examining how various fields present their claims to truth when it comes to sadomasochism. The first monograph by a new scholar working at the juncture of law and sexuality, Vicarious Kinks challenges the myth of law as an objective adjudicator of sexual truth.

Sex Scene suggests that what we have come to understand as the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s was actually a media revolution. In lively essays, the contributors examine a range of mass media-film and television, recorded sound, and publishing-that provide evidence of the circulation of sex in the public sphere, from the mainstream to the fringe. They discuss art films such as I am Curious (Yellow), mainstream movies including Midnight Cowboy, sexploitation films such as Mantis in Lace, the emergence of erotic film festivals and of gay pornography, the use of multimedia in sex education, and the sexual innuendo of The Love Boat. Scholars of cultural studies, history, and media studies, the contributors bring shared concerns to their diverse topics. They highlight the increasingly fluid divide between public and private, the rise of consumer and therapeutic cultures, and the relationship between identity politics and individual rights. The provocative surveys and case studies in this nuanced cultural history reframe the "sexual revolution" as the mass sexualization of our mediated world. Contributors. Joseph Lam Duong, Jeffrey Escoffier, Kevin M. Flanagan, Elena Gorfinkel, Raymond J. Haberski Jr., Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Eithne Johnson, Arthur Knight, Elana Levine, Christie Milliken, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Jacob Smith, Leigh Ann Wheeler, Linda Williams

From time to time we all tend to wonder what sort of "story" our life might comprise: what it means, where it is going, and whether it hangs together as a whole. In The Stories We Are, William Lowell Randall explores the links between literature and life and speculates on the range of storytelling styles through which people compose their lives. In doing so, he draws on a variety of fields, including psychology, psychotherapy, theology, philosophy, feminist theory, and literary theory. Using categories like plot, character, point of view, and style, Randall plays with the possibility that we each make sense of the events of our lives to the extent that we weave them into our own unfolding novel, as simultaneously its author, narrator, main character, and reader. In the process, he offers us a unique perspective on features of our day-to-day world such as secrecy, self-deception, gossip, prejudice, intimacy, maturity, and the proverbial "art of living." First published in 1995, this second edition of The Stories We Are includes a new preface and afterword by the author that offer insight into his argument and evolution as a scholar, as well as an illuminating foreword by Ruthellen Josselson.

This book presents current research focusing on sexual minorities. Topics discussed include gay and lesbian parenthood; asexuality; media representations of marginalised minorities; the effect of image contact on heterosexual women's attitudes toward lesbian women; the high-school experiences of sexual and gender minority youth and best practices in the development of interventions designed to attenuate homonegativity. The final entry is a "virtual discussion" in which contributors responded to a set of questions that focused on key issues in the field of sexual minority studies.

"A thought-provoking piece of scholarship that sheds light on the complex history of slave breeding in America. Smithers's book will be hotly debated in the profession."--Michael L. Ondaatje, University of Newcastle, Australia "As engaging as it is compelling, bold, and captivating, Smithers's Slave Breeding pulls the reader through its pages with heart-wrenching exposition of the dark and ugly chapter of what could rightly be characterized as the sexual zeitgeist of American national history."--Tunde Adeleke, Iowa State University For over two centuries, the topic of slave breeding has occupied a controversial place in the master narrative of American history. From nineteenth-century abolitionists to twentieth-century filmmakers and artists, Americans have debated whether slave owners deliberately and coercively manipulated the sexual practices and marital status of enslaved African Americans to reproduce new generations of slaves for profit. In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have refused to forget the violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation South. By placing African American histories and memories of slave breeding within the larger context of America's history of racial and gender discrimination, Smithers sheds much-needed light on African American collective memory, racialized perceptions of fragile black families, and the long history of racially motivated violence against men, women, and children of color. Gregory D. Smithers teaches American history at the Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of "Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s-1890s" and coauthor of "The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and Race in America."

'The Sexual History of the Global South' explores the gap between sexuality studies and postcolonial, cultural critique. Featuring twelve original case studies, based on original historical and ethnographic research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book examines the sexual investments underlying the colonial project and the construction of modern nation-states. Covering issues of heteronormativity, postcolonial amnesia regarding non-normative sexualities, women's sexual agency, the policing of the boundaries between the public and the private realm, sexual citizenship, the connections between LGBTQ activism and processes of state formation, and the emergence of sexuality studies in the Global South, this collection is of great geographical, historical and topical significance.

After the Great War, British men and women, grappled with their ignorance about sexuality and desire. This book shows how readers embraced popular media - self-help books, fetish magazines, and advice columns - as a source of information about sexuality and a means for telling their own stories.