To fit a changing society, the conventional ways we date and mate have given way to brand new methods. People nowadays marry later in life, choose not to marry at all, seek partners after divorce, outlive spouses, relocate to new areas and even endure pandemics. This signifies that we are moving toward larger dating pools, something made possible through public personal advertising. This text details personal advertising in print and digital media, as well as online dating services, speed dating, the use of mobile dating apps and other topics. Interviews reveal the appeal and limitations of personal advertising for meeting people. This book offers a window into the development of trust and relationships, as well as the increasing role technology plays in shaping how people meet and mate in the modern world.

Representing Kink raises awareness about non-normative texts and non-normative erotic practices and desires. It defines "kink" broadly, encompassing a range of "inappropriate" texts and understanding it in frequent reference to non-normative erotic fantasies and experiences. Kink is treated as both a set of practices as well as a category of texts at the nexus of subject and form. In addition to canonical texts that take up erotic and marginalized themes, the collection also studies forms that are themselves fringe and feature kink: taboo literature, self-published erotica, SM narratives, fan fiction, role-playing games, and other disavowed texts. The purpose of this study is to focus attention on the margins of an already marginalized subject, in order to highlight the extent to which non-normative textuality and eroticism both shape and are shaped by culture and context. It sheds light on a category of subjects that is at once mainstream in the form of texts such as Fifty Shades of Grey and yet nevertheless repeatedly disparaged and undertheorized. This book advocates for conversations about kinky texts that transcend dichotomous frameworks of good and bad, and normal and deviant--thinking instead in new, theoretically rigorous and flexible directions.

The third edition of this pragmatic resource assists mental health professionals in helping clients resolve sexual concerns that arise during the course of therapy. It has been updated with the latest theoretical approaches, pharmacological treatments, and ethical/legal concerns. It presents a wealth of information on assessing and treating both common and uncommon sexual concerns accompanied by helpful informational worksheets. By offering new case examples exemplifying contemporary concerns such as minority stress, intersectionality, and recognition of therapist privilege in relation to client, the new edition emphasizes diversity inclusive of sexual and gender minorities. It covers the latest technology in telemental health and the role it plays in the sex lives of clients.Designed to take the uninformed reader or one who might be uncomfortable about sex to a place of knowledge and competence, the book includes strategies to help both the client and therapist become more comfortable with sexuality. Take-Away Points, Activities and Resources in every chapter and downloadable forms, templates, and tools combine to make this an indispensable resource. Purchase includes digital access for use on most mobile devices or computers. New to the Third Edition: Updated approaches to considerations of gender identity The impact of intersectionality, oppression, and minority stress De-pathologizing "kinky" behavior Understanding the "orgasm gap" and "orgasm equality" Treating couples who want to open their relationships Applies mindfulness to treatment of sexual problems Expanded information about the sexological ecosystem Treating out-of-control sexual behavior and the new Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder ICD-11 diagnosis Key Features: Provides clear treatment recommendations for nearly all sexual concerns Uses an ecosystemic approach for assessing individuals and couples Explains how to assess and treat sexual pain disorders Covers sexuality across the lifespan Includes "Step into My Office" vignettes offering a glimpse into everyday sex therapy practice Provides activities for reader to reinforce information including "Take-Away" points, downloadable forms, templates, and tools Instructors Manual and PowerPoint presentation for each chapter

One of the great transformations presently sweeping the Muslim world involves not just political and economic change but the reshaping of young Muslims' styles of romance, courtship, and marriage. Nancy J. Smith-Hefner takes up the personal lives and sexual attitudes of educated Muslim Javanese youth in the city of Yogyakarta to explore the dramatic social and ethical changes taking place in Indonesian society. Drawing on more than 250 interviews over a fifteen-year period, her vivid, well-crafted ethnography is full of insights into the real-life struggles of young Muslims and framed by a deep understanding of Indonesia's wider debates on gender and youth culture.The changes among Muslim youth reflect an ongoing if at times unsteady attempt to balance varied ideals, ethical concerns, and aspirations. On the one hand, growing numbers of young people show a deep and pervasive desire for a more active role in their Islamic faith. On the other, even as they seek a more self-conscious and scripture-based profession of faith, many educated youth aspire to personal relationships similar to those seen among youth elsewhere - a greater measure of informality, openness, and intimacy than was typical for their parents - and grandparents' generations. Young women in particular seek freedom for self-expression, employment, and social fulfillment outside of the home. Smith-Hefner pays particular attention to their shifting roles and perspectives because it is young women who have been most dramatically affected by the upheavals transforming this Muslim-majority country. Although deeply personal, the changing aspirations of young Muslims have immense implications for social and public life throughout Indonesia. The fruit of a longitudinal study begun shortly after the fall of the authoritarian New Order government and the return to democracy in 1998-1999, the book reflects Smith-Hefner's nearly forty years of anthropological engagement with the island of Java and her continuing exploration into what it means to be both "modern" and Muslim. The culture of the new Muslim youth, the author shows, through all its nuances and variations, reflects the inexorable abandonment of traditions and practices deemed incompatible with authentic Islam and an ongoing and profound Islamization of intimacies.

While hook-up culture on university campuses represents a part of the story, it is only part of the story. It is important to add to this and investigate the way the university itself brokers and seeks out specific forms of sexuality, sex, and connection amongst students. This book sheds light on how the university as an institution endorses certain forms of sociality, sexuality, and coupling, while excluding others. Building on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book furthers the discussion on the impact these institutional measures have on students, and how students work through and around them - while simultaneously establishing relations outside of and beyond hooking-up.

Infidelity raises questions: Why do women stay with a cheater? Why do women cheat? Why do women become "the other woman"? How does the experience of infidelity impact future relationships? What effect does infidelity have on children? How do women deal with children born from a spouse's affair? Drawing on interviews with U.S. women of various ages, racial backgrounds, educational attainments and sexual orientations, this insightful study examines their personal experiences of cheating and being cheated on. Equal parts engaging, uplifting and dispiriting, their narratives range from all-too-familiar stories to unconventional perspectives on love, life and interpersonal communication.

This visionary volume examines how queer bodies are theatrically represented on the Cuban stage in ways that challenge one of the state's primary revolutionary tools, the categorization and homogenization of individuals. Bretton White critically analyzes contemporary performances that upset traditional understandings of performer and spectator, as well as what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry.Following the 1959 revolution, nonconformists were monitored and reported by local committees and punished or reformed by the government. Censorship was rampant, and Cuban art suffered as the state tried to control the national message. Through the lens of queer theory, White explores how the body has been central to the state's fear-based marginalization of gay life and looks at the ways these theatrical performances defuse that fear. She highlights the revolutionary model of masculinity and the role it plays in excluding people based upon visible queer difference. White finds that, through experimental performances of sexuality, actors create connections with audiences to evoke shared feelings of discomfort, intimacy, shame, longing, frustration, and failure, which echo the prevalence of these feelings in other Cuban spaces. By performing queerness, these plays question the state's narrative of heteronormativity and empower citizens to negotiate alternative understandings of Cuban identity.

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.

In this book, Bonnie Lander Johnson explores early modern ideas of chastity, demonstrating how crucial early Stuart thinking on chastity was to political, medical, theological and moral debates, and that it was also a virtue that governed the construction of different literary genres. Drawing on a range of materials, from prose to theatre, theological controversy to legal trials, and court ceremonies - including royal birthing rituals - Lander Johnson unearths previously unrecognised opinions about chastity. She reveals that early Stuart theatrical and court ceremonies were part of the same political debate as prose pamphlets and religious sermons. The volume also offers new readings of Milton's Comus, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Henrietta Maria's queenship and John Ford's plays. It will appeal to scholars of early modern literature, theatre, political, medical and cultural history, and gender studies.

One of the great transformations presently sweeping the Muslim world involves not just political and economic change but the reshaping of young Muslims' styles of romance, courtship, and marriage. Nancy J. Smith-Hefner takes up the personal lives and sexual attitudes of educated Muslim Javanese youth in the city of Yogyakarta to explore the dramatic social and ethical changes taking place in Indonesian society. Drawing on more than 250 interviews over a fifteen-year period, her vivid, well-crafted ethnography is full of insights into the real-life struggles of young Muslims and framed by a deep understanding of Indonesia's wider debates on gender and youth culture. The changes among Muslim youth reflect an ongoing if at times unsteady attempt to balance varied ideals, ethical concerns, and aspirations. On the one hand, growing numbers of young people show a deep and pervasive desire for a more active role in their Islamic faith. On the other, even as they seek a more self-conscious and scripture-based profession of faith, many educated youth aspire to personal relationships similar to those seen among youth elsewhere-a greater measure of informality, openness, and intimacy than was typical for their parents' and grandparents' generations. Young women in particular seek freedom for self-expression, employment, and social fulfillment outside of the home. Smith-Hefner pays particular attention to their shifting roles and perspectives because it is young women who have been most dramatically affected by the upheavals transforming this Muslim-majority country. Although deeply personal, the changing aspirations of young Muslims have immense implications for social and public life throughout Indonesia. The fruit of a longitudinal study begun shortly after the fall of the authoritarian New Order government and the return to democracy in 1998-1999, the book reflects Smith-Hefner's nearly forty years of anthropological engagement with the island of Java and her continuing exploration into what it means to be both "modern" and Muslim. The culture of the new Muslim youth, the author shows, through all its nuances and variations, reflects the inexorable abandonment of traditions and practices deemed incompatible with authentic Islam and an ongoing and profound Islamization of intimacies.

Reimagines black and brown sensuality to develop new modes of knowledge production In Sensual Excess, Amber Jamilla Musser imagines epistemologies of sensuality that emerge from fleshiness. To do so, she works against the framing of black and brown bodies as sexualized, objectified, and abject, and offers multiple ways of thinking with and through sensation and aesthetics. Each chapter draws our attention to particular aspects of pornotropic capture that black and brown bodies must always negotiate. Though these technologies differ according to the nature of their encounters with white supremacy, together they add to our understanding of the ways that structures of domination produce violence and work to contain bodies and pleasures within certain legible parameters. To do so, Sensual Excess analyzes moments of brown jouissance that exceed these constraints. These ruptures illuminate multiple epistemologies of selfhood and sensuality that offer frameworks for minoritarian knowledge production which is designed to enable one to sit with uncertainty. Through examinations of installations and performances like Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, Kara Walker's A Subtlety, Patty Chang's In Love and Nao Bustamante's Neapolitan, Musser unpacks the relationships between racialized sexuality and consumption to interrogate foundational concepts in psychoanalytic theory, critical race studies, feminism, and queer theory. In so doing, Sensual Excess offers a project of knowledge production focused not on mastery, but on sensing and imagining otherwise, whatever and wherever that might be.

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations. To tell the story of men such as Rufus?who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated?historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers' journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster's sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.