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.

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.

For most of western history, all sex outside marriage was illegal, with the church and state punishing any dissent. Between 1600 and 1800, this entire world-view was shattered by revolutionary new ideas - that consenting adults have the freedom to do what they like with their own bodies, and morality cannot be imposed by force. This groundbreaking book shows that the creation of this modern culture of sex - broadcasted and debated in a rapidly expanding universe of public media - was a central part of the Enlightenment, and helped create a new model of western civilization whose principles of equality, privacy and individual freedom last to this day.

Citizenship from Below boldly revises the history of the struggles for freedom by emancipated peoples in post-slavery Jamaica, post-independence Haiti, and the wider Caribbean by focusing on the interplay between the state, the body, race, and sexuality. Mimi Sheller offers a new theory of "citizenship from below" to describe the contest between "proper" spaces of legitimate high politics and the disavowed politics of lived embodiment. While acknowledging the internal contradictions and damaging exclusions of subaltern self-empowerment, Sheller roots out from beneath the historical archive traces of a deeper freedom, one expressed through bodily performances, familial relationships, cultivation of the land, and sacred worship.Attending to the hidden linkages among intimate realms and the public sphere, Sheller explores specific struggles for freedom, including women's political activism in Jamaica; the role of discourses of "manhood" in the making of free subjects, soldiers, and citizens; the fiercely ethnonationalist discourses that excluded South Asian and African indentured workers; the sexual politics of the low-bass beats and "bottoms up" moves in the dancehall; and the struggle for reproductive and LGBT rights and against homophobia in the contemporary Caribbean. Through her creative use of archival sources and emphasis on the connections between intimacy, violence, and citizenship, Sheller enriches critical theories of embodied freedom, sexual citizenship, and erotic agency in all post-slavery societies.

"Policing Sexuality" explores the regulation of sexual behavior and identity by nation states, and will question how and why states have sought to influence and control the sexuality of their citizens. This unique book simultaneously introduces the topic and argues for interpretation of state policing of sexuality. The author presents both theoretical and ethnographic literature, distilling common themes and causes and presenting factors that contribute towards a state's desire to control both the sexual behavior and sexual identity of its citizens, such as the influence of colonialism, class, religion, and national identity. This book features five crucial case studies from India, Britain, the USA, Malaysia, and Turkey. "Policing Sexuality" illuminates this fascinating study with comparative accounts.

Sexuality education is defined as a life-long process of acquiring information about individual's private life, sexual identity and relationships and a process of changing behaviour. The most essential purpose of sexuality education is developing positive sexual behaviour, which include self-confidence, requires respectful approach to both oneself and anybody, free of sexual coercion and violence and safe sexual experiences, planning to be parents. The other purpose of sexuality education is decreasing negative outcomes which include unintended pregnancy, sexual coercion, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual dysfunctions. It is aimed that to provide developing positive sexual attitudes during individual's growing period by gaining sexual knowledge and skills to protect their sexual health at present and in the future. In this way, it is possible to prevent adolescent pregnancy, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases. Thus, sexuality education must be viewed within the framework in biological, socio-cultural, psychological and religious dimensions. This book examines the most recent research done in the field.

This accessible and engaging book explores the ways that "space, place, and sex" are inextricably linked from the micro to the macro level, from the individual body to the globe. Drawing on queer, feminist, gender, social, and cultural studies, Lynda Johnston and Robyn Longhurst highlight the complex nature of sex and sexuality and how they are connected to both virtual and physical spaces and places. Their aim is to enrich our understanding of sexual identities and practices whether they be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, queer, or heterosexual. They show that bodies are defined and connected through media such as television, movies, ads, and the Internet, as well as through "real" places such as homes, churches, sports arenas, city streets, beaches, and wilderness. Drawing on a diverse array of historical and contemporary examples, the authors argue convincingly that sexual politics permeate all places and spaces at every level of geographical scale. Thus, they illustrate, sexuality affects the way people live in and interact with space and place, as space and place in turn affect people's sexuality."

In this hard-hitting anthology, journalist Shannon T. Boodram collects the compelling and personal firsthand accounts of young people dealing with sex in today's world. Laid covers a range of important topics, from teens' first times to STIs, abstinence to unplanned pregnancies. Boodram, an up-and-coming voice for her generation, engages teens and twentysomethings in honest dialogue and explores how they see and experience sex, how and why it shapes their beliefs, and what they have learned about themselves and their sexuality through their actions. Laid is a great conversation-starter, and doesn't shy away from the personal topics. A great resource for young people, Laid invites teens and young adults to take a close-up look at sex and sexuality. Boodram's chapters offer more than 40 personal narratives, from both female and male voices, with in-depth analyses, facts, and Q&As to further the discourse. Responsible and thought-provoking, Laid offers a range of honest perspectives on young adult sexuality in today's easy access culture

From social silence to social science: same-sex sexuality, HIV & AIDS and gender in South Africa presents a unique and innovative effort to examine what we know about homosexual transmission of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. It reverses the trend whereby categories of same sex sexual practice are almost always excluded from research of HIV and AIDS, as well as from care and intervention programmes. The varied contributors (academics, activists and programme planners) draw attention to the risk behaviours and treatment needs of people who engage in homosexual sex, and explain why same-sex sexuality has to be seen as key within South African efforts to study, test and prevent HIV infection. Relevant to scholarly debates about HIV and AIDS, it is also essential reading for anyone involved in research, policymaking, advocacy and community development.

Reforming the Moral Subject explores a movement known as "ethics reform" that flourished in Central Europe between 1890 and 1930. Tracie Matysik examines the works of German-speaking intellectuals and activists-moral philosophers, sociologists, legal theorists, pedagogy specialists, psychoanalysts, sexual liberationists, and others-who discovered in the language of ethics a means to revitalize the public sphere. Ethics reformers used the academic field of moral philosophy to contest public- and state-sponsored rhetoric that they thought equated "morality" with national loyalty, religious tradition, and repressive sexual mores. They founded organizations and periodicals, circulated brochures, and hosted lectures and conferences, all aimed at rethinking ethics for a secular modernity. Arising in a context sharply influenced by materialism, Darwinism, and the advent of sexology, ethics debates gradually focused not surprisingly on the role of sexuality in definitions of ethics and of the moral subject. Intellectuals and activists came to agree that sexuality was central to the formation of the moral subject. Some viewed the moral subject as that individual who had learned to suppress sexual drives, while others saw sexual drives and sexual autonomy as the source of moral energy and sentiment. The association of sexuality with a wide and variegated discussion of ethics made the sexualized moral subject an open concept that could not be fully regulated, confined, or conflated with national identities. Matysik's compelling intellectual and cultural history of ethics and moral subjectivity reframes the nature of German liberalism and intellectual activism from the end of the nineteenth century until the interwar period.

This study illuminates the 2,500-year social history of sexual relations in Iran. Marriage, temporary marriage, prostitution, and homosexuality are all discussed, as well as the often unintended result of these relations-sexually transmitted diseases. A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran uses travelers' accounts, Iranian and international archival sources, as well as government data, to bring together, in detail, and within the context of Iranian culture and religion, the nature, variety, and problems of sexual relations in Iran over the ages. Finally, Willem Floor summarizes the issues that Iranian society faces today which are not dissimilar to that of many other industrial nations the challenge to the male claim to dominance over women; change in the age of marriage; premarital sex; rising divorce rates; rising promiscuity; prostitution; sexually transmitted diseases; homosexuality; and street children. Willem Floor studied development economics and non-western sociology, as well as Persian, Arabic and Islamology from 1963-67 at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands). He received his doctoral degree from the University of Leiden in 1971 and went on to work for the World Bank as an energy specialist. Throughout this time, he published extensively on the socio-economic history of Iran. Since his retirement from the World Bank in 2002 he has published numerous scholarly history books and translations, including: Public Health in Qajar Iran, Agriculture in Qajar Iran, The History of Theater in Iran, The Persian Gulf: A Politcal and Economic History of Five Port Cities, The Persian Gulf: The Rise of the Gulf Arabs, and Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin's Travels Through Northern Persia 1770-1774. --

Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence.

In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia ), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless.

For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also crime fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears."

Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence.

In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia ), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless.

For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also crime fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears."

Contemporary culture provides conflicting and confusing messages about the meaning and purpose of human sexuality, and often sex education that is offered often does not promote a mature, integrated understanding of sexuality. Human Sexuality in the Catholic Tradition meets the great need for pastoral guidance in addressing moral issues of sexuality in both the Church and broader culture today. Kieran Scott and Harold Horell explore with other leading scholars how to draw from the best Christian faith traditions to renew our understanding of sexuality, explore the integration of our sexuality and our spirituality, and develop life-affirming and life-sustaining ways of approaching contemporary sexual issues. This book explores sexuality from spiritual, psychological, moral and ministerial perspectives, and addresses specific issues such as sex and marriage, celibacy, homosexuality, and cohabitation.

The Dictatorship of Sex explores the attempts to define and control sexual behavior in the years following the Russian Revolution. It is the first book to examine Soviet "sexual enlightenment," a program of popular health and lifestyle advice intended to establish a model of sexual conduct for the men and women who would build socialism. Leftist social theorists and political activists had long envisioned an egalitarian utopia, and after 1917, the medical profession took the leading role in solving the sex question (while at the same time carving out a niche for itself among postrevolutionary social institutions). Frances Bernstein reveals the tension between the doctors' advocacy for relatively liberal social policy and the generally proscriptive nature of their advice, as well as their lack of interest in questions of personal pleasure, fulfillment, and sexual expression. While supporting the goals of the Soviet state, the enlighteners appealed to "irrefutable" biological truths that ultimately supported a very traditional gender regime. The Dictatorship of Sex offers a unique lens through which to contemplate a central conundrum of Russian history: the relationship between the supposedly "liberated" 1920s and "repressive" 1930s. Although most of the proponents of sexual enlightenment in the 1920s would suffer greatly during Stalin's purges, their writings facilitated the Stalinist approach to sexuality and the family. Bernstein's book will interest historians of Russia, gender, sexuality, and medicine, as well as anyone curious about social and ideological experiments in a revolutionary culture.

You May Be Commitment-Phobic If: You have a mile-long list of requirements for your ideal mate You go from one short-lived relationship to the next You have a habit of dating "unavailable" men You think many of your married friends have settled for less You are constantly blowing "hot" and "cold" in your relationships For years, it was the men who had the monopoly on commitment-phobia. Today, single women are the fastest-growing segment of the population, with over forty-seven million single women in this country and twenty-two million of them between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four. Whatever the reasons -- fear of divorce, increased financial independence, delayed motherhood -- more women than ever no longer feel the urgency, or the ability, to settle down. Lucky for this growing group of women, author and former commitment-phobe Elina Furman has written Kiss and Run, the first-ever book about female commitment anxiety. Filled with fun quizzes, first-person testimonials, and step-by-step action plans, Kiss and Run includes the top-five panic buttons, advice for curbing overanalysis, and tips for fixing negative commitment scripts. You'll also find the seven types of commitment-phobes, including the Nitpicker, the Serial Dater, and the Long-Distance Runner. Based on the stories of more than one hundred women, this straight-talking guide helps single women conquer commitment anxiety and say yes to love.

In this pioneering, nonobjective study, a distinguished Black sexologist tackles one of the most controversial aspects of American race relations. The subject of Black sexuality has been widely discussed in every possible popular format for the past four hundred years, yet serious scholarship in the area is lacking. While Black sexuality has been a pervasive force in American life, it has been too sensitive a topic for Black or white authors to write about in a serious, non-polemical format. Robert Staples explores same-sex attitudes and behavior, interracial sexual relations, rape, prostitution, pornography, and the stereotypes of Black sexual superiority in this scholarly yet accessible collection. Staples shows how vaunted and feared sexual differences were the 'raison d'etre' of Southern school segregation, race-based laws, white flight from the inner cities, the double sexual standard, lynchings, and race riots. This groundbreaking study concludes with a speculation on the future of Black sexuality in the 21st century based on our knowledge of current demographic and economic forces.

In a personal, nontechnical, and informal style, eminent researcher Ira L. Reiss discusses the many situations he has encountered during the past fifty years while researching sexuality and developing useful and innovative explanations of its different aspects. Most of the problems that were present during those years are still confronting those who work on human sexuality. Reiss discusses his experiences in sexual science in areas such as premarital sex, the sexual revolution, Masters and Johnson's therapy, feminism and sexuality, crises in sexual organizations, responses to HIV/AIDS, child and adolescent sexuality, radical social constructionism, biology versus sexual science, international trends, and the movement toward a Ph.D. in sexual science. The insights and solutions Reiss proposes are of great importance to all those who are interested in the sexual issues that affect people today.

In this volume, noted scholars Elaine Hatfield and Richard Rapson focus on the cross-cultural research concerning the passionate beginnings of relationships: how people meet, fall in love, make love, and fall out of love, usually only to risk it all over again. Through in-depth analysis and astute assessment, they compare the way cultures try to set rules for these incendiary matters. Two main questions addressed are: 'What seems to be biological and universal?' and 'What seems to be socially constructed and transient?' Taking a historical perspective, the authors ask where different societies, and the world itself, are headed?

With a well-earned reputation for tolerance of both prostitution and miscegenation, New Orleans became known as the Great Southern Babylon in antebellum times. Following the Civil War, a profound alteration in social and economic conditions gradually reshaped the city's sexual culture and erotic commerce. Historian Alecia P. Long traces sex in the Crescent City over fifty years, drawing from Louisiana Supreme Court case testimony to relate intriguing tales of people both obscure and famous whose relationships and actions exemplify the era. Long uncovers a connection between the geographical segregation of prostitution and the rising tide of racial segregation. She offers a compelling explanation of how New Orleans's lucrative sex trade drew tourists from the Bible Belt and beyond even as a nationwide trend toward the commercialization of sex emerged. And she dispels the romanticized smoke and perfume surrounding Storyville to reveal in the reasons for its rise and fall a fascinating corner of southern history. The Great Southern Babylon portrays the complex mosaic of race, gender, sexuality, social class, and commerce in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans.

Be sexy but not sexual. Don't be a prude but don't be a slut. These are the cultural messages that barrage teenage girls. In movies and magazines, in music and advice columns, girls are portrayed as the object or the victim of someone else's desire--but virtually never as someone with acceptable sexual feelings of her own. What teenage girls make of these contradictory messages, and what they make of their awakening sexuality--so distant from and yet so susceptible to cultural stereotypes--emerges for the first time in frank and complex fashion in Deborah Tolman's "Dilemmas of Desire."

A unique look into the world of adolescent sexuality, this book offers an intimate and often disturbing, sometimes inspiring, picture of how teenage girls experience, understand, and respond to their sexual feelings, and of how society mediates, shapes, and distorts this experience. In extensive interviews, we listen as actual adolescent girls--both urban and suburban--speak candidly of their curiosity and confusion, their pleasure and disappointment, their fears, defiance, or capitulation in the face of a seemingly imperishable double standard that smiles upon burgeoning sexuality in boys yet frowns, even panics, at its equivalent in girls.

As a vivid evocation of girls negotiating some of the most vexing issues of adolescence, and as a thoughtful, richly informed examination of the dilemmas these girls face, this readable and revealing book begins the critical work of understanding the sexuality of young women in all its personal, social, and emotional significance.

Disorders of Desire is the only book to tell the story of the development and impact of sexology-the scientific study of sex-in the United States. In this era of sex scandals, culture wars, \u0022Sex in the City,\u0022 and new sexual enhancement technologies (like erectile dysfunction drugs), its critique of sexology is even more relevant than it was when the book was first published in 1990. This revised and expanded edition features new chapters addressing: &&LI&&The diagnosis of \u0022sex addiction\u0022in the 1970s and its social and political implications.&&/LI&& &&/UL&& &&LI&&New developments within the field of sexology, including the \u0022Viagra Revolution\u0022 that began in the 1990s. &&/LI&& &&/UL&& &&LI&&The pharmaceutical industry's role in the development of sexual enhancements and the search for the female equivalent of Viagra.&&/LI&& &&/UL&&