Using a sample collected from Ashley Madison, this book is the result of a yearlong inquiry into women's extramarital experiences. Ultimately, these women reject the binary proposition of marriage that assumes that either we work on our marriages and remain monogamous within them, or we break up the relationship and take up other relationships. These women conceive of an alternate solution to a marriage that is not wholly working, where their own needs are ignored, unmet, and not prioritized. Thus, the women in this study are engaging in secret defiance of the expectations of marriage and primary partnerships. This book gives voice to women's experiences and perceptions regarding their participation in infidelity, and glimpses into the interworkings of our most intimate relationships, and the ways women negotiate marriages that fall short of their expectations.

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.

With full-frontal genitalia, erections, even actual sex featuring increasingly in films, this explicitness in presentation has caused critical consternation and accusations that such film narratives are pornographic. This book explores how, rather than being pornographic, explicit sex can be an essential element of cinematic storytelling today. Offering detailed analysis of how choices are made in the presentation of explicit sex in often very controversial films, such as "Shame", "Baise-Moi", "Antichrist", "Dogtooth" and "Lust, Caution", the expert contributors - including Barbara Creed, Jacob Held and Linda Ruth Williams - show how sexual content can aid characterisation, highlight themes, and provide events that serve to develop plot. The impact of explicit sex as an element of a film's narrative is also revealed to be assisted by effective, nuanced performances and the incisive deployment of directorial technique. Together they detail through the fundamentals of cinema the shot by shot, moment by moment manner in which explicit sex can be an essential component of a dramatically powerful narrative.

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices?

Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerlessness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.

Taking the long view, the Christian religion for two thousand years maintained a disapproving attitude toward human sexuality ("sex is dirty"). As David Carr of Union Theological Seminary observes, "From the outset, Christianity has depicted sex as a dangerous, chaotic, anti-spiritual force." Such a negative attitude raises the question: Why has the church over the centuries exhibited a hostile attitude toward sex? Sullivan attempts to answer that question in Part One of this book. He contends that early Christian theologians failed to understand the mythic character of the Adam and Eve story and read into it ideas which are not there. In addition, early theology preached that "the soul and the body - which is inferior to the soul - are constantly at war with one another." Since human sexuality involves the body (which is inherently bad), early theologians concluded sex must be bad. In Part Two of "Rescuing Sex from the Christians", Sullivan examines the controversial subjects of masturbation, homosexuality, adultery, and prostitution and demonstrates how the Christian idea of sexuality has vilified these practices, not always for the good.

A passionate and consoling study of sexual love by one of Britain's finest philosophers. "A dazzling treatise, as erudite and eloquent as Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" and considerably more sound in its conclusion." - "TLS". "He is an eloquent and practised writer" - "The Independent". When John desires Mary or Mary desires John, what does either of them want? What is meant by innocence, passion, love and arousal, desire, perversion and shame? These are just a few of the questions Roger Scruton addresses in this thought-provoking intellectual adventure. Beginning from purely philosophical premises, and ranging over human life, art and institutions, he surveys the entire field of sexuality. Equally dissatisfied with puritanism and permissiveness, he argues for a radical break with recent theories. Upholding traditional morality - though in terms that may shock many of its practitioners - his argument gravitates to that which is candid, serene and consoling in the experience of sexual love.

In Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called "beingness." In developing a new legal subjectivity for animals, one oriented toward respecting animals for who they are rather than their proximity to idealized versions of humanness, Animals as Legal Beings seeks to bring critical animal theorizations and animal law closer together. Throughout, Deckha draws upon the feminist animal care tradition, as well as feminist theories of embodiment and relationality, postcolonial theory, and critical animal studies. Her argument is critical of the liberal legal view of animals and directed at a legal subjectivity for animals attentive to their embodied vulnerability, and desirous of an animal-friendly cultural shift in the core foundations of anthropocentric legal systems. Theoretically informed yet accessibly presented, Animals as Legal Beings makes a significant contribution to an array of interdisciplinary debates and is an innovative and astute argument for a meaningful more-than-human turn in law and policy.

Although the Marquis de Sade is often read only for his pornography, it is important to ask why his works have claimed such a persistent reception for the past two centuries, a reception that has grown increasingly more astute and analytical in the past two decades. Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), the founder of Sexualwissenschaft or sexology, taught the 20th century to examine Sade's works in terms of psychology and cultural anthropology in his study of 1899. In a magisterial two-volume biography, 1952-57, Gilbert Lely laid the foundation for every biography that has followed. Lely went on to assemble the first critical/historical edition of Sade, his Oeuvres completes, 16 vols., 1966-67. Alice Laborde extended Lely's work in her three volumes on Sade's relationships, imprisonment, and family history (1988-91). Laborde also edited Sade's letters, Correspondances du marquis de Sade et de ses proches enrichies de documents, notes et commentaries, 27 vols., 1991-98.The study of Sade's literary influence commenced with Mario Praz's account of "the Divine Marquis" (1930). Simone de Beauvoir, in "Faut-il bruler Sade?" (1953; "Must We Burn Sade?" 1955), paved the way for subsequent studies of Sade's relevance to gender issues and sexual behavior. Angela Carter, in The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1979) and Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), demonstrate the continuing ramifications of Sade's understanding of the motives of desire. Thanks to the foundational work of Lely and Laborde, recent commentators have been able to attend in more detail to Sade's literary career. Neil Schaeffer, in The Marquis de Sade: A Life (1999) addresses the logic and rhetoric of Sade's prose, his suasory strategies to arouse, his paranoiac strategies to conceal, his philosophy of passion, and the reason in his madness.Responding to current trends and offering new directions, this book examines Sade's reactions to medical theory and practice, to crime and punishment; his attempt to craft a reciprocity of written discourse and sexual intercourse; his involvement in the theater, both as a playwright for the public stage, and as playwright and director for the private theater of the insane asylum.

Sex and the sexual have for far too long been consigned to the dark corners by social scientists in general and tourism and leisure scholars in particular. Sex and the Sexual During People's Leisure and Tourism Experiences seeks to begin to rectify this situation by bringing the position and nature of sex and the sexual into the light of academic debate. As such, this book is designed to highlight cross-disciplinary emerging work on sex and the sexual in leisure and tourism and provide the readers with insights into this social realm. It encompasses a broad array of sex-related issues and tourism and leisure environments from across a variety of countries. The book should appeal to researchers and students across the humanities and social sciences both for the value of the research in its own right and the ability of it to be used as a lens through which to view the position of sex and the sexual as well as tourism and leisure in today's world. Overall, it is argued that sex and the sexual should play a part in the academic discourse, especially if we wish to describe what is actually happening out there as far as tourism and leisure are concerned.

This edited collection examines pornography as a material practice that eroticises gender inequality and sexual violence towards women. It addresses the complex relationship between pornography and medicine (in particular, sexology and psycho-therapy) whereby medicine has historically, and currently, afforded pornography considerable legitimacy and even authority. Pornography naturalises women's submission and men's dominance as if gendered power is rooted in biology not politics. In contrast to the populist view that medicine is objective and rational, the contributors here demonstrate that medicine has been complicit with the construction of gender difference, and in that construction the relationship with pornography is not incidental but fundamental.A range of theoretical approaches critically engages with this topic in the light, firstly, of radical feminist ideas about patriarchy and the politics of gender, and, secondly, of the rapidly changing conditions of global capitalism and digital-technologies. In its broad approach, the book also engages with the ideas of Michel Foucault, particularly his refutation of the liberal hypothesis that sexuality is a deep biological and psychological human property which is repressed by traditional, patriarchal discourses and which can be freed from authoritarianism, for example by producing and consuming pornography.In taking pornography as a cultural and social phenomenon, the concepts brought to bear by the contributors critically scrutinise not only pornography and medicine, but also current media scholarship. The 21st century has witnessed a growth in (neo-)liberal academic literature which is pro-pornography. This book provides a critical counterpoint to this current academic trend, and demonstrates its lack of engagement with the politics of the multi-billion dollar pornography industry which creates the desire for the product it sells, the individualism of its arguments which analyse pornography as personal fantasy, and the paucity of theoretical analysis. In contrast, this book re-opens the feminist debate about pornography for a new generation of critical thinkers in the 21st century. Pornography matters politically and ethically. It matters in the real world as well as in fantasy; it matters to performers as well as to consumers; it matters to adults as well as to children; and it matters to men as well as to women.

This is the most respected and authoritative college textbook available on human sexuality. Written in a direct, non-judgmental manner, OUR SEXUALITY, 12E, International Edition has been thoroughly and carefully updated to reflect the most current research findings. It is the first college text to bring cutting-edge and in-depth emphasis on the impact of politics on sexuality. Crooks and Baur keep you interested with the most exciting, emerging research and coverage, and focus on strengthening healthy communication among partners. The authors also have revised their overall coverage on maintaining a responsible and healthy sexual relationship, with greater attention to diversity and inclusiveness.