2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies It has been called sperm, semen, seed, cum, jizz, spunk, gentlemen's relish, and splooge. But however the “tacky, opaque liquid that comes out of the penis” is described, the very act of defining “sperm” and “semen” depends on your point of view. For Lisa Jean Moore, how sperm comes to be known is based on who defines it (a scientist vs. a defense witness, for example), under...
Sexuality in the Time of AIDS
This volume presents and reviews a wide range of recent research on sexuality and sexual behaviours in India to better understand the patterns of risk among different sections of the Indian populace. Participants in India′s HIV/AIDS campaign now recognize that the epidemic has great complexities which have to be understood in its entirety in order to combat it. The book contains three main components: an overview describing the HIV epidemic in India and the public and the non-governmental ap...
Sex can be an oppressive force, a tool to shame, divide, and control a population. But it can also be a force for change, for the legal and physical challenge of inequity and injustice. In "West of Sex", Pablo Mitchell uses court transcripts and criminal cases to provide the first coherent picture of Mexican-American sexuality at the turn of the twentieth century, and a truly revelatory look at sexual identity in the borderlands. As Mexicans faced a rising tide of racial intolerance in the Ameri...
While much attention has been paid in recent years to heterosexual prostitution and sex tourism in Brazil, gay sex tourism has been almost completely overlooked. In Tourist Attractions, Gregory C. Mitchell presents a pioneering ethnography that focuses on the personal lives and identities of male sex workers who occupy a variety of roles in Brazil's sexual economy. Mitchell takes us into the bath houses of Rio de Janeiro, where rent boys cruise for clients, and to the beaches of Salvador da Bah...
Criminal Intimacy
In "Criminal Intimacy", Regina Kunzel explores the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries - along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners' rights activism; and, the HIV epidemic - ultimately discovering a world whose surprising plurality reveals the fissures beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources - as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture - Kunz...
In this volume, Shannon Bell recovers the courtesan of ancient Greece as both sophistic philosopher and erotic teacher.
Heteronormativity, Passionate Aesthetics and Symbolic Subversion in Asia
by Saskia Wieringa
This book examines life trajectories among three categories of women living beyond the bounds of heteronormativity in Jakarta and Delhi, two major cities with substantively different religious and social values: women who have lost their husbands, either through divorce or death; sex workers; and young, urban lesbians. Delhi has a large Hindu majority and a sizeable Muslim minority, amongst other religious and cultural pluralities. The Indian state is constitutionally committed to secularism and...
The internet is changing the rules of the game of love. In a world where anything is possible, a potential date - whether it be a one-night stand or the start of a more lasting relationship - can be just a click away. Anyone looking for love online can throw off their inhibitions and can say what they have never dared to before. The internet revolution has ensured that online dating has now become both widespread and commonplace. Online users can buy into the consumerist illusion that they...
Transatlantic Gender Crossings
A special issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies As much as French feminism influenced the establishment of women’s studies in U.S. universities, so has U.S. gender and queer theory marked the French intellectual and academic landscape. For this reason, gender and sexuality studies have been bound up from the beginning with specific intractable questions of internationalization. Has internationalization contributed to an “Americanization” of the field, or has it allowed f...
The only anthology devoted exclusively to the topic of pornography and censorship that is designed as a textbook. Its aim is threefold: To make students aware of (1) the vast scope of arguments concerning both the nature of pornography and what ought to be done about it; (2) the fact that there is more than one feminist position on pornography; and (3) the complexity of arguments about free speech. Balanced and up-to-date, the book is sensitive to the variety of feminist positions on pornography...
An anthropologist's view of the incest taboo through and across cultures, including a new interpretation of kinship that emphasizes the primacy of the symbolic.The sharing of a sexual partner between relatives has always been taboo. In this stunning work, anthropologist Francoise Heritier charts the incest prohibition throughout history, from the strict decrees of Leviticus to modern civil codes, and finds a secondary type of incest, which she calls the incest of two sisters. The term refers not...
What does a gigolo do when his lives start to collide? Find out in this saucy and eye-opening memoir. Mixing business and pleasure - to devastating effect… Now 25 years old, young Australian Luke Bradbury has quickly established himself as one of London's most successful male escorts, raking in both money and as much sex as he can handle. With women falling at his feet, Luke happily entertains his long list of regular clients, whilst his reputation leads him into so...
Social Construction of Sex Work – Ethnography of Escort Agencies in Poland
by Izabela Slezak
This book presents an analysis of the social organization of escort agencies in Poland. Izabela Ślęzak focuses on the actions of female sex workers, who are seen as active participants co-creating their working conditions. She analyzes the interactions between sex workers and their clients. Furthermore, she discusses the relationships between employees of the premises, namely the women providing sex services, the managers of the agencies, and security workers. The conclusions of the publication...
Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power reveals insights into the complex history of prostitution in Salt Lake City. After the transcontinental railroad opened Utah to large-scale emigration and market capitalism, hundreds of women in Salt Lake City began to sell sex for a living, and a few earned small fortunes. Businessmen and politicians developed a financial stake in prostitution, which was regulated by both Mormon and gentile officials. Jeffrey Nichols examines how prostitution became a focal poi...
Continued public outcries over such issues as the presence of young models in sexually suggestive ads and occurrences of intimate relationships between teachers and students speak to one of the most controversial fears of our time: the entanglement of children and sexuality. In this book, Steven Angelides confronts that very fear, arguing that adult alarm over child sexualization often masks the sexuality of children. Angelides explores how emotional vocabularies of anxiety, shame, and even...
A delightfully thought-provoking study of why we have sex, from award-winning psychoanalyst Darian Leader'It was just sex.'It's a familiar claim. But is it really possible?The old idea that sexuality is a smouldering, animalistic force within us, desperate for release yet restrained by social forces, has little to support it. Bodies aren't just sticks that make fire when you rub them together, and the pain, heartache, and regret that can accompany the highs of sexual excitement show us that much...
Paola Monzini's new book focuses on the experiences of migrant women and girls who have very little choice or control over their lives. They can be distinguished from those women who do work as prostitutes, with some autonomy, however limited. Rooting her analysis firmly within the context of neo-liberal globalization, Monzini views these women and girls as the new 'slaves' of the contemporary era. The annual worth of this global industry is now estimated to be in the region of USD7 billion, mak...
Written by an award-winning author and veteran sex therapist, this practical, innovative, and often passionate book addresses the explosion of pornography use, advises couples on defusing conflict about it, guides parents in helping their kids deal with it, advises people concerned about their use of it, and shows how honest talk about sex can resolve America's "porn panic." When you first logged onto the Internet in the 1990s, did you ever wonder, "What do you suppose would happen if the Unite...
This book identifies risk and protective factors influencing routes into, through and out of sexual exploitation and sex work. It explores how the sense made of key childhood and adult experiences influences the ability to manage roles and identities and choices they feel empowered or forced to make.