Books by Subject
Books
by Subject
Sex
Book Description
Wendy Kline's lucid cultural history of eugenics
in America emphasizes the movement's central, continuing interaction with popular
notions of gender and morality. Kline shows how eugenics could seem a viable
solution to problems of moral disorder and sexuality, especially female sexuality,
during the first half of the twentieth century. Its appeal to social conscience
and shared desires to strengthen the family and civilization sparked widespread
public as well as scientific interest. Kline traces this growing public interest
by looking at a variety of sources, including the astonishing "morality
masque" that climaxed the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition;
the nationwide correspondence of the influential Human Betterment Foundation
in Pasadena, California; the medical and patient records of a "model"
state institution that sterilized thousands of allegedly feebleminded women
in California between 1900 and 1960; the surprising political and popular support
for sterilization that survived initial interest in, and then disassociation
from, Nazi eugenics policies; and a widely publicized court case in 1936 involving
the sterilization of a wealthy young woman deemed unworthy by her mother of
having children.
Kline's engaging account reflects the shift from "negative eugenics" (preventing procreation of the "unfit") to "positive eugenics," which encouraged procreation of the "fit," and it reveals that the "golden age" of eugenics actually occurred long after most historians claim the movement had vanished. The middle-class "passion for parenthood" in the '50s had its roots, she finds, in the positive eugenics campaign of the '30s and '40s. Many issues that originated in the eugenics movement remain controversial today, such as the use of IQ testing, the medical ethics of sterilization, the moral and legal implications of cloning and genetic screening, and even the debate on family values of the 1990s. Building a Better Race not only places eugenics at the center of modern reevaluations of female sexuality and morality but also acknowledges eugenics as an essential aspect of major social and cultural movements in the twentieth century
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First Sex : The Natural Talents of Women and How They Will Change the World
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The Mating Mind : How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human NatureEver Since Adam and Eve : The Evolution of Human Sexuality
Sex and Longevity : Sexuality, Gender,
Reproduction, Parenthood (Research and Perspectives in Longevity)
by Jean-Marie Robins, (Editor),
T.B.L. Allard (Editor), M.Allard (Editor)
Hardcover
Springer Verlag; ISBN:
3540677402
Editorial
Reviews
Book
Description
A central concept in the evolutionary theory of senescence is the
idea that ageing results from life-history trade-offs. In particular, the disposable
soma theory suggests that longevity is determined through the setting of longevity
assurance mechanisms so as to provide an optimal compromise between investments
in somatic maintenance (including stress resistance) and in reproduction. Comparative
studies among mammalian species confirm that cells from long-lived species appear
to have a greater intrinsic capacity to withstand stresses than cells from short-lived
species. Childbearing at older ages has become increasingly common in modern
societies because of demographic changes, medical progress and personal choice.
While the detrimental effects of late reproduction on infant mortality and genetic
diseases have been well documented, little is known about the possible postponed
detrimental effects of late parenting.
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Promiscuity : An Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition and Sexual Conflict
Editorial
Reviews
Book
Description
The Passionate Ape depicts human sexual and emotional evolution,
within the framework of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. It discusses loss of
automatic female orgasms and the compensating evolution of passion, and traces
the effects this new emotion might have on an otherwise unremarkable ape.
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Sex and Cognition
by Doreen Kimura
Hardcover - 272 pages
(June 1999)
MIT Press; ISBN: 0262112361
Book
Description
"Kimura provides an authoritative overview of the field of sex
differences in cognition, moving from hormones to cognition, genes to behavior,
in a calm and clear way. This book will be a valuable resource for students
and teachers of cognitive science." -- Simon Baron-Cohen, Departments of
Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, UK
In this fact-driven book, Doreen Kimura provides an intelligible overview
of what is known about the neural and hormonal bases of sex differences in
behavior, particularly differences in cognitive ability. Kimura argues that
women and men differ not only in physical attributes and reproductive function,
but also in how they solve common problems. She offers evidence that the effects
of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that, from the
start, the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys.
She presents various behavioral, neurological, and endocrinological studies that
shed light on the processes giving rise to these sex differences in the brain.
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Why Sex Matters : A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior
by Bobbi S. Low
Hardcover - 328 pages
(January 2000)
Princeton Univ Pr; ISBN:
0691028958 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.36 x 9.52 x 6.57
Book
Description
"Sex differences, ecology, conservation, war, and other social
dilemmas are topics of perennial interest to everyone. Here is a book that
touches on them all.... The breadth of Low's expertise is
remarkable."--Margo Wilson, McMaster University
"This is an excellent book. There is no other single volume that covers the broad question of what evolution can tell us about human nature, human behavior, and culture."--William Irons, Northwestern University
Why are men, like other primate males, usually the aggressors and risk takers? Why do women typically have fewer sexual partners? Why is killing infants routine in some cultures, but forbidden in others? Why is incest everywhere taboo? Bobbi Low ranges from ancient Rome to modern America, from the Amazon to the Arctic, and from single-celled organisms to international politics to show that these and many other questions about human behavior largely come down to evolution and sex. More precisely, as she shows in this uniquely comprehensive and accessible survey of behavioral and evolutionary ecology, they come down to the basic principle that all organisms evolved to maximize their reproductive success and seek resources to do so.
Low begins by reviewing the fundamental arguments and assumptions of behavioral ecology: selfish genes, conflicts of interest, and the tendency for sexes to reproduce through different behaviors. She explains why in primate species--from chimpanzees and apes to humans--males seek to spread their genes by devoting extraordinary efforts to finding mates, while females find it profitable to expend more effort on parenting. Low illustrates these sexual differences among humans by showing that in places as diverse as the parishes of nineteenth-century Sweden, the villages of seventeenth-century China, and the forests of twentieth-century Brazil, men have tended to seek power and resources, from cattle to money, to attract mates, while women have sought a secure environment for raising children. She makes it clear, however, they have not done so simply through individual efforts or in a vacuum, but that men and women act in complex ways that involve cooperation and coalition building and that are shaped by culture, technology, tradition, and the availability of resources. Low also considers how the evolutionary drive to acquire resources leads to environmental degradation and warfare and asks whether our behavior could be channeled in more constructive ways.
About
the Author
At the University of Michigan, Bobbi S. Low is Professor of Resource
Ecology at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, Associate Director
of the Population Environment Dynamics Program, and Faculty Associate at several
centers within the Institute for Social Research. She is an associate editor for
Politics and the Life Sciences and for Population and Environment. She is the
author, with Alice Clarke and Ken Lockridge, of Family Patterns in
Nineteenth-Century Sweden.
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From
the Back Cover
"For anyone who has puzzled over where and how we humans fit into
the world of critters -- and who has not? -- Susan Allport's beautifully written
work The Primal Feast offers a banquet of connections, from the foraging habits
of murre seabirds in the Arctic to the feeding strategies of chimpanzees in
equatorial Africa. The hungers and cravings of human and animal natures have
seldom been so clearly and cunningly interwoven, with deep care for the world
they share." -- Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars
"Susan Allport's The Primal Feast is a splendid excursion into the
intricacies of survival faced by Earth's creatures. It provides enough
intellectual fodder to keep a reader chewing for weeks, not the least of which
is her speculation that our amazingly efficient species will be able to temper
its fierce urge to propagate and dominate all other species, that we will, as
she puts it, 'learn how to share the planet' with its other less formidable
denizens." -- Nelson Bryant, columnist, The New York Times
"Once again, Allport makes it stunningly clear that we can't understand
human behavior without understanding animal behavior -- and our place in the
animal world." -- Catherine Crier, broadcast journalist
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Editorial
Reviews
Book
Description
Historically, reproductive science has focused on reproductive
behaviors divorced from the contexts in which they occur. Taking a more
integrated view, this book explores the neuroendocrine bases of reproduction in
relation to their environmental and social contexts. The contributors provide
compelling accounts of reproductive behaviors in animals ranging from turtles
and lizards to humans and nonhuman primates. They examine these behaviors from
the perspectives of ethology, endocrinology, behavioral genetics, and
evolutionary ecology. Together, they illuminate the dynamic interplay between
the ecological and social contexts of a species and the biological mechanisms
regulating reproductive behavior. The book shows how an appreciation of the full
complexity of the context of reproduction actually simplifies and clarifies our
understanding of reproductive behavior.
Contributors: Gregory F. Ball, George E. Bentley, Franklin H. Bronson, David Crews, Jeffrey A. French, Michael R. Gorman, Kay E. Holecamp, Jerry D. Jacobs, Sabra L. Klein, Theresa M. Lee, Donna L. Maney, Martha K. McClintock, Simone Meddle, Randy J. Nelson, Nicole Perfito, Emilie F. Rissman, Colleen M. Schafner, Patricia A. Schiml, Jill E. Schneider, Rae Silver, Ann-Judith Silverman, Laura Smale, Kira Soma, Jennifer M. Swann, Anthony D. Tramontin, George N. Wade, Kim Wallen, Scott R. Wersinger, John C. Wingfield, Ruth I. Wood.
"Historically, reproductive science has focused on reproductive behaviors divorced from the contexts in which they occur. Taking a more integrated view, this book explores the neuroendocrine bases of reproduction in relation to their environmental and social contexts."--BOOK JACKET.
About
the Author
Kim Wallen is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Behavioral
Neuroendocrinology at Emory University and associate editor of the journal Hormones
and Behavior. Jill E. Schneider is Lehigh Class of 1961 Distinguished
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University.
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The Adam Principle: Genes, Genitals, Hormones, and Gender: Selected Readings in Sexology
By John Money
Hardcover
Prometheus Books, May 1993
ISBN: 087975804X
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A Natural History of Rape : Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion
The authors base their argument partly on statistics showing that in the United States, most rape victims are of childbearing age. But disturbingly large numbers of rapes of children, elderly women, and other men are never adequately explained. And the actual reproductive success of rape is not clear. Thornhill and Palmer's biological interpretation is just that--an interpretation, one that won't withstand tough scientific scrutiny. They further claim that the mental trauma of rape is greater for women of childbearing age (especially married women) than it is for elderly women or children. The data supporting these assertions come from a single psychological study, done by Thornhill in the 1970s, that mixes first-person interviews with caretaker's interpretations of children's reactions.
While Thornhill and Palmer claim that they are trying to look objectively at the root causes of rape, they focus almost entirely on data that support their thesis, forcing them to write an evolutionary "just-so" story. The central problem is evident in this quote, from the chapter "The Pain and Anguish of Rape":
We feel that the woman's perspective on rape can be best understood by considering the negative influences of rape on female reproductive success.... It is also highly possible that selection favored the outward manifestations of psychological pain because it communicated the female's strong negative attitude about the rapist to her husband and/or her relatives.
Women are disturbed by rape mostly because they are worried about what their husbands might think? In statements like this, the authors repeatedly discount the psychological aspects of rape, such as fear, humiliation, loss of autonomy, and powerlessness, and focus solely on personal shame.
A Natural History of Rape will no doubt have people talking about
rape and its causes, and perhaps thinking about real ways of preventing it. In
fact, the authors suggest that all young men be educated frankly about their
(theoretical) genetic desire to rape. And it reopens the debate about the role
of sex in rape. But without more and better data supporting their conclusions,
Thornhill and Palmer are doing the very thing they criticize feminists and
social scientists of doing: just talking. --Therese Littleton
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Aspects of the Masculine (Bollingen Series)
By R.F.C. Hull & Carl Gustav Jung
Paperback
Princeton University Press, May 1989
ISBN: 0691018847
Book
Description
Extracted from Volumes 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 14. Extracts are also
taken from Dream Analysis, C. G. Jung: Letters (Volumes 1 and 2) and C. G. Jung
Speaking. A collection of Jung's most important contributions to the depth
psychological understanding of masculinity, not only the psychology of men but
the essence of masculinity in both sexes.
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Childhood Phases of Maturity: Sexual Developmental Psychology
Earnest Borneman
Hardcover
Prometheus Books, Aug. 1994
ISBN: 0879758953
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Circles and Settings: Role Changes of American Women (SUNY Series in Gender and Society)
By Helena Znaniecka Lopata
Paperback
University of New York Press, May 1994
ISBN: 0791417689
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Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender
By Bernice L. Hausman
Paperback
Duke University Press, Nov. 1995
ISBN: 0822316927
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Sex in the Future : Ancient Urges Meet Future TechnologyEditorial
Reviews
Amazon.com
Robin Baker is one of the people who brought us the notion of kamikaze
sperm: valiant but impotent swimmers who sacrifice themselves so that one (or
more) of their brethren--as opposed to some other guy's sperm--will secure a
man's genetic legacy. In Sperm Wars, Baker told us that the evolutionary
drive of our biology determined with whom we mated. In Sex in the Future,
he speculates on how. Using the same format of fictionalized scenarios followed
by more factual discussion, Baker peers into his sociobiological crystal ball to
forecast how we might reproduce in the future, and what it will do to our
society. Baker sees the multiplication of assisted reproductive technologies as
a social revolution. Sex, love, and reproduction will be divorced. The concept
of heterosexuality will be practically meaningless. Children will be
commissioned in a much more precise way than can now be done either through mate
selection or gamete selection. Sex in the Future is certainly
provocative. Some of the content is factual, some is plausible speculation, and
some is fantastical. This is not a book full of useful information for people
trying to conceive. The bibliography is slight, and Baker is something of a
black sheep in the scientific community, the martial nature of sperm having been
largely discredited (New Scientist described him as "a sociobiology
zealot"). But it certainly is a brave new world of baby-making out there.
Might Baker's "Contraceptive Café" and "Reproductive
Restaurant" be part of it? You be the judge. --J.R.
Arcade Pub; ISBN: 1559705213
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Come as You Are: Sexuality and Narrative (Between Men - Between Women - Lesbian and Gay Studies)
By Judith Roof
Paperback
Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231104375
Book
Description
Barbara and George Perkins Prize, awarded by the Society for the Study
of Narrative Literature. Roof's ambitious, wide-ranging book links narrative
theory, theories of sexuality, and gay and lesbian theory to explore the place
of homosexuality, and specifically the lesbian, in the tradition of western
narrative. According to Freud, perversions are the necessary obstacles in a
heroic plot of normal heterosexual development; and homosexuality is the nineteenth
century's classic case of perversion. Roof builds on Freud to illustrate that
a structural understanding of narrative enforces a heterosexual paradigm, a
sense of meaning that provides psychological stability for the reader. Looking
at film, television, and lesbian novels, Roof explores how ideas of narrative
and sexuality inform, determine, and reproduce one another. She identifies the
paradigmatic lesbian story, its unvarying repetition, and how it might be recast.
Understanding identification as a narrative practice, and narrative as typically
heterosexual and reproductive, Roof shows how sexuality and narrative must be
disentangled to alter oppressive social practices. Come As You Are marks
a significant contribution to lesbian and gay studies, psychoanalytic theory,
and feminism.
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Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England
By Alan Stewart
Hardcover
Princeton University Press, May 1997
ISBN: 0691011656
Humanism, in both its rhetoric
and practice, attempted to transform the relationships between men that constituted
the fabric of early modern society. So argues Alan Stewart in this ground-breaking
investigation into the impact of humanism in sixteenth-century England. Here
the author shows that by valorizing textual skills over martial prowess, humanism
provided a new means of upward mobility for the lowborn but humanistically trained
scholar: he could move into a highly intimate place in a nobleman's household
that was previously not open to him. Because of its novelty and secrecy, the
intimacy between master and scholar was vulnerable to accusations of another
type of intimacy - sodomy. In comparing the ways both humanism and sodomy signaled
a new economy of social relations capable of producing widespread anxiety, Stewart
contributes to the foray of modern gay scholarship into Renaissance art and
literature. The author explores the intriguing relationship between humanism
and sodomy in a series of case studies: the Medici court of the 1470s, the allegations
against monks in the campaign to suppress the English monasteries, the institutionalized
beating of young boys, the treacherous circle of the doomed Sir Thomas Seymour,
and the closet secretaries of Elizabeth's final years. Stewart's documentation
comes from a wide range of underused materials, from schoolboys' grammar books
to political writings, enabling him to reconstruct frequently misunderstood
events in their original contexts.
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The Construction of Homosexuality
by David F. Greenberg
Paperback
University of Chicago Press, Dec. 1990
ISBN: 0226306283
Book
Description
"At various times, homosexuality has been considered the noblest of
loves, a horrible sin, a psychological condition or grounds for torture and
execution. David F. Greenberg's careful, encyclopedic and important new book
argues that homosexuality is only deviant because society has constructed, or
defined, it as deviant. The book takes us over vast terrains of example and
detail in the history of homosexuality."--Nicholas B. Dirks, New York
Times Book Review --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this
title
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Courtly Desire and Medival Homophophia: The Legitimation of Sexual Pleasure in Cleanness and its Contexts.
by Elizabeth B. Keiser
Reviews
Hardcover
Yale University Press, August 1997
ISBN: 0300069235
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Cost of Competence: Why Inequality Causes Depression, Eating Disorders, and Illness in Women
By Brett Silverstein & Deborah Perlick
Hardcover
Oxford University Press, Aug. 1995
ISBN: 0195069862
Synopsis
Drawing on all the latest findings, rare historical research,
cross-cultural comparisons, and their own study of more than 2,000 contemporary
women attending high schools and colleges, the authors present powerful new
evidence to support the existence of a link between talented women, depression,
and eating disorders. Illustrations
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The Creation of Patriarchy
By Gerda Lerner
Paperback
Oxford University Press, Sept. 1987
ISBN: 0195051858
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Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act (The Chicago Series in Sexuality, History, and Society)
By David J. Langum
Hardcover
University of Chicago Press, Nov. 1994
ISBN: 0226468801
Book
Description
Crossing over the Line describes the folly of the Mann Act of
1910--a United States law which made travel from one state to another by a man
and a woman with the intent of committing an immoral act a major crime. Spawned
by a national wave of "white slave trade" hysteria, the Act was
created by the Congress of the United States as a weapon against forced
prostitution.
This book is the first history of the Mann Act's often bizarre career, from its passage to the amendment that finally laid it low. In David J. Langum's hands, the story of the Act becomes an entertaining cautionary tale about the folly of legislating private morality.
Langum recounts the colorful details of numerous court cases to show how enforcement of the Act mirrored changes in America's social attitudes. Federal prosecutors became masters in the selective use of the Act: against political opponents of the government, like Charlie Chaplin; against individuals who eluded other criminal charges, like the Capone mobster "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn; and against black men, like singer Chuck Berry and boxer Jack Johnson, who dared to consort with white women. The Act engendered a thriving blackmail industry and was used by women like Frank Lloyd Wright's wife to extort favorable divorce settlements.
Until 1986 any man who, with romance on his
mind, traveled with a woman other than his wife across the state lines of
America could be guilty of a federal felony. Such was the legacy of the
notorious Mann Act of 1910. Spawned by a national wave of "white slave
trade" hysteria, the act was created by Congress as a weapon against forced
prostitution. It was so loosely worded that the Supreme Court soon extended its
coverage: any man who intended to commit an "immoral act" with a woman
who had crossed a state line, either with him or to visit him, could be
prosecuted. In the 1920s, this sort of amorous behavior could send a man to
prison for up to five years. Crossing over the Line is the first history of the
Mann Act's often bizarre career, from its passage to the amendment that finally
laid it low. In David J. Langum's hands, the story of the act becomes an
entertaining cautionary tale about the folly of legislating private morality.
Langum recounts the colorful details of numerous court cases to show how
enforcement of the act mirrored changes in America's social attitudes. Federal
prosecutors became masters in the selective use of the act: against political
opponents of the government, like Charlie Chaplin; against individuals who
eluded other criminal charges, like the Capone mobster "Machine Gun"
Jack McGurn; and against black men, like singer Chuck Berry and boxer Jack
Johnson, who dared to consort with white women. The act engendered a thriving
blackmail industry and was used by women like Frank Lloyd Wright's wife to
extort favorable divorce settlements. The social costs exacted by the Mann Act,
Langum argues, send a clear warning about the government's ability to wage
"wars" against pornography, drugs, or art considered
"obscene." Complete with archival photographs, Crossing over the Line
will appeal to anyone interested in American history, popular culture, law
enforcement, or the history of sexuality.
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Dance, Sex, and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire
By Judith Lynee Hanna
Paperback
University of Chicago Press, May 1988
ISBN: 0226315517
Book
Description
"Ambitious in its scope and interdisciplinary in its purview. . .
. Without doubt future researchers will want to refer to Hanna's study, not
simply for its rich bibliographical sources but also for suggestions as to how
to proceed with their own work. Dance, Sex, and Gender will initiate a
discussion that should propel a more methodologically informed study of dance
and gender."--Randy Martin, Journal of the History of Sexuality
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Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality
By Nikki R. Keddie (Editor)
Paperback
New York University Press, Aug. 1996
ISBN: 0814746551
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Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order
By Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
Paperback
Yale University Press, Sept. 1990
ISBN: 0300046944
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The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South
By Catherine Clinton (Editor) & Michele Gillespie (Editor)
Paperback
Oxford University Press, June 1997
ISBN: 0195112431
Editorial
Reviews
Amazon.com
Focusing on matters of race and sex and the intersection of the two,
this collection of nearly 20 essays covers the American South for a period of
about 200 years ending in 1808. The focus is scholarly, but the book is
accessible to history buffs and general readers alike. (The title comes from a
term used to describe land in dispute in the colonial South.) In one essay,
"The Facts Speak Loudly Enough," Peter H. Woods tells the shocking
story of the massacre of several dozen blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, on
the eve of the American Revolution. Another, Paul Finkelman's "Crimes of
Love, Misdemeanors of Passion: The Regulation of Race and Sex in the Colonial
South," explores the ways in which authorities tried to proscribe
miscegenation in Virginia from the 1600s on, and notes one practical reason that
there has always been race mixing in America: in the 1630s, the ratio of male
immigrants to female in Virginia was 6-1.
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The Differences Between the Sexes
By E. Balaban (Editor) & R.V. Short
Paperback
Cambridge University Press, Sept. 1994
ISBN: 0521448786
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Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War
By Cahtherine Clinton & Nina Silber
Paperback
Oxford University Press, Oct. 1992
ISBN: 0195080343
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Emancipation and Illusion: Rationality and Gender in Haberma's Theory of Modernity
By Marie Fleming
Reviews
In this comprehensive analysis of Jurgen
Habermas's philosophy and social theory, Marie Fleming takes strong issue with
Habermas over his understanding of rationality and the lifeworld, emancipation,
history, and gender. The point of Fleming's critique of Habermas is not to dispute
universalism, but to build on the key universalist principles of inclusiveness
and equality. Her intention is to show that Habermas's theory of modernity is
so structured that it cannot achieve its universalist aims. Contending that
his theory is not universalist enough, she claims that universalism has to be
reconceived as a radical, critical, and historical project.
Paperback
Pennsylvania State University Press, July 1997
ISBN: 0271016558
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Erotisms
By Claudia Moscovici
Hardcover
University Press of America, May 1996
ISBN: 0761803122
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Evolution of Human Sexuality
By Donald Symons
Paperback
Oxford University Press, Jan. 1981
ISBN: 0195029070
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Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond ( The Blazer Lectures, 1990)
By Nancy J. Chodorow
Paperback
University Press of Kentucky, June 1994
ISBN: 08133118727
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Flesh & Blood: The National Society of Film Critics on Sex, Violence, and Censorship.
By Peter Keough (Editor) & The National Society of Film Critics
Paperback
ISBN: 1562790765
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Forbidden History: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe: Essays From the Journal of the History of Sexuality
By John c. Fout (Editor) & John C. Foul
Paperback
University of Chicago, Aug 1992
ISBN: 02262257835
Book
Description
How have society's values and attitudes toward sexuality and morality
changed over the centuries? Why and how has the state sought to criminalize
certain forms of sexual behavior and to control reproduction? How have churches
tried to influence the state in its regulation of sexuality?
This anthology encompasses a broad range of essays on sexuality spanning
European history from the fifteenth century to the present. The topics in this
collection of fifteen essays have both historic importance and current
relevance. All crucial issues in the regulation of sexuality are addressed, from
incest to infanticide, from breast-feeding and women's sexuality to female
prostitution, from pornography to reproductive politics, and from the first
homosexual rights movement to AIDS. Contributions from a diverse group of
prominent scholars representing a variety of disciplines are included in this
anthology. Essays by Randolph Trumbach on "Sex, Gender, and Identity in
Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment
London"; Ruth Perry on "Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity
in Eighteenth Century England"; Theo van der Meer on "Female Same-Sex
Offenders in Late Eighteenth Century Amsterdam"; Robin Ann Sheets on
"Pornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter's 'The Bloody
Chamber'"; and James W. Jones on "Discourses on and of AIDS in West
Germany, 1986-1990."
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Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self
By Lois McNay
Paperback
Northeastern University Press, Mar. 1993
ISBN: 1555531539
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Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
By Mary Beth Norton
Reviews
Crystallizing the inflexibility of gender roles in the American colonies is the tale of a servant known as Thomasine or Thomas Hall, alternately. Raised for two decades as a girl, Hall later switched several times between the clothes and roles of a man and those of a woman. Although outraged townswomen repeatedly assured colonial authorities that Hall was physically male, his feminine mannerisms and skill with a needle and thread so unnerved one regional commander that he demanded Hall "be putt in weomans apparell." Other stories include that of the ne'er-do-well Pinion family, who brawled through two generations of theft, adultery, and domestic squabbles in New England, and a man and woman brought up before a Virginia tribunal accused of "a great bussleling and juggling of the bed" judged unseemly in an unmarried couple. Founding Mothers & Fathers offers a full-bellied, incisive view of a developing social hierarchy and the slim margin of power that women held and lost within it. --Francesca Coltrera
Paperback
Knopf, March 1996
ISBN: 0679749772
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From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America
By Beth L. Bailey
Paperback
Johns Hopkins University Press, June 1988
ISBN:0801839351
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Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society
By Maria Lopowsky
Hardcover
Columbia University Press, Dec. 1993
ISBN: 0231081200
Book
Description
An ethnographic study of how gender is negotiated in Vanatinai, a small
matrilineal island near New Guinea. --This text refers to the paperback
edition of this title
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The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists
by Jack Nichols
Hardcover
Prometheus Books, October 1996
ISBN: 1573921033
Synopsis
Many conservative religious groups insist that homosexuality is a plague
on society, that AIDS is the result of unnatural behavior, and that organized
homosexual movements have some grand scheme to spread ungodly ways throughout
all areas of society, thus subverting moral values and the family. In this book,
columnist Jack Nichols sets fundamentalists on the run, exposing their lies,
threats, and the misunderstandings fostered and multiplied by the hosts of the
religious right.
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Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation
By John Money
Hardcover
Oxford University Press, May 1988
ISBN: 0195054075
Synopsis
One of the foremost investigators of human sexuality cogently
addresses many of the questions that have baffled people for centuries: What
makes some children grow up to be homosexual, while others grow up to be
heterosexual or bisexual? To what degree is gender identity determined before
birth? --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title
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Homophobia: Description, Development, and Dynamics of Gay Bashing
by Martin Kantor
Hardcover
Praeger Publishing Text, Jan. 1998
ISBN: 0275955303
Book
Description
Many gays and simpatico straights view homophobia as a problem for gays
and lesbians, but not as a treatable disorder. This book attempts to pathologize
most forms of homophobia--to view homophobia as a symptom of an emotional
disorder. Homophobia is studied from a developmental perspective, showing how it
originates in the homophobe's early relationships. With a scientifically-based
eclectic treatment approach, this work uses psychodynamic, interpersonal,
existential, cognitive/behavioral, and supportive techniques to treat homophobes
and to help gays and lesbians who are the recipients of the manifestations of
this emotional disorder.
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Human Sexuality, Human Sexuality Student Guide
By Andrei Simic, Patricia A. Omidian, & Alan J. Almquist
Paperback
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Jan. 1995
ISBN: 0787205230
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Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
By Suzanne J. Kessler & Wendy McKenna
Paperback
University of Chicago Press, July 1985
ISBN: 0226432068
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Making Sense of Sex: How Genes and Gender Influence Our Relationships
By David P. Barash
Hardcover
Island Press, Nov. 1997
Synopsis
In this book, the husband-and-wife team of David Barash, an evolutionary
biologist, and Judith Lipton, a clinical psychiatrist, draw on their respective
areas of expertise to explore and explain the central fact of our
existence--that men and women are fundamentally, unalterably different
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Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s
by John Gallagher, Chris Bull, & Christopher Bull
Amazon.com
As the influence of both religious conservatives and gay activists grew in the
1990s, the two movements repeatedly came into conflict with each other. Chris Bull and
John Gallagher, both veteran political journalists for The Advocate, outline the
struggle between these two groups with clear, objective reporting that refuses to take
sides, and acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses of both groups. Their analysis of
battlegrounds ranging from state elections in Oregon and Colorado to the 1992 presidential
election and the subsequent debacle of the gays-in-the-military hearings lays the
groundwork for mutual understanding and a move beyond shrill ideological squabbling.
Hardcover
Crown Publishers, August 1997
ISBN: 0517701987
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The Red Queen: Sex & the Evolution of Human Nature.
by Matt Ridley
Paperback reprint
Pequin USA, June 1995
ISBN: 0140245480
Synopsis
Citing the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, who
has to keep running to stay in the same place, Ridley demonstrates why sex is
humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal
predators, and answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture.
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Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives:
By David M. Buss (Editor), & Neil M. Malamuth (Editor)
Paperback
Oxford University Press, Apr. 1996
ISBN: 0195103572
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