Sexuality, Identity, and Society – serie

When viewed through the broad lens of social history, the story of sexual identity across place and time is infused with extraordinary contextual specificity. Different cultures in different historical eras have organized human sexuality in a multiplicity of diverse forms and functions, constructing stories of sexual identity that serve a larger social structure with master narratives of what it means to be a member of a given community, culture, and society. In examining the shifting narratives of sexual identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and their impact on the process of human social development, this edited volume fuses historical, cultural, and psychological perspectives on human sexuality to articulate a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to the study of sexual lives. Recognizing the historical and cultural relativity of life-course development, the contributors seek to offer a comprehensive perspective on the ways in which identity is inherently a process of co-construction between individual and culture, thereby positing a significant role for the social in the development of sexual identity. Following a general introduction in which the volume editors explain the utility of a narrative approach to the study of sexual identity, the volume is organized into sections which deal with specific life-span considerations of sexuality: childhood and adolescence, adulthood, marriage and parenthood, and aging.

Through rapid cultural change and technological advances, kink subculture has become more visible and accessible--and less stigmatized--than ever before. Internet communities have created exciting new possibilities for social identities and communities in ways that were once thought unimageable, both online and in the real world.This book combines a range of psychological, sociological, and cultural theories with 74 interviews of gay men in this community to unpack their attraction to kink and its impact on their social and sexual identities. In examining how the internet has transformed these subcultures, this book presents an authentic picture of kink social networking sites that have empowered and enabled a whole new group of people to engage both on- and offline. Through its case study of pup play, this book follows the rich tradition of locating kinksters in their communities and cultural contexts. It also investigates new pathways for a wide range of gay men, such as "non-community participants" who want to practice kink without entering the community. Kinky in the Digital Age is a comprehensive, empirically deep exploration of gay men's social and sexual experiences of kink. It bolsters the voices of these men in an unprecedented way as it documents the history and potential of this fascinating subculture and social community.

Through rapid cultural change and technological advances, kink subculture has become more visible and accessible--and less stigmatized--than ever before. Internet communities have created exciting new possibilities for social identities and communities in ways that were once thought unimageable, both online and in the real world.This book combines a range of psychological, sociological, and cultural theories with 74 interviews of gay men in this community to unpack their attraction to kink and its impact on their social and sexual identities. In examining how the internet has transformed these subcultures, this book presents an authentic picture of kink social networking sites that have empowered and enabled a whole new group of people to engage both on- and offline. Through its case study of pup play, this book follows the rich tradition of locating kinksters in their communities and cultural contexts. It also investigates new pathways for a wide range of gay men, such as "non-community participants" who want to practice kink without entering the community. Kinky in the Digital Age is a comprehensive, empirically deep exploration of gay men's social and sexual experiences of kink. It bolsters the voices of these men in an unprecedented way as it documents the history and potential of this fascinating subculture and social community.

Ozzie and Harriet, move over. A new couple is moving into the neighborhood. In the postmodern era, advances in medical technologies allow some individuals categorized female at birth to live in accordance with their gender identities, as men. While a growing body of literature on transgender men's experiences has come to the forefront, relatively little exists to document the experiences of their partners. In Queering Families: The Postmodern Partnerships of Cisgender Women and Transgender Men, Carla A. Pfeffer brings these experiences to light through interviews with the group most likely to partner and form families with transgender men: non-transgender (cisgender) women. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with fifty cisgender women partners of transgender men from across the United States and Canada, Pfeffer details the experiences of a community that often seems unremarkable and ordinary on its surface. Cisgender women who partner with transgender men who are socially "read" as male are often (mis)perceived as part of a heterosexual couple or family. Yet not all cisgender women who partner with transgender men are comfortable with this invisible existence and comfortable normativity. Instead, many of the cisgender women Pfeffer interviews hold deeply-valued queer identities that may be erased in their partnerships with transgender men.Queering Families details the struggles and strengths of these postmodern "Harriets" as they work to build identities, partnerships, families, and communities. Pfeffer's interviewees discuss the implications of visibility and invisibilty in their everyday lives as they face barriers or pathways to legal and social inclusion. They carve out new lexicons for partners' bodies and their own sexualities, transformed through gender-affirming hormones and surgeries. They plan and construct families with and without children, some drawing upon alternative reproductive technologies to bear the biological offspring of their transgender partners. With remarkable depth and insight, Queering Families explores a shifting social landscape that challenges the very notion of what constitutes a "same-sex" or an "opposite-sex" relationship, marriage, or family.

Key cultural shifts have enabled a "new sexualization" of women. Neoliberal, consumerist, and postfeminist media culture have shaped ways of understanding female sexuality, embodied by the figure of the choosing, empowered, entrepreneurial consumer citizen-woman, whose economic capital determines feminine success (and failure). Informed by older constructs of privilege such as class, sexuality, race and (dis)ability, this version of sexiness also constrains by folding contemporary femininity back into previous panics about youth, excess, "bad" consumption, and appropriate feminine behavior. In Technologies of Sexiness, Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley identify how current understandings of sexiness in public life and academic discourse have produced a "doubled stagnation," cycling around old debates without forward momentum. Developing a theoretical and methodological framework, they expand on the notion of a "technology of sexiness." They ask what happens and what is lost when people make sense of themselves within the complexities and contradictions of consumer-oriented constructs of sexiness. How do these discourses come to "transform the self"?This book provides a framework for understanding how women make sense of their sexual identities in the context of a feminization of sexual consumerism. The authors analyze material collected with two groups of women: the "pleasure pursuers" and "functioning feminists," who broadly occupy positions across the pre- and post-Thatcher eras, and the changes brought about by the feminist movement. As one of the first book-length empirical studies to explore age-related femininities in the context of what "sexiness" means today, the authors develop a series of insights into various "technologies of the self" through analyses of space, nostalgia, and claims to authentic sexiness.

Over the last thirty years in the West, there has been enormous change in social and state acceptance regarding sex and sexualities, with an apparent new acceptance and openness towards diverse sexual practices and sexualities. Much of this change has come about through community claims for rights grounded in critical social theory and the language of citizenship. While accepting that much of the critique has been valuable in advancing rights for sexual minorities, Sexual Citizenship and Social Change argues that the mode of critique itself may become problematic. Examining the use and abuse of critique in contemporary sexuality scholarship and associated activism, Darren Langdridge implicates a particular form of critique that is detached, unfettered, and set loose from the usual anchor of tradition. Even the most ostensibly well-meaning critic--and associated critique--can become problematic when their arguments are detached from tradition. Further, the book shows that this unrestrained excess of critique is particularly dangerous because it emerges from within minority sexual communities and their allies, not from the usual conservative opposition to progressive change. Theoretically and empirically grounded, Sexual Citizenship and Social Change draws on ideas and findings from psychology, sociology, politics, and philosophy and offers a radical challenge to the unfettered adoption of a critical approach in sexualities scholarship and activism. It highlights why we need to shine a critical lens on critique itself, while also anchoring it in a more constructive relationship with its natural opposite: tradition.

Modernizing Sexuality illustrates how Western idealizations of normative sexuality and the power of modernity come together in U.S. HIV prevention policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results are calls for women's "right to say no " to sex and the promotion of "love matches " as the remedy to the "traditional cultural practices " said to put people at risk for HIV. Using the country of Malawi as a case study, Anne W. Esacove draws on narrative theory and a rich set of interview, archival, and ethnographic data to expose the unacknowledged - yet widespread and well-funded - moderniziation project at the heart of U.S. policy, and to argue that these efforts not only fail to translate into actionable steps for preventing HIV in the widespread, generalized epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa, but actually exacerbate HIV risk, particularly for women.Moving beyond U.S. policy, Modernizing Sexuality also examines how people targeted by prevention efforts create everyday understandings of HIV risk and prevention. Deploying gossip, information gleaned, and strategically adapted from prevention efforts, and the assumption that sex is essential to life, Malawians tend to sort potential sexual partners into "tiers of desirability, " each with a corresponding HIV-prevention strategy. By illuminating the collective solutions and multiple paths of prevention used by Malawians, the analysis exposes fundamental flaws of U.S. HIV prevention policy and provides direction for potentially more effective strategies.Stepping outside of the normal theoretical and methodological boundaries of HIV scholarship, Esacove raises important questions about lure of the story told through prevention policy, the risks of medicalizing social justice advocacy, and the limits of feminist and sexuality theories for directing prevention efforts, particularly cases when they mirror U.S. policy by erasing corporeal bodies and actual sex acts. Modernizing Sexuality closes with a fascinating alternative narrative to guide HIV prevention that reimagines risk and provides one alternative path for organizing policy efforts.

Whether straight or gay, most men start their relationships desiring monogamy. This is rooted in the pervasive notion that monogamy exists as a sign of true love. Yet despite this deeply held cultural ideal, cheating remains rampant. In this accessible book, Eric Anderson investigates why 78% of men he interviewed have cheated despite their desire not to. Combining 120 interviews with research from the fields of sociology, biology, and psychology, Anderson identifies cheating as a product of wanting emotional passion for one's partner, along with a steadily growing desire for emotionally detached recreational sex with others. Anderson coins the term "the monogamy gap" to describe this phenomenon, suggesting that monogamy is an irrational ideal because it fails to fulfil a lifetime of sexual desires. Cheating therefore becomes the rational response to an irrational situation.The Monogamy Gap draws on a range of concepts, theories, and disciplines to highlight the biological compulsion of our sexual urges, the social construction of the monogamous ideal, and the devastating chasm that lies between them. Whether single or married, monogamous or open, straight or gay, readers will find The Monogamy Gap to be an enlightening, intellectually compelling, and provocative book.