Breaking Boundaries: New Horizons in Gender & Sexualities – serie

This book explores the ways Christian women in college make sense of bisexual, transgender, polyamorous, and atheist others. Specifically, it explores the ways they express tolerance for some sexual groups, such as lesbian and gay people, while maintaining condemnation of other sexual, gendered, or religious groups. In so doing, this book highlights the limits of Christian tolerance for the advancement of minority rights.

Even though they are the largest sexual minority group in the United States, the lives, joys, and struggles of bi+ people, as well as the social structure of monosexism, are regularly overlooked in social scientific research and broader conversations about sexuality and gender. Mapping the Monosexual Imaginary interrupts this pattern of erasure by providing readers with a sociological examination of sexualities in society that places bi+ people and monosexism at the center of analysis. Through exploring bi+ peoples experiences navigating identity, community, and politics, Lain Mathers argues that to understand and challenge gender and sexual inequalities, we must first recognize and interrogate the structure of monosexism. At a time when attacks on LGBTQ people are increasing, this book offers an incisive examination of how an often-overlooked group within the LGBTQ community makes sense of their place in the world and what we can learn from attending to the specific issues that bi+ people face in society.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 41 married individuals across diverse gender identities, sexual orientations, and relationship structures, this book demonstrates how people both reproduce and resist gender and sexual inequalities embedded in marriage. Rather than portraying marriage as either wholly oppressive or fully transformed, the book shows that it exists in a state of tension. Individuals rely on marriage for its legal protections and social legitimacy, yet many simultaneously challenge or queer its assumptions about monogamy, gender roles, and sexual identity. Through analyses of legal decision-making, naming practices, nonmonogamy, and LGBTQ+ identities, the book reveals how marriage continues to regulate relationships even as people attempt to reshape it from within. Ultimately, the book contends that the future of marriage depends not on preserving tradition, but on recognizing and legitimizing diverse forms of intimacy, care, and kinship that extend beyond its conventional boundaries.

Gender-Based Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa: Prevalence, Patterns, and Policies examines the multifaceted issue of gender-based violence (GBV) in Sub-Saharan Africa, offering an in-depth exploration of its prevalence, underlying patterns, and the policies and frameworks that aim at addressing it. The book provides a regional overview on the prevalence of GBV, drawing on a wealth of statistical data and case studies, and examines the diverse forms of gender-based violence on the African sub-region, including domestic violence, sexual harassment, trafficking, and harmful traditional practices, highlighting the complex social, cultural, and economic factors that create and sustain these abuses.In analyzing GBV patterns, contributing authors investigate the dynamics of power and control that underpin gender-based violence, exploring how the intersection of identities such as class, migration, and sexuality influence individuals' experiences. The policy component evaluates international, national, and local responses to GBV, and reviews existing legal frameworks, protection mechanisms, and support services, identifying both best practices and significant gaps. It also considers the effectiveness of public awareness campaigns, education programs, and community-based interventions in shifting societal attitudes and reducing the incidence of GBV. This book provides essential insights for policymakers, researchers, students, and activists committed to combating GBV and supporting survivors.

How do we fall in love in the 21st century? In Dating Apps, Modern Romance, and Social Inequality, Hannah Regan explores the impact dating apps have had on how we meet potential partners and decide who to date. In particular, Regan considers our tendency to fall in love with people who are very similar to us, and how dating apps both facilitate this preference and challenge us to think outside the box. By sharing the stories of dating app users, the book raises important questions about how social inequality exists in our intimate lives, and how technology reinforces these long-held social beliefs. This book situates current patterns of dating and relationships within the historical context of courtship, to explore how the introduction of new technology has changed romantic partnerships. Despite these new possibilities, the analysis encourages us to question whether dating is, in fact, changing, or whether we are simply enacting the same old social patterns in new ways. Challenging the assumptions which shape dating preferences in turn challenges the social structures of power and inequality which underlie them.

Beyond the Hegemonic: A Global Exploration of Theory and Praxis of Men and Masculinities critically examines the conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity, arguing against its reduction to a monolithic and inherently negative construct. Instead, it proposes a more nuanced understanding of hegemony as crucial for the development of effective strategies for gender justice. The volume investigates the complex interplay between globalization, postcolonialism, neoliberalism, and emergent technologies in shaping masculinities across local, regional, and global scales. It analyzes the dynamic relationship between hegemonic masculinity and a range of non-hegemonic masculinities, including complicit, subordinate, marginalized, and protest masculinities. Through a diverse range of case studies, encompassing topics such as the influence of Boys' Love media, the fragility of patriarchal masculinity as revealed in marginalized women's narratives, the cultural implications of the "geriaction" subgenre, the negotiation of metrosexuality within Indian contexts, and the intersection of violence and masculinity, the book explores the multifaceted ways in which feminism, globalization, and shifting gender roles have shaped contemporary masculinities, ultimately offering considered projections regarding their future trajectories.

Through the voices of 51 trans men, Baker A. Rogers analyzes what it means to be a trans man in the southeastern United States. Rogers argues that the common themes that pervade trans men’s experiences in the South are complicated by other intersecting identities, such as sexuality, religion, race, class, and place. This study explores the intersectionalities of a group of people who are often invisible, by choice or necessity, in broader culture. Rogers engages with debates about trans experiences of masculinity, ‘passing,’ and discrimination within LGTBQ spaces in order to provide a comprehensive study of trans men’s experiences.

Black Lives and Bathrooms: Racial and Gendered Reactions to Minority Rights Movements examines how people respond to minority movements in ways that maintain existing patterns of racial and gender inequality. By studying the Black Lives Matter and Transgender Bathroom Access movement efforts, J.E. Sumerau and Eric Anthony Grollman analyze how cisgender white people define minority movements in relation to their existing notions of United States social norms; react to minority movements utilizing racial, classed, gendered, and sexual stereotypes that reinforce racism, sexism, and cissexism in society; and propose ways that racial and gender minorities could gain conditional acceptance by behaving in ways cisgender white people find more comfortable and normal. Throughout this work, Sumerau and Grollman note how assumptions about whiteness and cisnormativity are spread as cisgender white people respond to racial and gender movements seeking social change.

Black Lives and Bathrooms: Racial and Gendered Reactions to Minority Rights Movements examines how people respond to minority movements in ways that maintain existing patterns of racial and gender inequality. By studying the Black Lives Matter and Transgender Bathroom Access movement efforts, J.E. Sumerau and Eric Anthony Grollman analyze how cisgender white people define minority movements in relation to their existing notions of United States social norms; react to minority movements utilizing racial, classed, gendered, and sexual stereotypes that reinforce racism, sexism, and cissexism in society; and propose ways that racial and gender minorities could gain conditional acceptance by behaving in ways cisgender white people find more comfortable and normal. Throughout this work, Sumerau and Grollman note how assumptions about whiteness and cisnormativity are spread as cisgender white people respond to racial and gender movements seeking social change.

This book utilizes collaborative autoethnography to examine transformations in health and aging among queer, trans, and intersex people in society. To this end, the authors each utilize their lived experiences as queer, trans, and/or intersex people to discuss inequalities and norms in U.S. healthcare. Further, they elaborate upon some ways U.S. healthcare systems may become more inclusive of queer, trans, and intersex populations over time. In so doing, they utilize the autoethnographic cases to illustrate and describe the complexities of sex, gender, and sexualities in health and aging as well as the ways such intricacies facilitate societal inequalities in health and aging.

This book utilizes collaborative autoethnography to examine transformations in health and aging among queer, trans, and intersex people in society. To this end, the authors each utilize their lived experiences as queer, trans, and/or intersex people to discuss inequalities and norms in U.S. healthcare. Further, they elaborate upon some ways U.S. healthcare systems may become more inclusive of queer, trans, and intersex populations over time. In so doing, they utilize the autoethnographic cases to illustrate and describe the complexities of sex, gender, and sexualities in health and aging as well as the ways such intricacies facilitate societal inequalities in health and aging.

Sexual Deviance in Health and Aging: Uncovering Later Life Intimacy explores life course health experiences and unmet care needs of populations perceived as sexually deviant in the United States. These groups include but are not limited to: gay, lesbian, and bisexual people; asexual and demisexual people; trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people; intersex people; nonmonogamous and polyamorous people; kink and fetishism practitioners; sex and adult entertainment workers; individuals labeled as sexual offenders and predators; people living with sexually transmitted infections; people identifying as neuroatypical and/or autistic; and people with chronic conditions and disabilities who lead active sexual lives. Lacey J. Ritter and Alexandra C.H. Nowakowski analyze the social, cultural, and political origins of perceptions of these groups as sexually deviant. In the process, they provide history and context for the health care experiences of people within each of these broad groups. Simultaneously, Sexual Deviance in Health and Aging highlights the complexity and individuality of different people’s journeys through sexuality in health and aging.

Beyond the Hegemonic: A Global Exploration of Theory and Praxis of Men and Masculinities critically examines the conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity, arguing against its reduction to a monolithic and inherently negative construct. Instead, it proposes a more nuanced understanding of hegemony as crucial for the development of effective strategies for gender justice. The volume investigates the complex interplay between globalization, postcolonialism, neoliberalism, and emergent technologies in shaping masculinities across local, regional, and global scales. It analyzes the dynamic relationship between hegemonic masculinity and a range of non-hegemonic masculinities, including complicit, subordinate, marginalized, and protest masculinities. Through a diverse range of case studies, encompassing topics such as the influence of Boys' Love media, the fragility of patriarchal masculinity as revealed in marginalized women's narratives, the cultural implications of the "e;geriaction"e; subgenre, the negotiation of metrosexuality within Indian contexts, and the intersection of violence and masculinity, the book explores the multifaceted ways in which feminism, globalization, and shifting gender roles have shaped contemporary masculinities, ultimately offering considered projections regarding their future trajectories.