This intriguing collection of stories and experiences from women of all walks of life allows readers to learn how others have handled everything from their first sexual encounter to abusive situations to rekindling romance in a long-term marriage.

Is love “blind” when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa M. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: “I fall in love with the person, not the gender,” say some respondents.Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women’s sexuality—and of the central importance of love.

Moving beyond a traditional focus on sexual functioning, this book emphasizes the complex interaction of psychological, social, cultural and biological influences on womens's sense of themselves as sexual beings. Written for practitioners and educators, its goal is to challenge contradictory messages and meanings that cause many women to feel disconnected from their bodies and from their needs and desires. Themes explored include the development of sexual awareness and sexuality in childhood and adolescence, the critical sexual choices of young adulthood, and the multiple transitions characterizing the middle and later years of life. The book features creative exercises and interventions to help girls and women construct more affirming sexual meanings.

American culture is more sexually liberal than ever. But compared to men, women's sexual pleasure has not grown: Up to 40 percent of American women experience the sexual malaise clinically known as low sexual desire. Between this low desire, muted pleasure, and experiencing sex in terms of labor rather than of lust, women by the millions are dissatisfied with their erotic lives. For too long, this deficit has been explained in terms of women's biology, stress, and age. In The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland rejects the idea that women should settle for diminished pleasure; instead, she argues women should take inequality in the bedroom as seriously as we take it in the workplace and understand its causes and effects. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred women and dozens of sexual health professionals, Rowland shows that the pleasure gap is neither medical malady nor psychological condition but rather a result of our culture's troubled relationship with women's sexual expression. This provocative exploration of modern sexuality makes a case for closing the gap for good.

Western culture has long regarded black female sexuality with a strange mix of fascination and condemnation, associating it with everything from desirability, hypersexuality, and liberation to vulgarity, recklessness, and disease. Yet even as their bodies and sexualities have been the subject of countless public discourses, black women’s voices have been largely marginalized in these discussions. In this groundbreaking collection, feminist scholars from across the academy come together to correct this omission—illuminating black female sexual desires marked by agency and empowerment, as well as pleasure and pain, to reveal the ways black women regulate their sexual lives. The twelve original essays in Black Female Sexualities reveal the diverse ways black women perceive, experience, and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. Yet they do not shy away from exploring the complex ways in which black women negotiate the more traumatic aspects of sexuality and grapple with the legacy of negative stereotypes. Black Female Sexualities takes not only an interdisciplinary approach—drawing from critical race theory, sociology, and performance studies—but also an intergenerational one, in conversation with the foremothers of black feminist studies. In addition, it explores a diverse archive of representations, covering everything from blues to hip-hop, from Crash to Precious, from Sister Souljah to Edwidge Danticat. Revealing that black female sexuality is anything but a black-and-white issue, this collection demonstrates how to appreciate a whole spectrum of subjectivities, experiences, and desires.

Through detailed studies, this collection of writings by academics and activists explores the emergence of contemporary lesbian and butch/femme relationships and communities throughout Asia and their location within the context of nationalist struggles, religious fundamentalism, state gender regimes and global queer movements.

This pioneering collection explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. It shows how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.

This cutting-edge two-volume set with contributions by distinguished and internationally recognized scholars provides a comprehensive picture of contemporary issues in the field of women's sexuality, emphasizing women's diversity and international perspectives. The multifaceted field of women's sexuality has expanded as a field of inquiry over the last 25 years to encompass a wide range of new perspectives, theories, topics, findings, and controversies. The chapters in this work review and question the utility of standard sexuality frameworks, addressing purely biological models, heteronormative definitions of sexuality, and others; and provide new insights and approaches to understanding women's sexuality. The intersectional and contextual nature of women's sexuality and how it is inextricably connected to women's relational, social, economic, and cultural contexts is highlighted. The Essential Handbook of Women's Sexuality includes in-depth coverage of a wide range of women's sexuality topics, including sexual desire and satisfaction; sexuality in relationships; development across the lifespan; sexuality concerns in diverse countries; pornography; lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women; women from diverse backgrounds; health and sexuality; reconceptualizations of women's sexual problems; trauma, rape, and intimate partner violence; and mental health and therapy. These volumes can serve as a resource for students, researchers, and anyone seeking a greater understanding of women's sexuality.

The digital revolution has ushered in a series of sexual revolutions, all contributing to a perfect storm for modern relationships. Online dating, social media, internet pornography, and the phenomenon of the smartphone generation have created an avalanche of change with far-reaching consequences for sexuality today. The church has struggled to address this new moral ecology because it has focused on clarity of belief rather than quality of formation. The real challenge for spiritual formation lies in addressing the underlying moral intuitions we carry subconsciously, which are shaped by the convictions of our age. In this book, a fresh new voice offers a persuasive Christian vision of sex and relationships, calling young adults to faithful discipleship in a hypersexualized world. Drawing from his pastoral experience with young people and from cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Jonathan Grant helps Christian leaders understand the cultural forces that make the church's teaching on sex and relationships ineffective in the lives of today's young adults. He also sets forth pastoral strategies for addressing the underlying fault lines in modern sexuality.

Western culture has long regarded black female sexuality with a strange mix of fascination and condemnation, associating it with everything from desirability, hypersexuality, and liberation to vulgarity, recklessness, and disease. Yet even as their bodies and sexualities have been the subject of countless public discourses, black women’s voices have been largely marginalized in these discussions. In this groundbreaking collection, feminist scholars from across the academy come together to correct this omission—illuminating black female sexual desires marked by agency and empowerment, as well as pleasure and pain, to reveal the ways black women regulate their sexual lives. The twelve original essays in Black Female Sexualities reveal the diverse ways black women perceive, experience, and represent sexuality. The contributors highlight the range of tactics that black women use to express their sexual desires and identities. Yet they do not shy away from exploring the complex ways in which black women negotiate the more traumatic aspects of sexuality and grapple with the legacy of negative stereotypes. Black Female Sexualities takes not only an interdisciplinary approach—drawing from critical race theory, sociology, and performance studies—but also an intergenerational one, in conversation with the foremothers of black feminist studies. In addition, it explores a diverse archive of representations, covering everything from blues to hip-hop, from Crash to Precious, from Sister Souljah to Edwidge Danticat. Revealing that black female sexuality is anything but a black-and-white issue, this collection demonstrates how to appreciate a whole spectrum of subjectivities, experiences, and desires.