The power of love is (as the song says) a curious thing. Rock stars sing about it, comedians tell jokes about it, and just about every advice columnist writes about it. Scientifically, however, just how curious love is, is still an open question. "Love" is a four-letter word to many people—and "sex" is the shortest four-letter word of all. Society builds taboos around these words, but there's no denying that love and sex are spectacular. This is a book about sex: typical and atypical, loving and lustful, sensible and ridiculous. Sexual Landscapes takes on the most challenging puzzles of human sexuality and incorporates the latest scientific research, experts' theories, and the author's own work to explain them. Why are we attracted to the people we love? Why are we hetero-, homo-, bi-, or transsexual? Who's controlling the communication when a man and a woman meet for the first time? Why do there seem to be more gay men than gay women? More bisexual women than bisexual men? Why do men and women say they're aroused by different things, but when tested with actual erotica, appear to be aroused by the same things? Why are we afraid to educate our children about sex? Does homosexuality run in families? How do things as delightful as sex and love become intertwined with pain and violence? Dr. Weinrich challenges our assumptions and popular taboos as he presents the results of fascinating research and controversial theories about why we love and lust. Sexual Landscapes is a provocative, challenging guided tour of our sexual selves that will delight, inform, and instruct. BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: The Power of Love — Introduction Chapter 2: Gender Transpositions — Erotic subtypes discussed in the book Chapter 3: Ten Unsolved Problems — about the science of sexual arousal Chapter 4: The S*x Taboo — and how it cripples our society Chapter 5: Reality or Social Construction? — Are things like 'homosexuality' real, or just constructed by society? Chapter 6: Limerence, Lust, Bisexuality — A new theory of types of attraction that explains how someone might 'fall in lust' with one sex but only 'fall in love' with the other sex Chapter 7: The Periodic-Table Model — How the gender transpositions can be arranged Chapter 8: Plethysmography — Direct genital measurement as an amazing and insightful scientific technique Chapter 9: Families of Origin — How sexual preferences are related to childhood personality traits and parental caring patterns Chapter 10: When Sex and Violence Mix — How can something as wonderful as love sometimes get connected to pain and suffering? Chapter 11: Courtship theory — The secret ways women attract men, and why men don't know about them Chapter 12: Homosexuality in Animals — Gay or bisexual animals? Why not?!?? Chapter 13: Sociobiology — How evolution explains sexual orientation Chapter 14: The Big Picture — Solving the ten problems posed in chapter 3 Chapter 15: Conclusions — Why responsible openness about sex is vital to society References Index — The index page numbers do point accurately to page numbers in this printed edition.

At first sight, to ask how sex has been influenced by technology over time may appear to be a perplexing question. There is no doubt about the current importance of the new technologies of reproduction, sex-change operations, and the passion that electronic chat-rooms incite. However, it might be argued that this is a recent phenomenon and the past has little to reveal about "techno-sexual" relations. This book draws on a number of examples of "productive" relations between technology and sexuality: the technical and sexual organization of medieval monasteries, the moral and erotic transgression afforded by the early wind and water mill, and the romances forged in the context of the train. The authors focus on three main eras: the medieval period (around the eleventh century with its monasteries as sites of technical innovation and heretical religious movements on the borders of Christianity); early modernity (from the time of the European "discoveries" and the creation of "others" including the natives of South America and the witch); and the present and the technologically-mediated future. What might be the connection between mills, navigation techniques and trains and the realm of sexuality? How does the government of sexuality and socio-economic relations in the sixteenth century across distances find resonance in cyberspace? Once the question of technology and sexuality has been placed in a long-term perspective, the reader is invited to reconsider relations often brushed aside, or devalued for their connection with "low", popular or quotidian culture, practices and spaces. Acknowledging the uncomfortable social fact of "techno-sexuality" as a quotidian experience allows us to recuperate a range of often discounted or forgotten social actors, movements and landscapes.

At a moment when "freedom of religion" rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation's changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics. The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D'Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.

From the hotspots of commercial sex through to the suburbia of twitching curtains, urban life and sexualities appear inseparable. Cities are the source of our most familiar images of sexual practice, and are the spaces where new understandings of sexuality take shape. In an era of global business and tourism, cities are also the hubs around which a global sex trade is organised and where virtual sex content is obsessively produced and consumed. Detailing the relationships between sexed bodies, sexual subjectivities and forms of intimacy, Cities and Sexualities explores the role of the city in shaping our sexual lives. At the same time, it describes how the actions of urban governors, city planners, the police and judiciary combine to produce cities in which some sexual proclivities and tastes are normalised and others excluded. In so doing, it maps out the diverse sexual landscapes of the city - from spaces of courtship, coupling and cohabitation through to sites of adult entertainment, prostitution, and pornography. Considering both the normative geographies of heterosexuality and monogamy, as well as urban geographies of radical/queer sex, this book provides a unique perspective on the relationship between sex and the city. Cities and Sexualities offers a wide overview of the state-of-the-art in geographies and sociologies of sexuality, as well as an empirically-grounded account of the forms of desire that animate the erotic city. It describes the diverse sexual landscapes that characterise both the contemporary Western city as well as cities in the global South. The book features a wide range of boxed case studies as well as suggestions for further reading at the end each chapter. It will appeal to undergraduate students studying Geography, Urban Studies, Gender Studies and Sociology.

The poems in Landscape with Sex and Violence explore what it means to be a woman, a sexual being, and a trauma survivor in contemporary America.

First Published in 1994. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to gather in one place information that otherwise would be difficult to find. Bring together a collection of articles that are authoritative and reflect a variety of viewpoints. The contributors come from a wide range of disciplines— from nursing to medicine, from biology to history— and include sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists, literary specialists, academics and non-academics, clinicians and teachers, researchers and generalists.

This book offers a major reconceptualization of the term audience, one which involves a landscape, including the landscape of a given audiencesituated and territorializing features of any way of seeing and defining the world. It acknowledges, in the face of conventional discourse analysis, the contextual features of discourse, to produce complex and textured understanding of the concept of audience. The book will speak to students of rhetoric, mass communication, cultural studies, anthropology, and sociology alike. This book offers a major reconceptualization of the term audience, including the landscape of a given audiencethe situated and territorializing features of any way of seeing and defining the world. Given de Certeaus hypothesis that listening, watching, and reading all occur in places and result in produce transformed paths or spaces, the contributors to this landmark volume have provided innovative essays analyzing the transformations that take place in the geography between sender and receiver. The book acknowledges, in the face of conventional discourse analysis, the contextual features of discourse, to produce a complex and textured understanding of the concept of audience. The Audience and Its Landscape, presents the work of a vital cross-section of international scholars including Swedens Karl Erik Rosengren, the UKs Jay G. Blumler and Roger Silverstone, Australias Tony Bennett, Israels Elihu Katz, Canadas Martin Allor, and the United Statess Janice Radway, Byron Reeves, and John Fisk, to name a few. This book is truly groundbreaking in its depth and scope, and will speak to students of rhetoric, mass communication, cultural studies, anthropology, and sociology alike.

Over the past decade geographers have shown a growing interest in 'the body' as an important co-ordinate of subjectivity and as a way of understanding further relationships between people, place and space. To date, however geographers have published little on what is one of, if not the, most important of all bodies - bodies that conceive, give birth and nurture other bodies. It is time that feminist, social, and cultural geographers contributed more to debates about maternal bodies. This book offers a series of windows on the ways in which maternal bodies influence, and are influenced by, social and spatial processes. Topics covered include women ‘coming out’ as pregnant at work, changing fashion for pregnant women, being disabled and pregnant, the politics of home versus hospital birth, breastfeeding practices that sit outside the norm, women who are constructed as ‘bad’ mothers, and ‘e-mums’ (mothers who go on-line).

Despite decades of greater gender awareness at work in Western countries, gender inequality in the executive suites is alive and well. "The Face of the Firm" highlights new critical perspectives on the relationship between hegemonic masculine cultures, gender embodiment, and gender disparities in corporate organizations. Using data from over 100 interviews with female and male executives who worked for some of the most prestigious advertising and computer firms in the world, the book makes important connections between the empirical data and contemporary sexism in the United States and United Kingdom. The book refocuses the debate of executive work, organizational spaces, and gender inequality on gendered bodies at work. It also demonstrates that gendered and sexualized relations among executives often construct the production process. The book makes a contribution to masculinity, gender, and work scholarship and is organized along three key concepts: homogeneity, homosociability, and heterosexuality. These address such factors as the organizational locker room, sexual and heterosexual spaces at work, and the construction of women and men as different workers. This conceptual model is crucial for evaluating the mechanisms that support male dominance among highly skilled professionals and executives."