In The Deconstruction of Sex, Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and foster a better understanding of how sex complicates our everyday existence in the age of #MeToo. Throughout their conversation, Nancy and Goh engage with topics ranging from relation, penetration, and subjection to touch, erotics, and jouissance. They show how despite its entrenchment in social norms and centrality to our being-in-the-world, sex lacks a clearly defined essence. At the same time, they point to the potentiality of literature to inscribe the senses of sex. In so doing, Nancy and Goh prompt us to reconsider our relations with ourselves and others through sex in more sensitive, respectful, and humble ways without bracketing the troubling aspects of sex.

Contemporary feminist and poststructuralist theories of sex and gender are explored alongside an investigation of how people make sense of such concepts as heterosexuality, orgasm, sexual dysfunction and femininity and masculinity.

Exploring the contemporary dynamics of sexuality in the Middle East, this volume offers an in-depth and unique insight into this much contested and debated issue. It focuses on the role of sexuality in political and social struggles and the politicization of sexuality and gender in the region. Contributors illustrate the complexity of discourses, debates and issues, focusing in particular on the situation in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey, and explain how they cannot be reduced to a single underlying factor such as religion, or a simple binary opposition between the religious right and feminists. Contributors include renowned academicians, researchers, psychologists, historians, human rights and women's rights advocates and political scientists, from different countries and backgrounds, offering a balanced and contemporary perspective on this important issue, as well as highlighting the implication of these debates in larger socio-political contexts.

What if it's not your fault that sex is bad in your marriage? Based on a groundbreaking in-depth survey of 22,000 Christian women, The Great Sex Rescue unlocks the secrets to what makes some marriages red hot while others fizzle out. Generations of women have grown up with messages about sex that make them feel dirty, used, or invisible, while men have been sold such a cheapened version of sex, they don't know what they're missing. The Great Sex Rescue hopes to turn all of that around, developing a truly biblical view of sex where mutuality, intimacy, and passion reign. The Great Sex Rescue pulls back the curtain on what is happening in Christian bedrooms and exposes the problematic teachings that wreck sex for so many couples--and the good teachings that leave others breathless. In the #metoo and #churchtoo era, not only is this book a long overdue corrective to church culture, it is poised to free thousands of couples from repressive and dissatisfying sex lives so that they can experience the kind of intimacy and wholeness God intended.

Countersexual Manifesto is an outrageous yet rigorous work of trans theory, a performative literary text, and an insistent call to action. Seeking to overthrow all constraints on what can be done with and to the body, Paul B. Preciado offers a provocative challenge to even the most radical claims about gender, sexuality, and desire. Preciado lays out mock constitutional principles for a countersexual revolution that will recognize genitalia as technological objects and offers step-by-step illustrated instructions for dismantling the heterocentric social contract. He calls theorists such as Derrida, Foucault, Butler, and Haraway to task for not going nearly far enough in their attempts to deconstruct the naturalization of normative identities and behaviors. Preciado’s claim that the dildo precedes the penis—that artifice, not nature, comes first in the history of sexuality—forms the basis of his demand for new practices of sexual emancipation. He calls for a world of sexual plasticity and fabrication, of bio-printers and “dildonics,” and he invokes countersexuality’s roots in the history of sex toys, pornography, and drag in order to rupture the supposedly biological foundations of the heterocentric regime. His claims are extreme, but supported through meticulous readings of philosophy and theory, as well as popular culture. The Manifesto is now available in English translation for its twentieth anniversary, with a new introduction by Preciado. Countersexual Manifesto will disrupt feminism and queer theory and scandalize us all with its hyperbolic but deadly serious defiance of everything we’ve been told about sex.

At last - an intelligent and accessible introduction to the relationship between feminism and deconstruction. In this incisive and illuminating book, Diane Elam unravels: * the contemporary relevance of feminism and deconstruction * how we can still understand and talk about the materiality of women's bodies * whether gender can be distinguished from sex * the place of ethics and political action in the light of postmodernist theory. Clearly and brilliantly written, Feminism and Deconstruction is essential reading for anyone who needs a no-nonsense but stimulating guide through one of the mazes of contemporary theory.

Poststructuralism, particularly through the writings of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, has achieved remarkable success in challenging our belief in natural sex categories and instincts. Here, Carrie Hull endorses the progressive ideals of poststructuralism while demonstrating the superiority of a realist account of sex and sexuality. Embracing biological and cultural variability, Hull nonetheless shows that the sexed body is naturally structured and deeply meaningful. Poststructuralist philosophers have argued that biological sex is a continuum rather than a binary, and that sex identity and drive are entirely performances of cultural norms rather than expressions of innate qualities. Hull draws parallels with Nelson Goodman, W.V.O. Quine, and B.F. Skinner to show that these poststructuralist theories are rooted in a nominalist, relativist, and behaviourist philosophy, and develops an alternative framework using arguments from contemporary and critical realism. Employing colourful illustrations from biology, anthropology and psychology, Hull demonstrates the rich potential of realist philosophy, and concludes that it is philosophically and scientifically correct, on one hand, and politically advisable, on the other, to maintain a distinction - albeit attenuated - between sex and gender, and sexuality and behaviour.

We all carry sexual shame. Whether we grew up in the repressive purity culture of American Evangelical Christianity or not, we've all been taught in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that sex (outside of very specific contexts) is immoral and taboo. Psychotherapist Matthias Roberts helps readers overcome their shame around sex by overcoming three unhealthy coping mechanisms we use to manage that shame. Beyond Shame encourages each of us to determine our own definition of healthy sex, while avoiding the ditches of boundaryless sex positivity on the one hand and strict moralistic boundaries on the other. Define your sexual values on your own terms, overcome your shame, and start having great, healthy sex.

In an update of the groundbreaking original title, Dr. Juli Slattery illuminates the power of women in marriage, with an emphasis on the uniqueness of a woman’s capacity to build intimacy. What do you do if your husband won’t get a job? When you don’t like the way he's parenting the kids? How do you know when to stand up to a controlling husband—or if you’ve become a controlling or manipulative wife? Many women feel lost in their marriages. They don't know what to do with their disappointment, when to ask for help, or what it looks like to let go of the need to control. Yet, God has given women incredible power in marriage—but they have to learn how to use it. In a complete rewrite of her bestselling book, Finding the Hero in Your Husband, psychologist Dr. Juli Slattery gently guides women to see how their attempts to manage or fix the messiness of marriage may actually undermine the very connection they want to build. As you read this book, you will: See how disappointment in marriage isn’t the end of intimacy, but an opportunity to build true intimacy that will go the distance. Learn to use your relational power in a way that builds intimacy—instead of sabotaging it. Recognize the ways you unknowingly sabotage intimacy by using your power to take over in marriage. Understand what biblical submission isn’t and be empowered to step into the influence and responsibility you have within marriage. Solidly grounded in biblical truth, Juli covers topics such as work, home life, conflict, and intimacy. As a mentor and friend, she offers explanations of God’s design, healthy expectations, and relatable applications that women of faith can practice to influence their marriage and deepen their relationship with God. Ultimately, Finding the Hero in Your Husband, Revisited, will help a wife more clearly see and encourage the hero within her husband by examining her own heart.

An ethicist provides an engaging exploration of the meaning of sex and articulates a Christian ethic for addressing a host of sexual issues facing readers today.