Boys Sex

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Now in paperback—Peggy Orenstein, author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller Girls & Sex, turns her focus to the sexual lives of young men. “Eye-opening…. Every few pages, the boy world cracks open a little bit…. Even in the most anxiety-provoking moments of Boys & Sex, it’s clear that Orenstein believes in the goodness of boys and the men they can become, and she believes in us, as parents, to raise them” (New York Times Book Review). Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex broke ground, shattered taboos, and launched conversations about young women’s right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy. Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word “hilarious” robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

Discusses the physical, emotional, and ethical aspects of sex including such topics as pre-adolescent sex play, masturbation, homosexuality, dating and petting, intercourse and its consequences, and other related topics.

The New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex and Cinderella Ate My Daughter delivers her first ever collection of essays—funny, poignant, deeply personal and sharply observed pieces, drawn from three decades of writing, which trace girls’ and women’s progress (or lack thereof) in what Orenstein once called a “half-changed world.” Named one of the “40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years” by Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics. In Don’t Call Me Princess, Orenstein’s most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless—they have, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate. Don’t Call Me Princess offers a crucial evaluation of where we stand today as women—in our work lives, sex lives, as mothers, as partners—illuminating both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men: The Trauma of Sexual Abuse is an indispensable go-to book for understanding male sexual victimization. It has become increasingly clear since the 1980s that men and boys, like women and girls, are sexually abused and assaulted in alarming numbers. Yet there have been few resources available to victims, their loved ones, or those trying to help them. Richard B. Gartner was in the vanguard of clinicians treating male sexual victimization and has written extensively about it, initially in professional papers, then in his landmark 1999 book for clinicians Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, continuing with his 2005 work Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse. He has been a tireless teacher, clinician, and advocate for male victims of sexual abuse in the classroom, the lecture hall, and of course the consulting room as well as in newspaper, television, radio, and online interviews. Dr. Gartner has gathered together expert colleagues from the trauma, psychoanalytic, medical, and survivor treatment fields. Together, they have created a comprehensive guide to what was once thought to be a rarity but now is clearly an all-too-common occurrence. Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men looks at the realities of male sexual victimization, guiding clinicians and lay people alike to understand the complexities of the devastation it causes in victimized boys and men. It considers topics as diverse as: sexual assault in institutions like the military, sports teams, schools, universities, and religious organizations; sex trafficking of boys and adolescents; neurobiology and brain chemistry of male survivors of sexual abuse; gender and sexual dysfunctions and confusions resulting from sexual exploitation and trauma; physicians’ treatment of sexually abused men’s medical problems; socio-cultural influences on processing and treating men’s and boys’ sexual victimization. Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men is required reading for anyone working with male victims of sexual abuse and assault at any level – psychotherapists, rape counselors, attorneys, journalists, guidance counselors, physicians, clergy, graduate students, and lawmakers – and helpful to lay people interested in this often-unrecognized problem.

A long overdue book by a psychologist who has extensive clinical experience treating male victims of child sexual abuse, it explodes the myth that sexual abuse of male children is rare, or that the consequences are less serious than for girls. Hunter examines the physical and emotional impact of abuse on its victims and the factors affecting revovery. With personal case histories of victims and their families, this is a powerfully written and meticulously researched book that is a landmark in the field of child sexual abuse literature.

A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. The mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world.