Landscape With Sex And Violence

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.

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.

Perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union transformed every aspect of life in Russia, and as hope began to give way to pessimism, popular culture came to reflect the anxiety and despair felt by more and more Russians. Free from censorship for the first time in Russia's history, the popular culture industry (publishing, film, and television) began to disseminate works that featured increasingly explicit images and descriptions of sex and violence. In Overkill, Eliot Borenstein explores this lurid and often-disturbing cultural landscape in close, imaginative readings of such works as You're Just a Slut, My Dear! (Ty prosto shliukha, dorogaia!), a novel about sexual slavery and illegal organ harvesting; the Nympho trilogy of books featuring a Chechen-fighting sex addict; and the Mad Dog and Antikiller series of books and films recounting, respectively, the exploits of the Russian Rambo and an assassin killing in the cause of justice. Borenstein argues that the popular cultural products consumed in the post-perestroika era were more than just diversions; they allowed Russians to indulge their despair over economic woes and everyday threats. At the same time, they built a notion of nationalism or heroism that could be maintained even under the most miserable of social conditions, when consumers felt most powerless. For Borenstein, the myriad depictions of deviance in pornographic and also detectiv fiction, with their patently excessive and appalling details of social and moral decay, represented the popular culture industry's response to the otherwise unimaginable scale of Russia's national collapse. "The full sense of collapse," he writes, "required a panoptic view that only the media and culture industry were eager to provide, amalgamating national collapse into one master narrative that would then be readily available to most individuals as a framework for understanding their own suffering and their own fears."

"First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014."--Title page verso.

A moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon. The first time Lynn Melnick listened to a Dolly Parton song in full, she was 14 years old, in the triage room of a Los Angeles hospital, waiting to be admitted to a drug rehab program. Already in her young life as a Jewish teen in the 1980s, she had been the victim of rape, abuse, and trauma, and her path to healing would be long. But in Parton’s words and music, she recognized a fellow survivor. In this powerful, incisive work of social and self-exploration, Melnick blends personal essay with cultural criticism to explore Parton’s dual identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol, identities that reflect the author’s own fraught history with rape culture and the arduous work of reclaiming her voice. Each chapter engages with the artistry and impact of one of Parton’s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, misogyny, creativity, parenting, friendship, sex, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Bold and inventive, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive gives us an accessible and memorable framework for understanding our times and a revelatory account of survival, persistence, and self-discovery.

Sexual spaces, normally inhabited by (mostly) female sex workers, are understood as masculine spaces, and positioned for and around male consumers. However, red light zones and public sex performances in both Thailand and Holland are being explored and visually consumed by female tourists in significant numbers. Their presence in red light districts and sexual venues is at odds with the ways in which sexual spaces have normally been positioned. Woman and Sex Tourism Landscapes explores female tourists' interactions with highly sexualized spaces and places in two very different contexts: the Netherlands and Thailand. Addressing this incongruence, this text explores the ways in which these spaces are constructed, and examines the different relations that govern the management of, and female tourist interactions with these liminal,sexual zones. Ethnographic data collected in both countries suggests that far from being male-centred spaces, the red light districts and associated sexual entertainment venues are very much open to female tourists. Drawing on this research the author argues that some women are indeed interested in exploring sexualized zones, challenging assumptions about women’s involvements with sexual space. Thinking specifically about the visual nature of women's sexualized experiences, the analysis draws on a range of different theoretical understandings that address power, privilege, and the gaze. An important contribution to a range of debates, this book will appeal to students and researchers in tourism, geography, sociology, gender studies and cultural theory.

'Rape Loot Pillage' offers a new framework for understanding conflict-related sexual violence based on feminist international political economy. By looking at patterns of contemporary conflict this book proposes a new typology of wartime sexual violence that ties the 'value' of this violence to the politico-economic objectives of the perpetrators in different conflict contexts.

Rethinking Rape applies current feminist theory to an urgent political and ethical issue to counter definitions of rape as mere assault Book jacket.