Public Sex

As some activists have turned to regulation rather than education in the effort to curb the AIDS epidemic, the public culture at the foundation of queer culture has come under attack.

Twelve essays provide a nuanced portrait of why public sexual activity is such an integral part of gay culture. Contributors explore issues such as visibility and secrecy, as well as economic status and social class, and interrogate the historical trajectories through which certain locations come to be favored sites for sexual encounters.

This informative book examines the dangers of violence, murder, and HIV contraction and how community organizations are trying to address these issues. Containing interviews with police officials, murderers, and the sex workers themselves, this in-depth study discusses data on assault and crime to provide you with information on how individuals can stay safe while seeking sex in public places."--BOOK JACKET.

Despite decades of feminist awareness and activism, women continue to be portrayed in outdoor advertising in a limited and sexist manner. The fact that in public space audiences are exposed to such images without choice, renders the issue an important public policy concern. Sex in Public utilises a large outdoor advertising data collection to examine the contemporary outdoor advertising landscape, documenting the routine portrayal of women as thin, white, young and idle. This book examines why such portrayals are concerning for feminists as well as for public policy, and explores the advertising self-regulation systems that facilitate the display of such images. This book criticises sexist outdoor advertising as a form of sexual harassment given that imagery often bearing very strong semblance to pin-ups which would be outlawed in a workplace are readily displayed in public space, reflecting a troublesome public policy double standard. Understanding sexist outdoor advertising as a form of sexual harassment is a new framework that Sex in Public offers to understand, critique and condemn such images.

The most intelligent and outspoken commentator on sexual politics writing today, Pat Califia has been "fuming and fussing" about censorship and the rights of perverts for more than two decades. Whether writing about gender bending and transsexuality, lesbian relationships, S/M and leather sex, sex between lesbians and gay men, eroticizing latex and safer sex, prostitution, or sex in public, Califia's essays—clear consistent, provocative and eminently readable—set the standard for writing about sex.

A chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States covers sexual practices, gay and lesbian activism, feminism, censorship, and other important issues. Original.

An up close and personal look at impersonal sex, with revealing looks into the steamy world of sex in bathhouses, gyms, parks, peep shows, swingers clubs, mens rooms, and Internet cruising.

The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book Two of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Victorian Era to present day. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.