Sexually Speaking

The ultimate women's guide to sexual health?new from Dr. Ruth In this down-to-earth guide, celebrated sex expert and bestselling author Dr. Ruth Westheimer teams up with prominent gynecologist at Cornell and New York Presbyterian Medical Centers, Dr. Amos Grunebaum, to address the most pressing health issues women face today. Written in Dr. Ruth's refreshingly candid and lively style, it gives you everything you need to take charge of your health?from finding a gynecologist to having a happy sex life to planning or avoiding a pregnancy. With practical advice and information for every age and stage of a woman's life, Sexually Speaking is an invaluable reference you will turn to again and again. Covers everything you've ever wanted to know about women's health?from celebrated sex expert and therapist Dr. Ruth and top gynecologist Dr. Amos Addresses questions related to sexuality, hormones, STDs, pregnancy, menopause, fibroids, ovarian cancer, and other women's health concerns Helps you overcome embarrassment and other common obstacles to understanding and safeguarding your personal health Combines Dr. Ruth's straightforward, reassuring approach to some of the more challenging and uncomfortable concerns related to women's health and the expertise of Dr. Amos, who has seen it all?from routine exams to high risk births

This updated and expanded version of the bestselling More Speaking of Sex, continues to deliver no-nonsense facts in a humorous yet scientific manner. With new chapters related to the Internet, and multi-faiths, parents will find the latest and greatest information about sexual health. Meg Hickling gently dispels misconceptions and unhealthy beliefs about sex by telling even more humorous stories from over 25 years of experience working with children, families, teachers, and other professionals. Hickling touches on the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of sexuality - a "whole" person approach to sex. She knows that many parents had no information given to them by their parents, their churches, or their schools, when they were growing up, and Hickling hopes this book will provide the knowledge parents need. Hickling provides age-appropriate information, guidelines on how to talk with children at various stages of their development, and examples of how to answer tough questions.

Gore Vidal has been described as America's finest essayist. He is also one of America's finest sex writers. Here, 14 essays and three interviews on sex and gender, including a candid conversation with Larry Kramer.

Nowadays we talk about sex incessantly - yet we still lack a comfortable language in which to do so. The 'polite' vocabularies of religion, medicine, law and sociology are too formal, value-laden and often simply boring, whilst the vernacular Anglo-Saxon words are regarded by some as 'obscene', and are frequently used by others in an aggressively negative, sex-hating way. Antony Grey criticizes the various rhetorics of sexual discussion, and points at the ways in which language often becomes a stumbling-block to mutual understanding and happiness. He calls for a thorough overhaul of sexual discourse, to pave the way for greater realism.

As the field of sexuality studies has become a growth area in academia and classes on sexuality studies are incorporated into various disciplines, the expanding book market has been filled with specialist oriented texts which are often theoretically focused and contain too many summaries for an undergraduate audience. Addressing this imbalance, this key new volume presents the field of sexuality in an accessible and engaging way for undergraduates. Breaking new ground, both substantively and stylistically, this book offers students, academics and researchers an accessible, engaging introduction and overview of this emerging field. Its central premise is to explore the social character of sexuality, the role of social differences such as race or nationality in creating sexual variation, and the ways sex is entangled in relations of power and inequality. Through this novel approach, the field of sexuality is considered, for the first time, in multicultural, global, and comparative terms and from a truly social perspective. This important volume consists of over fifty short and original essays on the key topics and themes in sexuality studies, and interviews with twelve leading scholars in the field which convey some of the most innovative work being done. Each contribution clearly conveys the latest research with examples. Ideal for students of gender and sexuality studies, this topical and timely volume will be an invaluable resource to all those with an interest in sexuality studies.

As anyone who has read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales knows, Middle English literature is rife with sexually explicit language and situations. Less canonical works can be even more brazen in describing illicit acts of sexual activity and sexual violence. Such scenes and language were not, however, included exclusively for titillation. In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris argues instead for obscenity’s usefulness in sexual education. She investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman’s songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. She focuses in particular on understudied female-voiced lyrics and gendered debate poems, many of which have their origin in oral culture, and includes teaching-ready editions of fourteen largely unknown anonymous lyrics in women’s voices. Harris’s own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.

Introducing the New Sexuality Studies: Original Essays is an innovative, reader-friendly collection of essays that introduces the field of sexuality studies to undergraduate students. Examining the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of sexuality, this collection is designed to serve as a comprehensive yet accessible textbook for sexuality courses at the undergraduate level. The fourth edition adds 51 new essays whilst retaining 33 of the most popular essays from previous editions. It features perspectives that are intersectional, transnational, sex positive, and attentive to historically marginalized groups along multiple axes of inequality, including gender, race, class, ability, body size, religious identity, age, and, of course, sexuality. Essays explore how a wide variety of social institutions, including medicine, religion, the state, and education, shape sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. Sources of, and empirical research on, oppression are discussed, along with modes of resistance, activism, and policy change. The fourth edition also adds new user-friendly features for students and instructors. Keywords are italicized and defined, and each chapter concludes with review questions to help students ascertain their comprehension of key points. There is also an online annotated table of contents to help readers identify key ideas and concepts at a glance for each chapter.