Transgressive Sex

Sex is often regarded as a dangerous business that must be rigorously controlled, regulated, and subjected to rules. Sexual acts that defy acceptable practices may be seen as variously defiling, immoral, and even unnatural. They may challenge and subvert both cultural preconceptions and the social order in a politics of sexual transgression that threatens to transform permissible boundaries and restructure bodily engagements. This collection of essays explores acts of sexual transgression that have the power to reconfigure perceptions of bodily intimacy and the social norms of interaction. Considering issues such as domestic violence, child prostitution, health and sex, teenage sex, and sex with animals across a range of settings from contemporary Oceania, the Pacific, South Africa, and southeast Asia to Euro-America, this book should interest all those who question the "naturalness" of sex, including public health workers, clinical practitioners and students of sex, sexuality, and gender in the humanities and social sciences.

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.

Regulating Sex is an anthology that presents debates over the role of the state in constructing and controlling erotic practice, intimacy, and identity. The purpose of this edited volume is to address sexual dilemmas in law and the state in substantive areas such as same-sex domestic partnerships, sexual economies, and childhood sexuality via a series of spirited dialogues between socio-legal scholars from diverse disciplinary, national, and political perspectives.

Queering the Medieval Mediterranean analyzes the forgotten exchange of sexualities that was brought forth through the Mediterranean and its bordering landmasses. It highlights the importance of queerness and sexuality developed on the Mediterranean trade routes.

This book offers an innovative way of doing critical discourse analysis that focuses on the performatively produced concepts and social structures that support oppressive attitudes in a community. It draws upon ethnographic data from a women's field hockey club to examine players' homophobic attitudes towards lesbians on the team.

This unique collection by leading authors explores the links between therapy and the political world, and their contribution to each other. Topics covered include: Psychotherapy in the political sphere, including the roots of conflict, social trauma, and ecopsychology Political dimensions of psychotherapy practice, such as discrimination, power, sexuality, and postcolonial issues Psychotherapy, the state and institutions, including the law and ethics, and psychotherapy in healthcare Working at the interface, examples of therapy in political action from Croatia, the USA, the UK and Israel/Palestine How to ‘place’ political issues in therapy is highly controversial – for example, whether political themes should be interpreted psychologically in the consulting room, or respected as valid in their own right: similar issues arise for the role of therapeutic insights in political reality. This book provides a map through these complex and demanding areas for therapists and counsellors in training, as well as for experienced practitioners or other interested readers. Contributors: Lane Arye, Arlene Audergon, Emanuel Berman, Sandra Bloom, Jocelyn Chaplin, Petruska Clarkson, Chess Denman, Dawn Freshwater, Kate Gentile, John Lees, Renos Papadopoulos, Hilary Prentice, Mary-Jayne Rust, Judy Ryde, Andrew Samuels, Nick Totton.

The stories in the Grimm brothers' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), first published in 1812 and 1815, have come to define academic and popular understandings of the fairy tale genre. Yet over a period of forty years, the brothers, especially Wilhelm, revised, edited, sanitized, and bowdlerized the tales, publishing the seventh and final edition in 1857 with many of the sexual implications removed. However, the contributors in Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms demonstrate that the Grimms and other collectors paid less attention to ridding the tales of non-heterosexual implications and that, in fact, the Grimms' tales are rich with queer possibilities. Editors Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill introduce the volume with an overview of the tales' literary and interpretive history, surveying their queerness in terms of not just sex, gender and sexuality, but also issues of marginalization, oddity, and not fitting into society. In three thematic sections, contributors then consider a range of tales and their queer themes. In Faux Femininities, essays explore female characters, and their relationships and feminine representation in the tales. Contributors to Revising Rewritings consider queer elements in rewritings of the Grimms' tales, including Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, Jeanette Winterson's Twelve Dancing Princesses, and contemporary reinterpretations of both "Snow White" and "Snow White and Rose Red." Contributors in the final section, Queering the Tales, consider queer elements in some of the Grimms' original tales and explore intriguing issues of gender, biology, patriarchy, and transgression. With the variety of unique perspectives in Transgressive Tales, readers will find new appreciation for the lasting power of the fairy-tale genre. Scholars of fairy-tale studies and gender and sexuality studies will enjoy this thought-provoking volume.

The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics is a lively and authoritative guide to current thought about ethical issues in all areas of human activity—personal, medical, sexual, social, political, judicial, and international, from the natural world to the world of business. Twenty-eight topics are covered in specially written surveys by leading figures in their fields: each gives an authoritative map of the ethical terrain, explaining how the debate has developed in recent years, engaging critically with the most notable work in the area, and pointing directions for future work. The Handbook will be essential reading, and a fascinating resource of ideas and information, for academics and students across a wide range of disciplines.