Troubling Sex

When legal scholars or judges approach the subject of sexuality, they are often constrained by existing theoretical frameworks. Queer theorists typically focus on sexual liberty but tend not to consider issues such as sexual violence; feminist theories focus on violence but often ignore the joy of sexuality. Craig examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to sexuality to assess the possibility of devising a legal theory of sexuality that can embrace both the good and the bad, ensuring equality without assimilation, diversity without exclusion, and liberty without suffering. Blending feminist theory with queer theory, she advances an iconoclastic approach to law and sexuality that has the power to transform both theory and practice.

In this book, Francis highlights the tension between inclusion and sexual orientation, using this tension as an entry to explore how LGB youth experience schooling. Drawing on research with teachers and LGB youth, this book troubles the teaching and learning of sexuality diversity and, by doing so, provides a critical exploration and analysis of how curriculum, pedagogy, and policy reproduces compulsory heterosexuality in schools. The book makes visible the challenges of teaching sexuality diversity in South African schools while highlighting its potential for rethinking conceptions of the social and cultural representations thereof. Francis links questions of policy and practice to wider issues of society, sexuality, social justice and highlights its implications for teaching and learning. The author encourages policy makers, teachers, and scholars of sexualities and education to develop further questions and informed action to challenge heteronormativity and heterosexism.

In recent years, researchers have considerably expanded our understanding of the experiences of students of color and of students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (ie. Queer). They have provided us with rich resources for addressing racism and heterosexism; however, few have examined the unique experiences of students who are both queer and of color, and few have examined the heterosexist or white-centered nature of anti-racist or anti-heterosexist education (respectively). What of the students and educators who live and teach at the intersection of race and sexuality? By combining autobiographical accounts with qualitative and quantitative research on queer students of different racial backgrounds, these essays not only trouble the ways we think about the intersections of race and sexuality, they also offer theoretical insights and educational strategies to educators committed to bringing about change.

For anyone who is dating or thinking about marriage, pastor and bestselling author Andy Stanley shares practical, uncensored wisdom on avoiding mistakes in the present to help you avoid regrets in the future. Single? Looking for the "right person"? Convinced that if you met the "right person" everything would turn out "right?" Think again. In The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating, Andy Stanley explores the challenges, assumptions, and pitfalls associated with dating in the twenty-first century. This guide takes a fresh approach to dating and love in the modern era by turning the search for "the one" back onto the searcher, challenging you to ask yourself tough questions like: Am I the person that the person I'm looking for is looking for? Are the Bible's teachings about women relevant today? If sex is only physical, why is the pain of sexual sin so deep? As you dig deep into Stanley's answers, you'll be equipped and empowered to step up and set a new standard for this generation by uncovering the things that create trouble in dating relationships and creating better habits now that will pay off later as you dive into married life. Praise for The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating: "No one speaks more powerfully and practically into the issues of dating and marriage in the twenty-first century than Andy Stanley. The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating is an exceptional resource for anyone seeking to navigate challenging relationship waters and survive in a culture that's confused and complex. Straightforward. Graceful. Truthful. Needed." --Louie Giglio, Passion City Church, Passion Conferences "Andy's new rules for love, sex, and dating are so wise, so compelling, so clear that I want every single friend I have to read this book, and I want to save a couple copies for my boys, so they can read it in a decade or so." --Shauna Niequist, author of I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet "Having experienced more than my fair share of destructive, harmful dating relationships, I can authoritatively say that Andy's views on the matter are clear and convicting. Andy so beautifully conveys the message of the unfathomable grace of God, leaving you free to turn a leaf and begin a new dating chapter, making better decisions and living with fewer regrets." —Maggie Bridges, Miss Georgia 2014

"In global politics, women's bodies are policed, objectified, surveilled, and feared, with particular attention paid to both their met or unmet procreative potential. By illuminating and interrogating representations and narratives of maternity, this volume shows how practices of global politics shape and are shaped by the gendered norms and institutions that underpin motherhood. The guiding theoretical idea in this volume is that motherhood matters in global politics. However - as with so many political phenomena coded 'female' in the binary cognitive architectures of the West - the diverse ways in which performances and practices of motherhood are constituted by and are constitutive of other dimensions of political life they are frequently obscured or assumed to be of little interest to scholars, policy makers, and practitioners. Featuring innovative and diverse interrogations of the politics of motherhood as an institution, this collection shows that maternality is troubled, complicated, and heterogeneous in global politics and thus performances and practices of motherhood warrant closer and more sustained scrutiny"--

Sexual Reckonings is the fascinating tale of adolescent girls coming of age in the South during the most explosive decades for the region. Focusing on the period from 1920 to 1960, Susan Cahn reveals how both the life of the South and the meaning of adolescence underwent enormous political, economic, and social shifts. Those years witnessed the birth of a modern awareness of adolescence and female sexuality that clashed mightily with the white supremacist and patriarchal legacies of the old South. As youth staked its claim, the bodies and beliefs of southern girls became the battlefield for a transformed South, which was, like them, experiencing growing pains. Cahn reveals how young women, both white and black, were seen as the South's greatest hope and its greatest threat. Viewed as critical actors in every regional crisis, from the economic recession and urban migrations of the 1920s to the racial conflicts precipitated by school desegregation in the 1950s, female teenagers became the conspicuous subjects of social policy and regional imagination. All the while, these adolescents pursued their own desires and discovered their own meanings, creating cracks in the twin pillars of the Jim Crow South--"racial purity" and white male dominance--that would soon be toppled by the student-led civil rights movement. Sexual Reckonings is an amazingly intimate look at a time of deep personal exploration and profound cultural change for southern girls and for the society they inhabited, a powerful account of the clash between a society's fears and the daily lives and aspirations of its most prized, and unpredictable, population.

Abrahamic scriptures serve as cultural pharmakon, prescribing what can act as both poison and remedy. This collection shows that their sometimes veiled but eternally powerful polemics can both destroy and build, exclude and include, and serve as the ultimate justification for cruelty or compassion. Here, scholars not only excavate these works for their formative and continuing cultural impact on communities, identities, and belief systems, they select some of the most troubling topics that global communities continue to navigate. Their analysis of both texts and their reception help explain how these texts promote norms and build collective identities. Rejecting the notion of the sacred realm as separate from the mundane realm and beyond critical challenge, this collection argues—both implicitly and sometimes transparently—for the presence of the sacred within everyday life and open to challenge. The very rituals, prayers, and traditions that are deemed sacred interweave into our cultural systems in infinite ways. Together, these authors explore the dynamic nature of everyday life and the often-brutal power of these texts over everyday meaning.

In Girls in Trouble with the Law, sociologist Laurie Schaffner takes us inside juvenile detention centers and explores the worlds of the young women incarcerated within. Across the nation, girls of color are disproportionately represented in detention facilities, and many report having experienced physical harm and sexual assaults. For girls, the meaning of these and other factors such as the violence they experience remain undertheorized and below the radar of mainstream sociolegal scholarship. When gender is considered as an analytic category, Schaffner shows how gender is often seen through an outmoded lens. Offering a critical assessment of what she describes as a gender-insensitive juvenile legal system, Schaffner makes a compelling argument that current policies do not go far enough to empower disadvantaged girls so that communities can assist them in overcoming the social limitations and gender, sexual, and racial/ethnic discrimination that continue to plague young women growing up in contemporary United States.