Two high school seniors believe their love to be so strong that it will last forever.

"From Teen Vogue sex and love columnist Nona Willis Aronowitz, a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism that probes the true meaning of desire and sexual freedom in today's age. At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona's life, and in America, was in extreme disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were suffering from overexposure. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what "sexual liberation" meant were suddenly up for debate. It was in that moment of personal and political sea change that Nona turned to the words of history's sexual revolutionaries-including the writing of her late mother, early radical pro-sex feminist Ellen Willis. At a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, Nona asked herself: What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy? Bad Sex places Nona's intimate history alongside her family history and other stories stretching back nearly two hundred years: those of ambivalent wives and unchill sluts, Free Lovers and radical lesbians, sensitive men and woke misogynists, women who risk everything for sex, who buy sex, reject sex, have bad sex and good sex. The result is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of the enduring barriers to sexual freedom. This book lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism and also helps shine a light on universal questions of desire"--

"A fiercely argued, keenly insightful, hilarious investigation of the impact of COVID-19 on sexual and romantic relationships, in which the author situates her own and others' coupled lockdown experiences against larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and #BLM"--

This anthology for queer Jewish history draws from two millennia, five continents, and fifteen languages. Through poetry, drama, law, literature, memoirs and commentary, the book reveals a history long shared by two ancient cultures, Jewish and gay. It includes generous bibliographies, two indexes, and an extensive list of thematic links for focused study.--

"WILD THINGS is queer theorist Jack Halberstam's account of sexuality in general, and queerness in particular, after nature. As the heterosexual/homosexual binary emerged in the late 19th-century and coalesced in the 20th-century, discourses of both heterosexuality and homosexuality defined sexuality in relation to nature and the natural world. The most well-known is the homophobic framing of homosexuality as unnatural, aberrant, and "against" nature, but of equal importance is the 19th-century male dandy's positioning of artifice and camp-and through it homosexuality-as anti-natural. On the other hand, heterosexuality was often held up as the "natural" sexuality and, later in the 20th-century, gay scientists tried to prove that homosexuality was a natural, biological desire. In this book, Halberstam mobilizes wildness as an analytic through which an alternative history of sexuality and desire outside of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and taxonomical classifications can emerge. To that end, Halberstam turns back to the orderly, taxonomical, and classified homosexuality and heterosexuality of the 19th and 20th-centuries and asks: what embodiments and desires were swept under the carpet in the process of creating identitarian sexualities? Halberstam claims these excluded and unruly figures as "wild" lives lived out in embodiments and desires which eluded the orderly classifications of their era. Wildness, for Halberstam, thus becomes a way to claim an "epistemology of the ferox," a way of being and knowing in the world which is not the opposition of order but order's absence: a force which "disorders desire and desires disorder." Although he is clear that wildness and queerness are not interchangeable, Halberstam sees in wildness and "wild thought" queer theory's anti-identitarian impulse to explore life outside of the limits of the human and liberal governance. More than just a project of recuperating queer figures lost in the archive, Halberstam's WILD THINGS argues for a revision of queer history, one in which "nature" and the "natural world" does not function as that which sexuality defines itself with and against"--

Looks at the relationship between power and sex, using history and literature to explore the trophy wife, the harem, the political marriage, and other evidence of a link between these two forces.

Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. What he finds is a persistent conflict between asceticism and gratification, between procreation and pleasure. From the period of the Talmud onward, Biale says, Jewish culture continually struggled with sexual abstinence, attempting to incorporate the virtues of celibacy, as it absorbed them from Greco-Roman and Christian cultures, within a theology of procreation. He explores both the canonical writings of male authorities and the alternative voices of women, drawing from a fascinating range of sources that includes the Book of Ruth, Yiddish literature, the memoirs of the founders of Zionism, and the films of Woody Allen. Biale's historical reconstruction of Jewish sexuality sees the present through the past and the past through the present. He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.

The present volume is the first collection of studies by Charles Mopsik to be published in English. It contains the contents of two separate volumes published in French, with an additional study which was published elsewhere. These seven studies focus on the function and character of sex and gender in Jewish Mysticism: (1) The Primeval Couple and the Primordial One in the Religions of the World; (2) The Masculine Woman; (3) Creation and Procreation: Beyond the Bounds of the Body - From the Hebrew Bible to Medieval Jewish Mysticism; (4) Genesis 1: 26-27: The Image of God, Man and Wife, and the Status of Women in the writings of the Early Kabbalists; (5) Genesis 2:24: 'They Become One Flesh': Several Interpretations by Medieval Jewish Mystics; (6) Union and Unity in the Kabbalah: The Proclamation of the Divine Unity and the Male/Female Couple; (7) The Secret of the Marriage of David and Batsheva.

Explores the complex factors and long line of "ancestors" that have contributed to human sexuality and human sexual behavior

In this book, Barney explores her family tree, chronicles her friendships and associations through reprinted correspondence and recreated conversations, and evokes the golden age of her salon in gallery of literary portraits.

In this media driven age in which private has become public we have seen the Stonewall riots, which launched the gay rights movement, Hair on Broadway with a nude cast, art from Mapplethorpe to Madonna, AIDS and safe sex campaigns, drag gone mainstream, and adolescents engaging in sexual activity at increasingly younger ages. At the same time, society continually tries to eradicate open expressions of sexuality and harass those who ignore the mandated modes of permissible sexual expression. Taking on those who would limit sexual freedom, New Sexual Agendas challenges the notion that there are fixed sexual behaviors for men and women. This engaging collection draws on a number of disciplines including women's studies, literature, gender studies, cultural studies, history, politics, and education, sociology, and psychology. Including well known thinkers such as Jeffrey Weeks, Leonore Tiefer, and Mary McIntosh, New Sexual Agendas explores our sexual legacy, from turn-of-the-century sexologists to the inequalities of sexually invested social structures, from the rise of the Right and its portent for sexual freedoms to the myth of women as the subordinate sex. Along the way it explores the limits of trust in intimate relationships, the escalating AIDS epidemic, and the dangers of prescribed sex roles for both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

"The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave eroticism its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education"--

"The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave eroticism its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education"--

"For one 1970's family, the center may not hold, but it certainly does fold. In 1978 Jimmy Carter mediates the Camp David Accords, Fleetwood Mac tops charts with Rumours, Starsky fights crime with Hutch, and twelve-year-old Lou Cove is uprooted from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Salem, Massachusetts- a backwater town of witches, Puritans, and sea-captain wannabes. After his eighth move in a dozen years, Lou figures he should just resign himself to a teenage purgatory of tedious paper routes, school bullies, and unrequited lust for every girl he likes. Then one October morning an old friend of Lou's father, free-wheeling (and free-loving) Howie Gordon arrives at the Cove doorstep from California with his beautiful wife Carly. Howie is everything Lou wants to be: handsome as a movie star, built like a god and in possession of an unstoppable confidence. Then, over Thanksgiving dinner, Howie drops a bombshell. Holding up an issue of Playgirl Magazine, he flips to the center and there he is, Mr. November in all his natural glory. Howie has his eye on becoming the next Burt Reynolds, and a wild idea for how to do it: win Playgirl's Man of the Year. And he knows just who should manage his campaign. As Lou and Howie canvas Salem for every vote in town - little old ladies at bridge club, the local town witch, construction workers on break and everyone in between - Lou is forced to juggle the perils of adolescence with the pursuit of Hollywood stardom. Man of the Year is the improbable true story of Lou's thirteenth year, one very unusual campaign, and the unexpected guest who changes everything"--

CONTENTS: Introduction The Release of Sexual Restraints War Wives and Immorality Eroticism of Nurses Sensuality in the Trenches Venereal Diseases Women Soldiers and Female Battalions Homosexuality and Transvestitism Regulation of Army Brothels Prostitution Behind the Lines Lust in the Conquered Areas Civilian Debauchery Back Home Genital Injuries, War Eunuchs, Etc. Sex Life of War Prisoners Amatory Adventures of Female Spies Eroticism Behind Military Drill Propaganda and Sex Lies The Bestialization of Man Sadism, Rape, and Other Atrocities Post-War Revolution and Sexuality Appendix-U.S. Starts Cleanup of Camp Followers