Sexual Fluidity

Sexual Fluidity
Author: Lisa M. Diamond
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2008
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780674026247

Is love “blind” when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa M. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: “I fall in love with the person, not the gender,” say some respondents.Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women’s sexuality—and of the central importance of love.

The Pleasure Gap

The Pleasure Gap
Author: Katherine Rowland
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1580058345

American culture is more sexually liberal than ever. But compared to men, women's sexual pleasure has not grown: Up to 40 percent of American women experience the sexual malaise clinically known as low sexual desire. Between this low desire, muted pleasure, and experiencing sex in terms of labor rather than of lust, women by the millions are dissatisfied with their erotic lives. For too long, this deficit has been explained in terms of women's biology, stress, and age. In The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland rejects the idea that women should settle for diminished pleasure; instead, she argues women should take inequality in the bedroom as seriously as we take it in the workplace and understand its causes and effects. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred women and dozens of sexual health professionals, Rowland shows that the pleasure gap is neither medical malady nor psychological condition but rather a result of our culture's troubled relationship with women's sexual expression. This provocative exploration of modern sexuality makes a case for closing the gap for good.

Women's Sexualities

Women's Sexualities
Author: Carol Rinkleib Ellison
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Women
ISBN: 9781572241961

This intriguing collection of stories and experiences from women of all walks of life allows readers to learn how others have handled everything from their first sexual encounter to abusive situations to rekindling romance in a long-term marriage.

Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure

Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure
Author: Susie Jolly
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780325738

This pioneering collection explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. It shows how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.

The Governesses

The Governesses
Author: Anne Serre
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2018-10-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0811228088

Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018 The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book’s “deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.” Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.

Facing the Complexities of Women's Sexual Desire

Facing the Complexities of Women's Sexual Desire
Author: Vera S. Maass
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2006-11-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0387331697

This book focuses on a problem frequently encountered by sex and family therapists, psychologists and primary care physicians: women’s sexual desire or lack thereof. The book covers both research and clinical interventions, and outlines factors that contribute to the decline in sexual desire in women of various ages. The text describes therapeutic steps which can be undertaken with the guidance of a therapist or by the woman herself.

Exploring the Hidden Power of Female Sexuality

Exploring the Hidden Power of Female Sexuality
Author: Maitreyi D. Piontek
Publisher: Weiser Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781578632183

Exploring the Hidden Power of Female Sexuality inspires women to go to the depths of womanhood to explore the hidden secrets of yin. In a playful way, she encourages women to surrender to the abyss and stillness of their being, where yin is centered. While sexuality is considered to be a fundamental base of health, creativity, and spirituality, and has been used as a main energy source, it has been dominated by the male principle (yang). This comprehensive theoretical and practical introduction to holistic female sexology enables women to understand their own true nature. Piontek includes meditations and exercises geared toward connecting with the well of unlimited strength to liberate from personal and collective conditioning. Bibliography. Index.

Women's Sexuality Across the Life Span

Women's Sexuality Across the Life Span
Author: Judith C. Daniluk
Publisher: Guilford Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2003-06-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781572309111

Moving beyond a traditional focus on sexual functioning, this book emphasizes the complex interaction of psychological, social, cultural and biological influences on womens's sense of themselves as sexual beings. Written for practitioners and educators, its goal is to challenge contradictory messages and meanings that cause many women to feel disconnected from their bodies and from their needs and desires. Themes explored include the development of sexual awareness and sexuality in childhood and adolescence, the critical sexual choices of young adulthood, and the multiple transitions characterizing the middle and later years of life. The book features creative exercises and interventions to help girls and women construct more affirming sexual meanings.

Women's Conflicts About Eating and Sexuality

Women's Conflicts About Eating and Sexuality
Author: Ellen Cole
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1317823524

Women’s Conflicts About Eating and Sexuality explores the strong relationships food and sex have represented to women over the years. No other book has spelled out so clearly the parallels between sex and eating nor integrated the relationship of these to women’s basic need to be loved. Today’s dilemma for women--be fat or go hungry--and the endless variations and unsatisfying solutions to this problem have contributed to the incidence of anorexia, bulimia, and obesity. The pursuit of slimness, the obsession with having the perfect body, excessive aerobicizing, and diet books ad nauseam are all part of this phenomenon. Authors in Women’s Conflicts About Eating and Sexuality skillfully discuss the parallel between women’s obsession with sex and romance in the fifties and their obsession with food today. An important book for all women, it sheds light on the complex issues facing women and devotes special attention to the career woman and the additional pressures to be slim and stay slim. The woman who reads this potentially life-changing book can examine, question, and change her behavior, using the specific step-by-step program aid included in the book. This book is for every woman who has ever worried about being too fat or too sexual. Women’s Conflicts About Eating and Sexuality will appeal to women of all ages--young women and their mothers will be fascinated by the parallels between sexual obsessions of thirty years ago and the eating obsessions of today. This healing book will particularly attract single career women for whom sex and relationships are fraught with complications. Counselors and therapists will find this book an excellent resource in their work with helping women. It is also a good auxiliary text for courses in Women’s Studies focusing on psychology and history of women and the sociology of women and eating disorders.