Sex Is Not A Natural Act And Other Essays

This collection of smart, accessible essays is culled from a number of Leonore Tiefers popular as well as professional writings and lectures providing a fascinating account of the social construction of sex and sexuality. Provocatively written, the book challenges the essentialism philosophy of sex by examining the where, when, how, and why of sexual behavior in our culture. }This collection of sexologist Leonore Tiefers essays includes popular as well as professional writings and lectures on the social construction of sexuality. Tiefers background as a sexologist is unusually broad, including rodent copulation research, sex therapy, classification of dysfunctions and feminist analysis. Her wit and passion are evident in such essays as The Kiss, Advice to the Lovelorn, Sexual Biology and the Symbolism of the Natural, In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis: The Medicalization of Male Sexuality, and New Perspectives in Sexology: From Rigor (Mortis) to Richness, and they all add up to a lively, controversial presentation of the forces shaping sex in our culture. As Tiefer provocatively states toward the end of her introduction to Part 1, A kiss is not a kiss; your orgasm is not the same as George Washingtons, premarital sex in Peru is not premarital sex in Peoria, abortion in Rome at the time of Caesar is not abortion at the time of John Paul II, and rape is neither an act of sex nor an act of violenceall of these actions remain to be defined by individual experience within ones period and culture. This book explores sex and its experts in colorful, original, and perceptive ways. }