Download or read book Buzz written by Hallie Lieberman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Mary Roach's Bonk, a brilliant microhistory of the sex toy that ultimately tells the story of our changing sexual mores and evolving cultural values. Once only whispered about in clandestine corners, vibrators have become just another accessory for the suburban soccer mom. But how did these once-taboo toys become so socially acceptable? The journey of the devices to the cultural mainstream is a surprisingly stimulating one. In Buzz, Hallie Lieberman traces the tale from lubricant in Ancient Greece to the very first condom in 1560 to advertisements touting devices as medical equipment in 19th-century magazines. She looks in particular from the period of major change from the 1950s through the present, when sex toys evolved from symbols of female emancipation to tools in the fight against HIV/AIDS to consumerist marital aids to today's mainstays of pop culture. The story is populated with a cast of vivid and fascinating characters including Dell Williams, founder of the first feminist sex toy store; Betty Dodson, whose workshops helped 1960s women discover vibrators; and Gosnell Duncan, a paraplegic engineer who invented the silicone dildo. And these personal dramas are all set against a backdrop of changing American attitudes toward sexuality, feminism, LGBTQ issues, and more. Both educational and titillating, Buzz will make readers think quite differently about those secret items hiding in bedside drawers across the nation.
Download or read book Vibrator Nation written by Lynn Comella and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s a group of pioneering feminist entrepreneurs launched a movement that ultimately changed the way sex was talked about, had, and enjoyed. Boldly reimagining who sex shops were for and the kinds of spaces they could be, these entrepreneurs opened sex-toy stores like Eve’s Garden, Good Vibrations, and Babeland not just as commercial enterprises, but to provide educational and community resources as well. In Vibrator Nation Lynn Comella tells the fascinating history of how these stores raised sexual consciousness, redefined the adult industry, and changed women's lives. Comella describes a world where sex-positive retailers double as social activists, where products are framed as tools of liberation, and where consumers are willing to pay for the promise of better living—one conversation, vibrator, and orgasm at a time.
Download or read book Sexidemic written by Lawrence R. Samuel and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexidemic is the first real cultural history of sexuality in the United States since the end of World War II. For a people who supposedly love sex, the author argues, Americans have had no shortage of problems with it. Since the end of World War II, in fact, we've had a contentious relationship with sexuality, the subject a source of considerable tension and controversy on both an individual and societal level. Rather than being a simple pleasure of life, something to be enjoyed, sex has served as a challenging and disruptive force in many Americans' everyday lives for the last two-thirds of a century. Our love affair with sex has thus been a rocky one, filled with bumps in the road that have caused major instability across our cultural landscape. Our individualistic, competitive, consumerist, and anxious national character is both reflected in and reinforced by this "sexidemic," something few have recognized or perhaps want to admit. By charting the cultural trajectory of sex in America since the end of World War II, Sexidemic reveals how the nation's continual woes with sexuality helped make us an anxious, insecure people. The sex lives of many, perhaps most Americans have been in a perpetual state of crisis, a constant source of concern. We've fretted over every dimension of it, with problems in both quality and quantity. With this unhealthy view of sexuality, it was not surprising that we felt we needed a variety of potions and gadgets to make it happen or be pleasurable. In tracing the cultural trajectory of sex in our society, Samuel illustrates our bipolar approach to sexuality: low libido and sex addiction emerged as common disorders, and sex scandal after sex scandal has made headlines, especially over the last couple of years. Only money has surpassed sex as a source of stress for Americans; indeed, sex has come to be seen and treated as a commodity. In this timely work, the author traces the role sex plays in our society, how it shapes us and the world around us, and how we got where we are today in our views, treatment, and practice of sex and sexuality in our everyday lives.
Download or read book Sex Game Book written by Denyse Beaulieu and published by . This book was released on 2007-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All you've ever wanted to know about sex, but never dared to asked. What do we really know about sex? Eroticism is not only a craft or experience in which one is more or less gifted. It's also a culture of its own, which has evolved according to eras and countries. From the oldest texts on the art of loving to the latest development in cybersex, the Sex Game Book peers into every aspect of sex culture: literature, mythology, cinema, arts, sciences, objects, places, social phenomenon. Punctuated with games, questions, and more than 300 illustrations, enhanced with a bibliography and cinematography of the masterpieces of Eroticism, this original encyclopedia offers an amusing, cultural, and multidisciplinary vision of this most fundamental pulse of mankind. AUTHOR Denyse Beaulieu wrote for the magazine Globe before launching Bagatelle, the first French magazine of charm addressed to women. She is a specialist in the work of Marquis de Sade to which she has dedicated a thesis and different articles, for the French review L'Infini among others. ILLUSTRATIONS 300 illustrations
Download or read book American Sexual Histories written by Elizabeth Reis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of American Sexual Histories features an updated collection of sixteen articles and their corresponding primary sources that investigate issues related to human sexuality in America from the colonial era to the present day. Fully updated with ten new chapters, featuring recently published essays by prominent scholars in the field Provides readers with the source documents that historians have analyzed in their articles Allows readers to see how historians craft arguments based on available sources Encourages readers to evaluate historical documents, test the interpretations of historians, and draw their own conclusions
Download or read book A Visual History of Lovemaking Toys written by Richard Battenberg and published by Goliath Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three centuries of pleasure products, all carefully documented and richly illustrated to detail its cultural history. An indescribable collection of scientific and fictional texts - combined with illustrations and photographs - from antiquity to the present day. Unique, entertaining, curious and photographically intense! Hardcover special edition (the cover may differ from the original). Just great.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire written by Chiara Beccalossi and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 19th Century saw intense urbanization, the development of a consumer culture, the formalization of gender roles, the solidification of class structures, and various encounters with the exotic customs of the colonies – all of which contributed to enhance sexual anxiety among the middle classes. In response, new social conventions, sanitary prescriptions, practices of self-control, and policies of sex regulation and education were developed as a means to control disorderly sexual behavior. At the same time, though an ideology based on sexual respectability was largely promoted throughout society, significant individuals and subcultures often challenged both the principle and the practice of such morality. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire presents an overview of the period with essays on heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexual variations, religious and legal issues, health concerns, popular beliefs about sexuality, prostitution and erotica.
Download or read book The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance written by Katherine Crawford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how Renaissance textual practices and new forms of knowledge transformed notions of sex and sexuality in France.
Download or read book Solitary Sex written by Thomas Walter Laqueur and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical account of masturbation as a moral issue and cultural taboo.
Download or read book Wonder of Wonders written by Alisa Solomon and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the world In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. It is a story of the theater, following Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture. Solomon reveals how the show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is "so Japanese." Rich, entertaining, and original, Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.
Download or read book Soap Sex and Cigarettes written by Juliann Sivulka and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOAP, SEX AND CIGARETTES examines how American advertising both mirrors society and creates it. From the first newspaper advertisement in colonial times to today's online viral advertising, the text explores how advertising grew in America, how products and brands were produced and promoted, and how advertisements and agencies reflect and introduce cultural trends and issues. The threads of art, industry, culture, and technology unify the work. The text is chronological in its organization and is lavishly illustrated with advertisements.
Download or read book With the Hand written by Mels van Driel and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People call it everything from “walking your dog” to “scratching your bean.” Women usually do it at home. Men, it sometimes seems, do it everywhere. Some people think it’s healthy; others think it is a sin that will send you straight to hell. But while many people declare that everyone’s doing it, no one actually talks about it—outside the pages of Cosmo, masturbation is among the most taboo of topics, not suitable for polite society or public conversation. Mels van Driel boldly breaks this silence in order to help the world overcome its diffidence toward solo sex in With the Hand. Consulting everyone from doctors and sexologists to feminists and chauvinists, van Driel explains what masturbation actually is and describes the latest discoveries and developments on the subject. He also looks to theologians, historians, and philosophers to understand perceptions of masturbation across cultures and religions throughout history. Covering a great number of topics, including age, location, and frequency, as well as the effects of circumcision and the ability to have multiple orgasms, With the Hand also explores masturbation in art, literature, poetry, and music. Addressing the physical, mythical, and mythological, this often humorous and always informative book clears up the confusion surrounding this universal, and universally unmentionable, topic.
Download or read book Impotence written by Angus McLaren and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture. Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society. From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.
Download or read book Sexual Nature Sexual Culture written by Paul R. Abramson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-07 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this multidisciplinary study of human sexuality, an international team of scholars looks at the influences of nature and nurture, biology and culture, and sex and gender in the sexual experiences of humans and other primates. Using as its center the idea that sexual pleasure is the primary motivational force behind human sexuality and that reproduction is simply a byproduct of the pleasurability of sex, this book examines sexuality at the individual, societal, and cultural levels. Beginning with a look at the evolution of sexuality in humans and other primates, the essays in the first section examine the sexual ingenuity of primates, the dominant theories of sexual behavior, the differences in male and female sexual interest and behavior, and the role of physical attractiveness in mate selection. The focus then shifts to biological approaches to sexuality, especially the genetic and hormonal origins of sexual orientation, gender, and pleasure. The essays go on to look at the role of pleasure in different cultures. Included are essays on love among the tribespeople of the Brazilian rain forest and the regulation of adolescent sexuality in India. Finally, several contributors look at the methodological issues in the study of human sexuality, paying particular attention to the problems with research that relies on people's memories of their sexual experiences. The contributors are Angela Pattatucci, Dean Hamer, David Greenberg, Frans de Waal, Mary McDonald Pavelka, Kim Wallen, Donald Symons, Heino Meyer-Bahlburg, Jean D. Wilson, Donald Tuzin, Lawrence Cohen, Thomas Gregor, Lenore Manderson, Robert C. Bailey, Alice Schlegel, Edward H. Kaplan, Richard Berk, Paul R. Abramson, Paul Okami, and Stephen D. Pinkerton. Spanning the chasm of the nature versus nurture debate, Sexual Nature/Sexual Culture is a look at human sexuality as a complex interaction of genetic potentials and cultural influences. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers—from scholars and students in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history to clinicians, researchers, and others seeking to understand the many dimensions of sexuality. "If we ever expect to solve the sexually based problems that modern societies face, we must encourage investigations of human sexual behavior. Moreover, those investigations should employ a broad range of disciplines—looking at sex from all angles, which is precisely what Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture does."—Mike May, American Scientist "...This timely and relevant book reminds us that we cannot rely on simple solutions to complex problems. It represents a transdiciplinary approach integrating knowledge from diverse fields and provides the reader with a challenging and rewarding experience. Especially for those who are involved in teaching human sexuality to medical students and other health care professionals, this book is highly recommended."—Gerald Wiviortt, M.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "In short, this volume contains much to stimulate, inform, and amuse, in varying proportions. What more can one ask?"—Pierre L. van den Berghe, Journal of the History of Sexuality "...the book succeeds in bring together some of the sharpest thinkers in the field of human sexuality, and goes a long way toward clarifying the diverse perspectives that currently exist."—David M. Buss and Todd K. Shackelford, Quarterly Review of Biology
Download or read book Virgins written by Anke Bernau and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witty and thought-provoking, 'Virgins' reveals virginity's changing cultural significance throughout its long history, and its enduring power in contemporary society.
Download or read book Reinventing Childhood Nostalgia written by Elisabeth Wesseling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Romantic-era concepts of childhood nostalgia have been understood as the desire to retrieve the ephemeral mindset of the child, this collection proposes that the emergence of digital media has altered this reflective gesture towards the past. No longer is childhood nostalgia reliant on individual memory. Rather, it is associated through contemporary convergence culture with the commodities of one's youth as they are recycled from one media platform to another. Essays in the volume's first section identify recurrent patterns in the recycling, adaptation, and remediation of children's toys and media, providing context for section two's exploration of childhood nostalgia in memorial practices. In these essays, the contributors suggest that childhood toys and media play a role in the construction of s the imagined communities (Benedict Anderson) that define nations and nationalism. Eschewing the dichotomy between restorative and reflexive nostalgia, the essays in section three address the ethics of nostalgia in terms of child agency and depictions of childhood. In a departure from the notion that childhood nostalgia is the exclusive prerogative of narrative fiction, section four looks for its traces in the child sciences. Pushing against nostalgia's persistent associations with wishful thinking, false memories, and distortion, this collection suggests nostalgia is never categorically good or bad in itself, but owes its benefits or defects to the ways in which it is brought to bear on the representation of children and childhood.
Download or read book Toys as Culture written by Brian Sutton-Smith and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are toys? What do they represent beyond the literal image? Do they affect growth- are they learning tools, baby sitters, trivial objects with no particular significance? This book is the first systematic analysis of the role of toys in contemporary society. Employing history, anthropology, and psychology, as well as the first-hand accounts of players themselves, the author explores the myriad of meanings behind the toy.-- Book Jacket.