Introducing the New Sexuality Studies Original Essays

Part 1: Laying the Foundations

1. Welcome to the New Sexuality Studies

Steven Seidman

2. Construction as a Social Process

Lars D. Christiansen and Nancy L. Fischer

3. The Shifting Boundaries of Sexual Morality

Nancy L. Fischer

4. Trans Categories and the Sex/Gender/Sexuality System: How Transforming Understandings of Sex and Gender can Shift Sexuality

Laurel Westbrook

5. Unthinking Compulsory Sexuality: Introducing Asexuality

Ela Przybylo

6. The Dos and Don'ts of Dating: Heterosexual and LGBTQ Dating Rituals as Sexual Scripts

Ellen Lamont

7. Why Sexual Identities, Behaviors, and Attractions Do Not Always "Match"

Tony Silva

8. Method Matters: Discovering How Early Motherhood, Monogamy, and Social Class Shape Young Women’s Sexuality

Jamie Budnick

9. Suicide Is Only Part of the Story: Telling Wounded Truths About LGBTQ Youth

Tom Waidzunas

10. Sex-Positivity: A Black Feminist Gift

Angela Jones

Part 2: Bodies and Behaviors

11. The History and Politics of Sexual Intercourse

Kerwin Kaye

12. Polishing the Pearl: Discoveries of the Clitoris

Lisa Jean Moore

13. But Can You Ever Win? Genital Cosmetic Procedures, the Promise of Vulval Perfection, and the Production of Vulval Distress

Virginia Braun

14. The Social Meanings and Practices of Orgasm

Juliet Richters

15. Anal Sex: Phallic and Other Meanings

Simon Hardy

16. Rethinking Dick Pics

Ben Light, Susanna Paasonen, and Kylie Jarrett

17. Reconceiving Unintended Pregnancy: Considering Context in Sexual and Reproductive Decision-Making

Jennifer A. Reich

18. Sex in Later-Life: Beyond Dysfunction and the Coital Imperative

Linn J. Sandberg

19. "There’s Really No Reason to Settle": Size Acceptance as a Path to Sexual Empowerment

Jeannine A. Gailey

Part 3: Relating and Relationships

20. Romance and Other Threats to Our Future

Laurie Essig

21. One is Not Born a Bride: Weddings and the Heterosexual Imaginary

Chrys Ingraham

22. Yes, No, Maybe So?: Inequalities in Sexual Consent and Sexual Pleasure for Young Adults

Shannon Russell Miller

23. What Do Vulnerability, Shame, and Mindfulness Have To Do With Intimacy?

Jennifer Gunsaullus

24. Interracial Romance: The Logic of Acceptance and Domination

Kumiko Nemoto

25. Romantic Apartheid: Digital Sexual Racism in Online Dating

Celeste Vaughan Curington and Jennifer Hickes Lundquist

26. Sexualized Othering in Multiracial Women’s Experiences with Sex and Romance

Shantel Gabrieal Buggs

27. Gay Racism: The Institutional and Interactional Patterns of Racism in Gay Communities

C. Winter Han

28. Gender Labor, Racework, and Trans Pleasure: Transgender Individuals’ Experiences in Intimate Relationships

alithia zamantakis and Coumbah Sidibe

29. "We Were on a BREAK!": Men Chasing Masculinity and Women Seeking Pleasure in Affairs

Alicia M. Walker

30. Polyamory, Mononormativity, and Polyqueer Kinship

Mimi Schippers

Part 4: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

31. Intersexy, but Fat: On the Selective Celebration of Bodily Differences

Georgiann Davis

32. Trans Sexualities: Identities, Relationships, and Desires

Avery Tompkins

33. Adolescent Girls’ Sexuality: Sexual Agency and the Renovated Sexual Double Standard

Deborah L. Tolman

34. "There’s No Such Thing as a Slut": Creating and Destroying the "Good Girl" in Taylor Swift’s Musical Persona

Adriane Brown

35. "Guys Are Just Homophobic": Rethinking Adolescent Homophobia and Heterosexuality

C.J. Pascoe

36. Not "Straight" But Still a "Man": Negotiating Non-Heterosexual Masculinities

Ghassan Moussawi

37. Straight Men and Women: Hegemonic and Counter-Hegemonic Straightness

James J. Dean

38. How "Regular Sex" Contributes to the Gender Gap in Orgasms

Nicole Andrejek and Melanie Heath

39. Sacred and Beastly Sex: Abstinence Pledges and Masculinity

Sarah H. Diefendorf

40. Heteroflexibility

Héctor Carrillo

Part 5: Social Structures and Institutions

41. The Economy and American Marriage: Change and Continuity

Erica Hunter

42. The Marriage Contract: The Legal Context of Marriage

Mary Bernstein

43. The Elusive Goal of Sexual Health

Steven Epstein

44. Medicine and the Making of the Sexual Body

Celia Roberts

45. The Feminization of "Responsive" Desire

Alyson K. Spurgas

46. The Coloniality of Sexuality

Vrushali Patil

47. "I Am God’s Creation": Religion as a Positive Force in the Lives of LGBTQ+ Persons of Faith

Orit Avishai

48. The Politics of Sexuality and Gender Expression in Schools

Melinda Miceli

49. Sexual Education and Its Failures: From Social Inequalities to Intimate Possibilities

Jessica Fields and Jen Gilbert

Part 6: Navigating Inequalities and Oppressions

50. The Body, Disability, and Sexuality

Thomas J. Gerschick

51. The Intersection of Sexuality and Intellectual Disabilities: Shattering the Taboo

Alan Santinele Martino

52. Disrupting Dichotomies: Non-Binary Sexual Identities

Andrea D. Miller

53. Creando Una Familia: LBQ Latinas Facilitating Bonds Through Shared Race/Ethnicity

Katie L. Acosta

54. "Heterosexual Families Do Not Have to Explain themselves": Heteronormativity in the Lives of LGBTQ+ Children and Parents

Kate Henley Averett

55. Intersected Lives: Race, Class, and Gender in Lesbian- and Gay-Affirming Protestant Congregations

Krista McQueeney

56. "The Thorn in My Side": How Ex-Gays, Ex-Ex-Gays, and Celibate Gays Negotiate Their Religious and Sexual Identities

S. J. Creek

57. The Racial and Sexual Stereotypes of the "Down Low"

Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and Brandon Andrew Robinson

58. Unspoiling Stigmatized Identities: Combatting Racial and Sexual Stigma

Terrell J.A. Winder

Part 7: Sexual Cultures, Places, and Scenes

59. Sexual Capital and Social Inequality: The Study of Sexual Fields

Adam Isaiah Green

60. Belonging in Gay Neighborhoods and Queer Club Nights

Amin Ghaziani

61. Queering the Sexual and Racial Politics of Urban Revitalization

Donovan Lessard

62. "We Will Always Remember": Reactivating Queer Places as Expressions of Grief, Solidarity, and Protest After Pulse

Theodore Greene

63. The Changing Role of Gay Bars in American LGBTQ+ Life

Greggor Mattson

64. Learning to be Queer: College Women’s Sexual Fluidity

Leila J. Rupp, Verta Taylor, and Shaeleya D. Miller

65. Critical Consent: Negotiating Consent in Trans-Les-Bi-Queer BDSM Communities

Robin Bauer

66. Nurturing through Normalizing, Endangering through Dramatizing: Approaches to Adolescent Sex and Love

Amy T. Schalet

Part 8: Sexual Labor and Commerce

67. The Sexual Economy and Nevada’s Legal Brothels

Barbara Brents

68. Inclusive Pleasure: Feminist Sex Shops

Alison Better

69. Looks for Sale: The Impact of Aesthetic Labor on Men Who Strip

Maren T. Scull

70. Intimate Labor in the Adult Film Industry

Heather Berg

71. Migrant Sex Work and Trafficking: Sorting them Out

Laura Agustín

72. Sex Work, the Victim, and the Anti-Trafficking Movement

Kassandra Sparks

73. Sex Workers’ Rights Activism in the United States: Navigating the Internet in an Age of S*x Work Censorship, State, and Corporate Surveillance

Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo and Cinnamon Maxxine

74. Challenging the Controlling Images of Vamps and Victims: Sex Work Activism in India

Gowri Vijayakumar

Part 9: Sexual Politics, Social Movements, and Empowerment

75. Sexuality, State, and Nation

Jyoti Puri

76. Anti-Homosexuality Legislation and Religion Viewed from a Transnational Frame

Marcia Oliver

77. The Religious Right, Same-Sex Marriage, and LGBTQ+ Rights Activism

Amy Stone

78. The Evolution of Same-Sex Marriage Politics in the United States

Kathleen E. Hull

79. The Politics of Race, Class, and Gender in Queer Safer Sex

Chris A. Barcelos

80. Children’s Sexual Citizenship

Kerry H. Robinson

81. War and the Politics of Sexual Violence

Margarita Palacios and Silvia Posocco

82. The History of Activism against Sexual Violence and the Modern #MeToo Movement

Rachel Loney-Howes

83. A Public Health Approach to Campus Sexual Assault Prevention: Sexual Citizenship, Projects, and Geographies

Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan

84. The Ally Paradox

Patrick Grzanka

Biography

Nancy L. Fischer is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Dr. Fischer is a former chair and former secretary of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sexualities. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Heterosexualities Studies (Routledge, 2020) and, in 2013, edited a special section of The Sociological Quarterly on critical heterosexuality studies. Besides sexuality, her research interests include vintage fashion and urban studies.

Laurel Westbrook is Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Dr. Westbrook is the author of Unlivable Lives: Violence and Identity in Transgender Activism (University of California Press, 2021). Their scholarship has also been published in Sexualities, Gender & Society, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, among others, and has been recognized with multiple awards from the American Sociological Association.