Sexuality is the fifth revised and updated edition of the classic text for understanding human sexuality. This new edition brings the arguments and evidence fully up to date and explores their implication for many topical controversies, around LGBTQ+ rights, the trans experience and gender fluidity, same-sex marriage, sexual autonomy and consent, and the meanings of sexual choice.
Since it was first published in the 1980s, Sexuality has been at the cutting edge of the study of the social and historical meanings of sexuality. Blending deep empirical knowledge with theoretical sophistication and an acute sensitivity to the politics of sexuality, the book offers an informed framework for understanding the complexities of sexual life. A key insight of the book is that the ways we think and speak about sexuality make a major contribution to the ways we live it. Sexuality may be rooted in biological possibilities, but it is shaped and experienced through languages and meanings which are inevitably historical and social in nature. The book explores with clarity and precision the invention and re-invention of sexual meanings, the question of what constitutes a true sex and the biological and social roots of sexual difference, the challenges of diversity, the re-making of sexuality as a highly divisive political subject and the implications of the transformation of intimate life in the past few generations. These are seen in the context of profound changes that are re-fashioning the world, especially globalisation, cyber-sex, and the rise of new forms of agency, including among women and LGBTQ+ people, which have fed into new claims for sexual human rights.
This new edition of Sexuality will be an indispensable guide for students in the social sciences with an interest in the ever-changing worlds of sexuality.
1 Introduction: languages of sex
The significance of sexuality
Words and meanings
Sexualities in history and society
2 The invention of sexuality
A brief history of the history of sexuality
A subject in constant flux
The ‘social construction’ of sexuality
The organisation of sexuality
Why sexuality is important
Intersections
3 The meanings of sexual difference
A true sex?
The biological imperative
Evolutionary diversions
Biological modes of argument
Sexuality and social relations
Multiple realities and diverse social worlds
Performing identities
Sexuality and the unconscious
Affect and the structuring of emotions
Phobias and norms
4 The challenge of diversity
The language of perversity
Categorising sexualities
The discourse of diversity
Deconstructing the categories
Making choices
5 Sexuality, intimacy and politics
Sexuality on the front line
Beyond tradition
Living with uncertainty: HIV/AIDS
Sexual and intimate citizenship
Globalisation and human sexual rights
6 Private pleasures and public policies
The limits of science
The ethical dilemma
Towards sexual democracy
The human gesture
Suggestions for further reading
Biography
Jeffrey Weeks is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University, UK. He is a renowned historian and sociologist of human sexuality and a pioneering writer on LGBTQ+ identities and ways of life. He is the author of numerous books including Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Modern Sexualities (Routledge, 1985), The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life (Routledge, 2007), The Languages of Sexuality (Routledge, 2011), and Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800 (Fourth Edition, Routledge, 2017). His work has been widely recognised internationally and translated into various languages. He is the recipient of the Gold Medal of the World Association for Sexual Health and was awarded an OBE in 2012 for his contribution to social science.
