Status Of Sexuality Research Articles

Black Sexual Minority Men's Experiences in MPowerment Interventions: Implications for HIV Prevention.

Black sexual minority men (BSMM) are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV acquisition; the MPowerment model is one community-based framework for preventing HIV in this population. It focuses on developing a supportive network of peers to promote health messaging, reduce stigma, and improve resilience. While these interventions have demonstrated general success, there are important challenges related to race, sexuality, and internalized stigma. Our study aimed to explore these experiences among BSMM in MPowerment models focused on HIV prevention. We conducted 24 qualitative interviews of BSMM attending HIV prevention-related MPowerment events in the greater D.C. Metropolitan area. In-depth interviews were conducted via phone, and interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. We identified four themes from the transcript analysis process: Black queer intersectional social support and community, HIV-related information and destigmatization, social status, and sexuality. Within each of these themes, we identified relationships with overall HIV prevention messaging, including barriers to PrEP use. Barriers related to social status were especially prevalent and described as unique to the D.C. metropolitan area. Overall, MPowerment event spaces provide a forum for BSMM to feel safe and supported while gaining important HIV-related knowledge and prevention access. Challenges related to social status and destigmatization of sexuality are important considerations in designing and implementing this model, especially related to PrEP promotion.

Lifestyle assessment in individuals with spinal cord injuries caused by accidents and disasters in qualitative studies published from 1990 to 2020: A meta-synthesis of qualitative study.

As a debilitating disorder, spinal cord injuries (SCIs) can bring about a range of physical, psychological, and social consequences in individuals and even have effects on their lifestyle indicators. The present study was thus to reflect on lifestyles among people with SCIs developing from accidents and disasters. Using a meta-synthesis of qualitative research, all articles recruiting qualitative methods to examine patients with SCIs, published from 1990 to 2020, were retrieved by the researchers, good at the Persian and English languages, from the databases of ScienceDirect, MD Consult, Pedro, ProQuest, PubMed, SID, MedLib, Magiran, Scopus, Google Scholar, Iranmedex, the Cochran Library, CINAHL, and Blackwell, tapping the keywords of "spinal cord injury, SCI, manmade disaster, natural disaster, content analysis, concept analysis, thematic analysis, lifestyle, quality of life, QoL, grounded theory, meta-synthesis, mixed-methods research, historical research, ethnography, and phenomenology" in both languages for their inclusion in this study and further analyses. With reference to the inclusion criteria, 18 articles were extracted, and after all 10 studies in line with the research topic were reviewed and analyzed. Ultimately, six main themes, namely, compromise, self-reliance, income-generating activities, mental status, inability, and issues of sexuality were extracted, demonstrating their importance to individuals suffering from SCIs. During the initial stages following SCIs, the abilities to engage in participatory practices and individual's power of decision-making diminish because of physical, social, psychological, and environmental constraints. It was accordingly recommended to have a holistic perspective and respect all aspects of life in individuals with SCIs.

“A very risky queer thing to do”: In conversation with Ken Plummer

A conversation about the different generational experiences of LGBT academics and the changing status of sexuality and queer studies. Ken Plummer, Arlene Stein and Travis Kong, longtime colleagues and sociologists of sexuality, share their insights. They discuss how different generational contexts and geographic locations shape sexuality studies. They acknowledge the ways Ken's work, and the efforts of his generation of activist-scholars, played a pivotal foundational role in establishing LGBT studies. They consider the relationship between queer theory and sociologies of homosexuality, and the growing importance of digital media. In conclusion, they discuss how neoliberalisation and authoritarian movements are impacting intellectual work.

MEHMED HANDŽIĆ’S TREATISE Risāla bayān al-umanāʼ fī ḥukm al-istimnāʼ “Explanation of the regulations of onanism provided by the trusted” (topic, description and content, terminology, significance and sources, text, context)

This paper deals with Mehmed Handžić’s treatise Risāla bayān al-umanāʼ fī ḥukm al-istimnāʼ (Treatise: Explanation of the regulations of onanism provided by the trusted), a manuscript kept in Gazi Husrev-beg’s Library under the classification number R. 2650/7. This paper gives a brief introduction to the status of human sexuality in Islam and the Qur’an and also a description of the manuscript itself, its terminology and the style in which it was written. Most of this paper deals with the review or reinterpretation of topics and attitudes that Mehmed Handžić took towards onanism, masturbation and sexual self-gratification from famous and recognized classical authorities on tafsir, especially in the tafsīr āyāt al-aḥkām discipline, fiqh, and literary works. A special section in this paper is devoted to Handžić’s interpretation of Ibn Ḥazm’s views on onanism. This paper was written with the aim of presenting this manuscript of Handžić in an accessible and interpretative manner. The paper has no pretensions to offering anything normative, nor should the paper be treated as a fiqh-legal work on onanism. Accordingly, this paper should not be read as a Shariah discussion of onanism. We recommend that you consult the official stances of the Islamic Community on onanism, masturbation and sexual self-gratification, which Prof. Dr. Enes Ljevaković, the deputy raisu-l-ulama and fatwa-i emin, took on several occasions in the Islamic Newspaper Preporod, at: https://www.islamskazajednica.ba/index.php/pitanja-i-odgovori-home.

The status of sexuality in Neoplatonism

The status of sexuality in Neoplatonism

The Main Value Vectors of Solidarity of LGBTQ+ Scene with Other Activist Groups

The conservative ideology influences the life scenario of LGBTQ+ people by pushing them out of the public sphere and controlling the private sphere of their lives. At the same time, over the past three years, online projects about and for LGBTQ+ people and communities have been actively developing, gaining popularity and support. LGBTQ+ scene is a decentralized space of various initiatives, organizations, and independent activists. The participants of the scene are fighting against gender and sexual-based discrimination by organizing protests, educational projects, and other activities. The empirical basis of the study is 20 interviews involving LGBTQ people.The LGBTQ+ scene is constituted through a reflexive, often conflicting discussion of issues that have fundamental importance for the community such as status of sexuality, public actions, power, and hierarchy, as well as new sexual and gender identities.The person engaging in activism on an individual level not only chooses a form of participation (professional work, volunteering, or independent activity), but also the direction of activity within the community or outside it. The core of the scene is set by active individuals and groups, the periphery and borders are supported by passive participants and opponents of the LGBTQ+ scene. The article examines the relationship of solidarity of LGBTQ + scene participants with other initiatives, or rather, what values serve as the basis for the formation of intergroup solidarity. KEYWORDS:

Sex and Intimacy Policy in Residential Aged Care Facilities in Flanders, Belgium

A survey was conducted using the 69 item Sexuality Assessment Tool (SexAT) to identify how supportive residential aged care facilities in Flanders, Belgium are of residents’ sexual expression. 750 aged care facilities were contacted and 69 (9.2%) completed the SexAT survey after three reminders. Findings indicate that no facilities are rated as ‘excellent’ (score greater than 60/69) and only 12% as ‘very good’ (score between 41–59/69). The majority (58%) of facilities are rated as ‘good’ (score between 21–40/69) and 30% scored less than 20/69. While the generalizability of findings is limited due to the low response rate, findings reflect the marginal status of sexuality accorded in the aged care setting and it is surmised, indicative of the low priority given to sexuality by aged care facilities over other measures of wellbeing. Findings mirror other sexuality research in residential aged care.

Babies, Bodies, and Buyers

In the thirty-five years since I began my career in legal education, much about the status of women, gender and sexuality has changed. There are the obvious triumphs: more female students, faculty and deans--as well as more bathrooms for more kinds of people than just "men." Life is less lonely now, and conversation more intersectional. There is more openness about LGBT issues. There is marriage equality, however contested. And there is less general tolerance for open forms of harassment. But challenges remain. While reproductive rights have always been at the center of women's work in the academy, that conversation has changed in complex ways in recent years--in no small part because of revolutionary new assisted-reproductive and genetic technologies. From oosplasmic transfer (1) to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (2) to the precise gene-editing capabilities of Crispr-cas9, (3) these technologies can facilitate quiet forms of eugenic natalism. Increasingly, consumerist rather than dignitary notions of choice have been deployed to chase non-medical, cosmetic notions of human perfectibility. I worry that this shift signals an ever-more pervasive styling of bodies--including future bodies--as private property, and as inert clay-for-the-molding. I am hardly alone in my concern that the ultra-contractarianism of our neo-liberal moment is not such a good thing when it dominates all crannies of human endeavor. Its narrowed understanding of corporeal integrity compromises many of the erstwhile goals of public accommodation for all. Below are three stories in which the personal is short-circuited as exclusively private rather than politically expressive as well. The first story is about surrogate pregnancy--by now a comparatively old-fashioned technology of assisted reproduction, but one rife with the ethical challenges and cultural incoherence to which I allude. In late January of 2014, Kansas State Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook introduced a bill that would have criminalized the use of surrogate contracts in pregnancy and imposed a $10,000 fine and up to a year in jail for anyone participating in such a transaction. (4) The effort was quickly abandoned amid a blizzard of publicity that included pro-lifers battling pro-lifers; Republicans battling Republicans; invocations of God having hired the Virgin Mary as a surrogate; vaginal sonograms broadcast live in a Senate committee; and by a host of other posturing too easily dismissed as risible. (5) If the bill hadn't been body-slammed into the dust by some of the sillier assertions of its chief proponent (Pilcher-Cook asserted, for example, that surrogacy creates children that are "not going to have either a biological mother, biological father or both" (6)), the discussion might have garnered more attention. The laws regarding surrogacy are a national jumble of inconsistent public policies, extra-legal technological engineering, free-market contracting, civil interventions, and criminal sanctions. However incoherent the Kansas attempt, there was a serious question at its center: whether individually-drafted private contracts are sufficient to settle questions of intended parenthood, or whether the "best interests of the child" standards governing custody, adoption, and other realms of family law should have greater sway. While some states have long found surrogate contracts not in the public interest, at least ten already criminalize them. (7) Many of those laws were passed in the very early days of ovum transplantation and have not been reviewed in the decades since. Hence, what laws are in place have not nearly kept up with the explosive technological revolution in assisted reproduction. Even in states that purport to regulate, it is largely doctors and IVF technicians who call the shots as to what's acceptable in the realm of surrogacy and reproductive techniques. (8) There is deep conceptual confusion, as well as outright conflict, about what is at stake in surrogacy. …

Człowiek Dążący, czyli antropologia filozoficzna w twórczości Krystiana Lupy

The starting point of Krystian Lupa’s work seems to coincide with the postulate that funds philosophical anthropology – get to know yourself. Sylwia Merk For the director, cognition is a kind of process, a constant study of himself and a constant verification of his status in the world. Lupa considers the striving for understanding to be the essence of humanity. The central issue of his work is therefore the ‘seeking man’. This study outlines the philosophical context of the director’s work, and also exposes in its context such problems as: the status of carnality, sexuality and eroticism, the question of utterance, and the meaning of unconsciousness and dreams in art. These reflections are subordinated to the extraction of anthropological motifs in Lupa’s investigations, as well as to the explanation of the concept of ‘the seeking man’.

‘White as Cheese’: A Discussion of ‘Jbene’, the Palestinian Oicotype of ATU 403

This article examines the oral versions of the Palestinian tale ‘Jbene’, an oicotype of ATU 403, focusing on the relationships between two plot details that neutralize each other: whitening the heroine, as an act of creation/blessing; and blackening her in an attempt to ruin/destroy her. Socio-cultural aspects are examined, taking into consideration the status of female sexuality in Palestinian society, as well as the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. The oicotype is viewed as both strengthening Palestinian collective identity and at the same time conveying messages to young women on how to handle their sexuality within a patriarchal society.

Babies, Bodies, and Buyers

In the thirty-five years since I began my career in legal education, much about the status of women, gender and sexuality has changed. There are the obvious triumphs: more female students, faculty and deans--as well as more bathrooms for more kinds of people than just men. Life is less lonely now, and conversation more intersectional. There is more openness about LGBT issues. There is marriage equality, however contested. And there is less general tolerance for open forms of harassment. But challenges remain. While reproductive rights have always been at the center of women's work in the academy, that conversation has changed in complex ways in recent years--in no small part because of revolutionary new assisted-reproductive and genetic technologies. From oosplasmic transfer (1) to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (2) to the precise gene-editing capabilities of Crispr-cas9, (3) these technologies can facilitate quiet forms of eugenic natalism. Increasingly, consumerist rather than dignitary notions of choice have been deployed to chase non-medical, cosmetic notions of human perfectibility. I worry that this shift signals an ever-more pervasive styling of bodies--including future bodies--as private property, and as inert clay-for-the-molding. I am hardly alone in my concern that the ultra-contractarianism of our neo-liberal moment is such a good thing when it dominates all crannies of human endeavor. Its narrowed understanding of corporeal integrity compromises many of the erstwhile goals of public accommodation for all. Below are three stories in which the personal is short-circuited as exclusively private rather than politically expressive as well. The first story is about surrogate pregnancy--by now a comparatively old-fashioned technology of assisted reproduction, but one rife with the ethical challenges and cultural incoherence to which I allude. In late January of 2014, Kansas State Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook introduced a bill that would have criminalized the use of surrogate contracts in pregnancy and imposed a $10,000 fine and up to a year in jail for anyone participating in such a transaction. (4) The effort was quickly abandoned amid a blizzard of publicity that included pro-lifers battling pro-lifers; Republicans battling Republicans; invocations of God having hired the Virgin Mary as a surrogate; vaginal sonograms broadcast live in a Senate committee; and by a host of other posturing too easily dismissed as risible. (5) If the bill hadn't been body-slammed into the dust by some of the sillier assertions of its chief proponent (Pilcher-Cook asserted, for example, that surrogacy creates children that are not going to have either a biological mother, biological father or both (6)), the discussion might have garnered more attention. The laws regarding surrogacy are a national jumble of inconsistent public policies, extra-legal technological engineering, free-market contracting, civil interventions, and criminal sanctions. However incoherent the Kansas attempt, there was a serious question at its center: whether individually-drafted private contracts are sufficient to settle questions of intended parenthood, or whether the best interests of the child standards governing custody, adoption, and other realms of family law should have greater sway. While some states have long found surrogate contracts in the public interest, at least ten already criminalize them. (7) Many of those laws were passed in the very early days of ovum transplantation and have been reviewed in the decades since. Hence, what laws are in place have nearly kept up with the explosive technological revolution in assisted reproduction. Even in states that purport to regulate, it is largely doctors and IVF technicians who call the shots as to what's acceptable in the realm of surrogacy and reproductive techniques. (8) There is deep conceptual confusion, as well as outright conflict, about what is at stake in surrogacy. …

Sexuality and its object in Freud's 1905 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Translations of summaryFreud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is one of the grounding texts of 20th century European thinking. In it Freud develops a highly original theory of sexuality for which hysteria (and pathology in general) serves a model to understand human existence. Freud published this text five times during his lifetime. This article wants to reconstruct the first edition with regard to the status and nature of (infantile) sexuality in relation to its object. It investigates how and why this relation changes in the different versions of the text. The reconstruction of the first edition is a crucial, but often forgotten task to understand the genesis of Freudian thinking.

Pilot initiative in India to explore the gonadal function and fertility outcomes of a cohort of childhood cancer survivors.

CONTEXT:Steady improvement in childhood cancer outcomes has led to a growing number of survivors, many of who develop long-term sequelae. There is limited data about these sequelae (including those related to fertility) on childhood cancer survivors from India.AIMS:We undertook a prospective pilot study on childhood cancer survivors from India to assess their gonadal function and fertility.SUBJECTS AND METHODS:A pediatric oncologist and a reproductive medicine specialist assessed 21 childhood cancer survivors. The risk of infertility was established using disease and treatment variables. Current status of puberty, sexuality, and fertility were assessed using clinical and biochemical parameters. Outcomes were correlated with risk group of infertility. Information was also ascertained on counseling with regards to risk of infertility.RESULTS:The cohort included 21 survivors (71% males) with a median age of 18 years who were off treatment for a median age of 7 years. Ten (48%) survivors were at low risk for infertility, 9 (43%) at medium risk and 2 (9%) at high risk. Gonadal dysfunction was seen in 3 (14%) survivors: 0/10 (0%) low risk, 1/9 (11%) medium risk, and 2/2 (100%) high risk. None of the survivors, who are at high risk or medium risk of infertility, received any counseling before treatment.CONCLUSIONS:This prospective pilot study of a cohort of childhood cancer survivors from India demonstrates a deficiency in the information provided and counseling of patients/families at the time of diagnosis with regards to the risk of infertility. Fertility outcomes of childhood cancer survivors were congruent with recognized risk groups for infertility. Future action points have been identified.

Blended Selves and the Spectacle of Subjection in Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”

Despite uttering not one of the 267 lines in Robert Browning's del Sarto (1855), (1) Lucrezia plays a powerful role in the poem and represents a dense field of textual meanings. The Lucrezia of this poem is not only an historical person Browning inherits from the biographical fact of Andrea's marriage to Lucrezia del Fede, but also the poet's invention as an adulterous wife, silenced victim, and economic agent. In these respects Browning summons a range of intertextual Lucrezias, from the raped Roman Lucretia (Livy and Shakespeare) to the Renaissance Italian pawn of political/matrimonial expedience Lucrezia Borgia. Without any overt pointers toward these other figures, Browning takes advantage of the subtle resonances generated by her namesakes to give complexity to his silent character and, more broadly, to invite comparisons among them. The historical sedimentation that results from overlaying ancient Rome or Renaissance Italy with Victorian Britain enables Browning to make an oblique commentary on contemporary wranglings over the status of women's sexuality and position in marriage and the public sphere. More specifically, one of the concerns of his poem is the situation of women as subject to and shaped by highly regulated, dependent, relational lives spent facilitating a range of male ambitions, from wealth and power to great artworks to new nations. Such unpropitious conditions for women do not produce uniformly charming results: though unusually, even refreshingly self-pleasuring, the masculinized Lucrezia seems self-absorbed and avaricious, as well as faithless. But reflecting on how Andrea, too, is unprepossessing, and rendered female (through his absorbing romantic attachment and unrealized potential, for instance), one begins to perceive how husband and wife are alike. By moving these two characters toward greater identification with each other--especially in their shared femininity--the poem reveals how the kinds of disabilities usually imposed on women can push people to clutch at some sense of control and self-esteem through unsavory means. He endeavors to detain her at home, stifle her speech, and make her the cause of his artistic underachievement, for example, while she ignores him, craves money, and openly takes another lover. But their mutual movement across porous gender norms and the temporary placement of each one's words in the other's mouth indicate a surprising overlap in their experiences of how disempowered femininity can warp the self. Ultimately, then, the monologue forgives and sympathizes with its unlikeable characters more than most readers are inclined to do. This essay argues that del Sarto shows Browning thinking about the issues of social control over women's movements, voice, and sexuality that occupied his contemporaries in Italy and Britain in the 1850s, and that the poem demonstrates how the disempowerments of womanhood generate the distasteful traits of Andrea as well as of Lucrezia. The couple's mutual efforts to assert themselves and exercise control lead them not only to contend against each other, but also to identify with one another, as each recognizes in the other the personality-distorting maneuvers of a desperate individual suffering the restrictions and resentments usually attendant on Renaissance and Victorian womanhood. This gender- and identity-blending matters in part because it represents a key innovation of the distinctively Victorian genre of dramatic monologue, whose emergent poetics I briefly historicize by means of cognitive theory. The article will situate the poem in its immediate context, where the policing of women's sexual selves had surprisingly far-reaching social and political consequences, and then touch on the gender fluidity of the poem's main characters before moving to a detailed assessment of Andrea's endeavors to control Lucrezia's speech. It concludes by considering how speech in the poem blurs identities--finally giving way to a moment of insight without speech--and I gesture toward the implications of my argument for an understanding of genre and cognition. …

Queering Personhood in the Neo-Slave Narrative: Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories

This article uses the explorations of antebellum black gender and sexuality in Jewelle Gomez’s neo-slave narrative The Gilda Stories (1991) to reconsider what Hortense Spillers has called the “neuter-bound” status of black gender and sexuality during slavery. Spillers’s work finds whiteness to be enacted through penetration of the enslaved and blackness to be neuter/neutered, meaning both gender indeterminate and incapable of penetration. Unfortunately, this schema conflates gender indeterminacy with impotency and lack of agency, thereby framing gender indeterminacy as a social condition incompatible with liberation. My reading of The Gilda Stories seeks to move critical conversation of antebellum gender and sexuality into queer- and transpositive territory by disentangling gender-indeterminacy from its associations with impotency and reframing it as a powerful resource of resistance and survival not only for enslaved people, but for postbellum African Americans as well.

‘Most Delightfully Incongruous’: Desire, Plot and Realism in Barbara Pym's No Fond Return of Love

In No Fond Return of Love (1961), Aylwin Forbes is surprised to find himself behaving like Edmund from Mansfield Park (1814) and falling in love with a woman whom he previously did not desire. Ironically, Forbes’ compliance with a famous Austen romance plot highlights the ambivalent status of desire and sexuality as driving forces in his own plot. Does he really want Dulcie? In this article, the author discusses Pym's representation of desire through her use (or misuse) of the romance plot, to argue that she modifies this powerful ideological structure to satisfy her own particular sense of realism. Considering the importance of Austen to Pym, the author examines, first, the ways in which the domestic woman, as defined by Nancy Armstrong in Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987), persists and is modified as an object of desire in Pym's novels. Second, considering Patricia Meyer Spacks's argument that eighteenth-century romance plots redefine the myths they reflect, the author considers how Pym's work also complicates romance myths. The author's reading of Pym examines her modification of desire and sexuality in vaguely dissatisfying plots that refuse to pander to readerly desires in an unremitting realistic turn.

On the Muslim Question by Anne Norton (review)

Reviewed by: On the Muslim Question by Anne Norton Shabbir Ahsen On the Muslim Question. By Anne Norton. The Public Square Book Series, Ruth O’Brien, series editor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 265. Hardcover $24.95, £16.95, isbn 978-0-691-15704-7. In On the Muslim Question Anne Norton attempts to demolish the dominant view in the post-9/11 context in Europe and the United States of a clash between Islam and the West. The clash is articulated in neat terms. Both Islam and the West are seen as monolithic entities, incapable of existing together. Since the West supports democracy, freedom of speech, equality, and human rights plus the liberation of women, the argument goes, it must be in conflict with Islam, which does not submit itself to these Western values. As opposed to the West, we are told, Islam is against democracy and it supports violence and terrorism, and treats women in a way that cannot be tolerated by Western civilization. Norton questions each of these points of view in her attempt to reject the “us versus them” thesis, something that is widely accepted by both academics and the dominant political paradigm. The Muslim question, for her, lies at the center of political and philosophical discourse that is going to shape our world in the twenty-first century, much like the Jewish Question that shaped the nineteenth century. Both, she argues, revolve around the questions of citizenship, equality, and discrimination. There are two dominant themes in the book. One questions the grounds of the clash-of-civilizations thesis while the other attempts to bring to the fore the lived experience of Europe and America in which people are shaping “a common life together.” Norton derives her inspiration from the Enlightenment ideals of equality, freedom, and fraternity, and is deeply committed to democracy and multiculturalism. In her opinion, the Muslim question is a question not about Islam but more about Western values. She rejects Derrida’s view that “Islam is the other of democracy.” In a world as diverse as ours there may be different forms of democracy that prosper in areas where Muslims are in the majority. Muslims sometimes take violent measures against free speech, but she suggests that Muslims in the West have not taken recourse to violent measures against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses or against the recent anti-Muslim Danish cartoons, which she maintains were provocative, and that Muslims were within their rights in voicing their anger against these publications. British citizens were asking for equal treatment in matters relating to the blasphemy laws. But this is not how things were seen then or afterwards in public discourse. Although she sees some aspects of Rushdie’s writings in a positive light, Norton is quick to point out that her orthodox students, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, made a common cause with conservative Muslims in expressing dislike for Satanic Verses. She further points out that Rushdie’s life was not endangered by British Muslims, and [End Page 800] that they did not set out to carry out the fatwa declared by Ayatollah Khomeini. She deals with possible counter-examples such as the killing of Theo van Gogh, the producer of the provocative film Submission, and the loss of lives (almost all of them Muslim) during protests in the Islamic world against anti-Muslim cartoons by arguing that the former was the individual act of an angry Dutchman, while the latter is explained in terms of the prevalence of violence in those countries where people lost their lives. Such violence has not been limited to the cartoon issue alone. A brief explanation in this regard would have been helpful. Norton maintains that freedom of speech need not be provocative or insulting—here criticizing those who hold that whatever can be said must be said, an attitude that she finds widely prevalent. The status of women, their dress, sex, and sexuality are recurrent themes of the book. Agreeing with Alain Badiou, Norton explains the opposition to the veil in terms of its being a challenge to capitalism and the commodification of female sexuality. As sex is now taken to be more of an...

Does Obesity Increase Sexual Dysfunction in Women?

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of sexual dysfunction among women with obesity who are otherwise healthy and applied to the diet center of a hospital located in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. The sample included 203 volunteers. Data were collected using the personal data form developed by the authors and the female sexual dysfunction inventory (FSFI). The mean age of the participants was 41.17 ± 8.38 years old. Of the participants, 48.7 % were elementary school graduates, 60.6 % were housewives, 64.0 % had the body mass index (BMI) score between 30.00 and 34.99, and the mean BMI score of the participants was 34.73 ± 4.86. Of the participants, 44.3 % stated that being over-weight had adversely affected their sexual life at a score of 6 points or more. Twenty point two of the participants received information regarding sexuality. It is remarkable that health care professionals were found to be the least frequently referred (3 %) resource regarding sexuality. The mean FSFI score of the participants was 27.36 ± 4.80. Severe dysfunction were observed in 12.8 % of the participants. Moreover, all domains of sexual function were dysfunctional. Female sexual function in the present study was not found correlated with several variables, such as the level of education, work status, menopausal status, and knowledge of sexuality. In conclusion, in order to improve women with obesity’s health and well-being diet to lose weight as well as sexual counseling are to be recommended.

Flashing Your Phone: Sexting and the Remediation of Teen Sexuality

This essay offers an account of “sexting's” cultural value and social uses by examining celebrities' production and distribution of sexual imagery on Twitter. It argues that as a result of technological convergence and the prevalence of social media, teens and celebrities are using “candid” images of their sexuality to remediate themselves in a fashion that generates a specific form of user-generated capital. Ultimately, this perspective is used to argue that the anxiety surrounding high school-age sexters has less to do with teens documenting their sexuality than it does with the ways that new forms of text-based media articulate the libidinal status of teenage sexuality in contemporary culture.

In Praise of Touch

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the praise of touch as the most important of the senses in Mario Equicola's De natura d'amore (1525) and, more broadly, addresses the moral and physiological status of touch in debates about the nature of love in the sixteenth century. Although Equicola's cautious and idiosyncratic defense of touch had relatively little impact on sixteenth-century debates about either the status of sexuality or the material nature of human existence, it is nonetheless an important acknowledgment of the centrality of sexuality to human life. It sheds light on early modern ways of understanding the physical world and the relation between sexuality and love. And it demonstrates that Platonic orthodoxy on the subject was not universally accepted, even in the scholarly community.