Rebecca F. Plante

On ‘good sex’ and other dangerous ideas: women narrate their joyous and happy sexual encounters

Abstract Existing studies of women’s sexual happiness and pleasure most often centre on sexual satisfaction, orgasm, and sexual dysfunction, largely failing to allow women to narrate their own experiences. With the recent release of the first drug to ‘treat’ women’s waning libidos a qualitative examination of women’s notion of ‘good sex’ is more pressing and urgent than ever. We need to extend feminist critiques of power, control, patriarchy and agency to the study of women’s sexuality and sexual happiness. Using semi-structured interviews with 20 women from a 2014 community sample collected in a large southwestern US city, we analyse women’s descriptions of and definitions of ‘good sex’ (as defined by respondents), as well as their experiences of sexual encounters that felt joyous and happy. Analysis revealed four themes in women’s descriptions of good, happy and joyous sex: (1) Physical pleasure, wanting and orgasm; (2) Emotional connection and relationship satisfaction; (3) Comfort and naturalness; (4) Control over sexual scripts. Ultimately, our findings suggest that women prioritized relational components of sexuality – particularly reciprocity, bonding, focus, attentiveness and flexibility of sexual scripts – over the more physical, orgasm-based, ‘release’ aspects of sexual encounters. We discuss the implications of the gendered study of happiness as framed within patriarchal and male-dominant definitions and in the clinical treatment of sexual dysfunction.

Working at the crossroads of pleasure and danger: Feminist perspectives on doing critical sexuality studies

For those entering the field of sexuality studies, there is often little advice or guidance on the many facets of the work, some of which are pleasurable and some of which are dangerous. Drawing from our personal and professional conflicts surrounding our work as feminist psychologists and sociologists studying women’s sexuality, we extend Carole Vance’s (1984) claims about pleasure and danger by arguing that, for the sex researcher, pleasure and danger are in fact inverted. That which should give us pleasure (e.g. having our work promoted to the public; teaching critical material about sexuality; thinking deeply about our personal relationships) ends up feeling dangerous, and that which should feel dangerous (e.g. saying and doing and working on taboo things; calling out homophobia, racism, classism, and sexism) ends up giving us pleasure. We examine several areas where we experience personal and professional costs and benefits of doing feminist sex research, including relationships with partners, communication with research participants, pedagogical challenges and conflicts, the interface between the sex-researcher identity and university/institutional practices, and, finally, our interface with the public world and the mass media. In doing so, we aim to use our personal experiences to highlight just a few of the areas that emerging sexuality researchers may encounter. In addition, we extend Vance’s framework of pleasure and danger beyond the experiences of women having sex and into the realm of those seeking to understand, research, write about, theorize, and assess the complicated terrain of women’s sexuality.

Sexuality and reputation: An introduction:

Sex is fascinating. Or so it would seem based on how much we talk about it and what we say. Put another way, sexual gossip is a mainstay of social life. People revel in the bits of information that they can gather – or imagine – about the hot and wet doings of others. More frequent than our sexual acts are the conversations we have about the sex that we imagine others are having. For this reason the examination of reputations should be central to sexuality research. We frequently – and with delight or with disdain – tell stories about the erotic lives of others. We identify and evaluate others in light of what we imagine. Examining these narratives and how they stick to their targets is the goal of this special issue. We downplay two central research topics, sexual behavior and sexual identity (acts and selves), in favor of a focus on evaluation within a community. Sex and talk belong together, endlessly fascinating bedmates, just as sex and action and sex and self do. Discussion of sexual reputations is central to the interaction order. Sexual reputations – whether supported by actual evidence – have brought low political and religious leaders, as well as celebrities. Sexual reputations have stymied progressive change – for example, the accusations hurled at Mary Calderone, a leading proponent of comprehensive sex education, in 1960s America. Sexual reputations have shaped the lives of those not famous as well and perhaps with greater impact. Consider the 2007 case of 17-year-old Genarlow Wilson in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson had consensual oral sex with someone who was below the ‘age of consent.’ He was arrested and convicted, sent to prison, and expected to register as a sex offender once he was released. Although he is no longer considered a sex offender, he remains a convicted felon. As a result, he is publicly marked. Sexual reputations have long been used as forms of shaming and gendered social control, with claims of ‘fag’ and ‘slut’ shaping culturally acceptable expressions

Asexualities: Socio-Cultural Perspectives

We explore the multi-layered concept of asexuality. After giving a brief history of the use of the term asexual, we explain and debunk some of the myths associated with the term, while offering a brief summary of some current literature. We clarify how asexual differs from celibacy and illuminate the particulars of asexuality compared to several Diagnostic and Statistical Manual diagnoses. By situating asexuality within a historical and current socio-cultural context, we examine the gap between self-identified asexuals’ experiences and cultural misunderstandings of asexualities. After briefly addressing diversity within the asexual community, we argue for several avenues of future research.

The Sociological Study of Sexuality: An Introduction

Sexuality is a major influence on individual health and well being, an important component of many types of social relationships, and an increasingly visible feature of social life. Not surprisingly, it has been the focus of a great deal of scholarly inquiry and research. In the early decades of the twentieth century, much of the “scientific” writing about sexuality focused on what were considered problematic forms of sexual cognitions and behaviors. These works reflected an essentialist view of sex, sexual orientation , and sexual behavior. The empirical base of this work was largely case studies of people seen in therapeutic settings. As a result, the literature had an individualistic, psychological focus.

Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First CenturyFuture Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century, by HarrisAnita. New York: Routledge, 2004. 229 pp.

their own choices of books to read and their concomitant assessment of these books, others find them off-putting and even make a policy of avoiding books sanctioned by canonical methods of evaluation. Sometimes these disputes center around feminist issues: Some groups pursue books that discuss topics of particular interest from a feminist perspective, while others avoid like the plague any “women in pain” books, as books focusing on women’s subjective experience are sometimes disparagingly labeled. I found especially enlightening Long’s extended discussion of various women’s reactions to Jane Austen’s novels in one of the groups she herself attended. As a feminist academic who is also a huge fan of Austen’s work, it was fascinating to see how women struggled with her language, and with trying to relate to the world of the eighteenth and nineteenth century British leisure classes Austen describes. It certainly gave me some insights into popular perceptions of classic literature, perceptions often shared by the university students we teach. Many of the women persevered through their struggles to develop an appreciation of this early feminist author. Some found her world, language, and experience simply too alien to enlighten life in our times. Their variety of responses probably parallel the range of historical processes through which some literary works are forgotten, while others are canonized, remembered, and widely considered important. Theoretically, Long’s book makes a significant contribution to feminist theories of the public sphere. By elaborating a space that few have acknowledged or described, she helps all of us to understand how women reflect and act upon the world in the semipublic setting that is the book group. Twenty years after this literature has pointed out the need to investigate these kinds of spaces that women occupy, there remain scandalously few other empirical studies that contribute to our knowledge of them. In this respect, Long’s book addresses a crucial gap in our theoretical literature. She also includes a useful analysis of Bourdieu and mentions that she is attempting to illustrate how people become subjectively engaged with culture, a type of discussion that adds an important dimension to Bourdieu’s work. Book Clubs is an important addition to the sociology of culture, and to the gender and culture literature, and can be useful in classes that fall into either category.