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Introducing the New Sexuality Studies: Original Essays

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003163329

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 Introducing the New Sexualities Studies:
Original Essays, 4th Edition
Edited by Nancy L. Fischer and Laurel Westbrook, with Steven Seidman

Annotated Table of Contents

Part 1: Laying the Foundations

1. Welcome to the New Sexuality Studies, by Steven Seidman

In the last 20th century, social scientists began to explore sexuality and its attendant issues of
desire, pleasure, identity, norms of sexual behaviors, and intimate arrangements as
fundamentally social phenomenon. We refer to this as the new sexuality studies to mark the
break with past approaches to studying sexuality that assumed it was primarily biological,
arising from internal drives and reproductive imperatives. Seidman describes how feminists
and lesbian and gay activists contributed to understanding sexuality in more social, less
stigmatizing, and more sex-positive ways. In turn, social scientists posed new questions and
new paths of inquiry based on this profoundly sociological view of sexuality.

2. Construction as a Social Process, by Lars D. Christiansen and Nancy L. Fischer

This chapter helps us to understand what is meant by saying that something is socially
constructed. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an explanation of the constructivist
way of understanding our world. Using examples on theories of the role of eggs and sperm,
sex and gender, and sexual identities, we argue that all things, from physical objects to sexual
concepts and theories, are human (i.e., social) constructions. In contrast to those who say that
something that is socially constructed is therefore not real, we argue that all constructions,
even those that are purely conceptual and those deemed “false” are real in their
consequences.

3. The Shifting Boundaries of Sexual Morality by Nancy L. Fischer

This chapter explores sexual morality -- the moral boundaries we draw around sexual matters
-- and how those moral lines vary and shift, as they are used to reinforce or challenge the
social order and its power relations and inequalities. Fischer discusses how what is
considered right and wrong, sexually speaking, is not fixed and absolute, but varies across
cultures and changes over time. Sexual morality can signify hierarchy at both interpersonal
levels and at the larger cultural level. Our society’s rhetoric about sexual morality often
reveals certain moral logics and deeper cultural meanings about what we consider pure or
polluted, corruption or innocence. By analyzing a society’s sexual morals, we can unpack
deeper cultural patterns and long historical trends that influence how people draw moral
boundaries between what they think of as acceptable and unacceptable sexual behavior, and
between “corruption” and “innocence.”

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

Sex, gender, and sexuality are often conceived of as natural and biologically determined, but
they are in fact socially constructed systems of classification, changing over time and varying
across cultures. In the last century, beliefs about sex, gender, and sexuality in the United
States have changed dramatically. Part of these changes has been the increased knowledge
and acceptance of practices and identities that have been termed at various times transsexual,
transgender, and trans. This chapter explains sex, gender, and sexuality as systems, as well
as their relationship in the sex/gender/sexuality system, and details the history of the of trans
categories in the United States. It then explores how the construction of trans categories has
the potential to trouble the assumed link between sex assigned at birth and current gender
identity, expand the number of acceptable ways of doing gender, and denaturalize both sex
and gender. The chapter concludes by describing how, due to the intertwined nature of sex,
gender, and sexuality, increased acceptance of trans people may also fundamentally alter
understandings of sexuality.

5. Unthinking Compulsory Sexuality: Introducing Asexuality, by Ela Przybylo

This chapter provides an overview of the sexual orientation of asexuality in the context of
contemporary Western societies. Opening with an examination of a harmful representation of
asexuality in mainstream media, the chapter continues with an analysis of compulsory
sexuality as a set of discourses that suggest that to be “normal” one must have sexual
attraction and practice sexual activities. Next, the chapter examines asexual or ace identities
and vocabularies, including the importance of the asexual-sexual and aromantic-romantic
continuums, arguing for the value of refraining from a singular asexual story or narrative. It
considers the importance of understanding compulsory sexuality in dialogue with
amatonormativity, heterosexuality, racialization, gender, and ability. Looking at how
discrimination against asexual people takes place under compulsory sexuality, the chapter
ends with a call to recognize the variability of sexual desire and attraction and the
contributions of asexuality studies perspectives.

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

Sexual script theory provides a framework to understand how sexuality is socially

constructed rather than biologically determined and innate. This chapter draws on interviews
with 105 heterosexual and LGBTQ young adults about their dating rituals to demonstrate
how sexual scripts work in practice. Heterosexual young adults use mainstream cultural
schemas about appropriate behaviors for men and women to guide their gender-differentiated
practices. LGBTQ young adults, on the other hand, draw on queer cultural schemas to
develop oppositional dating behaviors designed to challenge normative relationship practices.
Both pathways show how sexual and romantic behaviors only draw meaning from the
context in which they occur, indicating that sexuality is fundamentally a social experience.

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7. Why Sexual Identities, Behaviors, and Attractions Do Not Always “Match” by Tony
Silva

Why do some who have same-sex partners identify as straight? And why do some
heterosexuals have same-sex partners? Sexuality is multidimensional: sexual identities,
behaviors, and attractions do not always “match.” Scholars term this phenomenon
“discordance.” Discordance is fairly common among heterosexuals, particularly women.
Many identify as heterosexual despite having had same-sex partners because they believe
that an LGBQ identity is incompatible with a different-sex romantic partner or parenthood, or
because they wish to avoid stigma and to be a part of a socially dominant group. Many
straight men have sex with other men, despite attraction to women, because they want more
sex than they currently have in their marriages. Many believe that extramarital sex with
women would threaten their marriages, but not extramarital sex with men. Some enjoy sex
with other men because it offers them an opportunity to enjoy sexual pleasure without feeling
like they have to be in control, as they are in sexual encounters with women. Additionally,
romantic and sexual attractions are distinct. Some are sexually attracted to both men and
women but are romantically interested only in people of a different sex. Many such people
identify as heterosexual to reflect their exclusive different-sex romantic attractions.

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

This chapter uses a single surprising statistic—the finding that women with the lowest
educational attainment had the highest lifetime prevalence of same-gender sex—to examine
ideas about both women’s bisexuality and improving social science research. Sociology
about bisexuality has traditionally focused on the experiences of privileged white women,
shaping beliefs about who has same-gender sexual desire, behavior, and identity and leading
researchers to overlook sexual fluidity in other populations. This is an example of the
feedback loop between the production of scientific knowledge, society's pervasive sexual
stereotypes, and even the ideas people hold about themselves. This chapter draws on original
data from a study combining survey research and in-depth interviews to understand how
young women’s bisexuality is shaped by classed experiences such as early motherhood and
monogamy. This chapter illustrates how a study design that brings together different types of
methods, topics, and scholars can ultimately lead to a more legitimate, innovative, and
intersectional sociology of sexualities.

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

It has become common knowledge that LGBTQ youth are at a higher risk of suicide.
Statistics about suicide risk circulate widely and they are important tools that activists and
scholars use in LGBTQ youth advocacy. However, this chapter argues that portrayals of
LGBTQ youth as perpetually wounded can have detrimental and counterproductive effects,
yet the answer is not to deny these issues. After summarizing the history of how LGBTQ
youth suicide came to be known as social problem, and examining a range of responses to
this problem, Waidzunas explores ways that some activists and scholars tell a more

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 complicated story and calls for a continuation of these efforts. Telling a fuller story beyond
wounded truths is imperative for fostering a world that broadens our imagination about what
is possible for ourselves and the future, without denying realities of suffering.

10. Sex-Positivity: A Black Feminist Gift, by Angela Jones

In this chapter, I examine sex-positivity as emerging in Black feminist knowledge and

cultural production. Sex-positivity, the political act of defining your sexuality on your own
terms, is yet another thing I learned from other Black women. The term sex-positivity is
widely used and debated and has become something of a liberal feminist buzzword divorced
from its radical political orientations. This essay demonstrates that Black women indeed
show us the term’s power and political necessity. For Black women, sex-positivity challenges
centuries of overlapping white supremacist, ableist, sexist, and cissexist discourses and
power arrangements that have violently controlled Black women’s sexuality and bodies. In
this essay, I provide an overview of sex-positivity, and introduce different feminist
conceptualizations of the term. Second, I examine sex-positivity as a Black feminist gift and
situate sex-positivity in Black feminist theorizing and knowledge production. Third, I explore
the Black ratchet imagination and sex-positivity in Black feminist cultural production.

Part 2: Bodies and Behaviors

11. The History and Politics of Sexual Intercourse, by Kerwin Kaye

Intercourse is often taken to be a purely natural act. Yet social beliefs and practices not only
shape the meanings which surround sexual intercourse, but even the definition of intercourse
itself (for example, historically the preferred term was not intercourse but coitus, which had a
somewhat different set of connotations). Sexuality is a related term which arose at about the
same time that intercourse replaced coitus. The following essay briefly examines the history
and politics of intercourse and sexuality, looking at ways in which the concepts help to
implicitly establish and reinforce assumptions about pleasure, bodies, psychic development,
and relationships which shape our lives. Intercourse reveals itself to have a politics and a
history, one which has often worked to strengthen socially dominant modes of interaction
and notions of social value. Yet to the extent that intercourse helps to fix a normative social
order, its “perversion” might also help to subvert that order, generating consequences that
extend beyond the mere act of “sex.” Realizing these possibilities requires that we begin to
denaturalize intercourse, revealing the complex construction which lies behind its apparent
obviousness.

12. Polishing the Pearl: Discoveries of the Clitoris, by Lisa Jean Moore

The history of the clitoris is not only about anatomical “discovery” but also socio-cultural
expressions of beliefs about pleasure, control, gender, sex, and sexuality. Much of what we know
about the clitoris depends on who is defining it and systems of social stratification. As cultures
change, people establish new ways to define and understand this powerful organ.

4
13. But Can You Ever Win? Genital Cosmetic Procedures, the Promise of Vulval
Perfection, and the Production of Vulval Distress, by Virginia Braun

Vulvas are highly diverse in terms of size, shape, texture, and coloration. Yet an idealized,
small, “neat and tidy” vulva is often imagined as both the “normal” and the “desirable”
vulva. The last two decades have witnessed the appearance of procedures – such as
labiaplasty – designed to aesthetically alter the vulvar region. In this chapter, Braun describes
genital modification procedures, and outlines, contextualizes, and considers the consequences
of, the popularization of the procedures in Anglo-Western contexts. Various factors make
this surgery socially “understandable”, include: normalization of cosmetic surgery; neoliberal
subjectivity and healthist mandates to improve oneself; medicalization of “problems” and
commercialized “solutions”; a history of misogynistic medical neglect of genito-urinary
problems; sociocultural pathologisation of “women’s bodies,” particularly the vulva and
vagina; representational practices in media, advertising and pornography; shifts in pubic hair
removal norms and practices; and post-feminist choice mandates/rhetoric. Braun describes
resistance from within medicine and feminism but notes these have not prevented an
expansion and normalization of these procedures. Consequently, societal and individual
understandings of what vulvar distress is, and how you respond to it, have changed: vulvar
distress is legitimated, but the route to resolve such distress is medicalized, is surgical.

14. The Social Meanings and Practices of Orgasm, by Juliet Richters

Orgasm can be defined physiologically as a reaction to sexual stimulation. It is usually

thought of as the high point(s) of a sexual event, including masturbation. However, beliefs
about orgasm varies greatly in different cultures, and women’s experience in particular can
range from an expectation of bliss to complete ignorance of the idea that women can have
orgasms. In almost all cultures it is usual for men to ejaculate during sex, and sex usually
includes vaginal intercourse, a practice which is less likely to lead to orgasm for the woman.
Recent research suggests that the likelihood of orgasm more tightly linked to which sexual
practices are engaged in, rather than background and religion. Orgasmic sensation is also
affected by hormones, as people taking gender-affirming hormones discover. The medical
label of “orgasmic dysfunction” (difficulty reaching orgasm) tells us not only that it is a
bodily malfunction, but that orgasm is socially expected. The supposed naturalness of
penetrative intercourse is not assumed by gay men or by lesbians. Other variations of
orgasmic practice can include coitus reservatus (prolonged intercourse without ejaculation),
coitus interruptus (ejaculation outside the receptive partner’s body), multiple or repeated
orgasms, and female “ejaculation” or release of fluid.

15. Anal Sex: Phallic and Other Meanings, by Simon Hardy

Anal sex has emerged from the closet into the cultural mainstream, and this chapter provides
a brief overview of attempts to re-imagine anal sex. The meanings of anal sex in modern
sexual culture have been shaped by the struggle for equality of gender and sexual orientation,
the relationship between sexuality and self-identity, and the clash between phallic sexuality
and a more diverse range of “perverse” sexualities. Key themes include a discussion of anal
sex as a method of contraception, as a health risk, as a heterosexual substitute, as a

5
 perversion, as a routine variation of sexual repertoire, as a special/ultimate intimacy, as a
fashionable theme of cultural representation, as an obligatory pornographic number and as an
act of phallic domination.

16. Rethinking Dick Pics, by Ben Light, Susanna Paasonen, and Kylie Jarrett

Dick pics are pictures of penises. They are situated in a long and culturally complicated
history of what parts of the body are acceptable to show to others, and under what conditions.
With the rise of digital photography, the dick pic has developed many meanings and uses. In
this chapter we will explore what dick pics are, why and how they exist, or not, and why they
matter.

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

Decision-Making, by Jennifer A. Reich

This chapter examines the meanings of unintended pregnancy. The chapter points to the
social and contextual factors that shape perceptions and experiences of sex, contraception,
unintended pregnancy, and abortion. Rather than focusing on reproduction as entirely a series
of individual choices or experiences, this chapter highlights how the goals, meanings, and
experiences of pregnancy reflect social contexts and systems of inequality. Moreover, the
chapter demonstrates the inaccuracy of many assumptions about intended and unintended
pregnancies as well as who does and does not utilize abortion services. For example, there is
an assumption that there are two kinds of women: those who have abortions and those who
have babies. In fact, these are the same women, at different points in their lives. The chapter
concludes by identifying social changes that could better support individuals’ goals.

18. Sex in Later-Life: Beyond Dysfunction and the Coital Imperative, by Linn J. Sandberg

This chapter explores the question of how later-life people “fuck.” By presenting qualitative
studies featuring the voices and experiences of older heterosexual people, this chapter
presents late-life sexuality. A coital imperative increasingly informs mass media and medical
discourses of ageing and sexuality and assumes that impotence/ asexuality is a dreadful fate
for seniors. However, seniors are neither faulty nor dependent on a Viagra-induced forever-
functioning sexual machinery and involves a reinvention and negotiations of sexuality. The
examples are primarily taken from the author’s studies on older heterosexual men,
masculinity, and sexuality and for this reason a particular focus of the chapter is on men and
masculinity. Older partnered heterosexual men and women discuss alternatives to sexual
intercourse that they find enjoyable.

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19. “There’s Really No Reason to Settle”: Size Acceptance as a Path to Sexual
Empowerment, by Jeannine A. Gailey

It is common in contemporary Western societies for women to express dissatisfaction with

their appearance and body. Unrealistic beauty standards that are perpetuated in the media,
and by our friends, families, and even strangers, has amplified the pressure on women and
girls to be thin and conventionally attractive. For women who are fat, the messaging is even
worse. Anti-fat sentiments are woven into the fabric of our society and are incredibly
difficult to overcome. The size acceptance movement works to combat the insidious
messages that women and girls receive everyday about their appearance and critiques the
framing of fat as a problem. The focus of the messages is to shift our view from our
appearance to our bodily functionality. As part of a larger study, the author sought to better
understand how fat women negotiate living in a culture that largely deems them unattractive
and how that affects their dating and sexual relationships. Through in-depth interviews with
74 fat women, the author found that those who were aware of and embraced the size
acceptance movement ethos were able to come to appreciate their bodies in new ways. Self-
acceptance led to increased confidence and sexual empowerment, among other things.

Part 3: Relating and Relationships

20. Romance and Other Threats to Our Future, by Laurie Essig

Romance is not just fairy dust and happy endings. It is an ideology. And as an ideology,
romance can turn our attention away from what’s really going on even as it offers us false
promises of a better tomorrow. Romance has long done much of the emotional labor of
neoliberal capitalism, telling us we could have our very own safe and happily ever after, if
we just had the most spectacular engagement, the perfect wedding, and the most magical
honeymoon. During the coronavirus pandemic, romance distracted us with all sorts of
fantasies of our own individual futures, even as reality insisted on showing us just how
interconnected we all are. This chapter lays out the history of romance as an ideology and
brings us to the current Pandemic moment when it is time to recognize how dangerous
believing the future is about the couple can be.

21. One is Not Born a Bride: Weddings and the Heterosexual Imaginary, by Chrys
Ingraham

The wedding ritual represents a major site for the installation and maintenance of the
institution of heterosexuality. Although it may seem obvious to most that one is not “born” a
bride, many women see themselves as following a “naturalized” path toward heterosexual
womanhood, where the expectation to eventually marry and have a white wedding is
regarded as normal on the route to adulthood. The heterosexual imaginary describes a way of
thinking that relies on romantic and sacred notions of heterosexuality to create and maintain
the illusion of well-being and oneness. This imaginary presents a view of heterosexuality as
“just the way it is” while creating social practices that reinforce the illusion that, if one
complies with this naturalized structure, all will be right in the world. By leaving
heterosexuality unexamined as an institution, we fail to explore how it is learned, how it may

7
 control us, and contribute to social inequalities. Above all, the heterosexual imaginary
naturalizes the regulation of sexuality through the institution of marriage, ritual practices
such as weddings, and domestic relations laws.

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

This chapter examines issues related to consent based on data gathered from young adults
living in Canada who discussed their best and worst consensual sexual experiences. Gender-
based expectations about sex drove experiences of consent and unequal pleasure between
men and women. Although “good” and “mediocre” sexual encounters were often
characterized by clear feelings of consent, many also experienced a “gray area”, where
consent was not felt as clearly. Young people engaged in unwanted sexual experiences that
were not felt or described as sexual assault, due to socialized pressure of what they thought
that sex “should” be like, and how they “should” act and communicate. Gendered
expectations through heteronormative sexual scripts play a damaging role in our
understandings and communication of sexual consent, as well as young people’s experiences
of and advocacy for pleasure. As such, the notion of consent as unclear goes far beyond the
notion of miscommunication, hindered by perceptions and expectations of young men and
women’s sexual behavior. Consent is in fact more nuanced than a “yes” or “no”, instead
intersecting with factors such as mutual desire, arousal, and pleasure.

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

Jennifer Gunsaullus

What are the components of meaningful intimacy? This chapters opens with the author’s path
to becoming an intimacy coach and sex speaker. Gunsaullus then discusses factors that
interfere with meaningful intimacy, including shame around sexual beliefs and expression;
how vulnerability is necessary for intimacy yet can evoke a fear of judgment because of our
need for belonging. The concept of applied mindfulness is introduced, as a way to cultivate
vulnerability and intimacy. Mindfulness with an accompanying focus on compassion is a key
but often missing part of sexual health education and preventing sexual coercion. The chapter
concludes by discussing how self-worth and vulnerability are foundational to meaningful
intimacy and relationships.

24. Interracial Romance: The Logic of Acceptance and Domination, by Kumiko Nemoto

The increase in interracial relationships gives the impression that racism and discrimination
have lessened in society. However, some types of interracial couples are deemed acceptable
and desirable according to society’s dominant racial and gender beliefs. In a multicultural
society, images of interracial romance continue to be shaped by themes of white normalcy,
exoticization of people of color, as well as men’s authority, and distinct gender differences
between masculinity and femininity. Racial stereotypes play a critical role in gender
dynamics in interracial relationships such as stereotypes of Black men’s hypermasculinity, or
“model minority” stereotypes of Asian women as submissive, subservient, passive, and/or
hypersexual. Such stereotypes may serve as critical components of heterosexual attraction in

8
 interracial relationships. Nemoto interviews 42 Asian Americans and whites in interracial
relationship to explore race consciousness, social reception, racialized desires, gender
dynamics, and how whiteness has been circulated globally as a sign of power and an object
of desire.

25. Romantic Apartheid: Digital Sexual Racism in Online Dating, by Celeste Vaughan
Curington and Jennifer Hickes Lundquist

This chapter examines how online daters of various racial backgrounds make sense of their
racialized romantic decisions in the post-Civil Rights era. The authors track the existence of
digital sexual racism in online dating that daters use to rationalize racialized personal
preferences as a private, personal behavior. A colorblind ideology allows daters to justify
their racial preferences as natural and something that should be divorced from judgment or
criticism. These colorblind frames are deployed in three main ways to rationalize dating
choices: cultural racism; a public versus private distinction; and a naturalization narrative.
In contrast, some white daters and many online daters of color challenged racialized personal
preferences by recognizing that they are socially constructed and serve to privilege
whiteness. These alternative frames fall into three themes: unmasking racism, challenging
white’s racialized preferences, and challenging internalized racism.

26. Sexualized Othering in Multiracial Women’s Experiences with Sex and Romance, by
Shantel Gabrieal Buggs

The phenomenon of sexual racism, in which sexual and romantic appeal of an individual is
informed by racial understandings of sexuality that perpetuate social inequality, has been a
significant topic of study in research on online dating. This chapter explores the ways that
sex – as an activity – and sexuality – as perceived by potential and actual romantic partners –
shows up in self-identified multiracial and multiethnic women’s online and offline dating
experiences, particularly romantic and/or sexual experiences with white men. Specifically,
the chapter extends the concept of sexualized othering to understand how some people
navigate online dating websites and apps, how they feel about their bodies, and whether they
describe a willingness to date across racial and ethnic boundaries.

27. Gay Racism: The Institutional and Interactional Patterns of Racism in Gay
Communities, by C. Winter Han

Although gay white people often argue that racism is not a major problem in gay
communities, significant numbers of gay men and women report feeling more racial hostility
in gay communities than in the larger society. This chapter explores the different ways that
LGBTQ+ people of color experience racism in gay communities and identifies both
structural and interpersonal ways that racism operates to limit the ability of LGBTQ+ people
of color to fully participate in gay life. In exposing racism in gay communities, the chapter
particularly examines the ways that the possessive investment in whiteness among gay white
men and women leads to a situation where LGBTQ+ people of color are marginalized and/or
excluded from gay institutions and neighborhoods and erased in gay media. The chapter also
explores the idea of sexual racism, the ways that gay men of color are sexually marginalized

9
 or fetishized by gay white men and discusses the ways that gay media’s focus on white men
leads to sexual marginalization.

28. Gender Labor, Racework, and Trans Pleasure: Transgender Individuals’ Experiences
in Intimate Relationships, by alithia zamantakis and Coumbah Sidibe

In this chapter, we discuss the fears of violence that transgender people have when forming
intimate relationships. We highlight how these fears play an exorbitant role in shaping the
amount of time and energy some trans people put into pre-screening partners, explaining
their identities, and deciding how they will dress or where they will go for dates with new
partners. We additionally elucidate the lack of desire that many cisgender individuals have
been found to have for transgender individuals, as well as the difficulty that trans people,
particularly trans women and Black trans people, face when attempting to form relationships.
Finally, we explicate how relationships, dating, and other forms of intimacy can also open up
space for joy and euphoria for trans people.

29. “We Were on a BREAK!”: Men Chasing Masculinity and Women Seeking Pleasure in
Affairs, by Alicia Walker

No one wants to be cheated on, but most folks eagerly listen to gossip about infidelity within
the relationships of other people. Our ideas of what “counts” as cheating varies greatly, and
we rarely have conversations with our partners about what constitutes infidelity. Gender and
sexual orientation play a role in what kinds of infidelity upset us more. Like so much in our
world, we gender our own understandings of infidelity in an effort to make sense of the
behavior. As a result, much of our commonsense understandings of cheating revolve the idea
that “men are dogs” and women cheat for attention and love. Current research challenges
those stereotypes and reveals a much more nuanced framing of infidelity motivations.

30. Polyamory, Mononormativity, and Polyqueer Kinship, by Mimi Schippers

In this chapter, the author presents contemporary polyamory as a new way of doing and
thinking about relationships. The author defines polyamory and discusses relationship
innovations developed in polyamory subcultures. The author then defines mononormativity
as a pervasive feature of social organization that intersects with other forms of inequality and
provides examples from hers and others’ research. Finally, the author concludes by
suggesting that polyqueer kinship has broader political implications that extend beyond
interpersonal, intimate relationships.

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Part 4: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

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

This chapter presents a paradox in the intersex community—many fat intersex people
celebrate being intersex but lament fatness. By weaving their personal experiences alongside
interviews with fat intersex people, Davis adopts a scholar-activist approach to uniquely
reveal how this selective celebration of bodily differences surfaces in romantic relationships.
Davis shows how fat intersex people, themselves included, problematically enact and justify
anti-fatness because fatness is viewed as something that can be controlled whereas intersex is
something one is born with. Davis concludes with six actions that fat intersex people and
their allies can take to more fully embrace bodily differences.

32. Trans Sexualities: Identities, Relationships, and Desires, by Avery Tompkins

This chapter discusses how binary constructions of gender impact affirming and trans-
specific sexual identities for trans people and those with whom they partner. Trans sexualities
are discussed as being inclusive of all people, regardless of gender identity, who have a
relationship to trans identities in terms of their sexuality. This relationship is strained,
however, by social stigma about having sexual desire or attraction towards trans people.
Those who express sexual desire or attraction for trans people risk being called “tranny
chasers,” a generally negative term that indicates someone has fetishized trans people. This
chapter calls for the development of sexual identities that are trans-specific, and for trans
sexualities to be affirmed with sex-positive rhetoric that destigmatizes discussions of desire
and attraction.

33. Adolescent Girls’ Sexuality: Sexual Agency and the Renovated Sexual Double
Standard, by Deborah L. Tolman

Adolescent girls’ sexuality has been seen as a problem, leading to surveillance and moral
panics. The power of girls’ sexual agency (i.e., to know and act on their own desires) both
challenges and incites judgement and slut-shaming. The discourse of “sexual empowerment”
seems to repudiate it, but is actually a more insidious controlling discourse. A renovated
sexual double standard is the mechanism for keeping girls’ sexual desires under wraps,
invisibly propping up gendered (hetero)sexuality. There are new mandates for girls of
sexiness, sophistication, and sexual freedom, which seem to have been rebuffed; however,
these new mandates cover up and reinforce traditional values. There are tensions at the heart
of girls’ sexuality and development: pleasure and danger and sexual agency and sexual
violence are constantly negotiated. Race, class, sexuality, and gender identity are
fundamental to the possibilities for and obstacles to these paths, as are media and social
media. Sexual embodiment and sexual entitlement are crucial for girls’ sexual agency. Girls
are resisting suppression of sexual knowledge and sexual agency to ensure their sexual well-
being and sexual rights, through positive sexuality, activism, and disruption of controlling
discourses.

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34. “There’s No Such Thing as a Slut”: Creating and Destroying the “Good Girl” in Taylor
Swift’s Musical Persona, by Adriane Brown

This chapter examines several types of Taylor Swift fan sites--the forum section of two
popular Taylor Swift websites, the r/TaylorSwift subreddit, and comments on official Taylor
Swift YouTube channel videos--at three different timepoints in Swift’s career in order to trace
the development and deconstruction of the Swiftian “good girl.” Amidst an American
cultural and political focus on teen abstinence, Swift’s early music represented a nostalgic
longing for “traditional values” such as monogamy, propriety, and chastity—values which
are historically and inextricably tied to whiteness, heterosexuality, and normative femininity.
Fans in 2009-2010 valorized Swift for her “good girl” behavior and judged her lyrical bad
girl foils harshly for sexual impropriety. After the release of Reputation in 2017, however,
fans were ready to endorse Taylor’s own sexual subjectivity, and in 2020, fans embraced an
understanding of the “other woman” as simply a woman in love. This shift in perspective
represents an important shift away from propriety discourse; however, I also assert that it is
essential to acknowledge the ways in which Swift’s shifting musical sexual persona is
enabled by whiteness--sometimes through juxtaposition to the people of color featured in her
videos.

35. “Guys Are Just Homophobic”: Rethinking Adolescent Homophobia and

Heterosexuality, by C.J. Pascoe

Interactions between contemporary American boys indicate that homophobic taunts, jokes,
and harassment are central to the ways in which young boys come to think of themselves as
men. By calling other boys “gay,” and imitating effeminate men, boys attempt to assure
themselves and others of their masculinity. For some boys, signaling to self and others that
one is powerful, competent, unemotional, heterosexual and dominant appears through
practices of repudiation and confirmation taking form through fag discourse and compulsive
sexuality. Boys who do not conform to this understanding of masculinity and sexuality are
mocked, humiliated, and feared. Sexualized and gendered aggression directed from boys at
other boys, and the intolerance for gender differences espoused by these jokes, can have
serious consequences. In their relationships with girls, adolescent avoid expressions of love,
desire, or intimacy and instead display sexualized dominance over their bodies, where girls’
bodies provide boys the opportunity to ward off the fag discourse by demonstrating mastery
and control.

36. Not “Straight” But Still a “Man”: Negotiating Non-Heterosexual Masculinities, by

Ghassan Moussawi

In this chapter, Moussawi examines how compulsory heterosexuality polices gender

presentations, enactments, and performances. More specifically, he looks at how non-
heterosexual men in Beirut use relational and various definitions of masculinity, embracing
forms of hegemonic masculinity to distance themselves from gender non-normative men.
Although hegemonic masculinity is usually studied in relation to heterosexual men, this
chapter shows how non-heterosexual men distance themselves from both hegemonic
masculinity and femininity, embracing a modified version of hegemonic masculinity.

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 Moussawi argues that the various ways that non-heterosexual men define and enact various
masculinities is done to maintain masculine privilege and define themselves and their
masculinities in ways that affirm their commitments to the gender binary and gender
normativity.

37. Straight Men and Women: Hegemonic and Counter-Hegemonic Straightness, by James
J. Dean

This chapter draws on in-depth interviews to sketch a range of performances of straight

masculinity and femininity. Although hegemonic straight identities rely on homophobic
practices for their establishment, Dean shows that counter-hegemonic straight identities have
emerged that are antihomophobic but still use gender conventional identity practices to
perform a straight identity. That is, the association of gender conventional behavior with
straightness is one the main ways straight men and women perform their sexual identity in
everyday life. Social analysts need to separate out gender conventional identity practices
from practices of homophobia. Although gender conventional identity practices perform
straightness and its privileged status, they do not necessarily entail homophobic practices of
sexual domination. A key point is that some perform queered heterosexualities – straight
identities that include some form of sexual fluidity and avoid expressions of homophobia. In
short, scholars and others must account for the changing context of straight cultures, its
diversity, and the multiplicity of straight masculinities and femininities that exist in
America’s dynamic sexual landscape today.

38. How “Regular Sex” Contributes to the Gender Gap in Orgasms, by Nicole Andrejek
and Melanie Heath

There is a wealth of evidence that there is a gender gap in orgasms. The research on sexual
practices and relationship contexts has shown that, during partnered, heterosexual sexual
encounters, a lack of variation in sexual activities and an absence of clitoral stimulation are
contributing to women having fewer orgasms than men. If it is widely known that sexual
practices focused on clitoral stimulation increase women’s likelihood to orgasm, why are
couples not engaging in these types of sexual activities? In this chapter, we examine
heteronormative, gendered beliefs about what it means to “have sex,” and the implications of
those meanings. Our interviews with cisgender men and women who have engaged in
heterosexual sex across Canada suggests that heteronormative understandings of what counts
as sex prioritizes penile stimulation over clitoral stimulation, contributing to the gender gap
in orgasms.

39. Sacred and Beastly Sex: Abstinence Pledges and Masculinity, by Sarah H. Diefendorf

This chapter explores the ways in which men who pledge sexual abstinence until marriage
negotiate and assert masculine identities. Using interviews and focus groups with evangelical
Christian men before and after they were married, the author traces the ways in which these
men manage a tension between both “sacred” and “beastly” understandings of sexuality. The
practices and beliefs of these men highlight their attempts to resolve the incongruity between
practices of sexual purity—something usually associated with women—and normative

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 understandings of masculinity. Analyses of the data suggest that a decision to pledge sexual
abstinence until marriage is an example of hybrid masculinities (Bridges and Pascoe 2014) in
that the postmarriage transition to a more hegemonically masculine status suggests that
abstinence pledges do not challenge current gendered systems of power and inequality. This
is highlighted through the ways these men talk about and understand their relationships and
their wives postmarriage.

40. Heteroflexibility, by Héctor Carrillo

Categories like “heterosexual” are often taken for granted, but sometimes their meanings
may be more complicated than we imagine. This chapter examines the topic of
heteroflexibility, defined as a process that allows straight-identified people to incorporate
same-sex desires into their understandings of heterosexuality. As a process, heteroflexibility
implies an expansion of the category of heterosexuality, beyond its standard definition in
terms of exclusive “opposite-sex” attraction and desires. By examining heteroflexibility, we
gain insight into the intricate nature of sexual identities. The chapter discusses various
interpretations and assessments upon which straight-identified men and women who engage
in bisexual behaviors rely in maintaining their self-identification as straight. Those include:
(1) being aware of the social preponderance of heterosexuality, (2) assessing that one’s
bisexual behaviors are of lesser significance than one’s heterosexual behaviors, (3)
estimating that one’s different-sex attraction is primary, and (4) considering various
perceived links between heterosexuality and gender presentation (in terms of masculinity and
femininity). Finally, the chapter compares heteroflexibility with other related concepts such
as “sexual fluidity” and the fixed category of the “mostly heterosexual.”

Part 5: Social Structures and Institutions

41. The Economy and American Marriage: Change and Continuity, by Erica Hunter

This chapter examines marriage as an institution that supports, legitimates, and provides
benefits for some types of relationships. As an institution, marriage has undergone significant
change over time. Shifts in the social structure of the economy have altered marriage in the
United States. With the transition from an agricultural society to capitalism, marriage shifted
from being primarily a basis for economic survival to being conceptualized as being mainly
about couples choosing to share lives for the sake of love. Wage labor under capitalism
enabled individuals the economic freedom to seeking partners for love, including those who
desired same-sex relationships. Heterosexuality has been the ideological basis for marriage,
underpinned by the idea of “natural” and “complementary” gender roles, however this may
be changing as rates of marriage decline and people seek out alternative living arrangements.

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42. The Marriage Contract: The Legal Context of Marriage, by Mary Bernstein

Marriage is seen as a mark of maturity and earns social status for the married couple.
Marriage is also a legal contract. Historically, marriage laws have served to promote
procreation, to regulate sexual behavior, and to enforce gender roles and notions of racial and
national purity. In this chapter Bernstein examines the history of marriage as a legal contract,
and its relationship to procreation and gender roles. The chapter looks at the ways in which
marriage is promoted in contemporary public policies to solve a variety of social problems
such as gender inequality, inadequate healthcare coverage, and childcare. Finally, Bernstein
considers same-sex marriage and why gay and lesbian couples sought the right to marry.

43. The Elusive Goal of Sexual Health, by Steven Epstein

Sexual health is an important but elusive goal. What does it mean to be sexually healthy, and
who gets to say? At least since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments,
advocacy groups, foundations, commercial interests, and many individuals increasingly have
embraced the quest for something called sexual health. From sexually transmitted infections
to sexual dysfunction to sexual harassment to reproductive health to sexual rights to the
market in sexual wellness products, sexual health now signals urgent concerns and
substantial investments. This goal has fueled varied attempts to solve social problems,
propelled an array of projects to improve medical care and expand knowledge, and
encouraged individuals to undertake projects of “self-optimization.” Meanwhile, sexual
health has become a political battleground where the stakes are competing visions of the
future. Studying the rise, proliferation, and consequences of sexual health activities is
important, because conjoining “sexual” with “health” changes both terms: it alters how we
conceive of sexuality but also transforms what it means to be healthy. In addition, the many
meanings of sexual health, and the differing effects of sexual health activities on different
social groups, raise ethical and political questions, with implications for freedom, equality,
and social justice.

44. Medicine and the Making of the Sexual Body, by Celia Roberts

Sex and sexuality are intimately connected to medicine. Sexual bodies come into existence in
part through medical knowledges and practices, including physical and psychiatric
classifications and definitions, medical research, and pharmaceutical and behavioral
interventions and treatments. These connections are historically specific, and travel in
complex ways around the world. Examples discussed in this chapter include the
medicalization of homosexual bodies and identities, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, hormonal
contraceptives and the pharmaceuticalization of sexual desire. Each example demonstrates
the complex intertwining of medical ideas and practices with sexual subjectivities and
bodies.

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45. The Feminization of “Responsive” Desire, by Alyson K. Spurgas

This chapter investigates current protocols for interpreting and managing women’s “low
sexual desire.” Through dysfunction discourses and diagnostic technologies, women who
lack desire or are “unreceptive” to initiating partners are understood as in need of affective
regulation and management and are ultimately produced as a group or population. My
analysis suggests an institutionalized feminized responsive desire framework that consists of
four facets: 1) new sexual response models said to describe women’s “circular” sexuality, 2)
technologies that measure women’s (“low”) psychological desire against their (“high”)
physiological arousal, and proclaim many women “discordant” when these two measures are
compared, 3) new treatment regimens designed to boost desire, and 4) a new woman-specific
low desire diagnosis in the DSM-5: “female sexual interest/arousal disorder” (FSIAD). This
framework exemplifies a trend toward positioning women as more sexually receptive,
responsive, complex, non-linear, disconnected, and “incentive motivated” than men.
Contemporary treatments for low desire are increasingly promoted to help “discordant”
women “bridge the gap” between their supposedly reluctant minds and their allegedly
aroused bodies, including mindfulness and other “female-friendly” alternative methods. Such
treatments—under the guise of promoting happiness, pleasure, health, and wellness—
ultimately prescribe heteronormative feminized modes of embodiment, intimacy, and
relationality.

46. The Coloniality of Sexuality, by Vrushali Patil

This chapter argues that historically, sexuality has played a pivotal role in the colonial
encounter in terms of marking its meaning and in structuring its exercise of power. It starts
by discussing the dense entanglements between imperial and colonial power relations, race,
notions of whiteness, and heteronormativity. Given these entanglements, it considers writing
on the same-sex desiring subject which emerged in the later part of the 1800s. In particular, it
focuses on the Hanoverian writer, Karl Ulrichs, who sought to challenge heteronormativity
and make a space for the same-sex desiring sexual subject, and whose writings were deeply
influential on the eventual emergence of the notion of the “homosexual” sexual subject.
Contrary to approaches to sexuality which neglect coloniality—and which approach Ulrichs
solely through the lens of sexuality—it argues that the colonial dimension which has been so
central to the solidification of heternormativity cannot be neglected in considering challenges
to heternormativity. Coloniality and sexuality thoroughly inform each other. Ultimately,
challenges to heteronormativity (and its related constructs) and to coloniality must also
happen together.

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47. “I Am God’s Creation”: Religion as a Positive Force in the Lives of LGBTQ+ Persons
of Faith, by Orit Avishai

Conservative religious traditions are often considered to be antithetical to the wellbeing of

LGBTQ+ persons and are seen as obstacles to advancing LGBTQ+ rights, but this lens of
conflict does not capture the full story of LGBTQ+ persons and religion. This chapter
considers religion as a productive force in the lives of LGBTQ+ persons by drawing on the
case of same-sex attracted Orthodox Jews in Israel. The chapter demonstrates how some
LGBTQ+ persons of faith mine and harness their religious tradition’s logics, language, and
sensibility to make sense of themselves; how this process results in reinterpretations of the
tradition’s stories to make space for LGBTQ+ persons; and how religious language and ideas
help LGBTQ+ persons articulate their demands for acceptance and equality within a religious
community that has traditionally rendered them invisible. The result is a potential “queering”
of religion—troubling and challenging a tradition that claims to be timelessly hetero- and cis-
normative. By remaining within their religious tradition and enlisting it to further their
demands for acceptance, LGBTQ+ persons of faith render the tradition itself more inviting
and hospitable to LGBTQ+ lives. The twist here is that this queering works from within the
religious tradition.

48. The Politics of Sexuality and Gender Expression in Schools, by Melinda Miceli

This chapter discusses a variety of ways in which high school teach lessons about sexuality
and gender expression as part of both the formal curriculum and hidden curriculum. The
author argues that public debate over the content of what is taught on these topics has long
been, and continues to be, fueled by the rhetoric of powerful political interest groups. The
chapter provides an overview of many of the areas of debate—the content of sex education
courses, school dress codes, regulations over the gender of students’ prom dates, the
bathrooms and locker rooms students can use, and the sports teams’ students are allowed to
play on. To political interest groups being able to control what schools teach about sexuality
and gender is an important strategy in culture wars that help to sustain political divisions in
society.

49. Sexual Education and Its Failures: From Social Inequalities to Intimate Possibilities, by
Jessica Fields and Jen Gilbert

Across national and local jurisdictions, sex education is regularly at the center of political
controversy. In this chapter, we explore sex education as a sticky subject—a delicate and
sensitive topic and one that many other topics seem to “stick” to. We explore the lessons
advocates, policymakers, teachers, and students encounter and generate about sex and
sexuality and the ways those lessons reflect, repeat, and reinscribe social inequalities
including, but not limited to, adultism, racism, and sexism. Working with a broad definition
of sex education, we also consider how sex education might become an occasion to advance
subjectivity, desire, and possibility in the lives of all young people.

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Part 6: Navigating Inequalities and Oppressions

50. The Body, Disability, and Sexuality, by Thomas J. Gerschick

People with disabilities face formidable challenges in establishing self-satisfactory

sexualities; despite these challenges, they are increasingly doing so. This chapter conveys a
range of scholarship from advocates, researchers, and other interested parties regarding the
relationship among the body, disability, and sexuality. I begin with a brief contextualization
of disability and then turn my attention to the role of the body in social life using the
experiences of people with disabilities to highlight key social dynamics. Subsequently, I
provide an overview of the challenges that people with disabilities face in determining self-
satisfactory sexualities and conclude with a discussion of their active responses to those
challenges.

51. The Intersection of Sexuality and Intellectual Disabilities: Shattering the Taboo, by
Alan Santinele Martino

The intersection of disability and sexuality remains a taboo topic. In our social world, people
with intellectual disabilities are commonly de-sexualized and infantilized in ways that deny
their sexual interests, desires, and rights. This social group experiences a series of disabling
social barriers to pursuing and maintaining a romantic and sexual life. Drawing on interviews
with 46 adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario, Canada, this chapter explores the
intimate lives of disabled people, demonstrating how other social actors in their lives, such as
family members and support care workers, may at times silence and constrain the sexualities
of disabled people.

52. Disrupting Dichotomies: Non-Binary Sexual Identities, by Andrea D. Miller

This chapter discusses non-binary sexual identities, such as bisexuality, that are often
rendered invisible and illegitimate due to the prevalence of either/or categories rooted in
dualistic thinking and behaviors in society. Bisexuality, pansexuality, and asexuality are
introduced through a social lens, including through the social institutions of media, law, and
higher education. Theoretical interventions are used to debunk harmful misconceptions about
non-binary sexual identities. Beginning with essentialist theories, the reader is challenged to
consider why non-binary sexual identities continue to be delegitimized and invalidated. Next,
theories of social constructionism and queer theory are introduced to provide a much-needed
counterpoint to the commonly held belief that sexual identities are inherently natural, stable,
and never-changing. Finally, this chapter returns to the author’s own non-binary identity and
now she has personally navigated bi-negativity at both the personal and institutional level.

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53. Creando Una Familia: LBQ Latinas Facilitating Bonds Through Shared
Race/Ethnicity, by Katie L. Acosta

This chapter examines the concessions lesbian, bisexual, and queer Latinx intended parents
make when choosing a donor to conceive their future children. They must first decide if they
want to use a known or anonymous donor. Cryobanks offer a wide array of donors from
which intended parents can select their ideal candidate. But the choices for non-White donors
are relatively limited. To assist them, intended parents can filter through the many donor
profiles based on their preferred characteristics. In this chapter, I explore how intended
parents’ decisions regarding donor selection are shaped by their desires to cement familial
bonds and the ways they use race and ethnicity matching to facilitate this end goal.

54. “Heterosexual Families Do Not Have to Explain themselves”: Heteronormativity in the

Lives of LGBTQ+ Children and Parents, by Kate Henley Averett

This chapter explores some of the ways heteronormativity—the social processes through
which heterosexuality is continually reproduced as being normal, natural, and ideal—shapes
the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and otherwise non-heterosexual/non-
cisgender (LGBTQ+) people. Specifically, the chapter draws from research on LGBTQ+
children and parents to examine how the normalization of heterosexuality can hurt children
who are, or who may be, LGBTQ+, and how the idealization of heterosexually families
shapes the lives of LGBTQ+ parents. Importantly, the chapter also discusses how some
people resist heteronormativity, and raises questions about the possibility and shape of social
change.

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

Heterosexism and homophobia have multiplicative effects for gays and lesbians of color,
who are harmed by racism, classism, and sexism. How does one’s social location within
these interlocking systems of inequality define one’s experience and consciousness? In this
chapter, McQueeney draws on data from participant observation and interviews in two
lesbian and gay affirming Protestant churches in the Southeast—one predominantly Black
and the other predominantly white—to illustrate how an intersectional perspective
complicates and deepens our understanding of sexual identity. To dispel the “immoral”
images with which they confronted, lesbian and gay members engaged in a group process of
sexual identity reconstruction. They drew on the resources to present themselves as good
people—people of faith—despite their homosexuality. Importantly, all gay men and lesbian
women did not have the same resources at their disposal to accomplish this work to fashion
themselves as “normal” and “moral” people because such resources were linked to the
systems of racism, classism, and sexism that shaped their lives.

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56. “The Thorn in My Side”: How Ex-Gays, Ex-Ex-Gays, and Celibate Gays Negotiate
Their Religious and Sexual Identities, by S. J. Creek

Ex-gay ministries, and similar organizations, promise a therapeutic means to eradicate same-
sex sexual attractions through finding relief or freedom from “entering the lifestyle” of
homosexuality. This chapter analyses ex-gays, ex-ex-gays, and gay celibates, all of whom
once were or are currently a part of the ex-gay ministries. Ex-gays’ conservative Christian
identities were the most salient identities they held. For ex-ex-gays, their religious identities
do not serve as a substitute for their sexual identities. By leaving ex-gay ministries, ex-ex-
gays had to accept that change in their sexual orientation was not coming, consider that they
may be gay, and take on that identity to then reassess their conservative Christian identity.
Gay celibates in this study had relationships with both ex-gay and ex-ex-gay people, a
circumstance that offered both a sense of community and conflict. Juggling the demands of
religion with the realities of one's sexuality is a widespread experience, and this chapter
highlights a clear example of how religious and sexual identities inform one another.

57. The Racial and Sexual Stereotypes of the “Down Low”, by Salvador Vidal-Ortiz and
Brandon Andrew Robinson

This chapter examines the idea of “down low” (DL) in order to explore the intersections of
sexualities with race. We discuss themes of Black sexual stereotypes and link these
stereotypes to other non-white people. We illustrate how masculine white men seek
masculine Black men to be their “sexually aggressive” sex partners. When white men extend
their racial desire to non-white men, they construct a newer version of the “down low” that
stigmatizes Black men, and other men of color. Because the association of the “down low” is
often conflated with Blackness, white men who self-categorize as “DL” do not carry the
burden or stigma that is attached to Black men and other men of color. DL men of color are
often portrayed as having internalized homophobia, for not “coming out” as gay, as being
deceitful toward the women that they are presumably in a relationship with, and these men of
color are reduced to their bodies and to their genitalia; however, white men escape these
stereotypical portrayals. We suggest that the “down low” is a complex site of intersecting
modes of race and sexualities that needs to be unpacked in order to understand the circulation
of DL discourse.

58. Unspoiling Stigmatized Identities: Combatting Racial and Sexual Stigma, by Terrell
J.A. Winder

This chapter explores the stigma negotiation strategies available to people who
simultaneously experience multiple intersecting stigmas. Using the case of Black gay men,
the author argues for a new way to understand how enduring racial and sexual stigma can be
transformed into a resolve for social change. Building on existing stigma management
techniques, covering and passing, the author offers unspoiling as a new strategy that rejects
the burden of stigma for the stigmatized individual. Ethnographic and interview data help to
illustrate how backstage work among Black gay men create the conditions for the unspoiling
of stigmatized identities.

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Part 7: Sexual Cultures, Places, and Scenes

59. Sexual Capital and Social Inequality: The Study of Sexual Fields, by Adam Isaiah
Green

The concept of sexual field describes an arena of social life wherein individuals seek intimate
partners and vie for sexual status. Sexual fields emerge when a subset of actors with potential
romantic or sexual interest orient themselves toward one another according to a logic of
desirability within their collective social relations. These competitive sexual social relations
produce, to greater and lesser degrees, a system of stratification. Social actors have different
degrees of sexual capital that make them more or less sexually desirable in particular
settings. Sexual capital may include occupational status, physical attractiveness, cultural and
social capital that make one potentially desirable. Social media and dating apps, along with
real-time brick and mortar sites such as bars, bathhouses, gay-designed neighborhoods,
nightclubs, circuit parties, and bookstores are all examples of settings that are sexual fields.
Green illustrates sexual field theory through two guiding metaphors, including “field of
force” and as a “field of struggle”, both of which exemplify social orders that reflect and
produce social inequalities.

60. Belonging in Gay Neighborhoods and Queer Club Nights, by Amin Ghaziani

Research on belonging is often based in the context of globalization, nationalism, and

citizenship, or else on the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, refugees,
asylum seekers, and colonial subjects. The history, struggles, and perspectives of LGBTQ+
people are absent from this narrative. In this essay, I use urban gay districts in the United
States and underground queer club nights in the United Kingdom to show how our drive to
form meaningful social attachments occurs as we interact with people in particular places.
Evidence from the first case, gay neighborhoods, shows why belonging still matters in these
iconic places, despite declarations of their decline. Queer nightlife draws attention to the
specter of not belonging, or un-belonging. I use this second case to examine the effects of
exclusion as queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color respond to racism with
creativity and cultural entrepreneurship. I leverage both cases, neighborhoods and nightlife,
to propose a programmatic vision for the emplacement of belonging: our sense of belonging
is intimately connected to place.

61. Queering the Sexual and Racial Politics of Urban Revitalization, by Donovan Lessard

How are some LGBTQ groups accepted more than others? This chapter takes a spatial and
intersectional approach to studying social movements and identity, by observing how the
class and racial make-up within neighborhoods can lead to very different perceptions of
LGBTQ organizations by their neighbors, media, police, and city government. Lessard
argues that urban studies scholars, city planners, developers, and many lay people celebrate
middle-class, white gay community members as “urban pioneers” who become visible as
“gay” because of their privileged class, status, and race. Lessard compares two separate gay
community organizations that differ in class and racial makeup showing how neighborhood-
level processes of urban revitalization and the attendant demographic changes, along with

21
 city planning and policing objectives, lead to differential perceptions of the value of
queerness for a neighborhood. Although queer spaces matter, narrow definitions that
“whitewash” gay identities as white and middle-class renders invisible GLBTQ people of
color, working-class, and poor people, making them more likely to be displaced by the later
phrases of gentrification.

62. “We Will Always Remember”: Reactivating Queer Places as Expressions of Grief,
Solidarity, and Protest After Pulse, by Theodore Greene

On June 12, 2016, the world was shocked by the shooting in Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub in
Florida. In the days that followed, LGBTQ+ communities worldwide convened in iconic gay
neighborhoods to mourn and express solidarity with Orlando’s queer communities. Popular
and academic discourses have questioned the contemporary relevance of iconic gay
neighborhoods like the Castro in recent years. However, mourners temporarily revived the
culture, practices, and traditions that once distinguished these neighborhoods as anchors of
the LGBTQ+ community. Drawing on the reactivation of queer space in Washington, D.C.’s
gayborhood Dupont Circle, this chapter explores a process of placemaking I refer to as place
reactivation -- the act of temporarily reclaiming and reviving the dormant symbolic character
of a place or locality. A practice of placemaking long associated with LGBTQ+
communities, this chapter reflects on how evidence signaling the “straightening” of gay
neighborhoods has not erased their symbolic value. Place reactivation emphasizes how
everyday LGBTQ+ citizens preserve gay neighborhoods through various expressions of
placemaking, and rely on these places as safe spaces for the safe exploration of gender and
sexual identities. Provided that these areas persist in the queer imagination, members can
appropriate these spaces as they need to mobilize their vision of authentic community.

63. The Changing Role of Gay Bars in American LGBTQ+ Life, by Greggor Mattson

Gay bars are iconic in part because they are the most common and accessible LGBTQ+
places, but they are in decline. About one third of gay bars closed in the 2010s, but new ones
continued to open to serve their communities as one of the very few places where LGBTQ+
people can reliably encounter each other in public. Bars provide drinks, to be sure, but they
are also social spaces, performance stages, sites of memory and commemoration, and
instigators of local activism. This chapter describes gay bars in their diversity: as lone
“outposts” of LGBTQ+ culture in small cities that serve broad regions, as bar districts that
anchor gay neighborhoods, and as homes to subgroups of the broader LGBTQ+ community,
which includes lesbian bars and LGBTQ+ bars that serve kink communities and/or people of
color. This chapter reviews gay bars, a generic term for bars that serve LGBTQ+ people, and
their historic importance, longstanding critiques of bars as core institutions of LGBTQ+ life,
and how gay bars, lesbian bars, and queer bars are changing to meet the challenges posed by
increasing LGBTQ+ social acceptance and the rise of virtual socializing.

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64. Learning to be Queer: College Women’s Sexual Fluidity, by Leila J. Rupp, Verta
Taylor, and Shaeleya D. Miller

Based on interviews with college students assigned female at birth and identifying as
anything other than heterosexual, this chapter explores the meaning of fluid sexual and
gender identities and the ways that students come to these identities. We find that women
students adopt fluid identities because their desires are expansive and include the possibility
of attraction to transgender and genderqueer people; their identities shift, and more fixed
identities do not always fit; and their new fluid identities evoke a rejection of binary
sexualities and have political meaning. Students come to these new collective identities when
they arrive on campus through courses and literature on sexuality and queer theory and
socialization in queer organizations and the campus queer community. The identities non-
heterosexual women college students embrace are influenced by the scholarship on queerness
and sexual fluidity, which itself originated in the increasingly fluid and non-binary sexual
identities adopted by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals.

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

Robin Bauer

Consent has long been considered essential for an erotic or sexual activity to count as BDSM
by the BDSM community, distinguishing it from sexual and emotional abuse or physical
violence. Sexual negotiations and sexual consent within BDSM communities has also been
characterized as more explicitly and verbally communicative than in other contexts, which
can be explained by its non-normative and potentially risky bodily practices. Based on a
qualitative interview study with les-bi-trans-queer BDSM practitioners, this chapter takes a
closer look at how consent is negotiated in this context, what kinds of challenges arise, and
how they can be addressed with the concept of critical consent. In order for a culture of
sexual consent to be realized in the future, consent must be understood in two ways: First,
consent is always precarious because needs and wants can be subject to change during a
sexual or BDSM encounter and therefore the act of consenting to something remains
preliminary and critical. Second, negotiating consent is always taking place within social
power dynamics like racism or sexism and for consent to be valid, these dynamics must be
reflected upon and engaged with critically to counterbalance them.

66. Nurturing through Normalizing, Endangering through Dramatizing: Approaches to

Adolescent Sex and Love, by Amy T. Schalet

Cultural meanings and practices shape how parents and teenagers experience and interact
around issues of sexuality, love, and growing up. Qualitative research shows a pattern of
dramatization of teenage sexuality in the United States—an emphasis on the dangers of sex,
and on conflict within the individual teen, between the genders, and between the generations.
As a result, dating and sexual relationships during adolescence tend to be accompanied with
strife, friction, subterfuge, and disconnection. By contrast, in the Netherlands, there is a
pattern of normalization: a tendency to treat teenage sexuality as a normal part of adolescent
development, and to de-emphasize danger and conflict, whether within the self, between the
genders, or between the generations. When teenage sexuality is normalized in the family, in

23
 schools, in health care clinics, and in governmental health campaigns, it can help parents and
teenagers stay more connected. It becomes easier to see girls as the agents of their sexual
actions and boys as able and entitled to fall in love. Finally, it makes it easier for girls and
boys to reconcile their emergent sexuality with their family roles.

Part 8: Sexual Labor and Commerce

67. The Sexual Economy and Nevada’s Legal Brothels, by Barbara Brents

This chapter explores the political economy of commercial sex and sex work through a look
at the history and workings of Nevada’s legal brothel industry. The first part of the chapter
examines how sex and sexuality are interrelated with economic systems. Today’s consumer,
leisure, and service economy of gig work and emotional and body labor provides the context
to understand how businesses of the sexual industry have expanded their reach into the
economy. In this shift, commercial sex work has become more diverse and functions more
like non-sexual businesses, while at the same time reproducing and reflecting the same
inequalities we see in the economy as a whole. The chapter then turns to the development of
Nevada’s legal brothels through their history in a mining and then tourist economy. Finally, I
examine legal brothels today and provide some context on the politics of decriminalization.

68. Inclusive Pleasure: Feminist Sex Shops, by Alison Better

Sex stores can be found in many communities across the United States. Their history begins
in the 1960s, where a series of first amendment court cases allowed for the retail sale of
sexual merchandise. Early sex shops catered almost entirely to men and often felt unsafe or
unwelcoming to women and other sexual and gender minorities. Feminist sex-toy stores
began to open starting a decade later, making a sex positive, inclusive, and safe space for
exploring sexual pleasure for all consumers. Today, feminist sex-toy stores are characterized
by five features that shape their environment and set them apart from traditional sex shops. 1)
Feminist sex shops are committed to understanding the process of their inception and the
importance of connections to the past and also to other feminist and progressive sex-toy
stores; 2) They maintain the importance of safe spaces for marginalized genders and
sexualities, while being open to and inclusive of all; 3) They exist to fill needs in their
communities; 4) They promote the importance of healthy and pleasurable sexual lives; 5) To
this end, they provide information and education about sexuality.

69. Looks for Sale: The Impact of Aesthetic Labor on Men Who Strip, by Maren T. Scull

Exotic dance is a unique form of aesthetic labor where performers are expected to display
and move their body in ways that make them appear desirable and lustful. In this chapter, I
focus on the ways in which men who strip engage in aesthetic labor and the impact this has
on their self-concepts. Specifically, I discuss how they attempt to present themselves as
hypermasculine by using body technologies and performing tricks. Engaging in aesthetic
labor and being objectified by women in the audience had a positive impact on how dancers
thought about their bodies and themselves overall. Specifically, all aspects of their self-
concepts, which include mattering, mastery, and self-esteem, were enhanced as a result of

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 being an exotic dancer. This contrasts with the research on women who strip which suggests
the occupation can negatively impact women’s self-views over time. I argue that the
differences in the way exotic dance impacts men who strip versus women who strip is due to
the sexual double standard which rewards men for engaging in sexual behavior while
punishing women for engaging in the same acts.

70. Intimate Labor in the Adult Film Industry, by Heather Berg

Porn performance is less about the basic physical act of having sex than it is performing
genuine interest in one’s partner, exaggerating markers of pleasure, and sustaining
relationships with directors and coworkers. As in other jobs- especially those that fit under
the banner of intimate labor- it is the work we do not see or talk about that makes porn what
it is. Intimate labor is distinct in that sexual intimacy is what is bought and sold in these jobs.
For porn performers, that entails emotional and physical labor. This chapter highlights porn
performances as more than simply having sex in front of a camera and instead describes porn
performances as a form of intimate labor that requires specific skills from porn performers.
Such intimate labors have been socially constructed as if they are powered by “innate”
gendered qualities rather than learned skills of intimacy and authenticity. This mystification
impacts not only wages, but also social rights and legal protections for performers, including
access to a social safety net and protection from abuse on the job. Highlighting the learned
skills of intimate labor can encourage institutions to reject stereotypes of porn and other sex
workers.

71. Migrant Sex Work and Trafficking: Sorting them Out, by Laura Agustin

In this chapter Agustin examines stereotypes that erase individual experiences of migrant sex
workers that lead to non-productive debates and inaccurate ideas around migration, job
markets, the informal economy, the sex industry, trafficking, and the idea of “good sex.” She
examines the complex, ambiguous stories of women who sell sex to make travel and
migration possible by providing money for a ticket, independence, job security, and
flexibility. The purpose of this chapter is to show the many forms that migration with a
sexual component can take. This does not to deny the possibility of danger or unfairness for
migrant sex workers but is meant to avoid homogenizing the experiences of these women and
reduce them to a single supposedly universal truth of victims in need of rescue.

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

Both the anti-trafficking movement and the sex workers’ rights movements are on the rise.
The two sides are locked in battle over what it means to protect and fight for women. The
historical roots of this battle stretch back to late nineteenth-century urbanization. By
historically situating current debates around trafficking and gender, this chapter argues that
anti-trafficking discourse is a political tool that emerges when those in power need to gain or
assert control over women. The symbolic idea of the “victim” at the heart of anti-trafficking
discourse obscures larger sources of power that attempt to control women’s bodies, work,
and livelihoods. These historical patterns help contextualize the recent, major anti-trafficking
internet censorship legislation, the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop

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 Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). Although anti-trafficking advocates insisted
FOSTA/SESTA would effectively mitigate child sex trafficking, sex workers’ rights
advocates warned that it would make finding sex-trafficked victims more challenging. By
centering sex workers, this chapter reveals the actual impacts of FOSTA/SESTA: the
destruction of sex workers’ and adjacent workers’ revenue streams, and the digital
gentrification of the mainstream internet. It concludes by highlighting sex worker resistance
strategies to FOSTA/SESTA and anti-trafficking more broadly.

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

Briefly covering the historical and cultural contexts for sex workers’ rights activism in the
United States, this chapter offers a snapshot of how sex worker activists continue to
challenge their ongoing criminalization and marginalization in the digital age and, as a result,
have shifted the internet landscape and been transformed by it in the process. Two central
themes are highlighted. First, we focus on some of the lessons sex worker rights activism
teaches. For example, it teaches us about resisting late capitalism on the internet and beyond,
protecting our privacy in the digital age, and engaging in creative, impactful activism.
Second, we focus on the strategic use of sex workers’ rallying cry of “Nothing About Us
Without Us.” When someone outside the community speaks for sex workers, it acts as a type
of silencing that often does more damage than good. The chapter considers what these two
themes have accomplished, outlining how the lessons learned from sex worker rights
activists’ tactics have shifted discussions away from questions that do not ultimately serve
sex work communities, to more robust questions about the myriad lessons we learn about
sex, sexuality, labor, and resistance from sex workers’ craftily executed activism and their
sharp, often playful and cutting resistance to patriarchy and late capitalism.

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

Sex workers in India often have a clear view of how the state, society, and economy work
together to oppress them. But a combination of fear of, and fascination with, sex workers’
intimate lives often means their political visions and organizing are overlooked. This chapter
discusses portrayals of sex workers as vamps and victims, and then documents sex workers’
organizing efforts as a way of countering these controlling images. Sex worker activists have
challenged police violence on an individual and systemic level; worked strategically with
public health efforts locally and globally; and built alliances with other social movements.
Sex workers’ activism in India offers an example of how marginalized groups challenge their
conditions and build solidarity under conditions of precariousness and violence.

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Part 9: Sexual Politics, Social Movements, and Empowerment

75. Sexuality, State, and Nation, by Jyoti Puri

This chapter introduces the interconnections between sexuality, state and nation and highlights why
it is crucial to understand them. Defining concepts of nationalism, and state, it carefully shows that
ideas of “normal” sexuality are socially produced and are fundamental to how national identity is
defined and how states regulate society. Using a range of examples, the chapter provides an
overview of the ways that nations and states use sexuality to draw lines of inclusion and exclusion
around race, religion, and other aspects of social difference. Lastly, it explores why it is important to
be attentive to and critical of the ways that states privilege heterosexuality or seek to promote
LGBTQ rights for political gain.

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

Marcia Oliver

This chapter challenges readers to think about sexuality within a transnational frame by
questioning how the movement of people, ideas, resources, practices and institutions across
national borders shape local sexual politics and people’s lives in diverse and often
unpredictable ways. Using Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality legislation as an example, the
chapter discusses the complexity of transnational and domestic factors – religious, cultural,
political, economic, historical – to better understand the Anti-Homosexuality legislation’s
emergence and its development, as well as the advocacy efforts of LGBTIQ groups and allies
to challenge the law and support LGBTIQ rights across the continent. Of particular
significance is the colonial re-shaping of African sexualities and the enactment of legal codes
that criminalized homosexuality, the power and influence of Western Christian conservatives
in supporting (and arguably inciting) the rise in anti-gay sentiments in Africa, and the
instrumentalization of sexuality by diverse political and religious actors to support self-
serving political agendas.

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

Since the 1970s, the Religious Right has operated as a countermovement to lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, queer, and other gender and sexual minority (LGBTQ+) rights, often
pushing back against attempts to pass LGBTQ+ rights laws and have more visibility for
LGBTQ+ people in public. This countermovement has had both a negative and positive
impact on the LGBTQ+ movement. The LGBTQ+ movement has spent time and energy
combatting the Religious Right during state and municipal ballot measures. This
countermovement activity has also pushed the LGBTQ+ to grow and may have inadvertently
led to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

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78. The Evolution of Same-Sex Marriage Politics in the United States, by Kathleen E. Hull

Same-sex marriage gained legal recognition nationwide in 2015 with the U.S. Supreme
Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. This chapter reviews the arguments for and against
legal same-sex marriage that animated debates on this issue for several decades. The issue
sparked conflict between political liberals and conservatives, but also within the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and queer community. The chapter also documents the rapid shift in
public opinion on this issue between the late 1990s and the present, and discusses likely
reasons for this shift. Contributing factors include changing attitudes about homosexuality,
increased cultural visibility of LGBTQ people and same-sex relationships, and the spread of
legal same-sex marriage within the U.S. and abroad. The chapter considers the question of
how same-sex couples will change the institution of marriage, and how they may be changed
by it. Recent court rulings and social science studies suggest that there may be limits to
Americans’ acceptance of same-sex couples. The chapter concludes by placing same-sex
marriage in the context of broader trends in the institution of marriage, including a retreat
from marriage among Americans of lower socioeconomic status.

79. The Politics of Race, Class, and Gender in Queer Safer Sex, by Chris A. Barcelos

Most people tend to think about safer sex education as an awkward and relatively useless part
of their high school health class. What your school health teacher probably did not teach you
is that educating people about safer sex has a rich history in queer political movements. This
chapter documents how queer activists developed safer sex guidelines in response to the
HIV/AIDS crisis and as a strategy to care for each other in the face of government inaction.
Using archival queer safer sex materials, the chapter explores the politics of race, class,
gender, and sexuality in relation to safer sex promotion. It argues that queer safer sex must be
analyzed using an intersectional lens that accounts for interlocking systems of social power.

80. Children’s Sexual Citizenship, by Kerry H. Robinson

This chapter examines the concept of children’s sexual citizenship, its meaning and
importance to children’s health and wellbeing, to their agency, and to building respectful and
ethical gendered and sexual subjects. The precarious relationship between childhood and
sexuality and its relevance to children’s sexual citizenship is explored. Sexuality is widely
considered in society as irrelevant or a danger to children; it is perceived as a signifier of
being an adult. As such, some adults view sexuality as an aspect of adult life from which
children need protection. This essay argues that the western discourse of “childhood
innocence,” generally mobilized by adults to protect children, can work to undermine
children’s agency, their health and wellbeing, and increase their vulnerability to exploitation.
The discourse of childhood innocence is often used to deny and regulate children’s access to
certain knowledge, particularly comprehensive sexuality education. Comprehensive sexuality
education, which can be built on over the early years into adolescence, scaffolding children’s
learning, provides a critical opportunity to address amongst other issues, respectful and
ethical relationships, gender and sexuality diversity, and sexual health and wellbeing, all
relevant to children’s and young people’s sexual citizenship.

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81. War and the Politics of Sexual Violence, by Margarita Palacios and Silvia Posocco

This chapter seeks to expand the context of sexual violence, broadening the concept from
sexual assault and harassment to include sexual violence during war time as a strategy of
genocide, ethnic cleansing, political responses, and structural violence. We suggest
examining violence based on relations between masculinized and feminized positions and
how these may be marked by histories of racism, irrespective of the gender or ethnic
identification of the persons involved. Through use of case studies from Bosnia, Rwanda, and
Abu Ghraib, the complex interplay of power and sexualization of racialized bodies is
illustrated. Sexual violence is often a deliberate weapon of war that confronts the complex
dynamic of the social construction of the enemy. Gender and sexual dynamics are intimately
linked to processes of nation-state formation and to the exercise of state-power, and in
particular, the way the State regulates bodies and intimate lives. Sexual violence can be used
as a social technology through which notions of nation, ethnic identity and belonging are
fabricated, or indeed, destroyed.

82. The History of Activism against Sexual Violence and the Modern #MeToo Movement,
by Rachel Loney-Howes

When the #MeToo Movement exploded onto social media in October 2017, it nearly broke
the internet. Millions of survivors of sexual harassment and assault from around the world
shared their experiences in response to Alyssa Milano’s now infamous tweet. Survivors
illustrated the pervasive nature of sexual violence and rape culture and survivors’ silence.
Yet, although #MeToo might have seemed like a watershed moment for activism against
sexual violence, it faced scrutiny for failing to account for diverse survivors’ experiences and
acknowledge the work of activists who, for decades, have been seeking to address sexual
violence in their communities. This chapter introduces students to the history of activism
against sexual violence, before turning to examine the #MeToo movement and discussing
role and potential of digital platforms in generating and sustaining this social movement.

83. A Public Health Approach to Campus Sexual Assault Prevention: Sexual Citizenship,
Projects, and Geographies, by Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan

This chapter illustrates what it means to approach campus sexual assault as a public health
problem. It explains a public health approach by pointing to two major public health
successes–reducing teen driving fatalities and providing clean water–and notes that a
challenge in applying this perspective to sexual assault is the difficulty of specifying which
aspects of the environment make assaults likely to happen. It then uses three concepts –
sexual citizenship (the right to sexual self-determination), sexual projects (what sex is for),
and sexual geographies (how the built environment shapes sexual and social interactions) –
to provide an analytic framework for identifying elements of campus life that make sexual
assaults likely to happen. Those concepts are applied to three stories of sexual assault.
Finally, the conclusion shows how sexual geographies, sexual citizenship, and sexual
projects lay the groundwork for approaches to prevention that go beyond telling people not to
commit sexual assault.

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84. The Ally Paradox, by Patrick Grzanka

Straight allies occupy an important and contentious role in contemporary sexual politics and
social justice movements. In this essay, the author suggests that thinking about straight allies
as a social problem (in the sociological sense) helps to consider the various tensions inherent
to straight allyship in the 21st century: Who gets to be an ally? Who defines good and bad
allyship? Can allies actually be helpful, or are they doomed to fail? By unpacking what he
terms the ally paradox, Grzanka suggests that perhaps the trouble with straight allies is
contained in the ally framework itself, which is always dependent upon the ally’s perceived
social privilege. By addressing the political potential of intersectionality and coalitional
politics, Grzanka compels us to consider what forms of sexual liberation might exist beyond
allyship.

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