Author: Rebecca L. Davis Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 1631496581 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
From an esteemed scholar, a richly textured, authoritative history of sex and sexuality in America—the first major account in three decades. Our era is one of sexual upheaval. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, school systems across the country are banning books with LGBTQ+ themes, and the notion of a “tradwife” is gaining adherents on the right while polyamory wins converts on the left. It may seem as though debates over sex are more intense than ever, but as acclaimed historian Rebecca L. Davis demonstrates in Fierce Desires, we should not be too surprised, because Americans have been arguing over which kinds of sex are “acceptable”—and which are not—since before the founding itself. From the public floggings of fornicators in early New England to passionate same-sex love affairs in the 1800s and the crackdown on abortion providers in the 1870s, and from the movements for sexual liberation to the recent restrictions on access to gender affirming care, Davis presents a sweeping, engrossing, illuminating four-hundred-year account of this nation’s sexual past. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including legal records, erotica, and eighteenth-century romance novels, she recasts important episodes—Anthony Comstock’s crusade against smut among them—and, at the same time, unearths stories of little-remembered pioneers and iconoclasts, such as an indentured servant in colonial Virginia named Thomas/Thomasine Hall, Gay Liberation Front cofounder Kiyoshi Kuromiya, and postwar female pleasure activist Betty Dodson. At the heart of the book is Davis’s argument that the concept of sexual identity is relatively novel, first appearing in the nineteenth century. Over the centuries, Americans have shifted from understanding sexual behaviors as reflections of personal preferences or values, such as those rooted in faith or culture, to defining sexuality as an essential part of what makes a person who they are. And at every step, legislators, police, activists, and bureaucrats attempted to regulate new sexual behaviors, transforming government in the process. The most comprehensive account of America’s sexual past since John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s 1988 classic, Intimate Matters, Davis’s magisterial work seeks to help us understand the turmoil of the present. It demonstrates how fiercely we have always valued our desires, and how far we are willing to go to defend them.
Author: Rebecca L. Davis Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469664887 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Personal reinvention is a core part of the human condition. Yet in the mid-twentieth century, certain private religious choices became lightning rods for public outrage and debate. Public Confessions reveals the controversial religious conversions that shaped modern America. Rebecca L. Davis explains why the new faiths of notable figures including Clare Boothe Luce, Whittaker Chambers, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Chuck Colson, and others riveted the American public. Unconventional religious choices charted new ways of declaring an "authentic" identity amid escalating Cold War fears of brainwashing and coercion. Facing pressure to celebrate a specific vision of Americanism, these converts variously attracted and repelled members of the American public. Whether the act of changing religions was viewed as selfish, reckless, or even unpatriotic, it provoked controversies that ultimately transformed American politics. Public Confessions takes intimate history to its widest relevance, and in so doing, makes you see yourself in both the private and public stories it tells.
Author: John D'Emilio Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 9780060915506 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 428
Book Description
Traces changing American attitudes towards human sexuality, discusses social issues involving race, gender, class, and sexual preference, and looks at crusaders for sexual change
Author: Thomas A. Foster Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226257487 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
“Thorough, and timely . . . sure to be a popular and valued companion to courses on the history of sexuality and gender in the United States.” —Regina Kunzel, University of Minnesota Over time, sexuality in America has changed dramatically. Frequently redefined and often subject to different systems of regulation, it has been used as a means of control; it has been a way to understand ourselves and others; and it has been at the center of fierce political storms, including some of the most crucial changes in civil rights in recent years. Edited by Thomas A. Foster, Documenting Intimate Matters features seventy-two documents that collectively highlight the broad diversity inherent in the history of American sexuality. Complementing the third edition of Intimate Matters, by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman—often hailed as the definitive survey of sexual history in America—the multiple narratives presented by these documents reveal the complexity of this subject in US history. The historical moments captured in this volume show that, contrary to popular misconception, the history of sexuality is not a simple story of increased freedoms and sexual liberation, but an ongoing struggle between change and continuity.
Author: Pamela C. Regan Publisher: SAGE ISBN: 0761917934 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 186
Book Description
Accessibly written, this interdisciplinary book reviews theory and research on the characteristics of sexual desire, the individual physical and mental factors that influence the experience of sexual desire (hormones, age, gender, beliefs, mood), the various partner characteristics that incite sexual desire (attractiveness) and the association between sexual desire and interpersonal, relational events and experiences (romantic love). The book concludes with an examination of the personal, interpersonal and societal implications of sexual desire. Throughout, the authors draw on findings from their own body of research on sexual and romantic attraction, as well as on an extensive review of the relevant social, behavioural and medical science
Author: Kathy Lee Peiss Publisher: Major Problems in American His ISBN: Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 548
Book Description
Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. Each volume presents a carefully selected group of readings in a formal that asks students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians and others, and draw their own conclusions.
Author: Rebecca L. Davis Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 147980228X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 424
Book Description
The history of heterosexuality in North America across four centuries Heterosexuality is usually regarded as something inherently “natural”—but what is heterosexuality, and how has it taken shape across the centuries? By challenging ahistorical approaches to the heterosexual subject, Heterosexual Histories constructs a new framework for the history of heterosexuality, examining unexplored assumptions and insisting that not only sex but race, class, gender, age, and geography matter to its past. Each of the fourteen essays in this volume examines the history of heterosexuality from a different angle, seeking to study this topic in a way that recognizes plurality, divergence, and inequity. Editors Rebecca L. Davis and Michele Mitchell have formed a collection that spans four centuries, addressing the many different racial groups, geographies, and subcultures of heterosexuality in North America. The essays range across disciplines with experts from various fields examining heterosexuality from unique perspectives: a historian shows how defining heterosexuality, sex, and desire were integral to the formation of British America and the process of colonization; a legal scholar examines the connections between race, sexual citizenship, and nonmarital motherhood; a gender studies expert analyzes the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and explores the intersections of heterosexuality with shame and second-wave feminism. Together, these essays explain how differently earlier Americans understood the varieties of gender and different-sex sexuality, how heterosexuality emerged as a dominant way of describing gender, and how openly many people acknowledged and addressed heterosexuality’s fragility. By contesting presumptions of heterosexuality’s stability or consistency, Heterosexual Histories opens the historical record to interrogations of the raced, classed, and gendered varieties of heterosexuality and considers the implications of heterosexuality’s multiplicities and changes. Providing both a sweeping historical survey and concentrated case studies, Heterosexual Histories is a crucial addition to the field of sexuality studies.
Author: David Powlison Publisher: Crossway ISBN: 1433556170 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 105
Book Description
Sexuality was a part of God's good creation from the beginning. But with sin came a world filled with sexual brokenness. Thankfully, God is always in the business of restoration. This book offers hope for both the sexually immoral and the sexually victimized, pointing us all to the grace of Jesus Christ, who mercifully intervenes each moment in our lifelong journey toward renewal. Author David Powlison casts a vision for the key to deep transformation, better than anything the world has to offer—not just fresh resolve, not just flimsy forgiveness, not just simple formulas, but true, lasting mercy from God, who is making all things new.
Author: Kelsy Burke Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1635577373 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
For readers of Peggy Orenstein and Rebecca Traister, an authoritative, big think look at pornography in all its facets - historical, religious, and cultural. In the 1960s, sex researchers Masters and Johnson declared the end of the fake orgasm. Nearly two decades later, in 1982, evangelical activist Tim LaHaye foretold that the entire pornography industry would soon be driven out of business. Neither prediction proved true. Instead, with the rise of the internet, pornography saturates the American conscience more than ever and has reshaped our understanding of sexuality, relationships, media, and even the nature of addiction. Dr. Kelsy Burke has spent the last five years researching and interviewing internet pornography's opponents and its sympathizers. In The Pornography Wars, Burke does a deep dive into the long history of pornography in America and then turns her gaze on our present society to examine the ways this industry touches on the most intimate parts of American lives. She offers a complete understanding of the major players in the debates around porn's place in society: everyone from sex workers, activists, therapists, religious leaders, and consumers. In doing so, she addresses and debunks the myths that surround porn and porn usage while showing how everything from the way we teach children about sex to the legal protections for what can be published is tied up in the deeply complicated battles over pornography. Sweeping, savvy, and deeply researched, The Pornography Wars is a necessary and comprehensive new look at pornography and American life.
Author: Matthew Fretwell Publisher: ISBN: 9781626971042 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
Throughout life, humanity is pressed with decisions. Regardless of whether one chooses to make decisions or not, one will be made. The harder the decision, the better one is to make the right choice by thinking through it. Within the book of Job in the Old Testament, in chapter 31, the reader is provided with a rare glimpse into the life of God's servant. This chapter is commonly labeled "Job's Final Appeal." He lays out his testimony before his friends, that he has made conscious decisions to walk the right way before God and man. This small book is teeming with practical applications to living, or raising, a godly male and one of the best outlines to finding the right man, due to its basis upon Scripture. Job explains how certain desires, which affect all mankind, were pressed upon him, but that he denied the desires of wrong and quested to be God's servant. Based on the Biblical blueprint of Job, the "Job 31 man," rises as the counterpart to the Proverbs 31 woman. Denied Desires is an open, honest, candid, and relevant writing for all. "What does it mean to be a godly man? Using the words of Job, Pastor Matt describes in great detail what it means. His description of the Job 31 man is both challenging and immensely practical. Whether you are a young man seeking to live a godly life or parents seeking to raise a godly son, you will find hope and help here." Patrick Hubbard Living Bread Ministries Matthew Fretwell is married to his wife Julia, and has three daughters, Kathleen, Hailey, and Caroline. He holds a B.S. in Religion, MA in Theology, and Master's in Divinity. He now serves as Senior Pastor at Oak Hall Baptist Church in Sandston Virginia.
Author: Rebecca L. Davis
Author: Rebecca L. Davis
Author: John D'Emilio
Author: Thomas A. Foster
Author: Pamela C. Regan
Author: Kathy Lee Peiss
Author: Rebecca L. Davis
Author: David Powlison
Author: Kelsy Burke
Author: Matthew Fretwell