Review of the “Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality” (original) (raw)
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Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and Their Nature and Meaning (Book) Introduction
2016
This book examines the proposition that sexual behaviour is uniquely morally special and explores the nature of sex, sexual desire, love and marriage. Preface by Josef Seifert; Introduction; Chapter 1 Contraception as Contralife; Chapter 2 Natural Law, Functions, Teleology; Chapter 3 Marriage and Meaning; Chapter 4 Marital Willing; Chapter 5 Sexual Desire; Chapter 6 Love, Virtue and Vice; Appendix UMDAs. The book is available from Amazon.co.uk here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethical-Sex-Sexual-Choices-Meaning-y/dp/0929891171/ref=sr\_1\_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1462919023&sr=8-4&keywords=Anthony+McCarthy and at Amazon.com here: https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Sex-Sexual-Choices-Meaning/dp/0929891171/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468571533&sr=8-1&keywords=ethical+sex+mccarthy
Queering Sexology: A Critical Approach to the Construction of Mandatory Sexual Desire
Based on a Foucauldian and Queer Theory framework, this thesis performs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on seven sex self-help American manuals from the twenty-first century that give advice to heterosexual married couples on how to enhance sexual desire. It aims to show how these manuals constitute a technology of the self that (re)produce normative understandings of sexuality. Embedded in neoliberal modes of governmentality, the books use several legitimation strategies to persuade the readers, who are mainly female, into undergoing tremendous amounts of self-discipline and self-surveillance in order to make themselves and their partners enjoy sexuality, which is considered to be the privileged path to health, self-knowledge and realisation, and marital stability and happiness. The normal and healthy life is portrayed, first and foremost, as sexual; there is an almost complete rejection of life that does not include the active pursuit of sexual pleasure. Secondly, it is coupled, as marriage is seen as a place of love and intimacy where the need for self-fulfilment can be truly achieved. And thirdly, that marriage should be monogamous; monogamy is the only legitimate sexual and emotional economy, and it is associated with psychological maturity and responsibility towards the family. In addition, the sexuality that the manuals encourage is strictly framed within the limits of “appropriate” heterosexual practices, promoting a “packaged sex” consisting of a highly surveilled sexual script that aligns with a middle-class consumer culture. The authors build a hierarchy of sexual respectability that grants social recognition to some people and complicates the access to full citizenship for those who can or do not wish to conform to normative sexuality. This thesis intends to theoretically explore other alternatives for the practice of sex therapy, that step out of the regimes of the normal.
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Cambridge University Press, 2020
Introduction The most significant recent development, a break with the past, in the study of sexual cultures has to do with the term ‘culture’ itself: that we think of sexuality (and sexualities) as having ‘cultures’. Historically, both in academic and popular thinking, the term ‘sexuality’ most frequently elicited responses that have to do with biology. That is, whether as an area of study or as a set of ideas people have about their intimate lives, sexuality was too easily detached from the social contexts where it belongs and presented as something of itself. There is a strong tendency to view our sexual lives as dictated by their own peculiar rules that ( a ) are biologically derived, ( b ) have been historically stable (that is, the same since the ‘dawn of time’), ( c ) are ‘essentially’ about our ‘private’ lives, and ( d ) are ‘basically’ the same across different cultures. Ironically, while, on the one hand, we think of sexuality as a world-untoitself – such that it is regard...
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This essay examines the problems which face the concept of consent, especially as it has come to be understood: the grounding principal of sexual ethics. I argue that, while consent is of import for developing sexual legislation regarding assault and harm, it is insufficient to address the complexities of interpersonal sexual ethics. This is demonstrated by showing the inability of consent to address variations of human sexuality. In place of consent, I examine the possibilities held in a relational rethinking of classical autonomy in the form of the feminist project of relational autonomy. However, this option is limited in that it does not adequately address how it is that human beings are in relation with one another, while maintaining a certain kind of autonomy. In order to address this, I turn to the early work of existential-phenomenologist Jean-Paul Sartre to establish a model by which we may be able to understand our autonomy as interwoven with that of the other, including, and perhaps especially, the other(s) with whom we are having sex.