How are we to live with the wide varieties of sexuality and gender found across the rapidly changing global order? Whilst some countries have legislated in favour of same-sex marriage and the United Nations makes declarations about gender and sexual equality, many countries across the world employ punitive responses to such differences. In this compelling and original study, Ken Plummer argues the need for a practical utopian project of hope that he calls ‘cosmopolitan sexualities’. He asks: how can we connect our differences with collective values, our uniqueness with multiple group belonging, our sexual and gendered individualities with a broader common humanity? Showing how a foundation for this new ethics, politics and imagination are evolving across the world, he discusses the many possible pitfalls being encountered. He highlights the complexity of sexual and gender cultures, the ubiquity of human conflict, the difficulties of dialogue and the problems with finding any common ground for our humanity. Cosmopolitan Sexualities takes a bold critical humanist view and argues the need for positive norms to guide us into the future. Highlighting the vulnerability of the human being, Plummer goes in search of historically grounded and potentially global human values like empathy and sympathy, care and kindness, dignity and rights, human flourishing and social justice. These harbour visions of what is acceptable and unacceptable in the sexual and intimate life. Clearly written, the book speaks to important issues of our time and will interest all those who are struggling to finding ways to live together well in spite of our different genders and sexualities.

"In a historic verdict, the Supreme Court of India in September 2018, struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and decriminalized homosexuality and granted personal rights and freedom to the LGBTQIA community at large. However, in December 2018, the Transgender Persons Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha (the People's House and lower house of Indian Parliament) that has negated and undermined the rights of the trans community in India. The Bill omits the reference to a 'neither male nor female' formulation, and covers any person whose gender does not match the gender assigned at birth, as well as transmen, transwomen, those with intersex variations, the gender-queer, and those who designate themselves based on socio-cultural identities such as hijra, aravani, kinner and jogta. This book articulates the ethnographic and anthropological studies of hijras (eunuchs) and the popular transgender culture in India through the case study of contemporary Mumbai. It studies how their identity is shaped through consumption of various practices of beauty and takes into account the direct provincial dialogues as to how the hijras negotiate different spaces of surgeries, clinics and medicine to shape their new forms of identity. It highlights how globalizing modernity would build a concrete understanding of the way local patterns of transgender sexuality and eroticism are shaped by this sort of culture. It attempts to build a more robust and complex understanding of sexual experiences among these subjects in the locale, thus projecting the intersection of local meanings of transgender eroticism that intersect global patterns of similar identities with their desire and sexuality. The local specificity of the hijra sexual economy relates to global transgender practices, thus proposing a nuanced discourse of space, culture and sexuality to the local context of the globalized and modernized India, instead of the articulation of global homogeneity of transgender identities"--

With the church silent on the topic of sex, thousands of Christian young women learn about sex from the pages of Cosmopolitan Magazine: the only place that frankly explains what sex actually is. Unsure what is biblical and what is cultural, these girls come to dating and marriage misunderstanding their own sexuality. No one every taught them about sex from God's perspective. Christian Cosmo is the sex talk many girls never get. Rather than learn about sex from the culture, Christian Cosmo answers sexual questions from a Scriptural standpoint. By reframing sex for the single girl, we lay the foundation for God-honoring marriages and end the stigma on female sexuality.

Sexuality is a complex and multifaceted domain – encompassing bodily, contextual and subjective experiences that resist ready categorisation. To claim the sexual as a viable research object therefore raises a number of important methodological questions: what is it possible to know about experiences, practices and perceptions of sex and sexualities? What approaches might help or hinder our efforts to probe such experiences? This collection explores the creative, personal and contextual parameters involved in researching sexuality, cutting across disciplinary boundaries and drawing on case studies from a variety of countries and contexts. Combining a wide range of expertise, its contributors address such key areas as pornography, sex work, intersectionality and LGBT perspectives. The contributors also share their own experiences of researching sexuality within contrasting disciplines, as well as interrogating how the sexual identities of researchers themselves can relate to, and inform, their work. The result is a unique and diverse collection that combines practical insights on field work with novel theoretical reflections.

The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle explores the lived experiences of LGBT+ persons in an era of heightened visibility. Gay urban enclaves, known colloquially as gayborhoods, illustrate the evolution of LGBT+ political capacity building. Since their emergence after World War II, gayborhoods have homogenized at the expense of women, transgender, and nonwhite persons due to neoliberal policies promoted by urban planners. Thus, their popularization and economic vitality correlate with a loss of collective identity and space for some inhabitants. While gayborhoods were once diverse and inclusive spaces that rejected normative institutions of marriage and assimilation into dominant society, the stakeholders of these areas have now unashamedly aligned themselves with conformity and profitability to legitimize their existence. The contributors within The Gayborhood invite readers to reflect on the future of LGBT+ politics and look beyond the commercialized rainbow spectacle of gayborhoods to the communities and aspirations within.

Within Western Buddhism, practitioners are often assumed to be white and middle-class. Based in ground-breaking empirical research, Cosmopolitan Dharma: Race, Sexuality, and Gender in British Buddhism explores the stories of Buddhists from minority communities, through a rich analysis of their lived experiences. Smith, Munt and Yip explore their various contestations of dominant white and heteronormative cultures in Western Buddhism. Using cosmopolitanism as the theoretical lens, Cosmopolitan Dharma argues convincingly that the Buddhist ethos of human interconnectivity needs to be further developed to truly embrace the ‘Other’ of different kinds (not least Western Buddhism’s own internal ‘Others’). Cosmopolitan Dharma, through Buddhists’ own narratives, explores how cultural politics from the ground up can offer a more inclusive philosophy and lived experience of spirituality.

Sexualities and Society adopts a fresh, sociological perspective to explore the development of sexualities across both public and private spheres, giving thoughtful consideration to heterosexualities, cis, bi and trans identities. Divided into three parts, the book starts with an exploration into the history of sexuality, before covering the key theories, and how research into sexualities has been, and could be, conducted. Parts two and three examine how sexualities are framed by cultural factors and social institutions – including the media, religion, and politics – and considers the impact of how significant issues such as identity, age, health and violence relate to sexuality. Employing a range of international case studies, up to date policy developments, and engaging learning features such as ‘discussion points’ and ′fact file′ sections, this book is essential reading for students studying sexuality across sociology, social policy, social care, media, and politics.