Women experience considerable changes in their bodies, lives, and identity between the ages of twenty and seventy, including marriage, motherhood, the dissolution of relationships, and menopause, all of which often impact sexuality. In Deserving Desire, Beth Montemurro takes a wide-ranging look at the evolution of women’s sexuality over time, with a specific focus on the development of sexual subjectivity—that is sexual confidence, agency, and a sense of entitlement to sexual desire. Detailed stories of the ninety-five women in this study explore how they become more comfortable with their bodies, when most begin to enjoy sex, feel confident and positive about engaging in it, and how they become sexual subjects in control of their bodies. Deserving Desire explores the complex multi-stage process in which sexual subjectivity evolves over a woman’s lifetime. As girls, they learn about sex and how those around them—parents, peers, religion and media—regard sex. Physical and emotional transitions such as having a baby or ending a relationship further affect women’s sexual confidence and desire. Montemurro emphasizes that sexual subjectivity is about feeling in control of sexual decision making and acting purposefully and confidently. Though adolescent sexuality has been a major focus of sociological research, few studies have examined, as Montemurro does here, the development of sexuality through women’s lives and the events that change the way women feel about themselves, their bodies, and their relationships.

Glitter is about the female sexual experience, which contrary to what the media would have you believe, is not all bubble baths and chick flicks. Women are constantly judged as slutty, or uptight, but the reality is somewhere in between those two, and sometimes, no where near either. We have secret shames and private desires and we all feel we are the only one. We are good churchgoing girls with a penance for the paddle, PTA moms who hire escorts, feminists who like to bottom in the bedroom, slutty virgins, bi curious married ladies and women with a past. We are gay, straight and undecided. We are all over the map, and we are amazing. The contributors to this anthology discuss everything from masturbation to fetishes, from sexy to sad. Not every story will sit well with you for a variety of reasons. I hope you can still read it and be supportive of the writers.

Tolstoy wrote some of the most disquieting short stories the world has known--these three are no exception. Here, the duels and duality of man and woman are played out in tortured--and sometimes tragic--drama. Above all, the characters featured in these pages bring to life universal truths for the human condition; truths that Tolstoy weaves with an almost unrivaled skill. "Father Sergius" is preoccupied with the material desire for the flesh, while "The Kreutzer Sonata" caused a public sensation for its scathing indictment of marriage. Tolstoy had become convinced that "Christian marriage" was an impossibility, and in both "Sonata" and "The Devil" he launches a tirade against human sexuality and the humiliating sexual ties that bind men to women. Together these three stories provide a picture of a man obsessed with questions of moral, sexual, and religious ambiguity, his treatment of female sexuality still having a resonance today.

"Somehow I woke up one day and found myself in bed with a stranger." Meant literally or figuratively, this statement describes one of the best-known plots in world mythology and popular storytelling. In a tour that runs from Shakespeare to Hollywood and from Abraham Lincoln to Casanova, the erudite and irrepressible Wendy Doniger shows us the variety, danger, and allure of the "bedtrick," or what it means to wake up with a stranger. The Bedtrick brings together hundreds of stories from all over the world, from the earliest recorded Hindu and Hebrew texts to the latest item in the Weekly World News, to show the hilariously convoluted sexual scrapes that people manage to get themselves into and out of. Here you will find wives who accidentally commit adultery with their own husbands. You will read Lincoln's truly terrible poem about a bedtrick. You will learn that in Hong Kong the film The Crying Game was retitled Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis. And that President Clinton was not the first man to be identified by an idiosyncratic organ. At the bottom of these wonderful stories, ancient myths, and historical anecdotes lie the dynamics of sex and gender, power and identity. Why can't people tell the difference in the dark? Can love always tell the difference between one lover and another? And what kind of truth does sex tell? Funny, sexy, and engaging, The Bedtrick is a masterful work of energetic storytelling and dazzling scholarship. Give it to your spouse and your lover.

Draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis to provide an account of the making of sexual cultures in modern India.

Parents, there's no point hushing the topic of sex. Our pre-teens will see and hear confusing and inaccurate messages about their sexuality, through the media and among their peers. All around them, casual \"hook-ups\" are the new the relational norm. But we can win the hearts of our girls with a message of purity, by bringing the topic out into the light and offering the straightforward answers they need to make informed choices. Dr. Missy Kifetew remembers her own frustration in not being able to find the answers about sex she sought as a young girl. So here she writes with a tone of love, understanding, and honesty, as if penning a letter to her own daughter. In fact, she is. Her desire to equip her own daughter to pursue a sexually pure life inspired this book! In Beyond the Fairy Tale, girls will learn about the two basic necessities that prepare them to live sexually pure. They'll see how the beauty of God's creation is reflected in them and in His design for their sexuality. And they'll be equipped to avoid the dire consequences of sex apart from God's plan. Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, this book helps girls understand how and why God is for sex and pleasure... within the safe and loving boundary of marriage he designed. What our girls know and don't know about sex will make a lasting difference in their lives-like the difference between darkness and light. Each chapter includes reflection questions. Parent Guide and Leader Guide are available for download on the author's website, to help strengthen communication with youth on the topic of sex.

Jacob is a man with an overwhelming attraction to female feet. The Baroness is a clothing designer and evangelical sadist. Roy is a wedding band singer entranced by his step daughter. Ron and Laura are simply in love - only Laura lost both her legs in a car accident, and Ron is beguiled by a beauty many would be blind to. How do we deal with desire? Our own, and the desires of others? How do we comprehend desires that are extreme, or unacceptable? And how do those who have them, live with them? In A Map of Desire Daniel Bergner takes us on a journey into human passion suffered, endured, and celebrated. Desire is a sometimes anarchic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes destructive, sometimes redeeming, and always powerful force.Immersing himself in it through the people whose lives he follows and the scientists he spends time with who are trying to understand it, slowly he exposes and illuminates layers of our humanity.