Faced with the seemingly enormous difficulty of representing `others', many theorists working in Cultural Studies have been turning to themselves as a way of speaking about the personal. In Sexing the Self Elspeth Probyn tackles this question of the sex of the self, an issue of vital importance to feminists and yet neglected by feminist theory until now, to suggest that there are ways of using our gendered selves in order to speak and theorize non-essential but embodied selves. Arguing for `feminisms with attitude', Sexing the Self ranges across a wide range of theoretical strands, drawing upon a body of literature from early Cultural Studies to Anglo-American feminist literary criticism, from `identity debates' to Foucault's `care of the self'.

Microcosm Publishing bestseller Dr. Faith takes on the fabulous topic of... masturbation! In her usual style of combining hilariousness with science, she breaks down the history of societal shame around self-pleasure, and offers practical and straightforward whys and hows of exploring your sexuality on your own time. From the benefits of learning all the ins and outs of your own sexual response to a candid guide to shopping for and using sex toys, she addresses the needs of cis and trans folks, busts some myths, and gives some guidelines for talking to your kids about masturbation. She even includes book recommendations! There's a lot to this little zine, whether you're an experienced masturbator or a recent escapee from a fundamentalist cult.

This book explores the relationship between sex and belonging in law and popular culture, arguing that contemporary citizenship is sexed, privatized, and self-disciplined. Former sexual outlaws have challenged their exclusion and are being incorporated into citizenship. But as citizenship becomes more sexed, it also becomes privatized and self-disciplined. The author explores these contesting representations of sex and belonging in films, television, and legal decisions. She examines a broad range of subjects, from gay men and lesbians, pornographers and hip hop artists, to women selling vibrators, adulterers, and single mothers on welfare. She observes cultural representations ranging from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to Dr. Phil, Sex in the City to Desperate Housewives. She reviews appellate court cases on sodomy and same-sex marriage, national welfare reform, and obscenity regulation. Finally, the author argues that these representations shape the terms of belonging and governance, producing good (and bad) sexual citizens, based on the degree to which they abide by the codes of privatized and self-disciplined sex.

Now updated with groundbreaking research, this award-winning classic examines the construction of sexual identity in biology, society, and history. Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms -- sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed -- and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

Charts the emergence of a new kind of heterosexual rhetoric in eighteenth-century British literature, providing a nuanced reinterpretation of gender and its role in the major genres of the period.

Woman's Relationship with Herself explores the relationship women have with themselves and demonstrates how this relationship is often dominated by debilitating practices of self-surveillance. Employing Foucault's notion of panoptical power, Helen O'Grady illuminates the link between this kind of self-surveillance and the broader mechanisms of social control, arguing that these negative practices prevent women from enjoying a satisfying, affirming relationship with themselves. Cultural factors that render women vulnerable to dissatisfying self-relations are identified and analysed and, drawing on the insights of Foucault, feminism and narrative therapy, the possibilities for developing a more empowering relationship with the self are examined. This innovative contribution to feminist debates about gender and the self will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, feminist psychology, mental health studies and gender studies, and to practitioners in psychological therapies and counselling psychology.

Maria Tamboukou links Foucauldian ideas to feminism and education. Its central argument is that the Foucauldian notion of 'technologies of the self' needs to be gendered and contextualized. This argument is pursued through a genealogical analysis of autobiographical texts of women educators in the UK at the turn of the nineteenth century. This is a new theoretical approach, since Foucault's work has proved to be of great interest to feminist scholars but as yet, his theories have only intermittently been used in educational feminist work.