Best of
Sexuality

1986

Healing Love through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy


Mantak Chia - 1986
    This is the first book to make this ancient knowledge available to the West.The foundation of healing love is the cultivation, transformation, and circulation of sexual energy, known as jing. Jing energy is creative, generative energy that is vital for the development of chi (vital life-force energy) and shen (spiritual energy), which enables higher practices of spiritual development. Jing is produced in the sexual organs, and it is energy women lose continually through menstruation and child bearing. Mantak Chia teaches powerful techniques developed by Taoist masters for the conservation of jing and how it is used to revitalize women's physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Among the many benefits conferred by these practices are a reduction in the discomfort caused by menstruation and the ability to attain full-body orgasm.

Men and Marriage


George Gilder - 1986
    He examines the deterioration of the family, the well-defined sex roles it offered, and how this change has shifted the focus of our society. Poverty, for instance, stems from the destruction of the family when unmarried parents are abandoned by their lovers or older women are divorced because society approves of their husbands' younger girlfriends.Gilder claims that men will only fulfill their paternal obligations when women lead them to do so, and that this civilizing influence, balanced with proper economic support, is the most important part of maintaining a productive, healthy, loving society.He offers a concrete plan for rebuilding the family in America. His solutions challenge readers to return to these roles and reestablish the family values that were once so crucial in staving off the ills that plague our country. Gilder insists that it is time to reexamine what "liberation" has wrought and at what cost. Only a return to traditional family values, he contends, can stem the tide of disaster.George Gilder is the author of Wealth and Poverty, the best-selling critique of Reaganomics, The Spirit of Enterprise, Visible Man, Naked Nomads, and The Party That Lost Its Head . He was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and now writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and National Review about material advances and their effect on society. His most recent books include two other well-known social commentaries, Microcosm and Life After Television. Also available in paperback.

Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation


Roger Scruton - 1986
    Beginning from purely philosophical premises, and ranging over human life, art and institutions, he surveys the entire field of sexuality; equally dissatisfied with puritanism and permissiveness, he argues for a radical break with recent theories. Upholding traditional morality - though in terms that may shock many of its practitioners - his argument gravitates to that which is candid, serene and consoling in the experience of sexual love.

A Natural History of Sex: The Ecology and Evolution of Mating Behavior


Adrian Forsyth - 1986
    Why do roosters crow and waggle their wattles? Why does it benefit the female human to remain inscrutable about her sexual cycle? Who instituted monogamy? Why would a male mite copulate with its mother? Why does the male bedbug drive its "outlandish, formidable penis" into the female's abdomen? Forsyth's highly observational mind ranges over the natural world, revealing the seemingly random patterns and consequences of animal sexual behavior. This classic reference is a must for anyone who has ever wondered just what it is that makes the world go round.

The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture


Walter L. Williams - 1986
    I believe that people should be able to call themselves whatever they wish, and scholars should respect and acknowledge their change of terminology. I went on record early on in convincing other anthropologists to shift away from use of the word berdache and in favor of using Two-Spirit. Nevertheless, because this book continues to be sold with the use of berdache, many people have assumed that I am resisting the newer term. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless continued sales of this book will justify the publication of a third revised edition in the future, it is not possible to rewrite what is already printed, Therefore, I urge readers of this book, as well as activists who are working to gain more respect for gender variance, mentally to substitute the term "Two-Spirit" in the place of "berdache" when reading this text. -- Walter L. Williams, Los Angeles, 2006

The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art


Leo Bersani - 1986
    Analyzes Samuel Beckett's novels, Mallarme's poetry, Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Salo, Assyrian palace reliefs, and writings by Henry James in terms of Freudian theories.

When A Man Loves A Woman: Sexual And Emotional Literacy For The Modern Man


Claude Steiner - 1986
    

Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination


Lynn Margulis - 1986
    Margulis and Sagan trace sex from its inauspicious beginnings in bacteria threatened by ultraviolet radiation to its intimate relation with the origin of mitotic division of nucleated cells. The origin of meiotic sex through cannibalism followed by centriole reproductive tardiness and the connection of cell symbiosis to sex and differentiation are explored.“The authors have not only given us a new and exiting scenario for the evolution of sex, but have also provided us with critical ways in which we can test their hypotheses. . . . This is a stimulating book that is sure to invoke criticism and discussion; I strongly recommend it.”—Symbiosis“The book is well organized and well written, leading the reader from one thought to another almost effortlessly. Background information is presented to aid those of us who are not experts in this field, and a glossary is appended. The book could be used at all levels of study, from interested undergraduates in general biology though postdoctoral students of genetics and evolution. I recommend this thought-provoking book to you for both your enjoyment and your enlightenment.”—Richard W. Cheney, Jr., Journal of College Science Teaching“This book, undoubtedly controversial, is a thoughtful and original contribution to an important aspect of cellular biology.”—John Langridge

The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds: Secret Homosexual Life of a Leading 19th Century Man Of...


John Addington Symonds - 1986
    The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds are a startling, engrossing and unique new contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century sexual mores, and an instant, new classic of Victorian autobiography. Written in 1892, but until recently locked in a London library, they reveal the secret homosexual life of a nineteenth century man of letters. Symonds wrote his book knowing that it could never be published in his lifetime, but hoping that posterity would understand and vindicate what his own age despised and hid.

In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860


Judith S. Lewis - 1986
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