Women talk about men to women. Men and women talk to each other (or try to) about relationships. It’s Not You, It’s Biology provides insight, ammunition, snappy comebacks, and interesting cocktail party banter for everyone who ever wondered why we do what we do vis-a-vis the opposite sex.It’s Freakonomics for the Relationship-Challenged.

    But what happens when this system of adjusting emotions is adapted to commercial purposes? Hochschild examines the cost of this kind of "emotional labor." She vividly describes from a humanist and feminist perspective the process of estrangement from personal feelings and its role as an "occupational hazard" for one-third of America's workforce.

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    Though our culture is obsessed with both, the two commingling are sometimes seen as offensive, obscene, or even grotesque. Fat people are not viewed as sexual beings. Of course, this perception is far from accurate. Fat people have normal and peculiar sex lives, just like everyone else.​A compilation of true stories, cultural references, and narrative commentary, Fat Sex: The Naked Truth, tells the honest, and often heroic, heartbreaking, and hilarious experiences of large-size women and men in their romantic, intimate, and sexual relationships.​​​​​Subjects touched on include heterosexual relationships, gay men and lesbian women, those who have gained and lost a great deal of weight, and the sexual “underground” such as fetishes. Although the people portrayed in Fat Sex: The Naked Truth sometimes face bigotry and experience shame – they are often valiant and live remarkably fulfilling lives. The stories are compelling and told with sensitivity and wit, connecting people on profoundly important aspects of their lives.​This book is not just for large-size people. The stories and issues discussed touch all of us, each and every person who has ever experienced the trials and tribulations, as well as the ecstasies, of intimate relationships.

    It explains all this and much more. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, when to seduce your sisters or eat your lover. Quirky and brilliant, it takes as its starting point all creatures great and small worried about their bizarre sex lives, and the letters they write to the wise Dr Tatiana, the only agony aunt in all creation with a prodigious knowledge of both natural history and evolutionary biology.

    Then she is publicly hanged alongside her attacker. These events took place in 1644, in Boston, where today they would beviewed with horror. How--and when--did such a complete transformation of our culture's attitudes toward sex occur?In The Origins of Sex, Faramerz Dabhoiwala provides a landmark history, one that will revolutionize our understanding of the origins of sexuality in modern Western culture. For millennia, sex had been strictly regulated by the Church, the state, and society, who vigorously and brutally attempted topunish any sex outside of marriage. But by 1800, everything had changed. Drawing on vast research--from canon law to court cases, from novels to pornography, not to mention the diaries and letters of people great and ordinary--Dabhoiwala shows how this dramatic change came about, tracing theinterplay of intellectual trends, religious and cultural shifts, and politics and demographics. The Enlightenment led to the presumption that sex was a private matter; that morality could not be imposed; that men, not women, were the more lustful gender. Moreover, the rise of cities erodedcommunity-based moral policing, and religious divisions undermined both church authority and fear of divine punishment. Sex became a central topic in poetry, drama, and fiction; diarists such as Samuel Pepys obsessed over it. In the 1700s, it became possible for a Church of Scotland leader tocommend complete sexual liberty for both men and women. Arguing that the sexual revolution that really counted occurred long before the cultural movement of the 1960s, Dabhoiwala offers readers an engaging and wholly original look at the Western world's relationship to sex.Deeply researched and powerfully argued, The Origins of Sex is a major work of history.

    Bruce Goldstein's SENSATION AND PERCEPTION has helped more than 100,000 students make the connection between perception and physiology. Goldstein has crafted an easier-to-understand, and more student-friendly book, without sacrificing the text's comprehensive examination of sensation and perception. Goldstein takes readers on an intriguing journey through their senses, and chronicles scientists' efforts to understand the fascinating behind the scenes activity that allows us to perceive. With balanced coverage of all senses, this book offers an integrated examination of how the senses work together. Goldstein shows readers how seemingly simple experiences are actually extremely complex mechanisms and examines both the psychophysical and physiological underpinnings of perception. All material is presented in a way students find interesting and easy to follow. The book's visually dynamic presentation includes numerous color plates that are presented as visual topic essays. In addition, more than 50 hands-on demonstrations illustrate perceptual experiences. All are simple enough for students to do and are seamlessly integrated into the flow of the text.

    Your brain decides who is attractive to you, how to get a date, how well you do on the date, what to do with the feelings that develop, how long those feelings last, when to commit, and how well you do as a partner and a parent. Your brain helps you be enthusiastic in the bedroom or drains you of desire and passion. Your brain helps you process and learn from a breakup or makes you vulnerable to depression or obsession.”While plastic surgeons, diet gurus, and the pharmaceutical industry may have convinced you that they hold the secret to a fulfilling sex life, the truth is that you already have the only thing you really need: a brain. As the largest and most sensitive sexual organ in the body, a healthy human brain enhances your sex life and heightens sensation. A troubled brain, however, makes emotional and physical connection with others difficult. So forget the implants, the fad diets, and the pills. Learning about this intriguing and sexy organ is the key to your sexual satisfaction.Based on Dr. Daniel Amen’s latest research in practical neuroscience, Sex on the Brain shares 12 lessons that help you enhance your love and sex lives through understanding and improving brain function. Filled with practical suggestions and information on how sex can save your life, Sex on the Brain reveals:• How sex helps prevent heart disease, improve memory, stave off cancer, and boost your immune system• How the differences between men’s and women’s brains affect our perceptions and interest in sex—and how you can understand these differences to make the most of the opportunities with your partner• Why breakups hurt so much, and what you can do to ease the pain• Surefire techniques to fix common problems—depression, PMS, ADD—that get in the way of good sex • How to make yourself unforgettable to your partnerEveryone wants to know how to improve his or her love life, but so few of us understand the integral role that the brain plays in getting us in the mood, keeping us excited about our partner, and helping us achieve greater satisfaction. Sex on the Brain explains everything, showing you how use your brain to create a healthy, happy, and hot sex life.From the Hardcover edition.

    The New Male Sexuality addresses the most urgent questions of men today--and of the women who love them.  Bernie Zilbergeld reports findings from his twenty years as a psychologist specializing in human sexuality, as well as those other experts in the field, and shares his own and his clients' experiences.  the result is the most comprehensive guide ever to enhancing desire and arousal, focusing on pleasure rather than performance, and keeping sex exciting and fulfilling.Clear, comprehensive, witty, and refreshingly realistic, The New Male Sexuality is destined to be a classic of the nineties and beyond.From the Paperback edition.

    Since the publication of The Joy of Sex in 1972, the sexual landscape’s boundaries have been expanded to include a host of practices that are unthinkable in that classic tome. Although it also covers the basics, The Boudoir Bible fills those niches missing from other sex guides nicely, with full, elaborated chapters on rope bondage, restraints of sound and sight, erotic flagellation, and the stimulation of new erogenous zones, among innumerable other offerings. Well-researched, The Boudoir Bible is written from a joyful, sex-positive point of view. Going beyond the "lovemaking" of older guides, this witty and uninhibited tome expands the sexual act to encompass "verboten" topics, with chapters entitled "The Genital Gym," "Nipple Tease," "Male Ejaculation Control," and "The Anthems of Anal Sex." Illustrated by the renowned artist François Berthoud, whose provocative creations have graced both Prada campaigns and museum exhibitions, The Boudoir Bible provides a fresh view of sexuality in the twenty-first century.

    This Very Short Introduction provides an accessible, thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction to major debates around sexuality in the modern world, highlighting the social and political aspects of sexuality. It critically explores different ways of defining and thinking about sexuality and shows that many of our assumptions about what is "natural" in the sexual domain have, in reality, varied greatly in different historical or cultural contexts. The volume also examines ways in which governments have tried to regulate citizens' sexualities in the past-through policies and laws concerning public health, HIV/Aids, prostitution, and sex education-paying special attention to the particular zeal with which women's sexuality has been policed. The volume concludes by discussing political activism around sexuality more widely, focusing on the ways in which feminists, lesbians and gay men, as well as religious fundamentalists have transformed our ways of thinking about sexuality in the past few decades. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Meston, a clinical psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss joined forces to investigate the underlying sexual motivations of women, what they found astonished them.Through the voices of real women, Meston and Buss reveal the motivations that guide women's sexual decisions and explain the deep-seated psychology and biology that often unwittingly drive women's desires-sometimes in pursuit of health or pleasure, or sometimes for darker, disturbing reasons that a woman may not fully recognize. Drawing on more than a thousand intensive interviews conducted solely for the book, as well as their pioneering research on physiological response and evolutionary emotions, Why Women Have Sex uncovers an amazingly complex and nuanced portrait of female sexuality. The authors delve into the use of sex as a defensive tactic against a mate's infidelity (protection), as a ploy to boost self-confidence (status), as a barter for gifts or household chores (resource acquisition), or as a cure for a migraine headache (medication).Why Women Have Sex stands as the richest and deepest psychological understanding of female sexuality yet achieved and promises to inform every woman's (and her partner's) awareness of her relationship to sex and her sexuality.

    Addressing a range of topics from gay and lesbian identities to sex work, he delves into issues of social control that inform popular beliefs and moral standards. The Social Construction of Sexuality widens the public discussion of the morality and politics of sexuality. With this insightful exploration of society's effect on our sexual choices, Seidman once again makes a significant contribution to the sociological study of sexuality. The Social Construction of Sexuality is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

    But are we? The history of the orgasm is as elusive as orgasm itself can be, for sex rarely makes the historical record. Now acclaimed British journalist Jonathan Margolis delivers the definitive history of the human orgasm, of sex for pleasure as well as conception -- from prehistory to Viagra. Most people manage just twelve minutes of orgasmic bliss per year. Some never experience it at all. Yet the urge for orgasm rules much of human life, across national and cultural boundaries. How much have we learned about female pleasure since the 1558 discovery of the clitoris? How has the drive for pleasure, and the fear of it, shaped various societies -- from Saint Francis of Assisi and the thorn bush, to “primitive” tribes who embraced maximum pleasure for both sexes? How much does the sensation of orgasm differ for different people? Drawing on the biology, literature, anthropology, psychology, and technology, Jonathan Margolis delivers the final word on both male and female orgasm in an enlightening history that is a pleasure to read.

    Through extensive research and interviews, as well as years of experience working in the field, the authors cover gender variance from birth through college. What do you do when your toddler daughter's first sentence is that she's a boy? What will happen when your preschool son insists on wearing a dress to school? Is this ever just a phase? How can you explain this to your neighbors and family? How can parents advocate for their children in elementary schools? What are the current laws on the rights of transgender children? What do doctors specializing in gender variant children recommend? What do the therapists say? What advice do other families who have trans kids have? What about hormone blockers and surgery? What issues should your college-bound trans child be thinking about when selecting a school? How can I best raise my gender variant or transgender child with love and compassion, even when I barely understand the issues ahead of us? And what is gender, anyway? These questions and more are answered in this book offering a deeper understanding of gender variant and transgender children and teens.