As a result, we've come to accept that boys can't focus in a classroom and girls are obsessed with relationships. That's just the way they're built. In Pink Brain Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot turns that thinking on its head. Based on years of exhaustive research and her own work in the new field of plasticity, Eliot argues that infant brains are so malleable that a few small differences at birth become amplified over time, as parents and teachers—and the culture at large—unwittingly reinforce gender stereotypes. Perhaps surprisingly, children themselves exacerbate the differences, by playing to their modest strengths. They constantly exercise those “ball-throwing” or “doll-cuddling” circuits, rarely straying from their comfort zones. But this, says Eliot, is just what they need to do. And parents can help, if they know how and when to intervene. Presenting the latest science at every developmental stage, from birth to puberty, she zeroes in on the precise differences between boys and girls, erasing harmful stereotypes. Boys are not, in fact, “better at math” but at certain kinds of spatial reasoning. Girls are not naturally more empathetic, they’re just encouraged to express their feelings. By appreciating how sex differences emerge—rather than assuming them to be fixed biological facts—we can help all children reach their fullest potential, close the troubling gaps between boys and girls, and ultimately end the gender wars that currently divide us.

    Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity for the social sciences of the twenty-first century. The seven theoretical and interpretive essays in this volume each advocate reconfiguring, rather than abandoning, the concept of culture. Similarly, they all suggest that a theory which depends on the interested action of social beings—specifically practice theory, associated especially with the work of Pierre Bourdieu—requires a more developed notion of human agency and a richer conception of human subjectivity. Ortner shows how social theory must both build upon and move beyond classic practice theory in order to understand the contemporary world.Some of the essays reflect explicitly on theoretical concerns: the relationship between agency and power, the problematic quality of ethnographic studies of resistance, and the possibility of producing an anthropology of subjectivity. Others are ethnographic studies that apply Ortner’s theoretical framework. In these, she investigates aspects of social class, looking at the relationship between race and middle-class identity in the United States, the often invisible nature of class as a cultural identity and as an analytical category in social inquiry, and the role that public culture and media play in the creation of the class anxieties of Generation X. Written with Ortner’s characteristic lucidity, these essays constitute a major statement about the future of social theory from one of the leading anthropologists of our time.

    It is called by many names, and lived in a variety of ways by different couples. The most common terms used to describe it are 'hotwife' or 'cuckold lifestyle.' This sexual practice, a form of sexual nonmonogamy, is distinguished from swinging and polyamory in that the husband rarely seeks sexual contact outside the marriage except for participation in group sex with his wife and other men, while the wife is permitted and often encouraged to pursue unrestrained sexual encounters with other men. The author includes interviews and comments from couples living the lifestyle throughout the U.S., and presents the stories in an attempt to determine the history of this sexual practice and its role in society and in relationships. He explores the psychological, social, biological, and evolutionary underpinnings of this uncommon and socially taboo behavior in an effort to make it more comprehensible to those engaged in the lifestyle and those who are just curious.

    In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression.It is called maleness.Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world — such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana — and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species.In characteristically humorous and engaging prose, Konner sheds light on our biologically different identities, while noting the poignant exceptions that challenge the male/female divide. We meet hunter-gatherers such as those in Botswana, whose culture gave women a prominent place, invented the working mother, and respected women’s voices around the fire. Recent human history has upset this balance, as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an unstoppable move toward equality is afoot. It will not be the end of men, but it will be the end of male supremacy and a better, wiser world for women and men alike.

    Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a 'powerful site for intervention, challenge and change'. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

    Packed with 291 passion-igniting positions, The Position Sex Bible takes sex from predictable to over the top. Whether you and your partner are just beginning your sexual adventures, looking to break out of a same-old-position rut, or ready take your bedroom repertoire to the next level, this complete guide showcases every position available. With concise instructions and a full-color photograph for each position, this pleasure tome is organized into ten sections—Bed Action, Back Door Policy, On the Edge, The Standing O, Chair Action, Foreplay and Oral Sex, Advanced Positions, At the Office, Toys, Advanced Foreplay and Oral Sex, Taking It to Another Level, Advanced Toys, and Swing Time! From twists on traditional favorites to the straight-up exotic, positions include:The Kissing LotusSnake TrapThe CorkscrewThe Hoover UprightTunnel of LoveThe Door JamCupid’s BowPurrfect PlungeAt the back of the book, a handy checklist with a thumbnail visual of each position for quick reference also allows you to keep track of the positions as you enjoy them. Spice up your sex life with The Position Sex Bible.

    This collection features enduring essays about sex work around the world, first-person stories that range from deeply traumatic to totally hilarious, analysis of media and culture, and fantastic illustrations and photos produced just for the magazine. The book also features the previously untold story of $pread and how it has built a wider audience in its posthumous years. What started as a community tool and trade magazine for the sex industry quickly emerged as the essential guide for people curious about sex work, for independent magazine enthusiasts, and for labor and civil rights activists.

    . . entirely praiseworthy.”—The Sunday TimesThis is a book of many questions and some answers. What is this menstruation that half the world undergoes? Has it any use, or any purpose? Which is it, blessing or curse?This groundbreaking study of the facts, fantasies, and taboos surrounding menstruation has helped bring about a profound shift in attitudes toward a natural phenomenon that has been reviled and denigrated over the centuries. Thoroughly researched yet highly readable, combining psychology, anthropology, and poetry, Shuttle and Redgrove illustrate their theories using examples ranging from the Bible to such modern-day pop horrors as vampire movies and the cult film The Exorcist.

    Features the original stories of women in the life, including writings by Sapphire, Nina Hartley, and Joan Nestle.Updated for the Second Edition: * Sex Workers' response to AIDS * Latest information on the legal status of sex work in the United States, Europe, and Asia * Growth of the international prostitutes' rights movement * Bibliography, revised to reflect a decades’ worth of writing and publishing on sex work * Resources, including activist organizations and publications—many just a Web click away

    Of the wider issue of global politics, he reasons, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has been a side effect. And religious intolerance places the minority communities of the country in a precarious position.They have to come to terms with a rapidly changing situation. A White Trail is an ethnographic study of these communities and the changes they are having to face. At a time when almost all accounts of religious minorities in the country focus on the persecution and discrimination they experience, A White Trail delves deeper into their lives, using the occasion of religious festivals to gain a deeper insight into the psyche of Pakistani Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais. It seeks to understand, through the oral testimonies of the members of these communities, larger socio-political issues arising from the situation.A White Trail originally began as a series of newspaper articles written by Lahore - based Haroon Khalid for Pakistans widely - circulated weekly, The Friday Times.

    The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, 2/e, brings together recent critical writings in this important field, covering such diverse topics as the sources of eating disorders, the nature of lesbianism, and the consequences of violence against women. With the exception of two classic articles, all pieces were published in the last decade, and one-quarter of the selections are new to the second edition. The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, 2/e, begins by looking at how ideas about women's bodies become culturally accepted. As the writings in the first section demonstrate, this is a political process that can reflect, reinforce, or challenge the distribution of power between men and women. Subsequent sections look at how, once ideas about women's bodies become accepted, they can serve as powerful--and political--tools for controlling women's appearance, sexuality, and behavior. Articles new to this edition include Daring to Desire: Culture and the Bodies of Adolescent Girls, by Deborah L. Tolman; Casing My Joints: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis, by Mary Lowenthal Felstiner; and Holding Back: Negotiating a Glass Ceiling on Women's Muscular Strength, by Shari L. Dworkin. This unique interdisciplinary anthology is ideal for undergraduate courses that cover the body and sexuality. It is also appropriate for introductory courses in women's studies and courses in the psychology, anthropology, or sociology of women; women and health; and feminist theory.

    He has played on the Old Course at St Andrews as well as on the miners' courses of Yorkshire. He writes about the different cultural manifestations of the game, the history, the geography, and the different social meanings.

    A worldwide best seller, translated into twenty-five languages.“I was born in a konak (old house), which once was the harem of a pasha,” writes Alev Lytle Croutier. “People around me often whispered things about harems; my own grandmother and her sister had been brought up in one.”Drawing on a host of firsthand accounts and memoirs, as well as her own family history, Croutier explores life in the world’s harems, from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, focusing on the fabled Seraglio of Topkapi Palace as a paradigm for them all. We enter the slave markets and the lavish boudoirs of the sultanas; we witness the daily routines of the odalisques, and of the eunuchs who guarded the harem. Here, too, we learn of the labyrinthine political scheming among the sultan’s wives, his favorites, and the valide sultana—the sultan’s mother—whose power could eclipse that of the sultan himself.There were the harems of the sultans and the pashas, but there were also “middle-class” harems, the households in which ordinary men and women lived out ordinary—albeit polygamous—lives. Croutier reveals their marital customs, child-rearing practices, and superstitions. Finally, she shows how this Eastern institution invaded the European imagination—in the form of decoration, costume, and art—and how Western ideas, in turn, finally eroded a system that had seemed eternal. Juxtaposing a rich array of illustrations—Western paintings, Turkish and Persian miniatures, family photographs, and even film stills—Croutier demystifies the Western erotic fantasy of “the world behind the veil.” This revised and updated 25th anniversary edition of Harem includes a new introduction by the author, revisiting her subject in light of recent events in Turkey, and the world.

    To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his belief that if a human life is described with enough particularity, the universal will speak through it. The result is a work that combines one of the most moving memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the civil rights of the future. “This brilliantly argued and engaging book does two things at once, and it does them both astonishingly well. First, it's a finely grained memoir of young man’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and second, it's a powerful argument for a whole new way of thinking about civil rights and how our society deals with difference. This book challenges us all to confront our own unacknowledged biases, and it demands that we take seriously the idea that there are many different ways to be human. Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights.” -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed“Kenji Yoshino has not only given us an important, compelling new way to understand civil rights law, a major accomplishment in itself, but with great bravery and honesty, he has forged his argument from the cauldron of his own experience. In clear, lyrical prose, Covering quite literally brings the law to life. The result is a book about our public and private selves as convincing to the spirit as it is to the mind.” -Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here“Kenji Yoshino's work is often moving and always clarifying. Covering elaborates an original, arresting account of identity and authenticity in American culture.”-Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy at Princeton University“This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights. Like W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation. And like those classics, it should explode into America's consciousness.”-Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights“Covering is a magnificent work - so eloquently and powerfully written I literally could not put it down. Sweeping in breadth, brilliantly argued, and filled with insight, humor, and erudition, it offers a fundamentally new perspective on civil rights and discrimination law. This extraordinary book is many things at once: an intensely moving personal memoir; a breathtaking historical and cultural synthesis of assimilation and American equality law; an explosive new paradigm for transcending the morass of identity politics; and in parts, pure poetry. No one interested in civil rights, sexuality, discrimination - or simply human flourishing - can afford to miss it.” -Amy Chua, author of World on Fire“In this stunning, original book, Kenji Yoshino demonstrates that the struggle for gay rights is not only a struggle to liberate gays---it is a struggle to free all of us, straight and gay, male and female, white and black, from the pressures and temptations to cover vital aspects of ourselves and deprive ourselves and others of our full humanity. Yoshino is both poet and lawyer, and by joining an exquisitely observed personal memoir with a historical analysis of civil rights, he shows why gay rights is so controversial at present, why “covering” is the issue of contention, and why the “covering demand,” universal in application, is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a beautifully written, brilliant and hopeful book, offering a new understanding of what is at stake in our fight for human rights.” -Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice

    Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this new edition featuring an updated resource guide of newsletters, journals, books, groups, and festivals, Margot Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America's Pagan groups.