As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, the field of sociology plays a more crucial role in understanding the contemporary world than ever before. Analyzing the role of sociology and human behavior in areas as diverse as medical sociology, gender and experience, inequalities, migration and society, race and ethnicity, and the work sphere is crucial in grasping and understanding the evolution of humanity in a societal world. To this end, Frontiers in Sociology is organizing a series of Research Topics to highlight the latest advancements in the field. This editorial initiative, led by Prof. Kath Woodward, Specialty Chief Editor of the Gender, Sex and Sexualities section, is focused on new insights, novel developments, current challenges, recent advances, and future perspectives in the fi

The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sexuality, and Culture is an intersectional, diverse, and comprehensive collection essential for students and researchers examining the intersection of sexuality and culture. The book seeks to reflect established theories while anticipating future developments within gender, sexuality, and cultural studies. A range of international contributors, including leaders in their field, provide insights into dominant and marginalised subjects. Comprising over 30 chapters, the volume is comprised into five thematic parts: Identifying, Embodying, Making, Doing, and Resisting. Topics explored include homonormativity, poetry, video games, menstruation, fatness, disability, sex toys, sex work, BDSM, dating apps, body modifications, and politics and activism. This is an important and unique collection aimed at scholars, researchers, activists, and practitioners across cultural studies, gender studies and sociology.

This book examines young trans and gender diverse Australians’ views of school-based sex education. The analysis is informed by a queer epistemology that acknowledges the systematic and institutional erasure of trans subjectivities through highly medicalised systems of categorisation. Drawing on primary qualitative data, the author emphasises the accounts of trans and gender diverse young people as they relate to sex education at school, and how they undertake informal learning about sex, gender and identity in other areas of their lives.Ultimately, the book problematises the assumption that the sex education classroom is the most appropriate vehicle for social justice education in relation to queer issues. Queer issues and sex education tend to be packaged together discursively, deliberately or by association in dominant media narratives. However, this discourse constrains queer identities to the realm of sex and health, and therefore does not engage with the social citizenship of queer people. Further, this limits the capacity of schools and teachers to meaningfully explore diversity in the classroom, as sex education is front-and-centre in the so called ‘culture wars’ about gender, sexuality, youth and schools.

Thoroughly updated with over 30 newly written chapters, this edition of the Routledge Handbook of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Rights brings together academics and practitioners from around the world to provide an authoritative and up-to-date account of the field. Social researchers and their allies have worked hard in past decades to find new ways of understanding sexuality in a rapidly changing world. Growing attention is now given to the way sexuality intersects with other structures such as gender, age, ethnicity/race and disability, and increasing value is seen in a positive approach focused on ethics, pleasure, mutuality and reciprocity. This Handbook explores: theory, politics and early development of sexuality studies ways in which language, discourse and identification have become central to research on sex, sexuality and gender key issues across the broad media and digital ecology, demonstrating the centrality of representation, communication and digital technologies to sexual and gender practices research focusing on the body and its sexual pleasures work on forms of inequality, violence and abuse that are linked to sex, gender and sexuality The Handbook is an essential reference for researchers and educators working in the fields of sexuality studies, gender studies, sexual health and human rights, and offers key reading for mid-level and advanced students.

Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. But who counts in the collection, analysis and application of data? This important book is the first to look at queer data – defined as data relating to gender, sex, sexual orientation and trans identity/history. The author shows us how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and helps us understand how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer people. Guyan demonstrates why it is important to understand, collect and analyse queer data, the benefits and challenges involved in doing so, and how we might better use queer data in our work. Arming us with the tools for action, this book shows how greater knowledge about queer identities is instrumental in informing decisions about resource allocation, changes to legislation, access to services, representation and visibility.

Sexuality is the fifth revised and updated edition of the classic text for understanding human sexuality. This new edition brings the arguments and evidence fully up to date and explores their implication for many topical controversies, around LGBTQ+ rights, the trans experience and gender fluidity, same-sex marriage, sexual autonomy and consent, and the meanings of sexual choice. Since it was first published in the 1980s, Sexuality has been at the cutting edge of the study of the social and historical meanings of sexuality. Blending deep empirical knowledge with theoretical sophistication and an acute sensitivity to the politics of sexuality, the book offers an informed framework for understanding the complexities of sexual life. A key insight of the book is that the ways we think and speak about sexuality make a major contribution to the ways we live it. Sexuality may be rooted in biological possibilities, but it is shaped and experienced through languages and meanings which are inevitably historical and social in nature. The book explores with clarity and precision the invention and re-invention of sexual meanings, the question of what constitutes a true sex and the biological and social roots of sexual difference, the challenges of diversity, the re-making of sexuality as a highly divisive political subject and the implications of the transformation of intimate life in the past few generations. These are seen in the context of profound changes that are re-fashioning the world, especially globalisation, cyber-sex, and the rise of new forms of agency, including among women and LGBTQ+ people, which have fed into new claims for sexual human rights. This new edition of Sexuality will be an indispensable guide for students in the social sciences with an interest in the ever-changing worlds of sexuality.

This book showcases a wealth of knowledge and insight on gender and sexuality development. With contributions from leading researchers, it covers a comprehensive set of topics at the forefront of the field and strikes a balance between traditional and emerging areas of study. Given that gender and sexuality are shaped by myriad influences, this book is modelled on an interdisciplinary perspective and delves into biological, comparative, psychological, cognitive, social, cultural, and clinical approaches. In so doing, this collection conveys the rich tapestry of gender and sexuality science and will hold value for many. For those already in the field, this book provides an excellent resource for brushing up on the latest and for inspiring the next phases of scientific investigation. Those who are newer to the field, including undergraduate and graduate students, stand to gain tremendously from not only the thoughtful and informative content, but also from the interdisciplinary approach modelled throughout the book. Beyond academia, this book is a valuable resource for clinicians and policy makers who deal with child and adolescent issues.

This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital functions of male and female body, and any other physical or biological actions that define one’s sexual identity or orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social, political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary (e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture, iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a range of disciplines – e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience – to use theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad terms, or sexual practices in particular.

This book responds to the need to investigate the complex links between sex and leisure and their implications for research and practice. Understanding sex as leisure aligns with sex-positive culture that focuses on affirming pleasure in the contemporary sexual discourse and advocating for sexual diversity, freedom, empowerment, and fulfilling sex lives. The focus of this book is on analyzing the complexity of sex as leisure in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts, with particular reference to vulnerable populations and pressing sexual issues, including sexual pleasure and expression, biomedicalization of sexuality, and social justice and sexuality. Specific chapters offer diverse international coverage and address the links between a positive sexuality framework and leisure research. The chapters cover sexual play and sex toys based on consumer experience perspectives; using the leisure lens to analyze sex and pornography addiction; quadriplegic sexuality and leisure; rejection and resilience on a gay cruise; relational dynamics of aging, exploitation, and deceit in sex tourism; sexual harassment of solo female travelers; and the complexity of consent in the sexualized leisure space of a pornography expo. This book will be of great value to those interested in transdisciplinary scholarship as it critically broadens the bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspective of sex as leisure. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Leisure Sciences.