Sex Politics and Society

<p>A pioneering study which has become an established classic in its field, <i>Sex, Politics and Society </i>provides a lucid and comprehensive analysis of the transformations of British sexual life from 1800 to the present. These changes are firmly located in the wider context of British social, political and cultural life, from industrialization, urbanisation and the impact of Empire and colonisation, through the experience of economic disruption, World Wars, the establishment of the welfare state, changing patterns of gender and the emergence of new sexual identities. This book also charts the rise of both progressive and conservative social movements, including feminism, LGBT activism, and fundamentalist movements. It is a history where the past continues to live in the present, and where the present provides ever more complex, and often controversial patterns of sexual life, with sexual and gender issues at the heart of contemporary politics. </p><p>Now fully revised and updated, this edition examines key new developments including: </p><ul> <li>the impact of globalisation, and the digital revolution;</li> <li>gender nonconformity and the rise of transgender consciousness;</li> <li>shifting family and relational patterns, and new forms of intimacy;</li> <li>changes in reproductive technology including the debates on IVF and surrogacy; </li> <li>new discourses of equality and sexual rights for LGBT people;</li> <li>the irresistible rise of same-sex marriage; </li> <li>the weakening of the heterosexual/ homosexual binary divide and the development of new lines of concern and divisions in the politics of sexuality.</li> </ul><p>Combining rich empirical detail with innovative theoretical insights, <i>Sex, Politics and Society</i> remains at the cutting edge of the subject, and this fourth edition will inspire and provoke a whole new generation of readers in history, sociology, social policy and critical sexuality studies. </p> <p>CONTENTS</p><p>Preface and Acknowledgements </p><p>1. Sexuality and the historian </p><p>Introduction </p><p>Histories of sexuality</p><p>Sexuality and power</p><p>Sexuality and the politics of history</p><p>The making of ‘modern’ sexuality</p><p>2. ‘That damned morality’: sex in Victorian ideology </p><p>Victorian sexuality: myths and meanings</p><p>Emergent patterns </p><p>The domestic ideology </p><p>Sex and class </p><p>3. The sacramental family: middle-class men, women and children </p><p>Masculinity and femininity </p><p>Birth control </p><p>Childhood </p><p>4. Sexuality and the labouring classes </p><p>Middle-class myths, working-class realities </p><p>Traditions, illegitimacy and proletarianisation </p><p>The patterns of family life </p><p>Respectability and its discontents </p><p>5. The public and the private: moral regulation in the Victorian period </p><p>Forms of moral regulation </p><p>Private morality, public vice </p><p>Reform or control? </p><p>6. The construction of homosexuality </p><p>Homosexuality: concepts and consequences</p><p>The sins of sodom </p><p>Moral, legal and medical regulation </p><p>Identities and ways of life</p><p>Intimate lives </p><p>7. The population question in the early twentieth century </p><p>Population politics </p><p>Maternalism </p><p>Eugenics </p><p>The influence of eugenics </p><p>8. The theorisation of sex </p><p>A new continent of knowledge </p><p>Sex, science and society </p><p>Havelock Ellis and sex research </p><p>The impact of Freud</p><p>9. Feminism and socialism</p><p>Sexual radicalism and its limits </p><p>Feminism and sexuality </p><p>The morals of socialism </p><p>10. Sex psychology and birth control </p><p>Sex psychology </p><p>International movements </p><p>Parenthood and birth control </p><p>11. Towards a conservative modernity </p><p>A ‘glorious unfolding’? </p><p>Domesticity and family life</p><p>Protecting purity </p><p>Psychology and sex delinquency </p><p>12. The state and sexuality </p><p>Welfare and citizenship </p><p>Reproducing the population </p><p>Towards the complementary marriage </p><p>‘Wolfenden’ and sexual liberalism </p><p>13. The permissive moment </p><p>The transition </p><p>‘Permissiveness’ </p><p>Youth </p><p>Women </p><p>Ideologies </p><p>The political moment</p><p>The limits of permissiveness </p><p>14. Personal politics and moral conservatism </p><p>The ebbing tide </p><p>Second-wave feminism </p><p>The challenge of gay liberation</p><p>The new moralism</p><p>The Thatcherite experiment</p><p>The AIDS crisis</p><p>15. The changing landscape of sexuality and gender</p><p>Intimate pleasures </p><p>Doing families </p><p>A gender revolution?</p><p>16. Diversity, agency and citizenship</p><p>The changing world of LGBT people</p><p>Becoming ordinary </p><p>Multicultural Britain?</p><p>Live and let love </p><p>Index</p>