sexuality

The Secrets Of Female Sexuality: Unapologetic Brutally Honest Truth About Sex That Women Secretly Wish You Knew But Can't Tell You
$19.97
Had I known how repulsive, with vulgar language, this book was I would not have purchased it. The book has NO credential and seems to focus on the fantasy and imagination vs. reality... there is NO supporting research to back any of Spades claims. The stories told are border line pornographic and extremely sexist. Spade also has an annoying way of repeating his same stories and ideas throughout the book. He boasts throughout the book that his ideas work but NEVER does he give any an explanation of "what" to do. At any rate, I found the entire book immature and repulsive with the use of vulgar language! Needless to say I just got rid of it.

The New Male Sexuality, Revised Edition
$17.00
I have just started reading this book. I already find it very helpful. A must read for every male. Learn who you are and who you can become

Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand ItAnd Men Don't Either
$29.95
This was one of the most revelatory books I have read in a while. Even though it is under 200 pages, it took me a long time to read because there was so much in it. Culturally, men are supposed to be these sexual automatons (like the main character on HBO's "Hung") but the reality is that male sexuality is very psychologically complex and this book flushes out the reasons why in a sympathetic and understanding voice.

The book really gets into the dichotomy of being male - the simultaneous instincts for intimacy and security and one hand and freedom and limitless on the other. Bader believes that guilt - guilt for being a male, for showing love for someone besides his mother, for having desire for women who ostensibly look at male attraction as something that is domineering - is principally what ails men so much in their sex lives.

"Boys grow up with the belief, however irrational, that one of the most basic ways they can potentially hurt women is by simply being male. (23)." "Unfortunately, boys often grow up with the false and painful belief that their separation has hurt their mothers or that their own pride in being masculine is the object of maternal envy. The resulting guilt can cause a range of problems: it can force some boys to play down their difference, suppress their pleasure, or mute their pride in their masculinity (24)." One of the main consequences of this is that men often think that being sexually assertive is distasteful and turns off the opposite sex.

Upon feeling guilty, men react by either pushing women away by feeling an exaggerated sense of responsibility for women (I don't want to hurt her, I will hurt her feelings and end up repressing her if we get too close) or objectifying them (more of an aggressive impulse, equating intimacy with a weakening of one's masculine boundaries) [all this on pages 32-33 in the discussion of "ruthlessness."]. "The reason that a woman's need becomes the man's obligation is because of the unconscious belief that he is supposed to satisfy a woman's needs. Caught between feeling resentful that they have to suppress their own needs to make women happy, and feeling guilty about their chronic failure to do so, men are often unable to pursue sexual pleasure with even a momentary disregard for their partners (33)."

This is a very illuminating and challenging book that will help men understand what is behind their sexual urges and, hopefully, help more learn to accept themselves with less guilt.

And yet, going along with the taboo nature of it, I felt embarrassed reading it. I always read it alone in my room when everyone was out. I feel embarrassed to talk about things in this book with anyone. I'm hoping that books like this will change that.

The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
$14.00
i saw a pretty woman in a nun's habit once and i had an overwhelming desire to have sexual relations with her, and i felt guilty thereafter for my desire in the same way i would feel guilty for desiring to have sexual relations with my mother. understandably, these were desires i wanted to keep secret, until I read freud and learned about the incest taboo put in place to control normal incestuous desires prevalent in most societies and cultures.

foucault credits freud for `placing sex at one of the critical points marked out for it since the eighteenth century by the strategies of knowledge and power, how wonderfully effective he was ... in giving a new impetus to the secular injunction to study sex and transform it into discourse.'

a discourse foucault charts historically for a sexuality that functioned since the seventeenth century paradoxically as secret and a disclosure. even in the twenty first century when many people speak of sexuality they speak of repression and of the authorities in power in social institutions who do the repressing. foucault writes of a sexuality of obsession and how that obsession became discourse, first in the confessional booth of the catholic church where the confessor was urged to tell everything sexual and how later sexual confession was picked up by confessional writers, in particular the marquis de sade and the anonymous author of `my secret life'; and following was `a multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more ... toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, there emerged a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about sex ... . sex was not something one simply judged; it was a thing one administered ... .'

it was administered in discussions for population control, the architecture of school space and sex education, and, within the family, as normative sexual relations -- and the sexual relations, outside the norm, were heard and discussed as perverse by mental institutional workers, and sexual transgressions were relegated to discourses of civil law. those in power had sexual knowledge, and the powerless had silence about sex, secrets about which they were incited to talk. once the secrets were revealed they could be corrected, regulated and proscribed.

something else about my own confession: a few days later I saw the woman in the nun's habit again, on stage as part of a theatre production.