Sex Is Not A Natural Act And Other Essays

This collection of sexologist Leonore Tiefer's essays includes popular as well as professional writings and lectures on the social construction of sexuality. Tiefer's background as a sexologist is unusually broad, including rodent copulation research, sex therapy, classification of dysfunctions and feminist analysis. Her wit and passion are evident in such essays as “The Kiss,” “Advice to the Lovelorn,” “Sexual Biology and the Symbolism of the Natural,” “In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis: The Medicalization of Male Sexuality,” and “New Perspectives in Sexology: From Rigor (Mortis) to Richness,” and they all add up to a lively, controversial presentation of the forces shaping sex in our culture.As Tiefer provocatively states toward the end of her introduction to Part 1, “A kiss is not a kiss;… your orgasm is not the same as George Washington's, premarital sex in Peru is not premarital sex in Peoria, abortion in Rome at the time of Caesar is not abortion at the time of John Paul II, and rape is neither an act of sex nor an act of violence—all of these actions remain to be defined by individual experience within one's period and culture.” This book explores sex and its “experts” in colorful, original, and perceptive ways.