The essays in this volume address sexual phenomena in eighteenth-century Europe that were for one reason or another outside the legal or sanctified systems of acceptability: most notably, unwed heterosexual domesticity, masturbation, prostitution, libertinism, homosexuality, and erotic literature. The contributors' essays make an important first step toward integrating sexuality into our general understanding of eighteenth century culture. Contributors: Roy Porter; Jean-Marie Goulemot with Odile Wagner and Arthur Greenspan, translators; John R. Gillis; Theodore Tarczylo with James Coke and Michael Murray, translators; Vern L. Bullough; James G. Turner; Jean-Pierre Guicciardi with Michael Murray, translator; David Coward; Randolph Trumbach; Michel Delon, with Nelly Stephane, translator; G. S. Rousseau; Arend H. Huussen, Jr.; Michael Rey with Robert A. Day and Robert Welch, translators; Peter Sabor; Paul-Gabriel Bouce Robert J. Ellrich; Robert L. Dawson; Armando Marchi with James Cook and David Marsh, translators.

Chudacoff (history, Brown U.) describes how a new subculture was created in the late 19th century by single men migrating to US cities. He tells how they rejected the restraints and dependencies of the contemporary family and took their social life from public places such as boarding houses, saloons, clubs, and cafes. He also traces the ambiguous image through the 20th century and compares it to the burgeoning urban singles scene. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men's and women's brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men's brains aren't wired for empathy and women's brains aren't made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men's and women's behavior. Instead of a "male brain" and a "female brain," Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.--From publisher description.

Perspectives on Gender in Early Childhood provides a rich collection of academic essays reflecting research that explores and seeks to understand how children learn about their gender identity from the adults who teach them. These esays come from a diverse group of early childhood scholars from around the nited States and Eruope

My Husband Betty is the first book to explore the relationships of crossdressing men and their female partners. Known traditionally as transvestites, men like Helen Boyd's husband are starting to come out and win the respect of friends, family, and society - even if their behavior still baffles mental health professionals and the crossdressers themselves. Boyd explains the "taxonomy" of the transgendered, the distinct societies within the transgendered community, the effects of the closet, sexuality, and the issues faced by the wives and girlfriends of crossdressing men. Helen's own experience is at the heart of this book, her story complemented and contradicted by interviews with crossdressers, drag queens, "tranny chasers," and other transgendered couples.

The heart-breaking and much-contested case of a boy who was surgically altered at birth to live as woman re-interprets a case that was initially hailed as proof that gender is culturally conditioned. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Moving memoir and insightful examination of transgender politics TRANS is the story of growing up, of finding an identity, and about the politics of gender. In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead-end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time where the mainstream media—and even feminism—fail to acknowledge transgender identity. Yet through films, music, politics and football she begins to find herself, and starts the process of transition, and life beyond. Through her memoir, Jacques interweaves the narrative with powerful explorations of many of the major debates surrounding trans: the uses of life writing, the relationship with feminism, and the “before and after

"Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval. Historically, eras in whichthere have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them"--

The author recounts her eighteen-month undercover stint as a man, a time during which she worked a sales job, joined a bowling league, frequented sex clubs, dated, and encountered firsthand the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity.

Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's "essential nature.") The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen's work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.