Julius Evola sheds new light on the mystical and spiritual expression of sexual love. This in-depth study explores the sexual rites of sacred traditions, and shows how religion, mysticism, folklore, and mythology all contain erotic forms in which the deep potentialities of human beings are recognized.

Stories consist largely of representations of the human social environment. These representations can be used to influence the behavior of others (consider, e.g., rumor, propaganda, public relations, advertising). Storytelling can thus be seen as a transaction in which the benefit to the listener is information about his or her environment, and the benefit to the storyteller is the elicitation of behavior from the listener that serves the former’s interests. However, because no two individuals have exactly the same fitness interests, we (...) would expect different storytellers to have different narrative perspectives and priorities due to differences in sex, age, health, social status, marital status, number of offspring, and so on. Tellingly, the folklore record indicates that different storytellers within the same cultural group tell the same story differently. Furthermore, the historical and ethnographic records provide numerous examples of storytelling deliberately used as a means of political manipulation. This evidence suggests that storyteller bias is rooted in differences in individual fitness interests, and that storytelling may have originated as a means of promoting these interests. (shrink)

In the face of the recent backlashes against homosexual persons in Africa, on the ground that the phenomenon is un-African and/or threat to procreation and marital values, it is pertinent to review the discourse in the light of how ancient Africans perceived the reality. This is imperative given the lack of consensus on the part of scientists to disinter a conclusive finding on what causes homosexual behaviours among humans. In this research, I employ traditional Yorùbá philosophy to provide a plausible (...) justification for homosexuality among the people. In the face of this justification via Yorùbá folklore, I find that there is no documented evidence among the ancient Yorùbá that is suggestive of discrimination and stigmatization of homosexuals and inter-sex persons. As homosexual persons were respected but not criminalized, this study recommends the regurgitation of this outlook in the contemporaneous dealings with homosexual persons, beginning with the repealing of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014 in Nigeria, which is inconsistent with African values and outlooks on the subject. (shrink)

Egypt witnessed in the last decade, as in many Southeast Asian mega-cities, the reshaping of public space through the creation of new shopping malls and recreation places. This went hand in hand with the `gentrification' of certain areas of the city of Cairo, which is continuing at the expense of pushing away the poor. The 1980s and 1990s also witnessed increasing prosperity among certain classes and the appropriation of new consumer lifestyles. This article attempts to look at the variations of (...) shopping malls in Cairo and the new phenomenon of hybridization of tastes. One can observe the creation of `chic' shopping malls functioning parallel to popular and working-class malls which are frequented by different classes, depending on the various districts of Cairo. These newly created public spaces are gendered. The malls provide new outlets for deprived youth to experience mingling and flirting, in other words, these spaces offer new forms of `mixity' between sexes. A glimpse at the ` grands magasins' is brought up in relation to the history of consumerism in Egypt. This article also analyses the government's official discourse which alienates those living in unplanned and scattered construction as `violent' and unruly and relates it to the new remaking of the town of Cairo. (shrink)

This article discusses the politics of sex, gender and knowledge in the development of the Lilith myth in Jewish folklore. More generally, it discusses the contemporary intersection of discourses on Rabbinic Judaism, postmodernism and sexuality, and considers the ironic implications of expectations that post-modernism and its precursors might help to `redeem' Western epistemologies from their logocentric, masculinist biases. The insight - arguably not alien to Rabbinic thought - that knowledge or discourse involves a sexually marked set of practices and performances, (...) is put forward as being `reversible', i.e. as implying that sexual markings (such as binary sex distinctions) might therefore be considered as discursive. The efficacy of contemporary critiques of knowledge production is closely bound up with acknowledgement of this point. (shrink)

Dissociative symptoms are notorious for their enigmatic, disparate nature encompassing excessive daydreaming, memory problems, absentmindedness, and impairments and discontinuities in perceptions of the self, identity, and the environment. Recent studies (e.g., Koffel & Watson, 2009) have linked dissociative symptoms to vivid dreaming, nightmares, and objective sleep parameters (e.g., lengthening of REM sleep) for discussion, see (Van der Kloet et al., 2013). Germane to this link between dissociative symptomology and sleep, is the idea that in dissociative individuals, the waking state as (...) compared to REM sleep may be marked by an increase in “fluid” and hyperassociative thinking. Against this background, we invited contributions in the following areas: 1) a progressive and enduring de-differentation of wake and dream states of consciousness eventually results in schizophrenia (Llewellyn, 2011); a lesser degree of de-differentiation may have implications for dissociative symptoms; 2) sleep disturbances are not only linked to dissociation but to memory fragmentation also, further fuelling both dissociation and other manifestations of psychopathology; 3) sleep, memory and psychopathologies have complex interlinkages. Our summary below, relates the contributions to our topic to these areas. The contributing articles also give a comprehensive overview on current directions and challenges in these research fields.First, Soffer-Dudek elucidates why heightened sleep experiences (vivid dreams, nightmares, hypnagogic hallucinations) might be particularly associated with psychopathology. She explains how various psychopathologies may represent de-differentiation of the waking and dreaming states through intrusions of wake-like consciousness into sleep and dream-like cognition into wake. With regard to de-differentiation, she discusses theories of transliminality (‘thin boundaries between consciousness states’) and dissociation as potential mechanisms. Lucid dreaming is a hybrid state where wake-like cognition suffuses REM sleep/dreaming (Voss et al. 2009). Mota and colleagues compared the spontaneous occurrence of lucid dreaming in patients with psychotic symptoms (25 with schizophrenia and 20 with bipolar disorder) and 28 non-psychotic subjects. They found lucid dreaming was associated with psychosis- giving some support to the hypothesis of a link between state de-differentiation and psychopathology. In a methodological note, Ribeiro et al, having studied the prevalence of lucid dreaming using two questionnaires, show that the type of methodology used in lucid dreaming studies may have an effect upon their findings. Poerio et al state that both research and theory points to dissociation being engendered by the intrusion of dream-like mentation into waking consciousness. To extend this idea they examine the role of sleep and daydreaming as potentiating states for subsequent dissociation in depersonalization/derealization disorder (DDD). They show the occurrence and content of daydreams may act as potentiating states for heightened, in the moment, dissociation. Sleep paralysis is a dissociated state where a heightened level of wake-like alertness coexists with muscle atonia. Rodrigez de Sa and Mota-Rolim take a broad interdisciplinary perspective on sleep paralysis through reviewing its occurrence in Brazilian folklore by exploring the “Pisadeira” with a sleep science approach and link this with the field of history and art.There is now substantial evidence that active memory processing continues during sleep (see, for example, Rasch and Born (2013)) and dreaming may be involved (Llewellyn, 2013). De-differentiation of the wake, sleep and dream states would disrupt this memory processing fuelling dissociation and other psychopathologies. Horton presents an overview of discontinuity of consciousness in both wake and sleep, focusing on the processes of sleep-dependent memory consolidation and fragmentation. Nakagawa et al focus specifically on working memory and the relation with sleep. With their article, they are the first to investigate differences between verbal working memory (VWM) and visuospatial working memory (VSWM) related to daytime nap duration, nap frequency, and dream content recall frequency (DCRF). They discuss sex-related differences in the effects of sleep habits on VMW and VSWM and ascribe this to differences in underlying neural correlates, and effectiveness of sleep habits in males and females. Rosales-Lagarde and colleagues related to emotional memory by designing an extended International Affective Picture System (IAPS) instrument to measure bizarreness and show some interesting age and gender disparities. Finally, several authors took a developmental approach through focusing on sleep, memory and psychopathology in adolescents. Wang and colleagues show the relation between children and adolescents’ mental health and sleep problems in a 10-year longitudinal trial, and find anxiety, depression, attention problems and aggressive behaviour during childhood to be important predictors for later sleep problems. Importantly, sleep problems are also predictive of behavioural difficulties later in life. Nader, Murkar, and Smith investigated changes in sleep in adolescents between 12 and 19 years old following procedural task training and found that contrary to earlier work, there were no changes in sleep spindle density. Interestingly, participants who successfully learned the task showed no changes in their sleep stage proportions, but participants who were not successful showed a decrease in the proportion of Stage 2 and increases in both SWS and REM sleep, which is in line with the two stage model of sleep and memory by Smith et al. (2004).The self and the world during dreaming differ. The perceived world during waking depends on making sense of external sensory input, which engenders a strong sense of external reality in which the ‘self and its inner-world’ exists. Self-organizing during waking and dreaming enables integration of the self and the world in both states. It is noteworthy, that within this research topic so many novel themes have emerged and new questions and speculations have been posed with regards to relations among unusual sleep experiences – specifically lucid dreaming -, dissociation, psychosis, and memory. It brings together a richness of research by combining fields that originally have worked in isolation from each other. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that our ordinary English words man and woman are “gender terms,” and gender is distinct from biological sex. That is, they believe womanhood and manhood are not defined even partly by biological sex. This sex/gender distinction is one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century on the broader culture, both popular and academic. Less well known are the reasons to think it’s true. My interest in this paper is to show that, upon investigation, the arguments (...) for the sex/gender distinction have feet of clay. In fact, they all fail. We will survey the literature and tour arguments in favor of the sex/gender distinction, and then we’ll critically evaluate those arguments. We’ll consider the argument from resisting biological determinism, the argument from biologically intersex people and vagueness, the argument from the normativity of gender, and some arguments from thought experiments. We’ll see that these arguments are not up to the task of supporting the sex/gender distinction; they simply don’t work. So, philosophers should either develop stronger arguments for the sex/gender distinction, or cultivate a variety of feminism that’s consistent with the traditional, biologically-based definitions of woman and man. (shrink)

Student sex work is a current phenomenon all over the world, increasingly reported by the media in recent years. However, student sex work remains under-researched in Germany and is lacking direct first-hand reports from the people involved. Further, sex work remains stigmatized, and therefore, students practicing it could be at risk of social isolation and emotional or physical danger. Therefore, this study examines students working in the sex industry focusing on their personal experiences and attitudes toward them. An online questionnaire (...) was completed by 4386 students from Berlin universities. Students who identified themselves as sex workers were questioned with respect to their motivations to enter the sex industry, characteristics of their job, feelings after the intercourse, and perceived risks. Student non-sex workers were questioned regarding knowledge of and attitudes toward student sex workers. Most student sex workers reported that they entered the sex industry due to financial reasons. The majority reported offering services involving direct sexual intercourse. Disclosing their job to friends, family, or others was associated with less problems with social isolation and in romantic relationships. With a total of 22.9%, student non-sex workers reported never having heard about students working in the sex industry. The most frequent emotions mentioned by them with regard to student sex workers were compassion and dismay. There was no difference in happiness between student sex workers and non-sex working students. Through this research, it becomes evident that there are similarities between the student’s motivations to enter the sex industry, their feelings, and the problems they have to face. Moreover, prejudices still prevail about the life of student sex workers. Increasing understanding of student sex work might help those sex workers to live a less stigmatized life and thereby to make use of support from others. The universities as institutions could form the basis for this, e.g., by openly supporting student sex workers. This could help to encourage the rights of student sex workers and to gain perspective with respect to the sex industry. (shrink)

Paternalistic behaviour directed towards a person’s informed and competent decisions is often thought to be morally impermissible. This view is supported by what we can call the Anti-Paternalism Principle. While APP might seem plausible when employed to show the wrongness of paternalism by the state, there are some cases of paternalistic behaviour between private, informed, and competent individuals where APP seems mistaken. This raises a difficulty for supporters of APP. Either they need to reject APP to accommodate our intuitions in (...) these cases, or provide grounds for thinking that paternalistic behaviour between certain private individuals is different in a morally relevant sense. In this paper, I explore several possible morally relevant differences, and find all of them unsatisfactory as grounds for maintaining the plausibility of APP. (shrink)

Sex is not the answer to everything, though young men think it is, but it may be the answer to the intractable debate over the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research. In this paper, I advance one ethical principle that, as yet, has not received the attention its platitudinous character would seem to merit. If found acceptable, this principle would permit the beneficial use of any embryonic or fetal tissue that would, by default, be lost or destroyed. More important, (...) I make two appeals to consistency, or to parity of reasoning, that I believe show that no one who either has used or intends to use sexual reproduction as their means of procreation, nor indeed anyone who has unprotected heterosexual intercourse, nor anyone who finds in vitro fertilization acceptable, nor anyone who believes that abortion is ever permissible can consistently object on principle to human embryo research nor to the use of embryonic stem cells for research or therapy. (shrink)

Sex differences in mortality rates stem from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and social causes that are best understood when integrated in an evolutionary life history framework. This paper investigates the Male-to-Female Mortality Ratio (M:F MR) from external and internal causes and across contexts to illustrate how sex differences shaped by sexual selection interact with the environment to yield a pattern with some consistency, but also with expected variations due to socioeconomic and other factors.

Enduring romantic love is highly significant for our wellbeing, and there is much scientific evidence for its value. There is also evidence that marital sex is important for the flourishing of wellbeing for both partners. Casual sexual relationships and experiences (CSREs) are often characterized in a non-normative way, as sexual behavior occurring outside a committed romantic relationship. However, the prevailing normative description is negative, perceived as superficial behavior that harms our wellbeing. Although sexual activities are linked to many psychological and (...) physical health benefits, these are rarely attributed to casual sex. Instead, scholars and laymen have warned against the negative consequences of non-committed sex, particularly for women. Yet, positive reactions to casual sex, such as satisfaction, confidence, self-knowledge and social engagement, are stronger and more common than negative reactions. Accordingly, the two major aims of this article are to understand the complexity of CSREs better, and to substantiate the claim that in various circumstances, CSREs contribute to our wellbeing. (shrink)

I ask three questions related to the claims made within the staying alive theory : Is survival more fitness-enhancing for females than for males? Does the historical record on sex differences in mortality support the SAT? Is it possible to talk about “independent selective pressures on both male and female traits” when all we have are sex/gender comparisons?

This paper attempts to clarify what is, and is not, meant by claiming that special moral considerations apply to sexual behaviour that cannot apply to other areas of life. It then poses the problem by reference to virtue ethics, asking whether there are any virtues or vices specific to sex, which go beyond general considerations like justice and benevolence. This leads to a mostly sympathetic treatment of Scruton’s Aristotelian derivation of sexual morality, which stresses how some behaviour and fantasies are (...) debarred by a stable disposition to seek erotic flourishing. However, doubts are raised about some of the supposed implications of this account, and it is suggested that a better way to understand the moral distinctness of sex is to focus on the goods, rather than the evils, that arise uniquely in the erotic sphere. (shrink)

All species continuously evolve to adapt to changing environments. The genetic variation that fosters such adaptation is caused by a plethora of mechanisms, including meiotic recombination that generates novel allelic combinations in the progeny of two parental lineages. However, a considerable number of eukaryotic species, including many fungi, do not have an apparent sexual cycle and are consequently thought to be limited in their evolutionary potential. As such organisms are expected to have reduced capability to eliminate deleterious mutations, they are (...) often considered as evolutionary dead ends. However, inspired by recent reports we argue that such organisms can be as persistent as organisms with conventional sexual cycles through the use of other mechanisms, such as genomic rearrangements, to foster adaptation. (shrink)

The emerging discipline of complexity science, applied to the social sciences, seeks to study the rise of human civilization as a part of a natural, evolving biological system that exploits energy resources to fuel its growth into a complex social system. In order to understand the whole system, the reductionist approach, typical to Western science, must be supplanted. The atomistic study of various scientific fields as separate mechanical parts of the system must be broadened, creating a more holistic view of (...) human culture as an integral part of larger universal process of evolution and creation. In this article I wish to integrate the various scientific fields, including physics, chronobiology, biology, evolutionary psychology, and the social sciences, to achieve a unified understanding of our cultural evolution. (shrink)

The paper considers and rejects two arguments against the performance of sexual reassignment surgery. First, it is argued that the operation is not mutilating, but functionally enabling. Second, it is argued that the operation is not objectionably deceptive, since, if there is such a thing as our 'real sex', we do not know (ordinarily) what it is. The paper is also intended to shed light on what our sexual identity is and on what matters in sexual relations.

During the 1890s, animal development became associated with glandular activity, with profound implications for pediatric nosology and treatment. The significance of this endocrinological turn of developmental physiology and pathophysiology in part hinges on an often-overlooked continuity with ubiquitous early modern medical thought concerning semen as a recrementitious (reabsorbed) nutrient or stimulant. Mid-19th-century interests in adult sexual physiology were increasingly nerve-centered and antihumoral. Scattered empirical, particularly veterinarian, interests in gonadal developmental functions failed to moderate these explanatory trends. While Brown-Séquard’s rejuvenation experiments (...) still offered no clear starting point for a developmental endocrinology, in 1892 Gaston Variot and Paul Bezançon more explicitly deduced a testicular developmental endocrinological function from various observations on testicular ectopy and a local form of animal “demi-castration.” Ensuing interest in the thyroid, the thymus and in the testicles led to various working conceptions of their respective and putatively reciprocal developmental properties, including the idea of a thyroid–testis axis. From 1896, the pubertal affliction of chlorosis became the subject of multiple opotherapeutic approaches, providing an experimental basis for theories of ovarian internal secretion. Polyglandular therapy, piloted for divergent developmental conditions, remained routine until the 1930s despite the biological inefficacy of many endocrine products. (shrink)

This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organized criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and ‘trafficking’, and that between prostitution policy and forced labour in the sex sector. Focusing on the UK, it argues that far from representing a step forward in terms of securing rights and protections for those who are subject to exploitative employment relations and poor working conditions in the (...) sex trade, the current policy emphasis on sex slaves and ‘victims of trafficking’ limits the state's obligations towards them. (shrink)

This article, forthcoming in the international legal philosophy journal Ratio Juris, responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith arguing that the consistent application of liberal principles requires that same-sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith’s article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same-sex partners. In correcting these flaws (...) I tentatively propose a ‘Voltarian argument’ in favour of same-sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same-sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. (shrink)

The feminist movement was from its start in the 19th century involved in the struggle for better health care for women. The first feminists aimed at better information on birth control and sexuality. The second feminist wave focused on the unequal division of power roles between men and women. A lot of the problems women experienced could be seen as a consequence of their subordinate role in society. At the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s, the discipline women (...) and health or women and medicine was developed. In this introduction to the theme, the developments in this discipline are described. The starting points of the new discipline followed the principles of ‘women’s health care’. These principles can be summarized as the emphasis on control and autonomy by the patient, demedicalization, the importance of the psychosocial context of complaints, empowerment of women and good information and communication. The central issue of the article is: what is the actual scientific state of the art and what important changes have been made on the subject gender and health? The article ends with ideas for future research. (shrink)

A response to James S. Spiegel's article in THINK 43 in which he argues that same-sex marriage is unjust.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:When We Collide: Sex, Social Risk, and Jewish Ethics by Rebecca J. Epstein-LeviJoshua Stein (bio)When We Collide: Sex, Social Risk, and Jewish Ethics by Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023Sex is messy:Ethicists have an unfortunate habit of speaking of sex—or "good" sex, anyway—in lofty, aspirational terms: the physical and spiritual union of committed partners, the human sharing in divine creativity, the two becoming one, and so (...) on. This image of choreographed perfection is reproduced in popular culture. … But the actual practice of sex, by ordinary people, is not so lofty, so beautifully synchronous. Real sex, even "good" sex, is carnivalesque, even grotesque. Real sex involves fluids, farts, jiggling, grunting, adjustments of position, arms falling asleep, and accidental pinching or pulling of hair … and the making of a vast number of frankly ridiculous faces (83).Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi's When We Collide (2023) challenges us to think about sex as it is, rather than as we are conditioned to talk about it (or as we might sometimes like to imagine it). This is foundational to the book. There is a familiar tradition of sanitizing sex, reducing it to teleology, idealized bodies, heteronormativity, and venerated social institutions. In dispensing with this sanitized illusion, the book adopts a healthier and more honest relationship with sex; in order to have a productive discussion about the ethics of any human activity, that discussion should represent the human activity faithfully. Part of the reason that Epstein-Levi takes this approach is to distinguish Jewish ethics' discussion of sex, which regards sex, and therefore sexual ethics, "as an empirical, lived, and granular phenomenon" (3).Discussions in Jewish sexual ethics should treat sex as a lived social experience and be responsive to the messiness of that experience. Epstein-Levi argues that sanitizing sex through appeal to a nebulous notion of how historical [End Page 99] religious traditions must have been puritanical is ahistorical, chauvinistic, and inconsistent with scholarship on rabbinic texts.This is a striking and perhaps subversive view in our present context. Centrally, many associate "religious views" (especially in sexual ethics) with politically Conservative and purity-driven views characteristic of some Christian traditions. The term "Judeo-Christian" in American political discourse is often used evocatively of the heteronormative, sanitized, idealized posture toward sex that Levi explicitly rejects. Epstein-Levi's book recognizes that rabbinic scholarship underrepresents marginalized communities, including women, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people. This is the major moral and practical focus of Epstein-Levi's analysis; historical traditions in which dominant moral views are shaped by a particular group often have glaring blind spots. When we recognize those blind spots, as members of that tradition, need to be updated simply to address sex as it exists, not as we idealize it.The book centers Jewish texts and methods of thought, but (in my view) readers who will benefit most from reading Epstein-Levi's book are non-Jewish readers thinking about sex. Epstein-Levi's book illustrates methodological differences in Jewish ethics from other approaches. The ethics of sex should change as our knowledge of sex changes; as we learn about sexual activity and about the social lives of people, we should apply that knowledge to our understanding. For Jewish thought, ethics is discursive, not fixed; our understanding of ethics requires constant consideration and discussion as our understanding of the world changes and improves.One central focus of the book is risk; our knowledge of sex changes as we understand and mediate against the risks involved in sexual activity and as we learn more about how risk works itself. Risk is tied up in all social activity, including sex. The ethics of sex requires discussion of risk but often does so in a way not congruous with the discussion of risk in other areas of social life. "Sex is dangerous. … Sexual intercourse opens us up to risks of infections, violence, and, if we are in possession of functional ovaries and a uterus, pregnancy" (98). All social activity is risky; we are all acutely aware given the prospects of exposure to strains of a novel coronavirus and the way we have changed our... (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic project has been understood to be antithetical, or at best indifferent, to any project of sexual ontology. Against these dominant views, I argue for an interpretation of the schizoanalytic project that does justice to the differentiation of beings—particularly the human being—according to distinct forms of sexuate morphology. I claim that, although it is largely absent in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings, we can read this kind of determinate sexual difference into their project at both the organic stratum (...) of the organism and the alloplastic stratum of human signification and meaning. Given its importance in structuring bodies and organizing generational reproduction, I consider how sexual difference is the historical condition of possibility for alloplastic subjectivity. Nevertheless, I argue that the innovative features of Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic project emerge from their recognition that neither the organismic structure of sexual difference nor its social and personal representation is static. As such, reading sexual difference into the schizoanalytic project not only supplements Deleuze and Guattari’s work but also opens possibilities for developing a sexual ontology that recognizes the dynamic embodiment of individuals without denying the structural reality of sexual difference. (shrink)

Many women today prepare for a big meeting by reading a stack of folders and applying lipstick. They order their male colleagues around, then wait for those same men to help them on with their coats. They have higher-status jobs than some of the men they date, yet they never call men socially or ask them out. What's going on? Why such seemingly contradictory behaviors? Have women completely failed feminism--or has feminism failed them? In The Lipstick Proviso , Karen Lehrman--hailed (...) by the New York Times as the "sharpest" of the new feminist thinkers--shows that women today are failing neither feminism nor themselves. Rather, they've entered a new stage of feminism, one in which the personal is not political, differences between the sexes need to be respected, and courtship, chivalry, and the nuclear family don't have to be jettisoned just because they existed before the sixties. Thirty years after the women's movement liberated women from narrowly defined roles, Lehrman argues, we are finally beginning to see which traditionally feminine behaviors are more deeply rooted in biology and which are more heavily influenced by culture. Lehrman asserts that the result--whatever it is--will not undermine feminism as long as women still retain equal rights, opportunities, and responsibilities. Dispensing with the outdated notion of sisterhood, Lehrman offers women a "lipstick proviso": women don't have to sacrifice their complex individuality in order to be equal. As the first book to move beyond a critique of orthodox feminism, The Lipstick Proviso sets a radically new course for the future of the women's movement. While there's still much political work to be done, Lehrman argues that women should now focus on the personal sides of their lives. Women can't rightly be called autonomous if they stay with abusive or even emotionally challenged lovers; say "yes" to sex when they really mean "no"; overeat or undereat to hide their sexuality. With wit and grace, Karen Lehrman offers in The Lipstick Proviso a way to complete the feminist revolution, and clearly establishes herself as the definitive voice of the next generation of feminism. (shrink)

Benenson et al. postulate that human females evolved unique survival adaptations to facilitate maternal and grandmaternal care. This hypothesis is consistent with the broader hypothesis that female phenotypes are more ecologically optimal, but further evidence is needed to make a compelling case that sex differences in self-protection are not primarily the result of more intense sexual selection on males.

Campbell's evolutionary explanation of women's typically lower rates of interpersonal aggression is plausible, but some supporting evidence requires scrutiny. Women may not commit less interpersonal violence than men against small children. Women are more vulnerable than men in same-sex encounters. The link between dominance and reproductive success for males is less secure than was once thought.

Among hunter-gatherers, the sharing of male and female foods is often assumed to result in virtually the same diet for males and females. Although food sharing is widespread among the hunting and gathering Hadza of Tanzania, women were observed eating significantly more tubers than men. This study investigates the relationship between patterns of dental wear, diet, and extramasticatory use of teeth among the Hadza. Casts of the upper dentitions were made from molds taken from 126 adults and scored according to (...) the Murphy dental attrition scoring system. Females had significantly greater anterior occlusal wear than males when we controlled for age. Males exhibited greater asymmetry in wear, with greater wear on the left side in canines, first premolars, and first molars. We suggest that these sex differences in wear patterns reflect the differences seen in the diet, as well as in the use of teeth as tools. (shrink)

It may be most convenient to respond to Dr Andreae’s points in turn. Unless the claim that a child should determine its own genetic characteristics before it is conceived or born is intended to be flippant, it is logically incoherent. Conception is a decision that only a prospective parent can make. The editorial argument is that denial of choice of sex contributes to preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, particularly in developing countries. ….

In 1987, apprehension that “unreasonable mistakes of fact” might negative mens rea in sexual assault cases led the Canadian Parliament to enact “reasonable steps” requirements for mistakes of fact with respect to the age of complainants. The role and operation of the “reasonable steps” provisions in ss. 150.1(4) and (5) and, to a lesser extent, s. 273.2 of the Criminal Code, must be reassessed. Mistakes of fact are now largely addressed at common law by jurisprudence that has re-invigorated judicial awareness (...) of the evidentiary requirements for the availability of defences at common law and explicitly defines “honest belief” as a belief that is neither reckless nor willfully blind. As a consequence of these common law developments, the defence of mistake of fact with respect to age is rarely available as a matter of law. Properly used, these common law analytic tools afford minors and under-age sex-workers better legal protection from sexual exploitation than has often been achieved in practice over the last 25 years with the “reasonable steps” requirement under ss. 150.1(4) and (5). -/- Socio-economic inequalities ensure that aboriginal children and youth are disproportionately affected by the non-enforcement, under-enforcement, and selective enforcement of laws enacted to protect minors against sexual assault and participation in sex work. Continued reliance by prosecutors and judges on out-moded jurisprudence in the screening, prosecution, and disposition of these cases in the criminal justice system reinforces existing patterns of inequality and disadvantage and violates basic principles of human rights. (shrink)

Much ethical attention has been devoted to sex segregation and its relation to fairness in the world of sports, with prominent controversies about transgender and intersex athletes helping to advance the debate in recent years. In this paper, I deploy some of the discussion from philosophy of sport to examine the fairness of allowing a trans woman to compete in a beauty pageant. This requires scrutinizing the physical characteristics that are rewarded in such competitions and their distribution among the sexes. (...) The analysis casts doubt on the coherence of simple sex segregation and facilitates a feminist critique of beauty standards. (shrink)

Injection of a peptide of 36 amino acids into virgin Drosophila females changes their reproductive properties drastically: males are rejected and egg laying is increased. The neuronal and physiological properties of the virgin state are replaced by a new pattern of behavior and stimulation of egg production and deposition. Under natural conditions, the peptide is synthesized by the male and transferred into the female during copulation. The sex‐peptide, therefore, can be considered as a pheromone. In this review, I shall limit (...) my discussion to Drosophila melanogaster. (shrink)

Safer sex has emerged as a collection of practices and ideas deployed to combat the spread of AIDS. Prevention messages and rituals of safer sex each rely on constructing a potential user's relationship to latex devices. This article is based on an analysis of twenty-seven interviews conducted with people in the sex trade. Since sex workers make it their business to exchange sexual services for economic compensation, many have become extremely sophisticated in their innovations and expressions of eroticism using safer (...) sex techniques. Sex workers are one of a group of key knowledge producers focused on safer sexual practices. Their worlds are metaphoric laboratories for empiri cal studies of emergent sexual practices. This article describes the innovations of the use of technologies of safer sex and the configuration of users. (shrink)

This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resource for sex researchers as well as undergraduate courses in the philosophy of sex.