Showing papers on "Lust published in 2006"

The Handbook of Sexuality in Close Relationships

Abstract: Contents: JH Harvey, A Wenzel, S Sprecher, Introduction Part I: Introduction J DeLamater, JS Hyde, Conceptual and Theoretical Issues in Studying Sexuality in Close Relationships MW Wiederman, Methodological Issues in Studying Sexuality in Close Relationships MC Willetts, S Sprecher, FD Beck, Overview of Sexual Practices and Attitudes Within Relational Contexts JA Simpson, CL Wilson, HA Winterheld, Sociosexuality and Romantic Relationships Part II: Role of Sexuality in the Formation, Development, and Maintenance of Close Relationships PC Regan, Sex and the Attraction Process: Lessons From Science (and Shakespeare) on Lust, Love, Chastity, and Fidelity S Metts, First Sexual Involvement in Romantic Relationships: An Empirical Investigation of Communicative Framing, Romantic Beliefs, and Attachment Orientation in the Passion Turning Point C Hendrick, SS Hendrick, Sex and Romantic Love: Connects and Disconnects JA Feeney, P Noller, Attachment and Sexuality in Close Relationships ES Byers, A Wang, Understanding Sexuality in Close Relationships From the Social Exchange Perspective S Sprecher, RM Cate, Sexual Satisfaction and Sexual Expression as Predictors of Relationship Satisfaction and Stability Part III: The Dark Side of Sex WR Cupach, BH Spitzberg, Unrequited Lust FS Christopher, TS Kisler, Sexual Aggression in Romantic Relationships LK Guerrero, BH Spitzberg, SM Yoshimura, Sexual and Emotional Jealousy Part IV:Sexuality in Special Types of Couples and Contexts LA Peplau, A Fingerhut, KP Beals, Sexuality in the Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men FS Christopher, TS Kisler, Exploring Marital Sexuality: Peeking Inside the Bedroom and Discovering What We Don't Know--But Should! TD Fisher, Family Foundations of Sexuality EN Haugen, PA Schmutzer, A Wenzel, Sexuality and the Partner Relationship During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period EO Burgess, Sexuality in Midlife and Later Life Couples KD Vohs, KR Catanese, RF Baumeister, Sex in "His" vs "Her" Relationships Part V:Applications and Clinical Aspects S Aubin, JR Heiman, Sexual Dysfunction From a Relationship Perspective SM Noar, RS Zimmerman, KA Atwood, Safer Sex and Sexually Transmitted Infections From a Relationship Perspective A Wenzel, LC Jackson, JR Brendle, Psychopathology, Sexuality, and the Partner Relationship BW McCarthy, LE Bodnar, M Handal, Integrating Sex Therapy and Couple Therapy P Schwartz, D Perlman, S Campbell, Commentaries

Sex differences and similarities in frequency and intensity of sexual desire

Abstract: Only within the past decade have social scientists commonly recognized the phenomenon of sexual desire as a distinct and vital component of human sexual response. Of the various factors believed to be associated with sexual desire, gender (biological sex) is presumed by many theorists to be one of the most important. Limited empirical work suggests that men experience desire more frequently than do women; however, sex differences in intensity or level of desire have yet to be examined. This study explored both the self-reported frequency and intensity of sexual desire among an ethnically diverse sample of 676 men and women. As hypothesized, men reported experiencing a higher overall level of sexual desire than did women. Sex differences also were found with respect to frequency of sexual desire. Men reported experiencing sexual desire more often than did women and, when asked to estimate the actual frequency with which they experienced desire, men’s estimated frequency (37 times per week) was significantly higher than women’s (9 times per week). These results do not imply that men always feel desire or that women lack sexual desire. In fact, virtually every participant in this study reported feeling sexual desire on a regular basis. This suggests that desire may be the most universal sexual response experienced by both men and women.

The ebb and flow of marital lust: a relational approach.

Abstract: This diary study examined daily fluctuation in marital lust over a 56‐day period. The purposes of the study were to describe typical patterns of lust over time and to examine intrapersonal and interpersonal associations between relationship affect, relationship states, and marital lust. We also tested various daily moderational predictions. Four patterns of daily fluctuation in lust were identified. Typical patterns varied from almost no fluctuation to wide fluctuation over time. Our findings showed that daily affect was generally related to lust both within partners and between partners. Also, spouses’ relational states (closeness and equality of power) moderated several of these intrapersonal and interpersonal associations. In general, the affect‐lust link was strengthened by closeness and equality of power, while the lust‐lust link between spouses was often conditioned by both relationship affect and relational states. However, the role of negative affect toward spouses in interactions with other const...

Lust for liberty : the politics of social revolt in medieval Europe, 1200-1425 : Italy, France, and Flanders

Abstract: "Lust for Liberty" challenges long-standing views of popular medieval revolts. Comparing rebellions in northern and southern Europe over two centuries, Samuel Cohn analyses their causes and forms, their leadership, the role of women, and the suppression or success of these revolts. Popular revolts were remarkably common - not the last resort of desperate people. Leaders were largely workers, artisans, and peasants. Over 90 percent of the uprisings pitted ordinary people against the state and were fought over political rights - regarding citizenship, governmental offices, the barriers of ancient hierarchies - rather than rents, food prices, or working conditions. After the Black Death, the connection of the word 'liberty' with revolts increased fivefold, and its meaning became more closely tied with notions of equality instead of privilege. The book offers a new interpretation of the Black Death and the increase of and change in popular revolt from the mid-1350s to the early 15th Century. Instead of structural explanations based on economic, demographic and political models, this book turns to the actors themselves - peasants, artisans, and bourgeois - finding that the plagues wrought a new urgency for social and political change and a new self- and class-confidence in the efficacy of collective action.

Gay Life and Culture: A World History

Abstract: Now available in paperback, "Gay Life and Culture" is a comprehensive, global account of gay history. It is spectacularly illustrated throughout and includes an extensive selection of images, many of them only recently recovered. From Theocritus verses to Queer as Folk, from the berdaches of North America to the boy-wives of Aboriginal Australia, this extraordinarily wide ranging book illustrates both the commonality of love and lust, and the various ways in which such desires have been constructed through the ages.

The Psychology of Lust Murder: Paraphilia, Sexual Killing, and Serial Homicide

Abstract: Preliminary TOC Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: On Paraphilia and Lust Murder Chapter 3: On Sexual Homicide and Serial Murder: What Do We Know? Chapter 4: An Integrative Model: What Do We Need Chapter 5: The Case of Jeffrey Dahmer Chapter 6: Dahmer, Sexual Deviance and Lust Murder: Testing the Models Chapter 7: In Search of Meaning: On Theory Construction and Model Making Chapter 8: Implications and Conclusions

Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture

Abstract: In Pretend We’re Dead , Annalee Newitz argues that the slimy zombies and gore-soaked murderers who have stormed through American film and literature over the past century embody the violent contradictions of capitalism. Ravaged by overwork, alienated by corporate conformity, and mutilated by the unfettered lust for profit, fictional monsters act out the problems with an economic system that seems designed to eat people whole. Newitz looks at representations of serial killers, mad doctors, the undead, cyborgs, and unfortunates mutated by their involvement with the mass media industry. Whether considering the serial killer who turns murder into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies, or the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood’s profit-mad storytelling machine, she reveals that each creature has its own tale to tell about how a freewheeling market economy turns human beings into monstrosities. Newitz tracks the monsters spawned by capitalism through b movies, Hollywood blockbusters, pulp fiction, and American literary classics, looking at their manifestations in works such as Norman Mailer’s “true life novel” The Executioner’s Song ; the short stories of Isaac Asimov and H. P. Lovecraft; the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson and Marge Piercy; true-crime books about the serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer; and movies including Modern Times (1936), Donovan’s Brain (1953), Night of the Living Dead (1968), RoboCop (1987), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001). Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.

America's War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty

Abstract: In Alabama, it's illegal to sell vibrators, but legal to buy a gun. In South Dakota, the governor won't allow Columbia University's teen sexuality information website on library computers. In California, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Color Purple" is banned from a high school library due to sexual content. These are just a few examples of attempts to govern or control Americans' sexual knowledge and activities. At the same time, courts regularly decide child custody disputes based on the sexuality of one or both parents. Nationwide, the heated fight against homosexual marriage continues. And the academic front is not immune to attack. Members of Congress recently attempted to stop funds for all sex research in the U.S. In all 50 states, battles rage on political, legal and social fronts regarding legislation and other actions focused on sex, sexuality and sexual education. The author, an internationally known therapist, focuses attention on the power and injustice of America's 'War on Sex'. He sees this 'war' as part of a process in U.S. public discourse whereby religion and emotion are replacing science and pluralism. A coalition of political, religious and civic leaders are using the issue of sex to frighten, misinform and bully citizens, passing laws restricting sexual expression, health care, entertainment and education. Aided by a sensation-seeking mass media, this 'unholy alliance' is deliberately inflaming Americans' anxiety about out-of-control sexuality - sex crimes, teen pregnancy, 'porn addiction,' infidelity and the 'homosexual agenda.' The resulting fear has made Americans vulnerable to dramatic new sex-negative public policies. But when public policy is driven by fear and propaganda the results poison, rather than protect.

Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200-1425

Abstract: "Lust for Liberty" challenges long-standing views of popular medieval revolts. Comparing rebellions in northern and southern Europe over two centuries, Samuel Cohn analyses their causes and forms, their leadership, the role of women, and the suppression or success of these revolts. Popular revolts were remarkably common - not the last resort of desperate people. Leaders were largely workers, artisans, and peasants. Over 90 percent of the uprisings pitted ordinary people against the state and were fought over political rights - regarding citizenship, governmental offices, the barriers of ancient hierarchies - rather than rents, food prices, or working conditions. After the Black Death, the connection of the word 'liberty' with revolts increased fivefold, and its meaning became more closely tied with notions of equality instead of privilege. The book offers a new interpretation of the Black Death and the increase of and change in popular revolt from the mid-1350s to the early 15th Century. Instead of structural explanations based on economic, demographic and political models, this book turns to the actors themselves - peasants, artisans, and bourgeois - finding that the plagues wrought a new urgency for social and political change and a new self- and class-confidence in the efficacy of collective action.

Magic and the supernatural in fourth-century Syria

Abstract: Introduction Methodology Syria and Palestine Curses for Courses: Heavy Tactics in the Hippodrome Supernatural Sabotage: Ensuring a Successful Livelihood Demanding Desire: Rituals of Love and Lust Apotropaism: Protecting Good fortune Illness and Healing: Threats and Retaliation in a Discourse of Power Possession and Expulsion: Experiencing and Dispelling the Daimonic Ambiguous and Miscellaneous Conclusions: Ambitions, Desire, Fears and Insecurities

Bazaar Stories of Gender, Sexuality and Imperial Spaces in Gilgit, Northern Pakistan

Abstract: This paper provides a material and spatial analysis of processes of sexual imperialism in contemporary northern Pakistan. I interrogate Western women development workers’ experiences of sexual vulnerability in Gilgit, and argue that their representational practices and spatial negotiations are ambivalently organised by a discourse of racialised sexuality that emerged largely in the European era of high imperialism in the context of Western imperial relations and lingers into the ‘colonial present’. This discourse evokes a vaguely articulated moral panic about ‘lascivious’ indigenous men who lust after white women. Western women cope with sexual threat by scrutinising Gilgiti men’s behaviours, regulating social interactions with them, avoiding sexualised local space, and arranging their private spaces to exclude threatening men. Eroticist and racist discourses about Other men that are circulated through these efforts to cope with sexual danger reinforce established social, sexual, and spatial boundaries, which keep imperial hierarchies between Gilgiti men and Western women intact.

Decadent poetry from Wilde to Naidu

Abstract: The poems collected in this volume are exquisite and languorous expressions of a spirit of self-indulgence, eroticism and moral rebelliousness that emerged in the late Victorian age. They deal with eternal themes of transition, artifice and, above all, the cruel ravages of time - often depicting flowers, with their heady, perfumed beauty, as the embodiment of decay and desire. "Decadent Poetry" brings together the works of many fascinating writers - Oscar Wilde on tainted love and the torments of the human spirit, Arthur Symons on an absinthe-induced stupor and the mysteries of the night, Rosamund Marriott Watson on disenchantment and memory, W. B. Yeats on waning passion and faded beauty, Ernest Dowson on lust and despair, and Lord Alfred Douglas on shame and secret love, among many others of this exhilarating poetic movement.

Metaphors of Modernity: Prostitutes, Bankers, and Other Jews in Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes

Abstract: Why are the brothels of modern French literature filled with Jewish prostitutes? From Vanda in Huysmans's A Rebours, "qui remplissait chez Madame Laure l'indispensable role de la belle Juive" (119), to Rachel in Maupassant's "Mademoiselle Fifi," who kills a Prussian officer out of patriotic devotion, Jewish women seduce men powerless to resist their fatal attractions. Not do the walls of the bordello confine their numbers, which include both the glamorous actress Josepha in Balzac's Cousine Bette, whose deadly charm destroys respectable families, as well as the "affreuse Juive" of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal, whose "corps vendu" inspires the poet with both lust and horror. Tapping into fantasies of the oriental exotic, fictional Jewish prostitutes, like "Rachel quand du seigneur" in Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu, perform a part that is always already a fiction, a sexual and racial masquerade designed to arouse mysterious passions: "C'est une Juive! ca ne vous dit rien?" tempts Rachel's procuress in Proust's novel, hoping to whet the appetite of the narrator; "Pensez donc, mon petit, une Juive, il me semble que ca doit etre affolant! Rah!" (556). Prostitution has emerged in recent years as a critical locus for investigations into the imbrication of the social and the symbolic in modern French culture. Following Alain Corbin's pathbreaking history of prostitution and its regulation in nineteenth-century France, T.J. Clark, Peter Brooks, Charles Bernheimer, and Jann Matlock have all pointed to the importance of the prostitute in the cultural imagination of the time, showing how the prostitute's body inscribes class as well as gender hierarchies. (1) Building on their work, I want to explore the ways in which this body becomes still more marked in certain narratives. How do the vexed categories of race and religion further inflect our understanding of an already overdetermined figure? And what does this figure have to tell us about modernity? My discussion will focus on perhaps the first, and certainly the paradigmatic, literary representation of the Jewish prostitute, Balzac's Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes, published between 1838 and 1847. The Jewish prostitute surfaces in French literature at just the moment (the July Monarchy) that significant numbers of French Jews rose to positions of prominence. (2) The decades of the 1830s and 40s also saw the transformations associated with modernity--by which I mean the economic, social, and cultural effects of industrial capitalism--begin to take root in French culture, especially in Paris. In what follows, I argue that the Jew comes to serve as a privileged screen for the projection of anxieties about modernity in both literature and other discourses from the time. But whereas the male Jew tends to incarnate the negative aspects of modernity, the Jewish prostitute embodies a far wider range of associations. A counterpoint to the scorned figure of the Jewish banker or usurer, the Jewish prostitute elicits desire as well as disgust, lust as well as loathing. She thus provides Balzac as well as later writers with a means of registering the complex affective ambivalence at the heart of modernity--an ambivalence that many theorists have tended to overlook. Balzac's ambivalent handling of the Jewish prostitute in Splendeurs et miseres, brings into focus the realist novel's conflicted relation to the culture of capitalism, which it simultaneously criticizes and mythologizes. Before turning to the novel, a historical question arises: was the Jewish prostitute actually a myth? Might this literary obsession have sprung from empirical rather than merely fantasmatic sources? Given that historical documents on nineteenth-century prostitution were themselves not immune to fantasmatic projections, such a question is difficult to answer with certainty. Anecdotes provide some evidence. We know, for example, that there were Jews among the upper crust of the capital's courtesans, who may have provided models for Balzac's Esther or Josepha: the Russian-born Therese Lachmann (known as La Paiva), as well as the Dutch-born mother of the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, achieved fame as professional demi-mondaines in Paris during the July Monarchy. …

Paraphilia and Lust Murder

Abstract: This chapter examines the etiology and development of paraphilic behaviors It also delineates how these behaviors exist and function on a continuum, ranging from normal to abnormal By exploring the paraphilic process in this way, it is then possible to explicate how sexually aberrant behaviors manifest themselves and progress within an individual with fantasy, masturbation, and facilitators Additionally, the development of early childhood sexual fantasies and their aggressive content are explored Fantasy is a vital component in the facilitation of paraphilic conduct In order to sustain the erotically charged nature of the violent image, compulsive masturbation is typically featured Compulsive masturbation essentially reinforces the paraphilic behavior, and the person ultimately becomes conditioned to the erotic deviance and fantasy This conditioning process is addressed in this chapter Apart from this, this chapter investigates the connection between sexualized and aggressive fantasies, and sadistic or otherwise violent behaviors This understanding is useful in that it helps establish the powerful association that lust murderers make between violence and sexual arousal The chapter concludes by exploring a full range of issues pertinent to a proper clinical and criminological assessment of erotophonophilia, examining FBI typologies for lust murder (that is, organized nonsocial and disorganized asocial types), as well as the context in which both types of offenders behave similarly Several distinctive features related to these lust murderers are also enumerated, including attention to their respective clinical profiles and criminal actions

The desire you are required to get rid of: A functionalist analysis of desire in the bhagavadgita

Abstract: It is better to donate one's time to helping others for the sake of those helped than it is to donate one's time for the sake of gaining renown as an altruist. Anger, lust, and impatience for one's ends detract from our ability to deliberate and act rightly. De- sire in all its manifestations has at least the potential to detract from our ability to do the right thing. Kr u s n u a's nis u kamakarma (desireless action) advice in the Bhagavadgo¯ta¯ captures this basic moral intuition. 2 Yet when the intuition is followed through to its logical conclusion, it collides with another intuition—an intuition to which we subscribe even more tenaciously. If desire obstructs one's moral agency, then ideally one should act entirely without desire. But intentional action entails desire. Hence, desireless action is impossible. 3 There are only two ways to settle this conflict of intuitions. One way is to under- stand the advice to abandon desire as the advice to abandon only some desires, and then attempt to determine the basis for the distinction between permissible and im- permissible desires. The second way is to take the advice at face value and recon- sider whether desire is required for action after all. I argue that the first option is untenable, and that our resistance to the second option is based on a mistake. Con- sequently, we should understand Kr u s n u a's advice literally: as the advice to abandon all desire. I also consider Tara Chatterjeas's interpretation of nis u kamakarma and argue that despite appearances, the disagreement between her position and mine is negligible. This suggests that the view that I develop here is not as extreme as it might seem. Desire and Desirelessness: A Phenomenological Distinction

Dealing with Danger: Spatial and Mechanical Manipulations in Gilgit, Pakistan

Abstract: This article provides a spatial and technologically-oriented analysis of sexual imperialism in contemporary northern Pakistan. I interrogate Western women development workers’ experiences of sexual vulnerability in Gilgit, and argue that their representational practices and spatial negotiations are ambivalently organized by a discourse of racialized sexuality that lingers from the colonial era. This discourse evokes a vague moral panic about ‘lascivious’ indigenous men who lust after white women. Western women cope with sexual threat by regulating social interaction with men and avoiding sexualized public space. But when this is not possible, women prefer to negotiate that space in vehicles, which serve as protective barriers between themselves and Gilgiti men. I draw on Bruno Latour’s actor network theory to explain how jeeps are transformed into social actors as they are employed by Western women to manage gendered, racial, sexual and spatial relations. Once mechanized social actors are implicat...

THE TROUBLED HEART OF T.H. WHITE: WOMEN AND the Once and Future King

Abstract: Introduction This study sets out to accomplish three main objectives. It attempts to show the difficulties under which T.H. White labored when he came to write about the women in The Once and Future King,' and how these difficulties shaped his view of Lancelot, who was, for him, largely a figure of self-identification, and his depiction of Mordred, who became the incarnation of sexual transgression. second, it tries to illustrate through a study of his writing process how White succeeded in overcoming his handicaps and created in Guenever a memorable female character. Third, in support of my arguments I've made available previously unpublished material written by White and by his mother, Constance White. According to White himself, it was his mother's influence on him while he was a child that led him to regard women with deep distrust. In reading through his journals and diaries, one is rarely sensible of White entertaining a sexual response to a woman. Instead, women are frequently considered condescendingly almost as individuals of a separate species, worthy of his attention certainly, but inestimably less amiable than his favorite red setter, Brownie. It was well-nigh impossible for White to write of women fairly, or to treat sympathetically any woman from a background similar to his own who occupied a position of responsibility. When it came time to put women into the books he wrote, White labored under an immense disadvantage. The alternately lavish attention and the austere indifference which so bewilderingly replaced it that the beautiful, capricious, and selfish Constance White exhibited to her son, together with his experiences of corporal punishment while at Cheltenham, either commenced or confirmed his tendencies toward sadism and homosexuality and sank deep into his character feelings of shame, ugliness, and self-blame. It is helpful to remember that, in White's time-particularly the years between the First and second World Wars-the linkage between homosexuality and sadism was taken to be obvious and incontrovertible, possibly due in large measure to a growing general awareness of the prevalence, in English boys' schools both prep and public, of what the French so delicately term Ie vice anglais. Today's thinking, of course, among psychologists is that there is likely no connection between the two, and most certainly not an inevitable one. When he wrote TOAFK, White frequently omitted female characters contained in Malory or diminished their importance to the story, regularly downplaying Malory's 'bold bawdry.' He condemned for their evanescent nature affairs of the heart. For man-stupid, fierce, impolitic-White saw no salvation unless he would consent to learn from the animal kingdom. In the place of motherhood, of which he had only a skewed knowledge, and fatherhood, of which he had no experience whatever, White substituted in TOAFK a wish fulfillment relationship exemplified by Merlyn and the Wart, a relationship in which later in his life he was to assume the elder role, of the senex figure, the repository of wisdom, kindliness and skills, and the puer aeternus, the young and innocent boy. Inevitably, the senex-puer aeternus relationship carries with it the unmistakable suggestion of homosexuality. If he recognized this tendency in himself-a diary for the edification of Other poor devils' like himself was made the subject for a separate bequest-he was at pains to fight against giving in to it, by choosing for himself remote places in which to live and write, and by deliberately inviting physical danger and deprivation. As with his self-destructive drinking bouts, he was not always successful in his efforts to hew to the line that his strict morality insisted upon. The Once and Future King-was in White's eyes the story of old sin coming home to roost. For all the discussion in its pages of the blame for the tragedy originating with Uther's lust for Arthur's mother, and the contribution of the Lancelot-Guenever affair (another example of illicit love), there is no question that Arthur's doom is precipitated through Morgause, who, by her seduction of the innocent Arthur, becomes the mother of Mordred. …

The Afterlife of Pope Joan: Deploying the Popess Legend in Early Modern England

Abstract: The legend of a female pope is a compelling one. The story claims that a German woman named Joan disguised herself as a man in order to travel with her male lover, excelled in the studies to which her disguise gave her access, and was then unanimously elected to succeed Pope Leo IV in 855. After serving as pope for two years, she became pregnant and, unaware that she was going into labor, gave birth in the street in the midst of a papal procession. Scandalously revealed as a woman and a whore, she died, either in childbirth or mob violence. This legend thus describes a woman who can do whatever men can do, can even surpass her male peers. But it is also a story that locates her motivation in heterosexual desire—not ambition or defiance—and ascribes her downfall, again, to heterosexual desire more powerful than the love of learning or lust for power, and to an irrepressibly reproductive female body that exposes and defeats her. Joan, so dazzlingly learned and cunningly deceptive, does not grasp the one secret on which her survival depends: that she is pregnant, must hide that fact, deliver clandestinely, and dispose of the infant. This is the “secret knowledge” attributed in the period to every wayward nun and serving maid. The story thus casts doubt on an unbroken papal succession and articulates suspicion of clerical and particularly papal authority, of Catholic and feminine deception (and of the intimate connection between the two), and, above all, of women’s presumptions to erudition and authority, and of their ability to know and control the bodies that impede their ambitions. Accounts of Pope Joan are almost always presented as hearsay or rumor. The earliest versions of this legend appeared four hundred years after Joan supposedly died. They emerged from within the Roman church as a resource for internecine conflict: to denounce an effeminate pope, or women’s influences on the papacy, or “unprecedented demands for women’s participation in religious life” (11). It is certainly interesting to ponder why and to what end the legend emerged when it did. Craig Rustici considers this in a lengthy introduction (the longest chapter in the book), but this is not his central question, having been explored by Alain Boureau (The Myth of Pope Joan, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane [University of Chicago Press, 2002]). Rustici’s focus is not the legend itself but its “afterlife” in post-Reformation England. After the Reformation, as Rustici shows, Pope Joan’s affiliations with the Whore of Babylon, on the one hand, and the Virgin

A Personal History of Lust on Bourbon Street

Abstract: This autoethnographic account traces my lifetime of performative experiences on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. In particular, it focuses upon how Bourbon Street has functioned to situate lust as an act, within limits, of giving permission to consider the forbidden, of offering alternative possibilities for living, of claiming possession of desire, and of giving pleasure. While recognizing the potential dangers of exploitation, the essay ends by celebrating this carnival space.

"My Little What Shall I Call Thee": Reinventing the Rape Tragedy in William Rowley's All's Lost by Lust

Abstract: IN William Rowley's tragedy All's Lost by Lust (c1618-20), Jacinta, a Spanish noblewoman in the court of King Roderick, acquires an unacceptable social position through no fault of her own Left alone in the castle while her father leads an army against the Moors, Jacinta is raped by Roderick and held captive, lamenting the "heavy hainous wrong" (318) (1) that she has suffered She is guarded by Roderick's henchman, Lothario, who is ebulliently aware of Jacinta's new social status Lothario gloats that she is now a "crackt virgin" (9), taunting her with the knowledge that a woman who loses her chastity before marriage has lost any right to the three legitimate social roles available to early modern women: "Come, come, my little what shall I call thee For it is now doubtfull what thou art; being neither maide, wife, nor (saving your reverence) widow" (14-16) Lothario adapts a well-known riddle, "neither maid, wife, nor widow," the solution to which is "whore" (Tilley, M26) He employs mock-delicacy, avoiding the abusive word while making clear how the rest of the world will now view Jacinta Lothario's comments epitomize the conventional attitude to the rape victim in the drama of the period The rape victim occupies a contradictory social position: despite her lack of consent, she has experienced extramarital sex and is thus considered unchaste and unsuitable for marriage She has become "neither maid, wife, nor widow," and there is thus no acceptable role for her in a patriarchal society (Catty, 3) Paradoxically, her lack of consent means that she is at once a chaste woman and a whore The representation of rape in the drama of the period can be seen as a struggle to efface this paradox Recent feminist studies have shown that early modern literature typically obscures the victim's contradictory position by constructing narratives in which she internalizes the blame for the event Jocelyn Catty and Karen Bamford have both shown that in plays about rape, there are only two possible outcomes (Catty, 20; Bamford, 10-11) Most of the plays are tragedies, in which the victim dies, usually by committing suicide or, less often, at the hand of a male relative These tragedies are governed by the assumption by a male authority that "the girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew his sorrows" (Shakespeare, Titus, 5340-41) (2) The only alternative outcome is the solution found in a few tragicomedies, in which the victim marries the rapist, thereby preserving a form of chastity by restricting the number of her sexual partners to one (3) Underlying both of these narrative structures is an assumption that rape results in "a pollution of the female body, regardless of the victim's volition" (Catty, 15) In both tragedies and tragicomedies, the victim's suicide or marriage has the effect of "solving" the paradox of her social status so that she can no longer represent a threat to the patriarchal structure Rowley's play is different Although it follows many of the conventions of the "rape tragedy," it offers a number of startling and unusual revisions to the genre The most obvious is that Jacinta, far from committing suicide, remains noisily and energetically alive, only to be killed, against her will, in an incident that has nothing to do with the rape The play breaks with the conventions of the "rape tragedy" in a number of other significant ways, which have the effect of reversing the demonization of the rape victim that occurs in the more conventional plays on the subject Indeed, by transforming the typical conventions of the genre, Rowley's play moralizes on the dangers of ignoring the independent speech of women Previous critics have noted Rowley's divergences from the genre, but have always regarded his changes as illogical or meaningless, apparently assuming that a popular playwright like Rowley would not have been capable of coherent thought, let alone of radically rethinking a genre …

Abelard and Heloise: Conversion and Irreducible Desire

Abstract: The literary correspondence between Peter Abelard and Heloise is at once a narrative of desire and a sustained debate on whether desire can be transformed. The eight letters traditionally ascribed to them tell differing versions not just of their story but, equally important, of the meaning they construct for it.1 Abelard recounts an Augustinian narrative of conversion in which he moves from Ovidian craft used in the service of lust and pride to the integration of desire within spiritual and religious life. Claiming a position beyond the demands of eros, he urges a similar conversion on Heloise. She, however, asserts the irreducibility of desire. Though veiled and suppressed, desire is, for her, a passionate attachment that can neither be transformed fully into divine love nor reduced to appetite. Heloise rejects both the Augustinian and Ovidian models in favor of a sustained reflection on the place of desire within memory and selfhood.

Only Disconnect—Canonizing Homonormative Values: Representation and the Paradox of Gayness in Christos Tsiolkas’s 'Loaded'

Abstract: CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS'S LOADED (1995) FALLS NEATLY into the grunge-fiction genre as it chiefly deals with a dissatisfied, nineteen-year-old suburbanite who endeavors to fill the vacuity and spleen of his existence with music, drugs, sexual delight, and intoxication. Referring to the strong autobiographical lineaments, which can be read between the lines, this first novel could be construed as a coming-out story. Heterosexual readers are presented with a traditionally invisible alternative model of sexuality in literature which, according to Robert Dessaix, has been given topicality in the 1980s and 1990s due to a loosening of sexual repression.1 With its blend of sexuality and ethnicity, this round-the-clock depiction of the homosexual lifestyle of a gay Greek youngster has paved the way for a new genre called "queer multicultural fiction." Thanks to its popularity and subsequent successful film adaptation, Head On (1998) directed by Ana Kokkinos, this novel has now achieved iconic status within gay culture.I shall try to demonstrate within the remit of this article how the novel, which will receive here full consideration, is to some extent canonizing homonormative values. Such representations of gayness point to a glaring paradox: while most gay people yearn for visibility, openness, recognition and assimilation, they remain trapped in the shackling system of ideological closure.REPRESENTATIONS OF GAYNESS: "WHAT KIND OF QUEER ARE YOU?"Admittedly, representations of gayness nowadays are rather the result of eye-catching public events (like the Sydney Mardi Gras festival) and broadcast information (publicized pedophilia court cases, for instance) than scientific studies. Since the 1970s, gay and lesbian communities in Australia have reached some kind of recognition through symbols of gay affirmation like Stonewall in Sydney. However, some would argue that beyond the glitzy gay scene of bars, clubs, saunas where sociability and visibility interact; there has been little done to redress the imbalance regarding queer invisibility in the conceptual discourse among the dominant heterosexual population. In such context, Christos Tsiolkas's androcentric (male-centered) narrative breaks away from tradition with its strong focus on queer subject matter and gay relationships.Defining gayness is a quite an uneasy task which would automatically conjure up half-stereotyped visions generated by the vocal gay community and the media: gender bending, the crave for visibility, the primacy of friendship, the conflictual relationship with the family, a highly developed sense of lust, an ongoing festive mood, a strong focus on the pleasure principle, and hypersensitivity are some of the characteristics which spring to mind. But if there is probably more to it than what is listed above, Loaded does not seem to offer an alternative representation of gayness. In that sense, the novel seems to canonize such homonormative values.Johnny and Ari are twin stereotypical aspects of homosexuality: the precious darling and the macho man, the extrovert and the introvert. Johnny embodies the politics of gay pride by trying to achieve visibility.2 He is the extrovert gender-bender who cross-dresses and proudly foregrounds his gay identity in contradistinction to Ari who epitomizes the closeted homosexual macho man trying to come to terms with "the problem of how to be a man and have a man" (Beth Spencer). To be sure, Ari does not match the mediagenerated image of the sexually extrovert guy in adoration of the phallus and indulging in carnivalesque orgies. One of his five mock-biblical Commandments extolling freedom even goes against the "odious '70s stereotypical image of the mincing poofter."3 However, his "Thou can have a man and be a man" (101) nevertheless supports the "even more odious image of the sexually rampant homostud."4 Rather than picking guys up in gay bars Ari favors rough trade5 and what he calls "real men" whom he finds on beats, those dark discreet places which are off-gay scene:I sleep with faggots but they always disappoint me. …

The Military and the Dictatorship: Getúlio, Góes, and Dutra

Abstract: On November 10, 1937, the government of Brazil declared a new constitution and began eight years of dictatorship. Scholars have given vague explanations as to why the constitutional regime of 1934 fell into dictatorship. The standard explanation was the president’s lust for power. The frustrations of the complicated presidential election process were not sufficient to force the dramatic changes. And why would the army’s top generals concern themselves with the political struggle? Long available but overlooked documents provide a close behind-the-scenes view of the motives of the three main actors: President Getulio Vargas, and Generals Pedro de Goes Monteiro and Eurico Dutra.1

The Screens of Time: Feminist Memories and Hopes

Abstract: At first, it seemed that feminist futures were to be found in feminist pasts. The beginning swells of the second wave deliriously projected images of a feminist past onto the bifurcated screen of time, reimagining matriarchies, amazons and goddesses along with the secret lives, the so-called untold histories of those few women history had managed to recognize. Feminist historians, literary critics, and artists filled pages and stages with these mythical creatures whose lust, power, love and accomplishment stunned and seduced the gray, tired so-called ‘male’ histories. The story telling of the grandmothers and their ghostly performances in the passing flesh, displaced the notion of history with that of cultural memory. However termed, these projections logged images and events on to the screen of time, establishing an account of cultural capital for the present movement. The feminist present and the feminist future were animated by these figures, these actions, these settings deemed as remembered. In one sense, many were imagined utopias, hopes for the future, embedded in the past. The bipolar screen of time, the past and the future was a form of collective dreaming through temporal tropes.

"Back-fire to lust": G. Stanley Hall, sex-segregated schooling, and the engine of sublimation.

Abstract: G. Stanley Hall was an advocate of sex-segregated schooling long after most Americans had accepted coeducation. His position was based in part on personal experience: observations of his father and mother, a repressed and guilt-ridden boyhood sexuality, and his conviction that his own career success was a product of sublimated sexual desire, of erotic energy converted into mental energy. Hall theorized that coeducation put sublimation at risk, and that sex-segregated schools, by contributing to proper gendered development and by prolonging and sublimating the sexual tensions of adolescence, would produce social progress.

The Forbidden Fruit or the Taste for Sodomy in Renaissance Italy

Abstract: two sins, gluttony and lust and/or sodomy, were closely intertwined in the writings of the Fathers of the Church and unequivocally condemned by Saint Augustine in his Confessions, where they appear one after the other in the same discussion (S. Augustine, Confessions, book X, xxx-xxxi). Indeed, carnal pleasures for him include both lust, especially sodomy, and immoderate desire for food and drink. Even the pilgrim Dante—during his encounter with his friend Forese in Purgatory—supports this view in the condemnation ofboth the sin ofgluttony, attributed to Forese Donati, and of licentious Florentine women who dared to show their breasts on the streets of Florence {Purg. 23:97-1 1 1). Gluttony and lust in various forms—as the motive for comic play—are

Great Couples of the Bible

Abstract: "The book of God" is also a book of people. Love and lust, devotion and betrayal, sex, sin, jealousy, and grief - the stories of biblical couples disclose a full panorama of human emotions and actions. These stories of love, marriage, sex, and death, historically fascinating and yet also wellsprings of great artistic traditions and religious meaning, are here presented in an informative and engaging format with more than 200 full-color illustrations from classic, chiefly Western art sources.

Trapped in a Spider's Web of Animal Lust: Human Bestiality in Lev Gumilevsky's Dog Alley

Abstract: L the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as a number of scholars have reminded us recently, a heated debate erupted in Soviet public discourse over the so-called sexual question. The debate, which reached its peak near the end of the NEP era (1921-27), focused mainly on the question of what role love, marriage, and the family should now play in the lives of those who were currently engaged in the process of dismantling the old bourgeois order and creating a new Communist society in Russia. Two alternativeand diametrically opposed-positions toward the polovoi vopros quickly emerged: an open, liberal, if not radical, attitude that viewed sexual energy in a positive way as a liberating force that would free people from the stultifyingly repressive, hypocritical, oldfashioned morality that had regulated life within bourgeois society (an attitude that for a long time was closely, yet erroneously, associated with the purported "free-love" advocate, Aleksandra Kollontai); and a repressed (and repressive), conservative, somewhat puritanical attitude that considered libido a dangerous and damaging force in private life that must somehow be restrained and subordinated to the public interest of advancing the