Comments on: Help me overthink sex and romance.

Question: Help me overthink sex and romance.

bubukaba — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:35:49 -0800

What are some good books/essays/articles about human sexuality, sexual and romantic relationships, and sexual or otherwise affection-entangled activity - with an emphasis on the theoretical? I'm thinking more along the lines of Judith Butler than The Joy of Sex - so suggestions should be at least vaguely academic. (Things like Leaves of Grass count as vaguely academic). I'm asking for personal, not academic reasons - I'd like all the seemingly irrational stuff surrounding the emotional, social, psychological (and so on) aspects of this sort of thing to make more sense to me (or at least I'd like the fact that they're irrational to make more sense...).

In spite of my namedropping in the above-cut FPP, I haven't read much on these subjects, so even the most basic suggestions are welcome.

By: suedehead

suedehead — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:44:34 -0800

Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality volumes should be a very theoretical/epistemological approach to the sexuality. It's also worth pointing out that Butler was influenced by Foucault...

By: suedehead

suedehead — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:45:30 -0800

to ~~the~~ sexuality, I mean.

By: farishta

farishta — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:57:46 -0800

I second Foucault, but recommend sticking with the first volume, The Will to Knowledge, as the second and third volumes are more concerned with Greek and early Christian conceptions of knowing and caring for the self. Knowing Foucault, there are probably also a ton of essays about, or at least which mention sexuality to be found in Penguin's three volume Essential Works (skimming the indexes, they all have references to sexuality, but vols. 1 and 2 have significantly more). If you want to read about sex through a discipline at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you could do some reading in evolutionary psychology and learn about the subconscious inference systems which influence a lot of our sex-related decisions. There's a ton of popular science literature on the subject.

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:04:49 -0800

A former anthropology prof of mine, Harriet Lyons, recently wrote a book on anthropology and sex called Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality. I haven't read it, but she's a great prof and I expect the book is of high quality as well. I'm not really sure if this is what you are looking for but it might be work looking into.

By: My Bloody Pony

My Bloody Pony — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:32:11 -0800

You've probably looked through this already, but just in case, here are the full Savage Love archives - humorous, free, and with a mission statement (practically) of explaining the irrational. Not very academic, but more fun.

By: Bron

Bron — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:18:12 -0800

I enjoyed Anatomy of Love quite a bit, also by an anthropologist.

By: bibbit

bibbit — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:55:26 -0800

I read Women's Sexualities: Generations of Women Share Intimate Secrets of Sexual Self-Acceptance and found it to be very interesting.

By: waxbanks

waxbanks — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:20:14 -0800

Well, if you're committed to this (I don't think Judith Butler has much to teach you about sexuality, and her writing on the topic is arguably the worst academic writing I've ever been forced to read - though Foucault in translation is up there!), definitely grab Julia Serano's Whipping Girl. Interesting, genuinely forward-thinking response to feminist discourse on transsexuality and its cousin dispositions/activities.

Mostly, though, read good erotic poetry - how about Neruda's hundred love sonnets? Magnificent poems, those.

By: dreamyshade

dreamyshade — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:43:14 -0800

The Nonverbal Dictionary is lots of fun - you'll probably want to start with Love Signals I and follow the links from there.

By: munchingzombie

munchingzombie — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:23:35 -0800

Georges Batallia's Eroticism: Death and Sensuality is a classic and I found him way more accessible than Foucault and less ludicrous than Camile Paglia's Sexual Persona though that was an entertaining read as well.

Alan Sinfield's On Sexuality and Power is one of my favorites on the subject by my favorite academic.

By: kelseyq

kelseyq — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:57:45 -0800

Seconding Whipping Girl.

Anything by Pat Califia, especially Public Sex.

Love the sin : sexual regulation and the limits of religious tolerance is an interesting work that touches on religious & legal aspects of all that seeming irrationality.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:15:40 -0800

Archaeologies of Sexuality
The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Cultu re
Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones

By: SoftRain

SoftRain — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:59:01 -0800

You might like Laura Kipnis; she's an academic by trade but her most recent couple of books have been written for a more general audience, and she's really smart. I've read and would highly recommend The Female Thing, which is partly about women and sexuality and relationships; I'd imagine Against Love would be even more useful for you.

waxbanks: Judith Butler's not so bad if you know a bit of Foucault and Lacan; Bodies That Matter is slightly easier to take than Gender Trouble. She does occasionally have sentences that sound like they are parodies of academic writing though.

By: jasper411

jasper411 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:09:46 -0800

I've found Robert Stoller's books and theories to be quite interesting. He was a psychoanalyst who did serious investigations about various forms of sexual expression and came to some conclusions that were very brave for their time, endorsing a view of sexuality that was broad and inclusive. He was also a terrific listener and interviewer - the interviews in Porn and Coming Attractions are really fascinating to read.

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:58:04 -0800

Roland Barthes - A Lover's Discourse

By: easy_being_green

easy_being_green — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:15:08 -0800

Best Sex Writing 2008.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:51:39 -0800

I'm surprised that Reay Tannahill's Sex in History has not yet been mentioned - it's a pretty interesting book. Broad in scope, which makes it a useful reference.

I also echo the suggestion for Laura Kipnis - she's an interesting writer.

By: shotgunbooty

shotgunbooty — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:05:36 -0800

2nding Anatomy of Love. Helen Fisher is considered by many to be the authority on the subject. Also by her: Why We Love, which I think is the updated Anatomy of Love.

By: jammy

jammy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:50:11 -0800

for thinking about relationships, you might check out The Ethical Slut, a book about consensual non-monogamy, otherwise known as polyamory - a challenging & thought-provoking perspective in many different ways

another challenging book is Marjorie Garber's Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life which explores non-binary ways of conceiving of sexuality & relationships through a good mix of theory, literary investigation & historical anecdote - here's a taste

or, for something completely different, you could check out Abstract Sex

By: ifjuly

ifjuly — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:03:51 -0800

Pat Califia's Public Sex is, hands down, the best of this kind of book I've ever encountered. It avoids the pitfalls a lot of the newer pop sex theorist books (I'm thinking mainly of Susie Bright's and Carol Queen's, for instance)--it isn't even a smidgeon P.C. or feelgood, it's just first-person honest-as-hell account married brilliantly to challenging theoretical musing. There's also Germaine Greer--The Madwoman's Underclothes, The Female Eunuch, The Politics of Human Fertility, The Whole Woman. Shere Hite's best known works are The Hite Reports on Female and Male Sexuality, but Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress (The Hite Report on Love, Passion, and Emotional Violence) is a huge collection of people's accounts of relationships. It gets a little cheesy touchy-feely at times, but it's a good place to mine for varied opinions and experiences of love.

Laura Kipnis is also massively brilliant and honest/confrontational about this stuff, and way more accessible than Judith Butler. She's also just simply a damn good writer in the prose stylist sense of the term.

By: ifjuly

ifjuly — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:07:48 -0800

You might also be interested in Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture by Judith Mayne. She dissects all sorts of pop culture manifestations of sexuality--Clint Eastwood films, figure skating, Diabolique, prison pulp fiction--and is pretty theoretical (I believe the book was published through University of Minnesota Press) while still being accessible.