Good Sex

Catherine M. Roach

Description

Blog post: The story behind the book.

Salon excerpt: Lusty Puritans and the theological roots of free love: America's sex story is wildly contradictory

Find Your Feminine Fire podcast interview: The New Gender and Sexual Revolution with Catherine M. Roach

Residence 11 excerpt: Cliteracy and the Politics of Pleasure

Giddy interview: Between the Pages: 'Good Sex: Transforming America' Looks at a New Era

Sextras Podcast interview: Good Sex: Does What We Desire Give Us Pleasure? (With Catherine Roach)

The United States may have a puritanical past, but the 21st century is wide open to diverse gender expression and romance.

Good Sex is the manifesto—or Manisexto, if you will—for this cultural revolution. Same-sex marriage is legal, the #MeToo movement has exploded, colleges nationwide now teach consent-based sexual health, the media celebrates body positivity, and transgender visibility has become mainstream. Defining "good sex" as both ethical and pleasurable, Catherine M. Roach features such topics as equity, intersectionality, and shared pleasure while offering a lively discussion that is inclusively feminist, queer-friendly, and sex-positive without being divisive.

An accessible guidebook, Good Sex provides hope that America's sexual, gender, and racial injustices can be addressed together. After all, this new gender and sexual revolution strengthens the pursuit of happiness and love. Welcome to the revolution!

Preface
Foreplay: Introducing the Manisexto: A Manifesto for the New Gender and Sexual Revolution
Manisexto #1: Positive Sexuality: Sexuality Is a Normal, Healthy, and Pleasurable Aspect of Being Human
1. Sex: It's Complicated
2. What Do We Mean by "Good" Sex?
3. The Misunderstood Meaning of "Sex-Positive"
4. The Two-Sided Story of Sex in America
5. Romancing the Puritan
Manisexto #2: Equity and Inclusion: Gender and Sexual Identities Are Diverse—and That's Okay
6. Why Diversity Matters across the Rainbow Spectrum, for Us All
7. Conversation, Consensus, and Cultural Competence
8. The Meanings of Queer
9. Sex Is Not Everything: The Surprising Lesson of Asexuality as Part of Diversity
Manisexto #3: Body Positivity: All Bodies Are Good Bodies
10. The Naked Truth: Embracing Body Positivity and Diverse Ways to Embody Gender
11. Body Positivity Doesn't Mean "Let Them Eat Cake!": It's about Holistic Well-Being
12. It's Not about "Looking Good" but about Feeling Good—and That Includes Your Genitals Too
13. Sex Is Not Only for the Young and Beautiful
Manisexto #4: Consent: Full Consent Is Fundamental to All Sexual Activity
14. The Role of Consent in Good Sex
15. What Consent Is (Good Communication) and Is Not (Green Eggs and Ham, or a Blanket)
16. Saying Yes, Saying No, Expanding the Gender Scripts
17. Boys Don't Belong in a Box
Manisexto #5: Shared Pleasure: Good Sex Is Mutually Pleasurable and Respectful
18. Power With, Not Power Over
19. Who Gets to Feel Good?: Gender and Pleasure beyond the Shame-and-Blame Tightrope
20. Closing the Orgasm Gap: Porn and Hookups
21. Cliteracy and the Politics of Pleasure
22. Climax: Drawing the Line toward New Visions of Love
Afterglow: Where We Go from Here: Toward Better Sex Education in America
Acknowledgments and Note on Student Responses
Source Citations and Resources for Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• Gender studies
• Anthropology
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Social Science
• Human Sexuality
• justice

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253064714
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Also by Catherine M. Roach
Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture
Mother/Nature: Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics
Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Catherine M. Roach
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06468-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06469-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06470-7 (ebook)
To the next generation:
My sons, Benjamin and Nathaniel,
and all their friends throughout the years.
You lead us forward.
And my students, especially to C.
Your stories and your vision of a better future led me to this project.
CONTENTS
Preface
Foreplay Introducing the Mani sex to A Manifesto for the New Gender and Sexual Revolution
Manisexto #1
POSITIVE SEXUALITY
Sexuality Is a Normal, Healthy, and Pleasurable Aspect of Being Human
Chapter 1 Sex: It s Complicated
Chapter 2 What Do We Mean by Good Sex?
Chapter 3 The Misunderstood Meaning of Sex-Positive
Chapter 4 The Two-Sided Story of Sex in America
Chapter 5 Romancing the Puritan
Manisexto #2
EQUITY AND INCLUSION
Gender and Sexual Identities Are Diverse-and That s Okay
Chapter 6 Why Diversity Matters across the Rainbow Spectrum, for Us All
Chapter 7 Conversation, Consensus, and Cultural Competence
Chapter 8 The Meanings of Queer
Chapter 9 Sex Is Not Everything: The Surprising Lesson of Asexuality as Part of Diversity
Manisexto #3
BODY POSITIVITY
All Bodies Are Good Bodies
Chapter 10 The Naked Truth: Embracing Body Positivity and Diverse Ways to Embody Gender
Chapter 11 Body Positivity Doesn t Mean Let Them Eat Cake! It s about Holistic Well-Being
Chapter 12 It s Not about Looking Good but about Feeling Good-and That Includes Your Genitals Too
Chapter 13 Sex Is Not Only for the Young and Beautiful
Manisexto #4
CONSENT
Full Consent Is Fundamental to All Sexual Activity
Chapter 14 The Role of Consent in Good Sex
Chapter 15 What Consent Is (Good Communication)-and Is Not (Green Eggs and Ham or a Blanket)
Chapter 16 Saying Yes, Saying No, Expanding the Gender Scripts
Chapter 17 Boys Don t Belong in a Box
Manisexto #5
SHARED PLEASURE
Good Sex Is Mutually Pleasurable and Respectful
Chapter 18 Power With, Not Power Over
Chapter 19 Who Gets to Feel Good?: Gender and Pleasure beyond the Shame-and-Blame Tightrope
Chapter 20 Closing the Orgasm Gap: Porn and Hookups
Chapter 21 Cliteracy and the Politics of Pleasure
Chapter 22 Climax: Drawing the Line toward New Visions of Love
Afterglow Where We Go from Here Toward Better Sex Education in America
Acknowledgments and Note on Student Responses
Source Citations and Resources for Further Reading
Index
You ll hear from the undergraduates in my Sexuality Society course in the quotations throughout the book, highlighted by this student graphic. The responses, all presented here anonymously, come from the students coursework material and with their full permission to be included in the book.

A portion of the sales proceeds from Good Sex goes to support student programming at the University of Alabama for equity and inclusion events.
PREFACE
Every term, I ask the university students in my Sexuality Society course what they think about the pressures and possibilities around gender and sexuality these days. Here s a typical response:

Things are really different from before, from how my parents generation dealt with sex and gender. You can be more yourself now, with more choices, but a lot of people still get hurt. A lot s gotten better, but not everything. It s up to us now.

You ll hear from the undergraduates in my Sexuality Society course in the quotations throughout the book, highlighted by this student graphic. The responses, all presented here anonymously, come from the students coursework material and with their full permission to be included in the book.
I wrote this book because of this dual sense that things are really different from before and it s up to us now. I saw signs of a hopeful, although still incomplete, revolution unfolding among my students and echoing far beyond them, throughout the culture as a whole. The book pulls this vision into focus. For the generation now coming of age, how they think about and experience sex and gender have changed. A coherent new set of understandings, gaining ground across all age demographics, is becoming everyday reality for the American public.
While some critics think this cultural transformation means the country has tumbled down a slippery slope and lost its way in a landspace of anything goes, I am here to argue the opposite. This twenty-first-century shift upholds core American principles of equality, freedom, happiness, and personal responsibility. It has the potential to resolve enduring injustices and contradictions around gender and sexuality. It strengthens civil society. It is changing America for the better.
This book draws deeply on the space of the classroom and offers a window into its lively discussions. It is chock full of comments from the hundreds of students who ve passed through the course over the years. I deliberately minimize my use of secondary sources written by academic experts (although you ll find these recommendations for further reading in the back). Instead, I highlight the students own ideas, expressed in their own words, as the primary sources that make and illustrate many of the book s arguments. These young people are the experts on this moment of America at a turning point, since their generation is the one riding and building this wave into the future. The book is a type of dialogue between me and these students. Our discussion intertwines across the pages, in an experiment with form.
I invite the reader to join in this encounter. As in the college classroom where my students and I collaboratively map out these changing cultural patterns, I want readers to think and argue along with me. My goal is to structure a fair-minded conversation that deepens awareness about the commitments and implications of the new gender and sexual revolution: where we are headed and why it s a good thing. We re not going to agree on everything, but for the sake of such a crucial topic, there s a whole lot we should be talking about. How to understand and navigate today s new landscape. How to think critically about its challenges and potential.
Buckle in. Here comes an accessible guidebook to chart the changing terrain of gender and sexuality.

FOREPLAY
Introducing the Mani sex to
A Manifesto for the New Gender and Sexual Revolution
A cultural revolution unfolds in America.
It emerges from #MeToo activism against sexual misconduct, media campaigns around body positivity, and the increased visibility of people from across the gender and sexuality spectrum. These varied developments stand at the leading edge of a broad shift happening across America and the globe. Together, they herald a welcome revolution for the twenty-first century and a new vision of sexual and gender well-being.
In the popular culture and public sphere, a recent wave of discussion about sex and gender has grabbed mainstream attention. Back in 2014, Time magazine proclaimed America at a transgender tipping point, shortly after then vice president Joe Biden endorsed transgender rights as a crucial civil rights issue . Actress and social justice advocate Laverne Cox (a native of my state of Alabama) graced that Time cover, signaling the rise of transgender issues to celebrity status. In 2015, the US Supreme Court decided in support of same-sex marriage. Around the same time, the percentage of married households in the US hit a historic low . Delayed marriage, serial relationships, and the singledom movement with its vision of sexy spinsterhood offered options to traditional patterns of matrimony. Starting in 2017, a pink-pussy-hat surge of female energy fueled the #MeToo movement against previously tolerated or hushed-up sexual wrongdoing. Calls of Enough is enough! began to upend old power dynamics. The year 2020 saw another landmark Supreme Court case, this one declaring it unconstitutional for companies to fire employees simply because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. All along, ever-growing media representation continued to deepen public awareness of diversity: of asexual orientations that sidestep the hubbub of desire, of polyamory and other forms of consensual nonmonogamy, of intersex conditions and nonbinary gender identities that call into question the absoluteness of the male-female divide.

In 2015, the US Supreme Court decided in support of same-sex marriage.

After the 2020 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed civil rights against workplace discrimination, the New York Times commented, The decision is the strongest evidence yet of how fundamentally, rapidly and, to some degree, unpredictably American views about gay and transgender people have changed across the ideological spectrum in less than 20 years.

Actress, producer, and prominent equal rights advocate Laverne Cox posing at a Women s March event.
The United States, of course, is not alone in these developments. It s beyond our scope to trace the global context of these trends, except to note that the broad shift