Powers of Desire : The Politics of Sexuality

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction/Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson. I. The capitalist paradox: expanding and contracting pleasures: 1. Sex and society: a research note from social history and anthropology/Ellen Ross and Rayna Rapp. 2. "Charity Girls" and city pleasures: historical notes on working - class sexuality, 1880-1920/Kathy Peiss. 3. Marching to a different drummer: Lesbian and gay GIs in World War II/Allan Berube. 4. Capitalism and gay identity/John D'Emilio. II. Sexual revolutions: 1. Family, sexual morality and popular movements in turn-of-the-century America/Barbara Epstein. 2. Feminism, men and modern love: Greenwhich village, 1900-1925/Ellen Kay Trimberger. 3. The new woman and the rationalization of sexuality in Weimar Germany/Atina Grossmann. III. The Institution of heterosexuality: 1. Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian existence/Adrienne Rich. 2. Russian working women: sexuality in bonding patterns and the politics of daily life/Anne Bobroff. 3. They're always curious/Irena Klepfisz. 4. The Afro-American female: the historical context of the construction of sexual identity/Rennie Simson. 5. I just came out pregnant/Felicita Garcia. 6. Mass market romance: pornography for women is different/Ann Barr Snitow. 7. Issues and answers/Myra Goldberg. 8. Garden paths, descents/Sharon Thompson. IV. Domination, submission and the unconscious: 1. Master and slave: the fantasy of erotic domination/Jessica Benjamin. 2. Outside the operating room of the sex-change doctor/Sharon Olds. 3. Movie/Nancy Harrison. 4. Street dream#1/Sharon Thompson. 5. Is the gaze male?/E. Ann Kaplan. 6. "The mind that burns in each body": women, rape, and racial violence/Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. 7. Hearts of darkness/Barbara Omolade. V. On sexual openness: 1. Gender systems, ideology, and sex research/Carole S. Vance. 2. The teacher/Carole Rosenthal. 3. What we're rollin around in bed with: sexual silences in feminism/Amber Hollibaugh and Cherrie Moraga. 4. In the morning/Jayne Cortez. 5. Bestiary/Sharon Olds. 6. A story of a girl and her dog/Alix Kates Shulman. VI. Current controversies: 1. Male vice and female virtue: feminism and the politics of prostitution in nineteenth-century Britain/Judith R. Walkowitz. 2. The new feminism of Yin and Yang/Alice Echols. 3. Feminism, moralism and pornography/Ellen Willis. 4. My mother liked to fuck/Joan Nestle. 5. Abortion: is a woman a person?/Ellen Willis. 6. The fear that feminism will free men first/Deirdre English. Notes on Contributors.

"This provocative anthology brings together a diverse group of well-known feminist and gay writers, historians and activists. They are concerned not only with current sexual issues-abortion, pornography, reproductive and gay rights - but they also raise a host of new issues and questions: how, and in what ways, is sexuality political? Is the struggle for sexual freedom a complement to other struggles for liberation, or will it detract from them? Has the sexual revolution diminished or enriched the lives of women? Do women's and men's erotic natures differ fundamentally? How do race, class and ethnicity shape sexuality? An finally, what is the best way to organize politically around sexual issues? Through history, sociology, journalism, fiction, and poetry, the collection thus addresses itself to our sexual futures: how can we build an erotic world that feminists will desire?" (jacket)