The Power of Sex: The Social Construction of Sex, Genders and Sexualities

THE POWER OF SEX is an entertaining and often startling book that clearly explains why sex, genders, and sexualities--once so relatively simple--are now more complicated and problematic than ever. We may still be male or female but we are also increasingly intersex, transitioning, transgender, trans­sexual, she-males, or ambisexual; we may still be heterosexual or homosex­ual, but we are also increasingly bisexual, asexual, egosexual, polysexual, or pansexual, with paraphilias abounding. Sex, in short, is a maze, minefield and muddle, with the old 2-by-2 model of male/female, gay/straight all but gone from our personal lives, laws, norms, mores and the mass media.

While detailing the revolutionary transformation of our sexual identities and behaviors--including the dizzying array of forms sexual pleasure now comes in--THE POWER OF SEX clearly elucidates why almost everything to do with the genitals and sex is problematic and hotly debated today: marriage, prostitution, pornography, nudity, homosexuality, mastur­bation, contracep­tion, abortion, paraphilias, circumcision, divorce, clitoridectomies genital cos­metic surgeries, sexual identity--even what constitutes sex--to name only a few topics of controversy related to sex.

Through revelatory chapters on the penis, vagina, clitoris, breasts, nipples, anus, buttocks, feet, and other erogenous zones, THE POWER OF SEX pro­vides a deep understanding of sex and our bodies that liberates us from old ways of thinking and allows us to relate more fully and openly to ourselves and others--so that we can reap more pleasure from our sexual lives.

Anthony Synnott has done it again. Another sharp, sexy and insightful book about the endlessly fascinating world of sex and sexuality. In The Power of Sex, Synnott covers big ground--the politics of sex, cultural norms, sexual orientation, taboos and the future of sex. In fact, he tells us pretty much everything we need to know to be up-to-date with this exciting and complex field. And he does it in a way that is immensely engaging. The social constructionism of sex has never been so sexy.--Bella Ellwood-Clayton, Ph.D. (Dr. Bella), Sexual Anthropologist and author of Sex Drive: In Pursuit of Female Desire.

Anthony Synnott, Ph.D., studied at the London School of Economics, then West­ern University, in Ontario, and received his doctorate from London Univer­sity, after brief stints in the Royal Navy and the Jesuits. He is a Pro­fessor Emer­itus of Sociology at Concordia University, in Montreal, and the author of The Body Social (1993), Shadows: Issues and Social Problems in Canada (1996), Re-Thinking Men: Heroes, Villains and Victims (2009), and co-author of Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994).