Sexual Attitudes: Myths and Realities [Hardcover]

Vern L. Bullough (Author), Bonnie Bullough (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

This delightful work by two internationally acclaimed sexologists takes the reader on a guided tour through the many assumptions we humans harbour about our own sexuality. When did masturbation stop being a cause of insanity and become a normal part of sexual development? When did we stop viewing homosexuality as a sin or a sickness and accept it as a form of sexual expression? The Bulloughs highlight the ways in which social, moral, and religious attitudes have dramatically changed from being based upon pervasive myths to relying on more science-based realities. They even show how, in the past, science unwittingly helped perpetuate some myths.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sex is a topic American adults assume they know everything about. To explain the genesis of the myths and realities of modern sexual customs and ethics, two internationally known University of California sexologists (coeditors of Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia, Garland, 1994, and many other titles) turn their attention to the historical and cultural backgrounds-from the ancient Greeks and Romans through early and medieval Christian, Islamic, Chinese, and Indian cultural strains. Topics of discussion include prostitutes, pornography, obscenity, masturbation, transexualism, transvestitism, menstruation, abortion, sex labeling, nudity, and more. The discussion of each topic is presented in as unbiased a fashion as possible, although an unintentional Western skew is evident. Based as much in sociology as psychology, each thoroughly researched chapter ends with a three- to four-page bibliography of resources consulted. Larger public libraries may want this book, which is accessible to the informed public library patron; academic libraries should also purchase.
Scott Johnson, Meridian Community Coll. Lib., Miss.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 281 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879759496
• ISBN-13: 978-0879759490
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,713,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Succinct summaries of scholarship on sexual topics, September 8, 2007

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John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sexual Attitudes: Myths and Realities (Hardcover)

The Bulloughs have written a long shelf of studies on sexuality, and this collection of essays surveys efficiently and concisely various aspects of their field. Chapters ask "Why the Hostility to Sex?" and place blame with the Platonic and Christian strictures favoring the soul over the body, and spirit over the flesh. This survey makes powerfully and poignantly the case that Western attitudes have been tainted and crippled regarding the body. Alternative Views offers Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Chinese attitudes that all remind Europeans how comparatively narrow and guilt-ridden are what we often perceive as "natural" and "ordinary" perceptions towards sexuality. Each chapter sets out its findings with calm clarity and rational analysis, backed up by primary sources and a scholarly detachment combined with a humanistic acceptance of our diversity in our sexual desires and their satisfaction. Some material has been repeated in other publications by these prolific authors; this is a minor caveat, but I do want to warn that if you have read other material by these authors, that the entries here may lack freshness. However, the Bulloughs, leading scholars in this field, write calmly, learnedly, and persuasively.

With the third chapter, the classification popularized by early Christian thinkers such as Augustine takes the '"Unnatural" Sex' restrictions against nature that limited effectively any expression of sexual activity into that of the "missionary position" for purposes of procreation, and this even limited severely and largely reluctantly by many theologians. This makes for instructive if depressing reading, considering the long shadow cast over fifteen centuries since of repressed erotic and libidinal activity by most of the Western world. The sources are dealt with concisely and clearly that led to this reaction and fear of sexual expression.

Masturbation, Sex & Gender, Contraception, Abortion gain each a chapter. Infertility, Impotence, and Artificial Insemination earns its own treatment. Pornography is differentiated from obscenity; "Homosexuality, Sex Labeling, and Stigmatized Behavior" follows. Finally, "Sex in a Changing World" compares past restrictions on sexual investigation with our own era's limited but undeniable freedom of inquiry and study. For summary, the end of the chapter on "'Unnatural' Sex" sums up the focus of this clear, succinct, and level-headed volume well. "It might be well that no human sexual activity is really unnatural. Certainly some might regard certain sexual activities as undesirable, others as potentially harmful, and still others that many would classify as immoral, but to base our assumptions on ancient Greek philosophy or Jewish mythology is to build a castle on shifting sands." (60)