Connexions Resource Centre
Focus on Sexuality

Recent & Selected Articles

  1. This is a small sampling of articles related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as Subject Index, especially under topics such as sexuality, sexual behaviour, and sexual freedom.
  1. The Rise of the Intellectual Pornstar (September 27, 2018)
    Once only found in society's margins, the pornography industry has developed into a multi-billion dollar business that is branching into the mainstream. The article explains that the industry, while still controversial, increasingly comments on the social problems of today and pushes for reforms in areas that other large industries are scared to.
  2. How Brazil's Sex Workers Have Been Organized and Politically Effective for 30 Years (December 19, 2017)
    Sex workers in Brazil have been organizing for 30 years and have influenced politics to the extent that the government recognizes sex-work as an official occupation. They are celebrating the anniversary in part with an exhibit of photographs taken by sex-workers.
  3. Title IX Witchhunts, Anti-Sex Frenzy and Bourgeois Feminism (November 3, 2017)
    Is the specter of sex haunting the campus? Under the pretense of targeting sexual harassment and assault, university administrations have been whipping up a climate of fear and imposing neo-Victorian values. As the recent book Unwanted Advances - Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus (HarperCollins Publishers, April 2017) argues, "The new campus codes aren't preventing nonconsensual sex; they're producing it.” Written by Northwestern University professor and self-described left-wing feminist Laura Kipnis, the book exposes the vastly expanded definitions of sexual assault, which criminalize anything from drunken hook-ups to student-professor romance and even allow for consent to be withdrawn retroactively.
  4. A queer take on Safe Schools and identity politics (June 16, 2016)
    In recent weeks, the debate over the Safe Schools Coalition anti-bullying program has intensified, taking what is in many ways a bizarre turn. The brief suspension of program architect Roz Ward from her position at La Trobe University has reopened the debate about whether Safe Schools is 'cultural Marxism' by stealth, the program once again coming under fire from conservatives across the country. Even trans advocate and member of the ADF Catherine McGregor has weighed in. One of the more interesting elements of this, however, has been the debate it has created about the role gender and sexual politics can and should play within Marxism. Here enters Guy Rundle. In the pages of Crikey, Rundle penned a treatise on the program and what he considers the failures of 'queer theory'. Rundle believes Safe Schools (via queer theory) presents the view that 'gender and sexuality are infinitely fluid'. He argues, however, that such a view denies the material realities of sexuality and gender, not to mention his view that 'almost no-one really believes it -- and they certainly do not let it shape their lives'.
  5. Why Not Have Sex With People Who Aren't Your Partner? (March 4, 2015)
    Although open relationships are not as shocking a concept today as they were 50 years ago, they’re still regarded with overwhelming skepticism and even disdain. The usual assumption is that polyamorous people are selfish, immature, incapable of commitment, and their primary relationship is therefore doomed to failure.
  6. Selling Sexual Services: A Socialist Feminist Perspective (February 4, 2015)
    The current debate about sex work among feminists generates more heat than light. Accusations of bad faith fly back and forth across the two sides, research findings are mobilized to undercut the other side even when the research itself is limited by its methods and scope, different sex worker voices are authorized by each side as either genuine or manipulated, depending on whose position those voices seem to support.
  7. Sex and Consent on Campus (November 14, 2014)
    Amid an ongoing debate over sex and consent on college campuses, in September California passed "affirmative consent" legislation, which was followed by a slew of similar initiatives nationwide. The pretext is to curb a purported epidemic of sexual violence and have college administrations come clean on reporting sexual assault complaints. But legislating one form of consent as the only acceptable variant and branding all else as assault -- as these new policies do -- means that these administrations now have even greater power to enforce what is acceptable sexual activity among students.
  8. A Win for Sex Workers - A Win for Safety, Equality, and Justice (December 20, 2013)
    The Supreme Court of Canada has released a unanimous decision striking down all three prostitution laws, paving the way for more safety, justice and equality for sex workers in Canada.
  9. Secret Sexual Fantasies (October 8, 2013)
    Your fantasies are always with you, playing hide-and-seek with your perceived realities, whispering wild ideas into your inner ear, showing movies in your mind, stirring your passions mysteriously, yet so powerfully. If you are imprisoned in any way–by your work, your family, your education, your religion, your government–your fantasies become your freedom. Sometimes your ability to fantasize is the only freedom you have.
  10. What's the Sexual Health of the Nation? (June 21, 2013)
    What happens to pleasure during a period of social crisis? Sex may be the best way to determine the true pulse of the nation.
  11. Primitive Heterosexuality (April 12, 2013)
  12. Sex work: Solidarity not salvation (June 5, 2012)
    An ongoing debate is taking place in anarchist and feminist circles on the legitimacy of sex work and the rights of sex workers. The two main schools of thought are almost at polar opposites of each other. On the one side you have the abolitionist approach led by feminists, such as Melissa Farley who maintains that sex work is a form of violence against women. Farley has said that "If we view prostitution as violence against women, it makes no sense to legalize or decriminalize prostitution." On the other side you have sex worker rights activists who view sex work as being much closer to work in general than most realize, who believe that the best way forward for sex workers is in the fight for workers' rights and social acceptance and for activists to listen to what sex workers have to say. In this article I will discuss why the abolitionist approach discriminates against sex workers and takes advantage of their marginalized status, while the rights approach offer the opportunity to make solid differences in the labour rights and human rights of sex workers.
  13. Connexions Archive Case Statement (September 24, 2011)
    Working together to secure a future for the past
  14. Toward A Queer Marxism? (March 1, 2011)
    Scholarly approaches to sexuality since the 1980s have become increasingly divorced from practical sexual politics, and both have largely given up on earlier attempts to engage with Marxism. Now this may be changing. A stimulating new book by Kevin Floyd maintains that people in queer studies are paying more attention to Marxism’s “explanatory power.” From the activist side, Sherry Wolf of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) has made an impressive effort to sum up LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) theory and practice from a Marxist perspective.
  15. Lupercalian Valentine's Day (February 11, 2011)
    The tradition of honoring all-inclusive, natural LUST around February 14 pre-dates classical times when Ancient Romans celebrated the Lupercalia, an archaic festival of the now obscure old shepherd god Lupercus (or perhaps Faunus, the Roman Pan), and a celebration of communal sexuality, purification, fertility, the rush of hormones, the howl of the wolf, the crack of the whip and the coming of Spring.
  16. Hot Wet Holiday Sex (December 17, 2010)
    Whatever your preferences, do go on some kind of holiday sex adventure. Try not to hurt anyone, including yourself, and whatever your pleasure, enjoy it and infuse it with a sense of *sacred* solstice power, a promise to resist the deadly status quo of depression, perma-war and power-grabs, and a passionate commitment to love.
  17. Our Promiscuous Prehistory (August 19, 2010)
    Most otherwise topnotch evolutionary psychologists, primatologists and anthropologists come up with flip, vague or convoluted ways to explain away unpopular evidence. They seem to be trying to squeeze the square peg of monogamy into the round hole of humanity. Ryan and Jethá have chosen a more well-rounded term to characterize the essence of human sexuality as practiced by our prehistoric progenitors: promiscuity.
  18. The New Sexual Radicalism (May 1, 2010)
    What are the social origins of queer? Does this current have a vision - whether implicit or explicit - of sexual liberation, and if so, what is it? What is its relationship to such emancipatory projects as feminism, antiracism, global justice and socialism?
  19. The New Sexual Radicalism (May 1, 2010)
    From its beginning in the 1990s in the United States, a “queer” activist current has gradually spread to other countries, including in recent years in Western Europe. In decades when the prevailing trend in LGBT movements has been to orient to legal reforms by parliamentary means, queer activism has constituted a third wave of sexual radicalism, emphasizing visibility, difference, direct action, refusal to assimilate to the dominant culture, and the fluidity and diversity of sexual desire.
  20. Globalizing the Culture Wars (April 2, 2010)
    Uganda, like many countries in Africa and around the world, adheres to long-standing heterosexual and patriarchal traditions as to what is acceptable sexual behavior. In the West, such traditions are shared by a dwindling minority. The bourgeois capitalist marketplace has reconfigured that which is morally acceptable. Sexual practices among adults are areas of personal erotic experience, protected private activities.
  21. Connexions Archive seeks a new home (November 18, 2009)
    The Connexions Archive, a Toronto-based library dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change, needs a new home.
  22. No, Not All Bi Women Love Threesomes (October 1, 2009)
    Being bisexual means that you are attracted to members of both sexes, even if you're not sleeping with them. Here are some things bisexuality doesn't mean.
  23. Porn can be good for you (2008)
    While pornography can be dehumanising and exploitative, it can also be educative, liberating, empowering, fulfilling and immensely socially beneficial. It all depends on how it is made, who makes it, what it depicts and why it is being used.
  24. In Defence of Sex and Science: Review of Kinsey (2005)
    A review of the film "Kinsey".
  25. US-UN Crusade Against 'Sex Trafficking' (2004)
    Kidnapping, debt bondage, sexual assault, beatings - for any purpose - are horrible crimes. But there is a qualitative distinction between this kind of coercion and the fundamentally consensual act between a prostitute and her client to exchange money for sex.
  26. Further Dialogue on Pornography (March 1, 1997)
    The Church and right-wing groups have intensified their war on the three horsemen of immorality: abortion, gays and pornography. In the struggle against this, we have emphasized the need to oppose censorship. We have also-if appropriate or necessary-defended pornography. a freer, richer, sexuality cannot evolve by somebody (experts, feminists, socialists) legislating what liberating sex is, while censoring what falls beyond the practices so defined.
  27. Beyond Gay Identity (1997)
    Gay emancipation will destroy gay identity. This is a good thing, because gay identity sustains gay conformism.
  28. Pornography and the Sex Censors (July 1, 1996)
    The pornography debacle has driven deep wedges among feminists, and has weakened the women's movement by alienating many women who cannot relate to a perceived ethos of anti-sexuality, gender antagonism, and victimhood. To the extent that it has convinced women to conceive of themselves as victims, to live in constant dread of male violence and aggression, rather than thinking of ourselves as the agents of our own liberation, it has been profoundly disempowering.
  29. Satan, the State and Anti-Sex Hysteria (1996)
    A lengthy review of two books about the anti-sex witchhunts in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
  30. Are We Having Sex Now or What? (1992)
    Questions you may never have thought to ask about sex.
  31. Yes Means No? (1992)
    The anti-sex moralists say one thing but mean another.
  32. Anti-Porn is the Theory, Repression is the Practice (1989)
    The campaign against pornography has been one of the most visible faces of feminism for more than a decade now. Few have wanted to know whether the 'clean up' they were promoting strengthened women's hand or the State's. Thus they have attracted supporters and allies among politicians from the New Right, which governs (among others) the US and the UK, from the old moralizing Left, and even from the trendy Left. Although this anti-porn lobby is not homogeneous, it is rare for any part of it to dissociate itself from the most powerful pro-censorship law-and-order identity.
  33. Prostitution Rights (1980)
    Decriminalization takes prostitution from the jurisdiction of the criminal code. It means private sexual acts between consenting adults are placed outside the realm of criminal laws.
  34. Socialism, the Family and Sexuality
  35. Take your partners
    Monogamy is not necessarily the best policy.
  36. U.S. Funds False Sex Lessons
    Facts about sex you never knew.

Selected Websites and Organizations

  1. This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with education and children in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as sexuality, sexual behaviour, and sexual freedom.
  • BiNet USA
    BiNet USA collects and distributes information regarding Bisexuality; facilitates the development of Bisexual community and visibility; works for the equal rights and liberation of Bisexuals and all oppressed peoples; and to eradicate all forms of oppression inside and outside the Bisexual community.
  • Bisexual Resource Center
    Information, discussions, and resources for bi-sexuals.
  • British Columbia Bisexual Network (BiNet BC)
    An umbrella organization providing resources and networking for bi and bi-supportive people and groups in British Columbia.
  • Connexions Library: Lesbians, Gays, Bi-sexuals Focus
    Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on gays, lesbians, bisexuals.
  • Greenery Press
    Publishes books "for the sexually adventurous".
  • QSM - Books, Magazines and Comics
    Books, DVDs, magazines, and comics on SM, dominance & submission, erotic pain, and related fetishes.
  • SexSources.ca
    A web portal featuring sexuality resources: articles, websites, books. The home page features a selection of recent and important articles. A search feature, subject index, and other research tools make it possible to find additional resources and information.

Other Links & Resources



Books, Films and Periodicals

  1. This is a small sampling of books related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more books and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as sexuality, sexual behaviour, and sexual freedom.
  1. Art and Pornography
    Author: Peckham, Morse
  2. The Bonobo Way
    The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure
    Author: Block, Susan
    Author Susan Block writes: "The most revolutionary way bonobos use sex is for conflict resolution. It’s the main reason why these apes are my heroes."
  3. The Civilized Couple's Guide to Extra-Marital Adventure
    Author: Ellis, Albert
  4. The Ethical Slut
    A guide to infinite sexual possibilities
    Author: Easton, Dossie; Liszt, Catherine A.
    A guide for anyone who dreams of having all the sex and love and friendship they want. Explores the skills and issues of a life beyond tradiational lifetime monogamy, from scheduling dates to handling jealousy, finding partners, resolving conflict, and raising children.
  5. Intimate Friendships
    Author: Ramey, James
    Examines various forms of intimate relationship, from monogamy, to monogamy with adultery, to polygyny, polyandry and group relationships.
  6. The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity
    Author: Baird, Vanesse
    An examination of the ways in which tolerance and hostility have manifested themselves throughout history, and in current attitudes toward sexual diversity.
  7. Open Marriage
    A New Life Style for Couples
    Author: O'Neill, Nena & George
    The authors propose open marriage as a way to help couples realize that there can be both relatedness and freedom in marriage, and that freedom, with the growth and responsibility it entails, can be the basis for intimacy and love.
  8. Satan's Silence
    Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt
    Author: Nathan, Debbie; Snedeker, Mike
    About the wave of hysteria over alleged satanic abuse of children which hit the United States in the 1990s.
  9. Sex at Dawn
    The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
    Author: Rayn, Christopher; Jetha, Cacilda
    Ryan and Jethá contend that humans evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors argue that monogamy is by no means part of human nature.
  10. Sex Scandals America
    Politics and the Ritual of Public Shaming
    Author: Rosen, David
    A comprehensive history of sexual scandals in America from colonial times, including Pocahontas and the Puritans, to today which exposes the scandals of national political figures and celebrities and ties these scandals to the deeper changes in sexual culture. It assesses the role of political scandals as a form of public shaming and shows how, scandals have changed, evolving from a morality tale to an entertainment distraction.
  11. Sex-Pol
    Essays 1929-1934
    Author: Reich, Wilhelm; (Baxandall, Lee, ed.)
    Wilhelm Reich's writings from his Marxist period, outlining his thoughts about sexual and political liberation.
  12. Sexual Minorities Out South Sexual minorities in the Majority World
    New Internationalist October 2000
    Why and how sexual minirities are persecuted throughout the South. As well as religion, minorities are a threat to the nuclear family (the most manageable social unit) and a convenient scapegoat. Articles on Africa, India, Muslim countries and the spread of HIV.
  13. Sexuality and Socialism
    History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation
    Author: Wolf, Sherry
    An accessible analysis of many of the most challenging questions for those concerned with full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Essays on the roots of LGBT oppression, the construction of sexual and gender identities, the history of the gay movement, and how to unite the oppressed and exploited to win sexual liberation for all. Sherry Wolf analyzes different theories about oppression — including those of Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics, and queer theory — and challenges myths about genes, gender, and sexuality.
  14. Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings
    Author: Vidal, Gore


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