Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-239) and index.
I. Entering the Story Zone. 1. Prologue: The Culture of Sexual Story Telling. 2. An Invitation to a Sociology of Stories. 3. Making Sexual Stories -- II. Coming Out Everywhere: Modernist Stories of Desire, Danger and Recovery. 4. Coming Out, Breaking the Silence and Recovering: Introducing Some Modernist Tales. 5. Women's Culture and Rape Stories. 6. The Modernisation of Gay and Lesbian Stories. 7. Recovery Tales -- III. Sexual Stories at Century's End. 8. The Tale and Its Time. 9. The Shifting Sexual Stories of Late Modernity. 10. Intimate Citizenship: The Politics of Sexual Story Telling. 11. Epilogue: Beyond Stories? The Pragmatics of Story Telling.