Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-286) and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
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1. Introduction -- 2. Sex as Procreation: Is That All There Is? -- 3. The Regulation and Marketing of Sexual Pleasure -- 4. The Biology of Sexual Pleasure -- 5. The Psychology of Sexual Pleasure -- 6. AIDS: The End of Pleasure? -- 7. Porn: Tempest on a Soapbox -- Epilogue: The Future of Sex -- Appendix A: Contextual Glossary for Chapter 4 -- Appendix B: Mathematical Models of HIV Transmission.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
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Challenging everything from the mandates of the Catholic Church to the hotly debated ethics of pornography, and from the controversy surrounding gay rights to issues of gender and feminism, With Pleasure explores a new theory of human sexuality that ignites every hot topic in the public domain. What role, authors Paul Abramson and Steven Pinkerton ask, does sexual pleasure play in our lives?
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Ranging from discussions about the church to current debates about pornography, and from evolutionary theory to questions about the future of sex and pleasure, Abramson and Pinkerton argue persuasively that the pleasurability of sex cannot be restricted to purely reproductive behavior.
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With Pleasure provides a profoundly original challenge to the cherished truisms of human sexuality. Abramson and Pinkerton proclaim the paramount importance of pleasure, while at the same time overthrowing traditional ideas about gender, pornography, contraception, homosexuality, abortion, and much more. Supported by rigorous research and co-written by one of the foremost authorities on sex, With Pleasure argues that human sexuality cannot be understood if its significance is limited to reproduction alone. The authors posit that in humans reproduction itself occurs as a byproduct of pleasure - not the other way around - and that it is the strong drive for pleasure that makes people overcome many obstacles - and even life-threatening dangers such as AIDS - to have sex.