Sex Acts: Practices of Femininity and Masculinity

Inter-disciplinary in approach, Jennifer Harding identifies a series of key issues on contemporary discourses: essentialism vs constructionism; gender and sexuality; representation and concepts of identity; Foucalut′s notion of `discourse′; and Butler′s theory of gender `performance′. These topics are explored in the light of contemporary cultural contexts - for instance, the debate on hormone theory and the social construction of sexuality, `gender bending′ and masculinity, the maternal body, queer families, and constructions of motherhood and fatherhood. Critical summaries of the main debates in the fie