Sex Matters 5th Edition

A sex-positive reader that presents sex as a social issue

This popular reader has a strong sociological focus, highlighting the ways that social institutions—and the individuals within them—shape our understanding of sexuality and influence our behaviors, attitudes, and identities. The readings, 50 percent of which are new to the Fifth Edition, cover a diverse range of sexual experiences, including new pieces on asexuality, online porn, and PrEP for HIV prevention. The editors mix qualitative and quantitative empirical pieces, sexual narratives, and articles from the popular press.

About the Authors

Mindy Stombler is a senior lecturer in sociology at Georgia State University. Her research has focused on the production of sexual collective identities. For example, she explored how men in gay fraternities negotiated their dual identities of being gay and being Greek and how men in gay fraternities reproduced hegemonic masculinity. Her current research focuses on power relations and oral sex as well as a variety of pedagogical issues. For more information, please visit her website.

Dawn M. Baunach is an associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University. Her research interests include sexuality and gender inequalities, statistics and methodologies, social demography, and the sociology of food. She is currently studying various sexual attitudes and behaviors, including same-sex marriage, sexual prejudices, sexual disclosure, and bullying.

Wendy Simonds is a professor of sociology at Georgia State University. She is the author of Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic and Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading Between the Lines; coauthor with Barbara Katz Rothman of Centuries of Solace: Expressions of Maternal Grief in Popular Literature, and coauthor with Barbara Katz Rothman and Bari Meltzer Norman of Laboring On: Birth in Transition in the United States. She is currently the president of SSSP.

Elroi J. Windsor is an assistant professor of sociology at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and incoming chair of SSSP's Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities division. Windsor's teaching and research interests include gender, sexuality, health, and embodiment. Most recently, Windsor researched the disparate regulation of transgender and cisgender consumers of surgical body modification.

Elisabeth O. Burgess is the director of the Gerontology Institute and an associate professor of gerontology and sociology at Georgia State University. Her research interests focus on changes in intimate relations over the life course, including involuntary celibacy, sexuality and aging, and intergenerational relationships. In addition, Dr. Burgess writes on theories of aging and attitudes toward older adults.