In this dramatic and compelling narrative, anthropologist Don Kulick follows the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes (called travestis in Portuguese) in the Brazilian city Salvador. Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes,...

Taboo looks at the ethnographer and sexuality in anthropological fieldwork and considers the many roles that sexuality plays in the anthropological production of knowledge and texts. How does the sexual identity that anthropologists have in their "home" society affect the kind of sexuality they are allowed to express in other cultures? How is the anthropologists' sexuality perceived by the people with whom he or she does research? How common is sexual violence and intimidation in the field and why is its existence virtually unmentioned in anthropology? These are but a few of the...

This text looks at the ethnographer and sexuality in anthropological fieldwork and considers the many roles that sexuality plays in the anthropological production of knowledge and texts. How does the sexual identity that anthropologists have in their home society affect the kind of sexuality they are allowed to express in other cultures? How is the anthropologists' sexuality perceived by the people with whom he or she does research? How common is sexual violence and intimidation in the field and why is its existence virtually unmentioned in anthropology? These are a few of the questions to be...

The Language and Sexuality Reader is the first collection to bring together historical and contemporary writings from a range of academic disciplines to explore the connections between sex as a domain of human experience and the language we use to speak and write about it. The topics addressed by contributors include gay slang and gay speech styles; the language of drag performances, personal ads, Nepali love letters and Japanese schoolgirl fiction; what counts as 'having sex' and whether 'marriage' has to be heterosexual by definition; the communication of sexual desire, consent and refusal;...

This accessible book looks at how we talk about sex and why we talk about it the way we do. Drawing on examples that range from personal ads to phone sex, sado-masochistic scenes to sexual assault trials, this work provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality. Using a broad definition of "sexuality," it encompasses not only issues surrounding sexual orientation and identity, but also questions about the discursive construction of sexuality and the verbal expression of erotic desire.

Don Kulick's book is an anthropological study of language and cultural change among a small group of people living in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. He examines why the villagers of Gapun are abandoning their vernacular in favor of Tok Pisin, the most widely spoken language in Papua New Guinea, despite their attachment to their own language as a source of identity and as a tie to their lands. He draws on an examination of village language socialization process and on Marshall Sahlins's ideas about structure and event.

This accessible book looks at how we talk about sex and why we talk about it the way we do. Drawing on examples that range from personal ads to phone sex, sado-masochistic scenes to sexual assault trials, this work provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality. Using a broad definition of "sexuality," it encompasses not only issues surrounding sexual orientation and identity, but also questions about the discursive construction of sexuality and the verbal expression of erotic desire.

Few people these days would oppose making the public realm of space, social services and jobs accessible to women and men with disabilities. But what about access to the private realm of desire and sexuality? How can one also facilitate access to that, in ways that respect the integrity of disabled adults, and also of those people who work with and care for them?

Loneliness and Its Opposite documents how two countries generally imagined to be progressive engage with these questions in very different ways. Denmark and Sweden are both liberal welfare states, but they diverge...