Good Sex

Catherine M. Roach has 25 years of grant-funded research experience on gender, sexuality, and American popular culture. A two-time Fulbright awardee with a PhD from Harvard and publications in both fiction and nonfiction, she's been an invited visiting professor in Canada, Australia, and Europe. She is Professor of New College, an innovative liberal arts program at the University of Alabama, where she's won the school's top research and teaching awards and where she offers a popular cross-university course titled "Sexuality & Society." Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

• PrefaceForeplay: Introducing the Manisexto: A Manifesto for the New Gender and Sexual RevolutionManisexto #1: Positive Sexuality: Sexuality Is a Normal, Healthy, and Pleasurable Aspect of Being Human1. Sex: It's Complicated2. What Do We Mean by "Good" Sex?3. The Misunderstood Meaning of "Sex-Positive"4. The Two-Sided Story of Sex in America5. Romancing the PuritanManisexto #2: Equity and Inclusion: Gender and Sexual Identities Are Diverse—and That's Okay6. Why Diversity Matters across the Rainbow Spectrum, for Us All7. Conversation, Consensus, and Cultural Competence8. The Meanings of Queer9. Sex Is Not Everything: The Surprising Lesson of Asexuality as Part of DiversityManisexto #3: Body Positivity: All Bodies Are Good Bodies10. The Naked Truth: Embracing Body Positivity and Diverse Ways to Embody Gender11. Body Positivity Doesn't Mean "Let Them Eat Cake!": It's about Holistic Well-Being12. It's Not about "Looking Good" but about Feeling Good—and That Includes Your Genitals Too13. Sex Is Not Only for the Young and BeautifulManisexto #4: Consent: Full Consent Is Fundamental to All Sexual Activity14. The Role of Consent in Good Sex15. What Consent Is (Good Communication) and Is Not (Green Eggs and Ham, or a Blanket)16. Saying Yes, Saying No, Expanding the Gender Scripts17. Boys Don't Belong in a BoxManisexto #5: Shared Pleasure: Good Sex Is Mutually Pleasurable and Respectful18. Power With, Not Power Over19. Who Gets to Feel Good?: Gender and Pleasure beyond the Shame-and-Blame Tightrope20. Closing the Orgasm Gap: Porn and Hookups21. Cliteracy and the Politics of Pleasure22. Climax: Drawing the Line toward New Visions of LoveAfterglow: Where We Go from Here: Toward Better Sex Education in AmericaAcknowledgments and Note on Student ResponsesSource Citations and Resources for Further ReadingIndex

Despite the fact that fights over "good" sex versus "bad" sex are often fought in the name of protecting young people from danger, young people's own voices are rarely given a hearing. In refreshing contrast, in this volume Catherine Roach gives her college students a platform to speak on their own behalf about their worries and hopes for sexual pleasure. In so doing, she cuts through moral panics and political smokescreens to issue an accessible, lucid, and expansive call for new possibilities for living gender and sexuality. Good Sex is an uncommon blast of good sense.- Ann Pellegrini, New York University, coauthor of "You Can Tell Just By Looking" and 20 Other Myths about LGBT Life and People In Good Sex: Transforming America through the New Gender and Sexual Revolution, Catherine Roach sets out an optimistic vision of a New Gender and Sexual Revolution happening in the United States and beyond, which she argues builds on earlier sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 70s. Roach offers a positive and optimistic vision of how students define and manage their sexuality and experience of sex, showing that this new gender and sexual revolution goes much further than earlier revolutions that largely focused on sex. The views here from students are much bigger statements of cultural change, optimistic in terms of the future, offering a more egalitarian and positive vision of change and presenting exciting vistas for the future.- Ann Brooks, editor of The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love I loved reading this ManiSexto! Catherine Roach has charted the path from puritanical past to the new gender and sexual revolution with verve. Without shying away from hot button topics she explores the evolving norms of sex and love and their impacts on civic life, lucidly and decisively navigating what makes sex good, what sex is worth having and how we might make it better.- Clarissa Smith, Northumbria University, Newcastle Roach emphasizes equity throughout and discusses the need to appreciate bodies that are not 'fit, abled, youthful, and light-skinned' and to rewrite gender scripts to be more accepting of emotional expression in men and desire for sex in women. The student quotes capture a panoramic view of how Generation Z thinks about sex, with Roach's analysis expertly distilling the social forces driving their anecdotes and opinions. The result is a perceptive volume on the contemporary culture of sex.(Publishers Weekly) Thoughtful and thought-provoking, insightful and iconoclastic, "Good Sex: Transforming America through the New Gender and Sexual Revolution" is a work of impressively and meticulous scholarship in the field of the medical, psychology, and cultural anthropology of human sexuality.- Reviewer's Bookwatch (Midwest Book Review.)