Moral Panics, Sex Panics Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights [Hardcover]

Finalist for 2010 LGBT Anthology Award from the Lambda Literary Awards
Unwed teen mothers, abortion, masturbation, pornography, gay marriage, sex trafficking, homosexuality, and HIV are just a few in a long line of issues that have erupted into panics. These sexual panics spark moral crusades and campaigns, defining and shaping how we think about sexual and reproductive rights. The essays inMoral Panics, Sex Panicsfocus on case studies ranging from sex education to AIDS to race and the down low, to illustrate how sexuality is at the heart of many political controversies. The contributors also reveal how moral and sexual panics have become a mainstay of certain kinds of conservative efforts to win elections and gain power in moral, social, and political arenas.Moral Panics, Sex Panicsprovides new and important insights into the role that key moral panics have played in social processes, arguing forcefully against the political abuse of sex panics and for the need to defend full sexual and reproductive rights.
Contributors:Cathy J. Cohen, Diane DiMauro, Gary W. Dowsett, Janice M. Irvine, Carole Joffe, and Saskia Eleonora Wieringa.

Moral Panics, Sex Panicsis a valuable interdisciplinary contribution to emotion, media, and gender studies. The authors here provide thorough accounts of contemporary social and sexual issues that dominate social consciousness, media and politics . . . the book offers a modern synopsis of how sex and sexuality continue to be embedded in political, educational and social debates. Smart analysis and crucial advice in a timely academic call to arms. In this six-essay collection, with an astute introduction from editor Herdt, social scientists and scholars of sexuality dissect where such loathing for personal freedoms originates, how maniacally it is deployed and whether there is an effective response to the fomented onslaught of anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-sexual moral Puritanism. Abortion, AIDS,l#m