With Pleasure

Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality

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by Paul R. Abramson and Steven D. Pinkerton

Oxford University Press

Due/Published March 2001, 130 pages, paper

ISBN 0195146093

Challenging everything from the mandates of the Catholic Church to the hotly debated ethics of pornography, and from the controversy surrounding gay rights to issues of gender and feminism, With Pleasure explores a new theory of human sexuality that ignites every hot topic in the public domain. What role, authors Paul Abramson and Steven Pinkerton ask, does sexual pleasure play in our lives? With Pleasure provides a profoundly original challenge to the cherished truisms of human sexuality. Abramson and Pinkerton proclaim the paramount importance of pleasure, while at the same time overthrowing traditional ideas about gender, pornography, contraception, homosexuality, abortion, and much more. Supported by rigorous research and co-written by one of the foremost authorities on sex, With Pleasure argues that human sexuality cannot be understood if its significance is limited to reproduction alone. The authors posit that in humans reproduction itself occurs as a byproduct of pleasure - not the other way around - and that it is the strong drive for pleasure that makes people overcome many obstacles - and even life-threatening dangers such as AIDS - to have sex. Ranging from discussions about the church to current debates about pornography, and from evolutionary theory to questions about the future of sex and pleasure, Abramson and Pinkerton argue persuasively that the pleasurability of sex cannot be restricted to purely reproductive behavior.

About the Authors:
Paul R. Abramson is one of the world's most eminent scientists in the field of human sexuality. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a former editor of the Journal of Sex Research. He has been a technical advisor to the World Health Organization's Global Program on AIDS and is the author of six books, including Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture and Sarah: A Sexual Biography.
Steven D. Pinkerton recently received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Pinkerton has written extensively in the areas of human sexuality and AIDS prevention and is presently pursuing a broad research agenda in psychology and the behavioral sciences as a post-doctoral fellow at UCLA.