Main description:

This book, like its companion volume, Women's Sexual Development, is a potpourri of ideas, not campaign literature to promote a particular point of view. The editor agrees with some of her authors and strongly disagrees with others. The "facts" are few, the questions many. The intent of both books is to evoke questions, delay convictions, invite controversy, and plead for opening minds. The examination and ex planation of women's sexual experience has long been the province of men. The "is" and the "oughts" have been hopelessly confused by the investigators' (or exhorters') biases and limited experience, as well as by the use of the male sexual experience as the model for all human sexual experience. Women, at long last, are talking not only to each other, in personal journals and letters, but also in the more formal worlds of academic and scientific publications. The papers in this book come from many sources. Some are aca demic; some are experiential, journalistic, or personal. Several empha size the lack of adequate research and data but address an issue that is just appearing on the surface of contemporary controversy and con cern. Many topics and sources of information are missing.

Contents:

I * The General Condition.- 1 * Women's Sexual Response.- 2 * The Sexual Experience of Afro-American Women: A Middle-Income Sample.- Discussion * Further Thoughts on a Group Discussion by Black Women about Sexuality.- 3 * Sexual Consequences of Acculturation of American Indian Women.- Discussion * Myths in the Midst of Missing Data.- 4 * Sex and Sexuality: Women at Midlife.- Discussion * Midlife Women: Lessons for Sex Therapy.- 5 * In Praise of Older Women.- Discussion * Aging and Female Sexuality.- II * Special Circumstances.- 6 * The Cradle of Sexual Politics: Incest.- 7 * Beyond Belief: The Reluctant Discovery of Incest.- 8 * Effects of Teenage Motherhood.- 9 * Does Motherhood Mean Maturity?.- Discussion * Some Developmental Aspects of Adolescent Mothers.- 10 * Female Sexuality and Pregnancy.- Discussion * The Developmental Crisis of Pregnancy.- 11 * Voluntary Childlessness.- Discussion * Voluntary Sterilization in Childless Women.- 12 * Women in Swinging: America's Amazon Society?.- Discussion * Extramarital Sex: A Multifaceted Experience.- 13 * Wife Beating: A Product of Sociosexual Development.- Discussion * Psychoanalytic Reflections on the "Beaten Wife Syndrome".- 14 * The Prostitute as a Victim.- Discussion * Legal Victim or Social Victim?.- 15 * Women-Victims of the VD Rip-Off.- Discussion * Prophylaxis of Sexually Transmitted Diseases: An Overview.