Vern L. Bullough

Illuminating the lives of the courageous individuals involved in the early struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights in the United States, this comprehensive historical study invokes the lives and sacrifices of the greatest barrier-breakers of the pre-1969 fight. Authored by those who knew them best (often activists themselves), the concise biographies in this volume examine the lives of such heroes of the gay and lesbian movement as Harry Hay, Henry Gerber, Alfred Kinsey, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Jim Kepner, Jack Nichols, Christine Jorgensen, Jose Sarria, Barbara Grier, Frank Kameny and forty more. While no member of the gay movement achieved fame and reputation to compare with that of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights movement, they all put their careers and reputations on the line, drawn together in spite of personality and philosophical differences to fight for a better, world.

In Sexual Attitudes: Myths and Realities, internationally acclaimed sexologists Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough take readers on a guided tour through the many assumptions and misconceptions we harbor about our own sexuality, as they bring us up to date on a variety of sexual and related issues. How did masturbation evolve from being regarded as a cause of insanity to being a normal part of sexual development? When did the medical profession stop viewing homosexuality as a sin or sickness, and accept it as a valid form of sexual expression? How did abortion move from being an illegal act, performed in secrecy under dangerous conditions, to a constitutionally protected right? The authors highlight the ways in which social, moral, and religious attitudes have dramatically changed from being founded on myths to relying on more science-based realities. . The Bulloughs argue that accepting new knowledge need not undermine morality even though it challenges entrenched, often unfounded, assumptions about our sexual behavior. They contend that our traditional attitudes about sex must be continuously rethought and updated rather than shrouded in mystery and myth. Moral values can still be maintained even while acknowledging the existence of vastly more accurate information about the physiology of sex and the many ways in which we choose to express our sexuality.

From the first serious sex research study ever undertaken (in France with a group of Prostitutes in 1830) to the work of Masters and Johnson in our own day, sex research has been a field mired in controversy. Science in the Bedroom shows how, for most of its history and in whatever country it has been undertaken, sex research has been driven by forces outside itself. Among those forces have been groups marginalized as deviant, including homosexuals, free-love advocates, and feminists; courts and governments in search of independent data to support public morality standards; the desires of women for safe and effective contraceptive devices freely disseminated; the desire of doctors to medicalize all sex research and to view only the research that produces treatment therapies as valuable; and the fears of public funding institutes that their images will be sullied if they support independent sex research.

In any society, the perception of femininity and masculinity is not necessarily dependent on female or male genitalia. Cross dressing, gender impersonation, and long-term masquerades of the opposite sex are commonplace throughout history. In contemporary American culture the behavior occurs most often among male heterosexuals and homosexuals, sometimes for erotic pleasure, sometimes not. In the past, however, cross dressing was for the most part practiced more by women than men. Although males often burlesqued women and gave comic impersonations of them, they rarely attempted a change of public gender until the twentieth century. This phenomenon, according to Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, has implications for any understanding of the changing relationships between the sexes in the twentieth century. In most Western societies, being a man and demonstrating masculinity is more highly prized than being a woman and displaying femininity.^ Some non-Western societies, however, are more tolerant and even encourage men to behave like women and women to act like men. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender not only surveys cross dressing and gender impersonation throughout history and in a variety of cultures, but also examines the medical, biological, psychological, and sociological findings that have been presented in the modern scientific literature. This volume offers the results of the authors' research into contemporary gender issues and the search for explanations. After examining the various current theories regarding cross dressing and gender impersonation, the Bulloughs offer their own theory. This book, destined to become a classic in its field, is the culmination of thirty years of research by the Bulloughs into gender impersonation and cross dressing.^ Their groundbreaking findings will be of interest to anyone involved in the debate over nature versus nurture, and have implications not only for scholars in the various social sciences and sex and gender studies, but for educators, nurses, physicians, feminist, gays, lesbians, and general readers. This work will be of more personal interest to anyone who identifies as a transvestite or transsexual or who has been classified by medical and psychiatric professionals as suffering from gender dysphoria. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender covers a wide range of cultures and periods. As the first comprehensive attempt to examine the phenomenon of cross dressing, it will be of interest to students and scholars of social history, sociology, nursing, and women's studies.