Plastic sex and the sociologist

To what extent have feminism and sexual liberation truly changed our lives? In spite of undeniable shifts in collective behaviour and mentality it is not clear in retrospect that the quality of intimacy among individuals - within the family, in marriage, in love relations - has been radically transformed, let alone significantly improved. In spite of some isolated efforts, contemporary social and political theory seems especially disorientated and confused when confronting this problem. In fact, the problem is far from new: the consequences of sexual liberation and egalitarian relations between men and women were at the centre of the reflection developed in the eighteenth century by the progressive writers of the Enlightenment. Their struggle against the prejudices and conventions of traditional society was accompanied by the awareness that permissive relations among individuals might prove potentially more conflictual and destructive than the bonds of patriarchalism; that, in order to achieve true respect and equality, the nature of sexual identity and intimacy must be redefined at all levels

Aesthetics · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Feminism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Philosophy