Tiefer.

Tiefer, L (1995) Sex is not a natural act and other essays. Boulder CO: Westview, 232 pp no price (pbk)

When is a kiss not just a kiss and a sigh not just a sigh? When reading Tiefer's analysis and critique of popular and scholarly constructions of sexuality. Tiefer appropriate s an entire essay to kissing, and it is well worth the overspread price.

In this collection of essays, Tiefer tears apart the false universalism of familiar patterns of sexuality, including Master's and Johnson's sexual answer cycle and DSM systems of classification. She advises that teaching about sexuality at discussing bodily organs is as wrong-headed as teaching about music on discussing the ear. She envisions a field of sexology which is creative, liberatory, collaborative, and flat spiritual, rather than mechanical.

In in the greatest degree of the pieces, Tiefer's name is light, irreverent, and engaging, yet at the same time the satisfy is solid. For instance, the essay entitled, "In search of the finished penis: The medicalization of male sexuality" includes historical information in succession the construction of the vexed question of impotence, a critique of biomedical approaches to male sexual question s and their genital focus, and ideas about by what means to change male sexual scripts. This is heady essence couched in highly readable language. Tiefer's breezy diction is an unusual complement to her intelligent intellect. She is a professor of urology and psychiatry at Albert Einstein literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning of Medicine and clearly knows whereof she speaks about sexuality-both in metes of the individual, intimate acts between family and as a field.

Tiefer wastes most of her time these days interviewing men who wish to pass through sexchange operations. Her writings point out to her to be a fascinating, multifaceted individual and thinker. Readers will stop the covers hoping they will have an opportunity to convenient this woman some day. Although the essays can become somewhat redundant if read in their entirety in following each stands on its acknowledge as a gem.

Tiefer posits that there are as many paths to sexuality as there are the public and that the emphasis forward one or two routes above all others is narrow-minded, oppressive, and disrespectful. Her ideas are [i]de novo[/i] and liberating and have proven useful to us in our work with clients and as teachers.

Lisa Aronson Fonte PhD University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA

Anne Prouty PhD Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA

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