Telling Sexual Stories

The world has become cluttered with sexual stories. From child abuse scandals to lesbian and gays coming out, from Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas to sexual surveys and therapy groups - sexual talk has become more evident. This book explores the rites of a sexual story-telling culture.
The world has become cluttered with sexual stories. From child abuse scandals to lesbian and gays coming out; from Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas to the travails of Michael Jackson; from sexual surveys to therapy groups - sexual talk has become more and more evident. This book explores the rites of a sexual story-telling culture. Taking three major examples - rape stories, coming-out stories, recovery stories - this book examines the nature of these newly emerging narratives and the socio-historical conditions which have given rise to them. It looks at the rise of the women's movement, the lesbian and gay movement and the "recovery" movement as harbingers of significant social change that encourage the telling of new stories. In the concluding section, the book turns to the wider concern of how story-telling may be changing in a postmodern culture and how central it may be in the creation of a participatory democratic political culture.