With Pleasure

Abstract

Abstract What role, does sexual pleasure play in our lives? Is the pursuit of sexual enjoyment in our blood? Our brains? Our very nature? Challenging everything from the mandates of the Catholic Church to the current debates about pornography, and from the controversy surrounding gay rights to issues of gender and feminism, With Pleasure explores a new theory of human sexuality that ignites many of the most explosive topics in the public domain. Supported by rigorous research, With Pleasure argues that human sexuality cannot be understood if its significance is limited to reproduction alone. Its central thesis is that in humans reproduction itself occurs as a byproduct of pleasure - not the other way around - and that it is the strong drive for pleasure that makes people overcome many obstacles and even life-threatening dangers (such as AIDS) to have sex. The authors present sexual pleasure as a unifying phenomenon to account for the enormous variety of meanings, practices, and functions of sexuality.