Tag: sexuality

January 4, 2016

Against moral panic (for cultural politics)

Pundits, sociologists, and activists frequently use the term “moral panic” to describe what they perceive as a public overreaction to an issue (or non-issue). Examples include “Prostitution and Human Trafficking – The Anatomy of a Moral Panic,” “What’s Flakka and is it Real? A Guide to the New Moral Panic Drugs,” From Miasma to Ebola:…
December 25, 2015

Christmas in a gay bar

I haven’t yet told you why I go to gay bars to get loaded on Christmas Day. I go to hear the stories. You haven’t heard anything until you’ve gone to a gay bar on Christmas Day and heard the stories… I have discovered that among those of us hanging out in bars on Christmas…
November 24, 2015

The Traffic in Deer

Deer trafficking: another example of the spread of what I call trafficking talk, or the traffic in trafficking. Recent headlines include Two Florida Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Deer or Deer-Trafficking Scheme Nets Record $1.6 Million Fine Up until around 2010, news outlets usually called such crimes “smuggling,””poaching,” “illegal sales” or “illegal transport” (the earliest…
June 2, 2015

The Four U’s: Latent Classes of Hookup Motivations among College Students

College students’ “hookups” have been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years. Motivations for hooking up have been linked to differences in well-being after the hookup, but studies detailing college students’ motivations for engaging in hookups focus on single motivations. Using data from the 2010 Duke Hookup Survey, we consider how…
January 1, 2015

Social Context and Sexual Intercourse among First-Year Students at Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States

Most examinations of sexual behavior ignore social context. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen, a panel study of 3924 students at 28 selective colleges and universities, I examine how institutional and peer-group characteristics influence the incidence of sexual intercourse among students during their freshman year. Students who enter college as virgins…
October 15, 2014

Article: The Gender Gap in Reported Homosexuality

An article of mine in the International Journal Advances in Social Science and Humanities 2(10) 20-26. Men consistently report higher rates of homosexual behavior and identity than women in national population surveys of sexuality, a gender gap that has received little attention. Though women express similar levels of same-sex desire, they are far less likely…
February 14, 2013

State of the Field: Sex Work / Trafficking

I was fortunate to be part of an amazing team to craft a position paper on prostitution, sex work, and human trafficking during the 2012 Sexualities Section of the American Sociological Association conference Crossing Boundaries, Workshopping Sexualities. So in keeping with Valentine’s Day: Brents et al 2012 State of the Field Working Paper Sex Work…
February 11, 2011

Book review of The State of Sex by Brents, Jackson & Hausbeck

A Review of: “The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland. By Barbara G. Brents, Crystal A. Jackson, and Kathryn Hausbeck” New York, NY: Routledge, 2009, 320 pages. Paperback, $28.76. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2011.