ABSTRACT
Over the last few years, the study of sexuality has ceased to be of marginal interest in the social sciences. Various reasons can be given for this. The work of Foucault (1976, 1984a, and 1985b) and Rubin (1975, 1984) has encouraged us to understand sexuality as a social construction and an area of study relatively separate from that of gender. Concurrently, a focus on pleasure, which had hitherto been absent in social theory, stressed the importance of deconstructing the binary divides of man-woman, masculine-feminine, heterosexual–homosexual, within which discussion of sexuality has hitherto been framed (Butler 1990). Interest shifted subsequently towards the study of desire, its significance, evolution and cultural meaning. In parallel, feminist analysis not only questioned the ‘naturalness’ of sexuality, but also developed a critique of gender relations and the normative character of heterosexual and reproductive sexuality (Bereni et al. 2008).
