ABSTRACT
The predominantly social-political literature on ‘gender’ has opened up the question of the subtle relations between sexualities and their cultural variations, reflecting the deeply embedded humanistic assumptions of sexuality which is now never considered entirely ‘natural’, and may even be thought not at all ‘natural’. This literature’s approach to addressing sexualities is, moreover, one that is usually constructed explicitly against the very idea of ‘nature’, which is one of the highly ideologically-charged ideas and concepts in civilizations where segregation was a fact of life (cf. Kojève, 1969; Aristotle, 1995. In this context, it is vital that the literature on gender originating from North America should penetrate the old continent of Europe and its biases. This is currently occurring, with the benefit of bringing about greater equality (although still too slowly) in the social, economic and political conditions of existence for women and men in the workplace and elsewhere.
