Women's Sexuality across the Life Span

Challenging Myths, Creating Meanings

Judith C. Daniluk

Paperback

June 9, 2003

ISBN 9781572309111

Price: $49.00

416 Pages

Size: 6⅛" x 9¼"

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This essential book explores how women experience and express their sexuality from childhood through old age. Moving beyond a traditional focus on sexual functioning, the book emphasizes the complex interaction of psychological, social, cultural, and biological influences on the creation of individual sexual meanings—meanings central to each woman's experience of herself as a sexual person. The author shows how these meanings are often problematic and contradictory, causing many women to feel disconnected from their bodies and from their needs and desires. Demonstrating how problematic myths and messages can be challenged, the book outlines ways that women can be empowered to create a more comfortable and self-defined sexuality throughout life.

“I recommend this book to women who want to learn more about their sexual selves and to the counselors who want to help them. In addition, I hope this book is widely adopted in human sexuality courses and women's studies courses. This is a book that challenges and informs.”

—The Journal of Sex Research

“[This book is] a text for students and teachers in women's studies programs; a manual for therapists, social workers, and nurse practitioners; a treatise for those interested in how the cultural and social context shapes sexual development; and a feminist critique of patriarchal power. I was especially struck by the volume of information on every conceivable aspect of women's sexuality.”

—Journal of Feminist Family Therapy

“Daniluk's humor and attention to context and the wholeness of life connect and define this work, and her overall integration of themes makes it essential reading for those interested in gender issues, feminine sexuality, the role of social constructs in female sexual issues, and the relation of sexuality to stages of the life span.”

—Readings

“This volume excels at exploring the psychological and biological stages of a female's sexuality in an easy-to-understand format....Age appropriate exercises are provided in a step-by-step replicable format that can be administered to clients in either individual or group formats.....Recommended for all counselors.”

—Counseling Today

I. The Enigma of Women's Sexuality

1. Opening Pandora's Box

II. Childhood and Adolescence

2. Teaching the Children

3. Adolescence: Biological and Psychological Development

4. Menstruation: Initiation into Womanhood

5. "Bawdy" Image: From Subject to Object

6. Who Loves Ya, Babe?: Sexual Intimacies and Expression

III. Young Adulthood

7. Biological and Psychological Development

8. Creating a Life

9. In the Prime of Life: Living in Our Bodies

10. Fanning the Flames of Desire

IV. The Middle and Later Years

11. Biological and Psychological Development

12. When Being "Hot" Takes on New Meaning: Menopause

13. The Festival of Lipid Migration: Bodily Changes and Body Image

14. Intimate Connections: Sexual Expression and Relationships

15. Coming Full Circle

Appendices:

The Sexual Development of Children and Adolescents

Body Image and Struggles with Weight

The Aftermath of Sexual Violence

Lesbian Identity and Sexual Orientation

Reproductive Health and Decision Making

Disability and Illness

Issues for Women in the Middle and Later Years

About the Author

Judith C. Daniluk, PhD, is Professor and Director of Training in the Counselling Psychology Program at the University of British Columbia.

Audience

Helping professionals in diverse settings; professors and students in clinical and counseling psychology, social work, nursing, health education and human sexuality, and women's studies.

Serves as a text in advanced undergraduate-level courses in women's studies and human sexuality, or in graduate-level courses in counseling, social work, and nursing.

Course Use