Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex

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Rutgers University Press, 1997 - Psychology - 415 pages
In Fantasies of Femininity, Jane Ussher focuses on unraveling the contradictory visions of feminine sexuality: the fact that representations of the definition of woman seethe with sexuality yet for centuries women have been condemned for exploring their own sexual desires. In her quest for the sources of feminine representation, Ussher interviewed dozens of women - as well as some men - and combed popular media - from Seventeen to Cosmopolitan and Dallas to Donahue - to identify what shapes women's symbolic images of sex and femininity. Ussher argues that women have effectively resisted and subverted these archetypal fantasies of femininity, and in the process of so doing, reframed the very boundaries of sex. In this way, she exposes as myth much of what we think we know about "woman" and about "sex."

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Contents

INTRODUCTION Imagining Women Imagining Sex
3
Framing Woman
84
Denigration of Woman
143
Rape
292
Reframing
346
FURTHER READING
375
INDEX
393
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

JANE M. USHER is a senior lecturer in psychology as well as research director of the Women's Health Research Unit at University College, London. She is the author of several books, including The Psychology of the Female Body and Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?

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