Subtitle: Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions
Author: Edited by Patricia Beattie Jung, Mary E. Hunt, and Radhika Balakrishnan
Subject: Women's Studies/Religion/Sociology
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2884-4
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2883-6
Pages: 220 pp.
Description: Essays that consider how women from diverse religious traditions and cultures are redefining sexuality for the common good

"This groundbreaking collection of 11 articles by women from eight countries and seven religious traditions challenges male-defined ideas of sexuality that have constricted women by denying them pleasure and autonomous agency and threatening their well-being and, sometimes, lives. . . . While the contributors do not always agree, they do recognize the importance of global and interdisciplinary perspectives and affirm the tension women experience when they work for change from within a repressive tradition. Recommended." --Library Journal

"Religious communities rarely address sex and sexuality effectively. This collection by international, interreligious feminist scholars gives us healthy ways to talk about women's sexuality."--Emilie M. Townes, author of Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care

"Good Sex is a rare gem. It opens doors of inquiry into feminism, religion, and sexuality--exploring terrain that is vital to the human rights of women and men. It invites passionate debate and will no doubt become a classic."--Charlotte Bunch, executive director, Center for Women's Global Leadership, Rutgers University

What is "good sex" in the globalized world of the twenty-first century? This volume brings together essays by feminist scholars from different religions and cultures to consider how women are redefining sexuality for the common good. The essays explore sexual and social restrictions on women; religiously and socially acceptable avenues of sexual expression; constructions of sexual identities; and attitudes toward women's sexual desires. How is sexual desire constructed within specific cultural and religious contexts? What sacrifices must women make (and how do they make them) simply to have sexual lives? What options and strategies are available to women to dissolve the many restrictions imposed on their sexuality? These are some of the questions being explored.

Patricia Beattie Jung is an associate professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago and is coauthor of Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge. Mary E. Hunt is cofounder and codirector of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and author of Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship. Radhika Balakrishnan is an associate professor of international studies at Marymount Manhattan College.