Sexual Bargaining in the Digital Era: Crafting a New Normal

(Hardback)

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Sexual Bargaining in the Digital Era follows the evolution of genders/sexualities and so on away from their Old Normal (ON) pattern, which prevailed during the Agricultural Age and the Industrial Age, and into the New Normal (NN) pattern which is currently surfacing in concert with an emerging Digital Era.

ON was based on the ancient traditional script governing how women, men, children ought to behave within the spheres of genders/marriages/families/relationships/sexualities. Over the centuries, ON eventually modified into the familiar 1950s style (nuclear) patriarchal, cisgender, husband/wife/with children and family. And now that style itself is fading away into NN.

NN is based not on script but on improvisationit is essentially a continual work-in-progress. To make it function the partners engage in ongoing negotiation governed by the principle that everything is negotiable except the principle that everything is negotiable. NN has thus far been pursued most frequently by persons (New Lights) who are educated and relatively advantaged. ON has been pursued mostly by persons (Old Lights) who are less educated and relatively less advantaged. ON is also strongly embraced by persons of a traditional religious bentpersons who tend to be rigid and unbending in their religious views. Currently, they tend to be extremely right-wing evangelicals and extremely right-wing Catholics. Importantly, their political clout far exceeds their relatively modest numbers within the larger population.

In brief, the shift from ON to NN is a move away from the sanctity of a particular structure to the primacy of persons engaged in ongoing processes of inventing (and reinventing) certain arrangements of genders/marriages/families/relationships/sexualities, enabling them to fulfil their needs for primary (intrinsic/emotional) satisfactions such as liking, loving, empathy, companionship, sexual and so forth. Among other things, this shift replaces the preeminence of the historic binary or cisgender approachheterosexual, legal, children and so onin favor of the diversity/variety/multiplicity approach which incorporates under one conceptual umbrella all persons of whatever genders, sexualities and so on. All persons are thus engaged in a common struggle to achieve personal satisfactions as well as contribute to the Greater Good.

Reviews

Scanzoni adeptly interrogates how vestiges of a religiously conservative and patriarchal landscape still impede the progressive agenda to forge a new normal for how people construct, negotiate, and express their gendered identities. This provocative and engaging book champions fresh educational initiatives to cultivate womens autonomy in the new digital era. William Marsiglio, Professor, Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida, US

Author Bio

John H. Scanzoni is a sociologist with a long interest in the study of historic and contemporary changes in genders/marriages/families/relationships/sexualities.