Shameless

In "Shameless", noted scholar Arlene Stein explores American culture's attitude towards shame and sexuality. Stein makes sense of the conservative and progressive groups' competing visions of morality and justice, arguing that while conservatives have brought back sexual shame by instituting abstinence - only sex education, limitations on abortion, and prohibitions of gay/lesbian civil rights, progressives have simultaneously overseen the flowering of sexual liberation, the emergence of a post-closeted culture, and the enactment of same-sex marriages and adoption laws. As these two groups struggle to gain ground on one another, there is much in the balance: the future shape of families, the right to privacy, and the meaning of equal rights for all. "Shameless" covers seventies lesbian feminism through the unprecedented attack on sexual freedom in the twenty-first century, and includes essays on lesbian sexual identities, the sexual politics of popular music, how activists of the religious right think about themselves, the culture war's battle over Holocaust memory, and the rise of homophobia in conservative politics. In the end, with wit and a sly sense of irony, Stein points out that American culture is a curious mix of the shameless and the shamers, a seemingly endless parade of Pamela Andersons and Jerry Falwells strutting their stuff and wagging their fingers.