Sex in the Middle East and North Africa examines the sexual practices, politics, and complexities of the modern Arab world. Short chapters feature a variety of experts in anthropology, sociology, health science, and cultural studies. Many of the chapters are based on original ethnographic and interview work with subjects involved in these practices and include their voices.
The book is organized into three sections: Single and Dating, Engaged and Married, and It's Complicated. The allusion to categories of relationship status on social media is at once a nod to the compulsion to categorize, recognition of the many ways that categorization is rarely straightforward, and acknowledgment that much of the intimate lives described by the contributors is mediated by online technologies.
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Glossary of Terms
Introduction
Sex in the Middle East and North Africa: Complicated Legacies and the Politics of Representation
Angel M. Foster & L. L. Wynn
Part I: Single and Dating
Anywhere but Home: Dating, Hooking Up, and Casual Sex in Jordan | I. M. El-Mowafi & Angel M. Foster
Gay Sex Apps and Heteronormative Masculinity in Beirut, Lebanon | Mathew Gagné
Better Out than In: The Importance of Withdrawal in Sex and Family Planning in Turkey | Katrina MacFarlane
Queer Sociality in the Gulf in the Early 2000s: A Continuum of Outness and Silence Mediated by Class Privilege | Saffaa Hassanein & L. L. Wynn
Hexes and Exes: Post-Breakup Curses in Fez, Morocco | Shannon Hayes
Part II: Engaged and Married
God under the Bedsheets: Pleasure, Porn, and Piety among Iranian Revolutionary Women | Younes Saramifar
The Gendered Relationship between Sex and Marriage in Egypt: Interrogating Secret Marriages among Urban Youth in Cairo and Minya | Rania Salem
For us, there is no love: Becoming "American" and the Politics of Intimacy | Morgen Chalmiers
The Wives of the Heroes, Smuggled Sperm, and Reproductive Technologies: Palestinian Women Building Families on Their Own | Laura Ferrero
Part III: It's Complicated
Blurred Lines between Transactional Sex and Paramarital Relationships in Egypt | L. L. Wynn
Legal and Illegal Sex Work in Tunisia: Before and After the 2010-2011 Revolution | Laurence Michalak
Love, Sex, and Sexuality in Morocco: Navigating Barriers, Expanding Boundaries | Ginger Feather
(Un)hiding the Samaritan's Sexuality in Egypt: Insights from a Coptic Woman's Journal | Mina Ibrahim
Conclusion
Sexual Emergence in the Middle East and North Africa: Ten Insights from the Ethnography | Marcia C. Inhorn
Index
