Disorders of Desire: Sex and Gender in Modern American Sexology (Revised and Expanded Form): By Janice M. Irvine. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2005, 304 pp., $25.95.

Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:356358 DOI 10.1007/s10508-007-9298-5

BOOK REVIEW

Disorders of Desire: Sex and Gender in Modern American Sexology (Revised and Expanded Form)

By Janice M. Irvine. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2005, 304 pp., $25.95.

Elise R. Chenier

Published online: 13 February 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008

At the 2005 IASSAC conference, Irvine commented that if she were to write this book today she would approach her study of sex and gender in modern American sexology quite differently. Of course, few would write the same book twice, but Irvine was speaking directly to the shared sense of panic and despair U.S. scholars and activists expressed as they watched precious gains made in the 1970s and 1980s disappear faster than forces can be mobilized against the current assault on sexual rights and freedoms. As she remarks in the Afterword, critiques from the left were drowned out by the tidal wave of criticism from the right. Irvines comments were an apt reminder that whether we are constructing it, treating it, or writing about it, sex is politically charged territory where everyone has a position.

Fortunately, the publisher recognizes that this volumes sociohistorical analysis of modern American sexology is as relevant to readers today as it was when rst released in 1990 (see Turner, 1992). Reissued in expanded form, the returning reader is offered additional material in the form of a short preface, Chapter 7 (which rst appeared as an article in a 1993 issue of Social Text), and an Afterword that brings the book, and some of its arguments, up-to-date. Aside from minor editing for clarity, the original contents remain unchanged.

Irvines approach refuses to assess the successor fail-ureof any one technique, approach or theory. Like other historians of sexuality, she focuses on unpacking the cultural, ideological, and commercial foundations sexology rests upon. Inuenced by social control and social construction theories, Irvine regards 20th century American sexologists as agents for the medicalization of sex (p. 243). A central

theme that runs throughout the text is that sexology faces a double bind: on the one hand, because it relies on scientic rationality to stake a claim for cultural and political authority and legitimacy, sexology is doomed to fail since it refuses to engage with broader...