Sexuality: The Essential Glossary (review)

1 86Reviews Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. 2004. Edited by Jo Eadie. London: Arnold (distributed by Oxford University Press). Pp. 286. i: [f one's primary interest in a book boldly titled Sexuality is prurient .and puerile, then one had best flee to the dark corners of the Internet for satisfaction rather than turn to Jo Eadie's "essential glossary." It is an adult (as in "emotionally and mentally mature" not "XXXX GIRLS!!!!") work, rather than locker-room fodder, and it speaks plainly without blushing or giggling : there is nothing erotic about a description of breasts as "the fleshy appendages on the chest of the adult female." The headword list varies from terms as bland as family to those as unusual as fetching (given in the text under its less-common spelling, feltching) . With about 400 entries, ranging from about a half-page in length for most entries to more than a page for a few, there must be some expected entries that do not appear. But it is curious that there are two entries for sex, the first handling the idea of gender, but there is no single entry for gender itself, nor a cross-reference in its place. Other selection choices are also at odds with the idea of this book being a general-use guide. Rainbow kisring and feltching seem to this reviewer to be outliers — they fit neatly into the structure of the glossary given in the Preface, under the rubric of "Identities, acts, and orientations ; Sex acts" but they also seem to be random choices — why those? When there are so many types of sex acts to choose from, how were the included entries chosen? The frontmatter does not explain the process by which the headword list was set. Beyond, apparently, a desire for increased public sexual awareness, no orthodoxy or one political perspective seems to be evangelized by the contributors or editor. Certainly ongoing or historical debates related to any entry, such as whether female ejaculation occurs and is made of something other than urine, are mentioned, but unless one counts the absence of any kind of condemnation of certain sexual acts to be a fault, no particular mores or behaviors of any sexual community are promoted here. They are simply explained. The work is best considered as an introduction to the field of sexuality and as a resource for study in fields where sexual or gender politics are in play. As Eadie makes plain in the preface, it is where fields overlap that this book has its greatest utility. She and the more than 40 contributors have stayed close to the glossary side of building a lexicon, with entries that are encyclopedic , and avoiding many of the shorthands and space-savers of mass market lexicography. The entry for anus, for example, is taken as an opportunity to talk about the orifice's role in sex play, but the entry also serves as a link through Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Soáety ofNorth America 27 (2006), 186-187 Reviews1 87 cross-references to terms elsewhere in the book that might not immediately be associated with the term. One comes away from entries like that for anus with the feeling that there is much more to be said than is accounted for in the entry, but this is compensated for by an extensive bibliography, which is heavily referenced throughout each entry. References marked "further reading" also appear at the end of some entries. The anus entry also includes several terms, such as turd-burglar, that are not given stand-alone entries in the glossary and not cross-referenced or listed among the headwords anywhere else in the work. This is a minor shortcoming , to be sure, but it is one that galls the obsessive completist. Perhaps a short index strictly for terms that do not appear in the alphabetical listings might have been in order. Other opportunities for more cross-referencing also exist. For example, there is an entry for FGM but no cross-reference atfemale genital mutilation, the full form of the term. Instead, there is one at circumcision. The book has a few stylistic curiosities. The main one is that nearly all headwords are capitalized...