This issue of Sexuality, Health and Society – Latin American Journal explores a wide range of subjects and problems. We start by highlighting two articles for their careful critical analyses of particularly loaded notions deployed in contemporary debates on sexual abuse of children and adolescents, and on the legalization of abortion in our Region. Another common thread connecting the articles in this issue is the analytical challenge of taking up different empirical contexts with the tools of the approach conventionally designated as intersectional.
This issue of Sexuality, Health and Society also offers to its Latin American readership a Portuguese version of an important article by the North American sociologist Janice Irvine, especially released by the author and her editors. The piece, originally published in 1993, traces the relatively recent creation of two then new diagnostic categories for so-called sexual disorders – “inhibited sexual desire” and “sexual addiction.” Irvine’s article, which brought a fundamental contribution to the understanding of contemporary sexual regulation, serves as companion to the dossier on Medicalization, Sexuality, and Gender included in our previous issue #14.