The ensemble of articles and book reviews in this issue of Sexuality, Health and Society explore life, labor, and identity itineraries unforeseen/unforeseeable vis-à-vis currrent gender and sexuality conventions. They discuss various situations of displacement or rupture –– commercial sex; infertility and its derivations; Viagra recreational use; beauty pageants; abortion and couple swinging –– all of which seem to impose on their subjects (as they do on researchers) the delicate reflexive work of actively constructing lived experience from new meanings, significations, and values.
We hope that the narratives that researchers construct on, and about, the stories told by the protagonists of the multiple social situations addressed in this issue may, in turn, motivate readers to further reflexions and developments.