One of my earliest papers and for a while, in my far away youth, my favourite personal paper was Symbolic Interactionism and Sexual Conduct: An emergent perspective. It was my first clear statement of a position – even though it took some ten years to be published and even then in a much edited form than the original ( a third of the original!). For a little while it did seem to be used for teaching as a guide to the emerging new position on sexuality ( during the 1980’s ) on courses and the like.
It grew out of my 1973 Ph.D thesis; and a paper that I presented at the British Sociological Association Conference in 1973 on Gender Division conference in Aberdeen.
It finally got published in a 1982 collection, edited by a friend – ~Mike Brake, who tragically died young. Mike was a mature sociology student – retrained from the ballet – and was a stalwart of the National Deviancy Conference. He became a lecturer at the University of Kent and died in the late 1980’s.
You can find the paper at: Symbolic Interactionism and Sexual Conduct: An Emergent Perspective 1982
