Ch. 5. Sexualities Flashcards
Sexuality as a Social Construction
SEXUALITY AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT – Within sociology, sexuality is thought of as dependent on culture – based on society’s agreed-upon meanings for sexual behaviors, feelings, and identities.
- Seeing Sexuality this way allows us to explain why it is so different across cultures, and why the meanings of sex have changed over time.
- It also helps us understand how sexuality can be viewed as a social problem.
- Many issues related to sexuality can be considered social problems: sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections, and public masturbation.
SEXUAL BULLYING – A pattern of sexual harassment that can include:
- Spreading rumors about a person’s sexual behavior or identity
- Forcing someone to do something sexual
- Writing sexual messages about a person online or as graffiti.
SEX – The behaviors of two or more people who consent to the pursuit of pleasure and define these behaviors as such.
SEXUALITY – A combination of sexual behaviors, attractions, identities, and communities.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION – Society’s agreed-upon meanings that vary across culture and time.
- When we examine sexuality as socially constructed, it becomes clear that sexuality-related social problems are also socially constructed. What counts as a social problem in one society is quite normal in another.
Patterns and Trends
PATTERNS AND TRENDS
- College women aged 18–24 face a risk of sexual violence three times higher than women overall.
- Among all juvenile victims of sexual assault, 82% are girls. Among adult victims, 90% are women
- People can’t even agree on the definition of sex.
- Even with the most obvious definition – Penile-Vaginal Intercourse (PVI) – Some people still hesitate to classify PVI as “sex”. This is because Many people would classify PVI as sex only if it was consensual, otherwise, it is rape.
-
Why do we need to be told that “no” always means “no” when it comes to sex? Isn’t that assertion common sense?
- Society is moving toward understanding CONSENT as a key part of sexual experiences.
Hookup Culture and the Sexual Double Standard
HOOKING UP – A casual sexual encounter without emotional or romantic expectations, often occurring within an intoxicating party atmosphere.
- The ubiquitous presence of alcohol in hookup culture:
- means that young adults may engage in risky sexual behaviors.
- Raises important questions about whether intoxicated actors are freely consenting to sexual activity.
- The kind of sex that happens in a hookup culture tends to benefit men more than women due to the “Orgasm Gap” between heterosexual women and men.
- Men’s entitlement to pleasure in a hookup, and disregard for women’s, reflects a type of gender inequality
SEXUAL DOUBLE STANDARD – the ways men are rewarded for their sexually permissive attitudes and behaviors, while women are negatively labeled for doing the same things.
- The argument is that, although hookup culture may not necessarily be bad for women overall, its focus on men’s pleasure may normalize men’s sexual aggression and be a contributing factor to rape culture.
- As a result, many people consider hookup culture a social problem.
Sex Work and Human Trafficking
SEXUAL LABOR – Selling of sex for money
- People who have conservative political ideologies are more likely to oppose prostitution, while people who are more liberal, less religious, and of higher social status are more accepting of it.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING – Recruiting, transporting, and harboring vulnerable people through threats or force to exploit their labor, including sexual labor.
- Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry that enslaves millions of children, women, and men.
SEX TRAFFICKING – Human trafficking that results in forced Sexual labor.
- Targets the most vulnerable by victimizing youth who run away and are homeless.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Sexual Health
SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES (STD) – Bacterial and viral infections of the human body that are passed through sexual behaviors.
- Most sexually active people will be affected by an STD at some point in their lives
- The existence of STDs is considered a social problem.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC) – a national governmental organization tasked with the surveillance of risks to human health, including STDs.
- Although anyone can get an STD, some groups are more at risk than others:
- Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years are most at risk for acquiring an STD
- Men who have sex with other men are at greater risk of acquiring STDs compared to men who are exclusively heterosexual and women.
- Compared to men, women face serious long-term health complications, such as infertility.
- The American Psychiatric Association (APA) designates a range of sexual practices as indicative of mental disorders in its diagnostic manual.
- However: APA’s diagnostic manual lacks any definition for what counts as healthy or functional sexuality.
- Much of how we pathologize sexuality in the United States is related to social stigma.
- So, perhaps the social problems related to sexual health, then, are more about societal health than physical or psychological conditions.
Structural Functionalism – Sexual Violence
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM – Theories within structural functionalism focus on how a society works, or functions, to maintain itself. It examines the ways different social institutions work together to maintain order within society. With regard to Sexuality, we would consider what function sexual violence serves in society.
- A Structural Functionalist explanation for sexual violence relates to gender inequality.
- In a patriarchal, or male-dominated, society like the United States, sexual violence can be understood as serving to maintain the status quo of gender differences.
- It might argue that because many women live in fear of being raped, their ability to live freely in the world is stifled, thus perpetuating their continued subordination as women.
- The threat of sexual violence, then, serves to inhibit women’s independence and sexual autonomy.
- Conversely, it sustains men’s roles as the dominant actors in sexual exchanges and in social life more broadly.
- In a patriarchal, or male-dominated, society like the United States, sexual violence can be understood as serving to maintain the status quo of gender differences.
-
LATENT FUNCTIONS – An unintended, or indirect, consequence of a social action; results that occur but were NOT the primary purpose of the action.
- EX: Sexual violence may have important latent functions – like mobilizing women to act with collective resistance.
- An unintended consequence of sexual violence from a structural functionalist perspective may be the new ways we understand sexual violence as occurring in a RAPE CULTURE – The societal conditions that encourage men’s dominance over women where men feel entitled to sexually coerce women in order to fit conventional standards of masculinity.
- In this context, rape is not something committed by “bad” or pathological men but is something that fits within masculinity constructs that encourage men’s dominance over women and promotes relationships based on sexual coercion.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM – If we acknowledge that sexual assault occurs because of cultural norms, then strategies to end sexual violence should address the institutional factors that contribute to rape culture.
- Through social media hashtags like #BeenRapedNeverReported, anti-street harassment apps like HollaBack!, and countless feminist blogs, digital activism is raising awareness about the problem of sexual violence. These forums foster community and dialogue among young women and girls
Conflict Theory – Sexual Violence
CONFLICT THEORY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE – conflict theory represents a struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots.” – with regard to sexual violence, Conflict Theory considers the ways men control resources and are therefore positioned to set the sexual agenda in heterosexual contexts.
- Women between the ages of 18 and 24 report the highest rates of rape compared to all other age groups among women
- A conflict theorist would conclude that in this patriarchal context, men are the beneficiaries who have more power to sexually exploit women.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS of the Conflict Perspective – It can be hard for women to report being raped.
- Compared to other original felony charges that accused defendants face, rape and assault have a lower chance of resulting in convictions.
-
Reasons why girls/women are unlikely to report these incidents to the police.
- Fear of judgment – Young women may fear that law enforcement officers may judge them negatively, especially if they were involved with older men or were drinking alcohol while underage.
Symbolic Interactionism – Sexual Violence
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM and SEXUAL VIOLENCE – focuses on the interpersonal relationships between the people involved and the meanings of their interactions. With regard to sexual violence, we would consider the problem on the individual, or micro, level – which puts the focus on interpretations by the individual in each interaction.
-
EX: Due to buying into the myth that women “ask” to be raped by dressing or acting provocatively or by flirting or becoming intoxicated. In such a circumstance, a male club-goer may attribute a girl’s clothing as a sign that she is interested in sexual activity. To this person, the clothing symbolizes a possibility for a physical encounter, but for the woman, she may have just wanted to flirt and have a good time dancing.
- The symbolic interactionist theory helps us to understand how people interpret the same symbols with different meanings.
- It can demonstrate how people normalize sexual violence in everyday interactions by rationalizing that “She was asking for it”.
- EX: So the male sees his unwelcome groping and sexual dominance as just a regular part of heterosexual life.
LOOKING-GLASS SELF – individuals imagine how others view them and respond according to how they think others are judging them.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS of Symbolic Interactionism – How can change be felt in one-on-one interactions?
- One study of college students found that sexual stereotypes affect how people expect to negotiate consent in their interpersonal relationships.
- This research drives home the need for sexuality education programs that combat harmful sexual stereotypes while teaching young people how to talk about their wants, needs, and boundaries.
- Openly discussing desires and limits with prospective partners lays the foundation for consensual encounters to occur.
TRANSGENDER and LGBTQ
In the commonly used LGBTQ descriptor, all the letters stand for a SEXUAL IDENTITY (Gay/Stright/Bi), except for –
-
T—TRANSGENDER – which represents a gender (male-female) term.
- In reality, transgender people can be any sexual identity.
- They can be L, G, B, Q, or any other sexuality.
- The inclusion of “transgender” in this acronym reflects the ways trans people are part of queer communities and organizations.
- The acronym seems to account for the ways that gender and sexuality intersect.
- Half of trans people reported being sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
- In addition to the links between gender and sexuality, the effects of race and class cannot be overlooked. Looking at all these influences is critical and is a part of the INTERSECTIONAL approach.
Erotic Habitus: Marginalized and Normalized Sexualities
EROTIC HABITUS – The interplay between psychological processes (Individual) and structural influences (Society) at work when people negotiate sexual desires and behaviors.
- Says that the way we experience our sexuality is influenced by society – that things like sexual desire and our ideas about sex are connected shaped by society.
HABITUS – How people learn and implement that learning as action in a given social context.
- Bourdieu (1980) described habitus as “embodied history” that “is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product”. He argued that people develop a habitus over time through the process of socialization and life experiences.
-
In other words, people and society become who/what they are over time due to the collection of influences and experiences they’ve absorbed over time.
- EX: In some societies, women’s breasts are not sexualized. The sexualization of breasts, then, is dependent on one’s culture. So, in the United States, where breasts are featured as a prominent attribute of women’s sexuality, people learn to treat them as such.
-
In other words, people and society become who/what they are over time due to the collection of influences and experiences they’ve absorbed over time.
- The Erotic Habitus Theory argues that societal forces influence us and affect the ways we experience desire. In this way, heterosexual men’s sexual desire for women’s breasts has become normalized.
BLACK FEMINIST THEORY – also known as intersectional feminist theory, has a rich history in the United States.
- Black feminist theory will always examine the intersections between gender, race, class, sexuality, and other aspects of identity that shape human experiences in complex ways.
