Chapter 1 - What is Human Sexuality? Flashcards
Gender
The behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically involved with one sex.
Gender Roles
Complex clusters of ways in which males and females are expected to behave within a given culture.
Human Sexuality
The ways in which we experience and express ourselves as sexual beings.
Values
The qualities in life that are deemed important or unimportant, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable.
Phallic Worship
Worship of the penis as a symbol of generative power.
Phallic Symbol
An image of the penis.
Incest Taboo
The prohibition against intercourse and reproduction among close blood relatives.
Bisexual
Sexually responsive to either gender.
Pederasty
Sexual love of boys.
Courtesan
A prostitute - especially the mistress of a noble or wealthy man.
Concubines
A secondary wife, usually of inferior legal and social status.
Bestiality
Sexual relations between a person and an animal.
Sadism
The practice of achieving sexual gratification through hurting or humiliating others.
Fellatio
A sexual activity involving oral contact with the penis.
Cunnilingus
A sexual activity involving oral contact with the female genitals.
Fornication
Sexual intercourse between people who are not married to one another.
Evolution
The development of a species to its present state, which is believed to involve adaptions to its environment.
Natural Selection
The evolutionary process by which adaptive traits enable members of a species to survive to reproductive age and transmit these traits to future generations.
Mutation
A random change in the molecular structure of DNA.
Genes
The basic unit of heredity, which consists of chromosomal segments of DNA.
Chromosomes
The rodlike structures that reside in the nuclei of every living cell and carry the genetic code in the form of genes.
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid - the chemical substance whose molecules make up genes and chromosomes.
Psychoanalysis
The theory of personality originated by Sigmund Freud, which proposes that human behavior represents the outcome of clashing inner forces.
Defense Mechanisms
In psychoanalytic theory, automatic processes that protect the ego from anxiety by disguising of ejecting unacceptable ideas and urges.
Repression
The automatic ejection of anxiety-evoking ideas from consciousness.
Erogenous Zones
Parts of the body, including but not limited to the sex organs, that responsive to sexual stimulation.
Psychosexual Development
In psychoanalytic theory, the process by which sexual feelings shift from one erogenous zone to another.
Oedipus Complex
In psychoanalytic theory, a conflict of the phallic stage in which a boy wishes to possess his mother sexually and perceives his father as a rival in love.
Behaviorists
Learning theorists who argue that a scientific approach to understanding behavior must refer only to observable and measurable behaviors.
Coitus
Sexual intercourse.
Social-Cognitive Theory
A cognitively oriented learning theory in which observational learning, values, and expectations play key roles in determining behavior.
Feminist Theory
A theory that challenges acceptance of the male as the norm, traditional gender roles, and male oppression of females.
Queer Theory
A theory that challenges hetreronormativity and heterosexism.
Homophobia
Hatred of homosexuals.
Principles of Critical Thinking
- Be skeptical
- Examine definitions of terms
- Examine the assumption or premises of arguments.
- Be cautious in drawing conclusions from evidence.
- Consider alternative interpretations of research evidence.
- Consider the kinds of evidence on which conclusions are based.
- Do not oversimplify.
- Do not overgeneralize.
Stone Age art suggests that people worshiped ______.
Women’s ability to bear children.
The ancient ______ were first to produce a sex manual.
Chinese
According to the text, _________ challenged the prevailing British view by arguing that sexual desires in women were natural and healthy.
Havlock Ellis
A controversal Freudian belief is that _________.
Children normally harbor erotic interests.
Masters and Johnson are best known for using _______ in their research on human sexual response.
The laboratory-observation method.
Queer theories oppose _______.
Heterosexism.
According to _______ theory, children acquire the gender roles deemed appropriate in a society through reinforcement and observational learning.
Social-cognitive.
Psychopathia Sexualis was written by _______.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing.
According to the queer theory ______.
Current categories of sexual orientation do not adequately describe all people.
