Lecture 17 - sexualuty,practices,preferences and identities Flashcards
How do societal norms and values shape perceptions and reactions to sexual deviance?
What did psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing contribute to the understanding of sexuality?
He authored Psychopathia sexualis, defining terms like ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’.
Define ‘heterosexuality’.
Erotic feelings towards the opposite sex.
Define ‘homosexuality’.
Erotic feelings towards the same sex.
What is ‘psycho-sexual hermaphroditism’?
Impulses towards both sexes.
What shift occurred regarding sexuality in modern medicine?
- Sexuality moved from sin and crime to health and illness.
- Detaching sexuality from procreation
The invention of heterosexuality
- Satisfaction of bipolar sexual desire crucially contributed to emotional satisfaction and partnership
- Hetero-Homosexual division.
- Heterosexuality - master sex. This is the definition and everything else falls underneath.
- Other forms of sexuality: deviations
What was the societal impact of the baby boom after WWII?
Desire to procreate confined to marriage with two sexes.
* In the early 20th century there were wars, falling birth rates and rising divorce rates.
* Wars threathen to wipe out population so we need procreation.
* Hetero-oppositeness of sexes and stress on gender differences
* Sexuality - erotic pleasure
What does ‘hegemonic masculinity’ refer to?
The dominant form of masculinity that legitimizes men’s superior position in society.
* Institutionalizes the common idea that women and men are different and unequal
*
List characteristics of hegemonic masculinity.
There is a specific way to be a man based on the idea that the genders are unequal - they are the breadwinners and are in the public sphere.
* Physical prowess
* Competitiveness
* Dominance
* Aggressiveness
* Career-oriented
* Suppressing emotions
What is ‘hegemonic femininity’?
Characteristics that reinforce women’s subordination and uphold traditional gender roles.
* Women are gated to the domestic sphere rather than the public sphere.
* Upholding traditional gender roles and expectations, contributes to the maintenance of a patriarchal social structure where men hold more power and privilege than women.
List examples of hegemonic femininity.
- Prioritizing domestic tasks
- Being nurturing
- Conforming to beauty standards
What is ‘heteronormativity’?
- Traditional gender order
- The assumption and enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality.
- Social norms and institutions reflect and reinforce gender order.
What does ‘heterosexual hegemony’ entail?
Cultural emphasis on traditional gender roles post-WWII.
* The cult of domesticity
* Feminist started looking into the fact that before WWII women were participating more in the academic sphere and going more into academia and labour markets (because men were gone and at war)
* Women=home, motherhood, childcare (strong emphasis on the gender role of women, closing of the opportunity for women to do work…which they could before)
* Men=fatherhood and wagework
1930s - FBI wars on sex criminals
- Conflation of pedophilia with homosexuality through mass media
- People arrested and institutionalized for homosexuality
1950s - Lavender scare
- National fear of soviet attack
- Being a homosexual is tied to being part of soviet attack - easily used by russian spies. Moral feableness - more system is corrupt already. If you are hiding the gact you are homosexual, this can be used against you by russian to get you to do things for them
- People losing jobs and being arrested because of being homosexual
What was the American Psychiatric Association’s stance on homosexuality in 1952?
Listed it as a ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’ in the DSM-I.
* Homosexuality was the most significant agent that divided the world into good and evil
What was Alfred Kinsey’s view?
Kinsey: Is there a place for “normal” and “abnormal” in scientific vocabulary?
* No
* Society: Normal sex=majority sex
* Its science!
* It is a spectrum, we dont actually have binaries
* People don’t retain the idea of a spectrum
* His information is twisted, misuse of Kinsey’s reports in the 60s
Same sex attraction as mental illness
- Freud: universal human bisexuality — everybody had within them a mix of masculinity and femininity (we are all born bisexual and then we turn heterosexual)
- In 1940s American psychiatrists started claiming that they could cure homosexuality by modern medical institutions.
- Rejected the ideas of earlier sexologists who argued that homosexuality was innate.
- Homosexuality was a symptom of a deeper pathology, one that could be treated and cured.
“The diagnosis” for homosexuality
- The “diagnosis”
- Gays and lesbians were viewed as mentally ill deviants
- Not to punished by to be cured
- Forced hospitalization into mental institutions (some were voluntary hospitalization)
- Hormone replacements,
- Castrations,
- Sex organ transplants,
- Bodily cauterization
- Lobotomies - Common treatments prescribed by doctors to chemically and psychologically alter thebody part/system that was hypothesized to be the cause of homosexuality
- Between 1936 and 1951 approximately 18,600o were documented to have undergone lobotomy
What did Freud theorize about sexual orientation?
He proposed universal human bisexuality.
What was the treatment approach for homosexuality in the 1940s?
Claimed it could be cured by modern medical institutions.
What were some common treatments for homosexuality in the mid-20th century?
- Hormone replacements
- Castrations
- Lobotomies
How did they cure mental illness?
- Conversion therapies (soft form of regiment)
- Exercise regiments to promote masculinity in male patients
- Rest and relaxation designed to further sexual equilibrium
- Extensive contact with sex workers and arranged marriages to promote relationships with opposite-sex partners
- Controlled masturbation designed to force clients to find individuals of the opposite sex arousing.