Lecture 18 Flashcards
What is The gender gap in voting?
refers to the difference in the percentage
of women and the percentage of men voting for a given candidate or supporting a particular party, officeholder, or issue
women are Democrats
What is Sexuality?
is how people experience and express
themselves as human beings. It involves values, thoughts, feelings and relationships.
● ‘Sexuality’ is not a given; it is a product of power,
negotiation, struggle and human agency
What is the Essentialist view of sexuality?
● Sex is a natural element
● It is as an all-powerful instinct which
demands fulfillment against the claims
of morals, beliefs and social restrictions
● Sex is dangerous and source of all of
our troubles
● Sex is a ‘biological mandate’ which
presses against and must be restrained
by the cultural institutions
How is sexuality socially constructed?
Sexuality is shaped by social forces.
● Becomes meaningful through its social forms and social organization
● The forces that shape and mould the erotic possibilities of the body vary from society to society
● We go through sexual socialisation in the same way we go through all the other
“socialisations”
How are there cultural differences in sexuality?
Ex. Gender of the partners, the species, age, kin, race, caste or class
● Ex. The organs that we use, what we may touch, when we may touch, with what frequency
● Regulations formal and informal, legal and extra-legal.
What is the Roman Catholic Sexual Tradition?
Sex occurs between two different genders in monogamous marriage
Do many cultures have monogamy?
Nah only 15% ish
What did Kinsey find?
Western practices also varied beneath “official conformity”
- “Taboo” stuff behind closed doors
● In Kinsey’s 1940s sample, 50% of males and 26% of females had extra-marital
sex by the age of 40 (Kinsey et al. 1953).
What is the difference between teenage sex with American parents and Netherland parents:
American parents:
● Teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden:
● Most will not allow their children to have sex at home
● Sex is a frequent source of family conflict.
For parents in the Netherlands: parents often permit young couples to sleep
together in their home
● Provide them with contraceptives
● Teenage pregnancy and STDs are far less frequent in Netherlands
How was Homosexual activity in ancient times?
Focus on ACT
tolerated as long as it did not ‘feminise’ the man (can’t bottom)
How is Homosexual activity Modern Western society?
preoccupation with the WHO
- Now don’t dislike the act, you dislike person
How did 18th and 19th century definitions of normal effect relationships with other sex?
Categorization of other forms of sense
● Labelling the “other” as perversive/aberrant/immoral/insane
● Homosexuality moved from being a category of sin to become a psychosocial disposition.
● Rise of medical, psychological and educational norms and of Sexology
How was homosexuality skewed?
Sharpen the binary divide between the normal and the abnormal
● Construct homosexuality as the despised Other
● Underwrite heteronormativity as the unspoken dominant structure.
What did Kinsey argue about normal / abnormal sexuality?
Kinsey’s research showed their was a great
deal of diversity in terms of sexual desire
and behaviour.
● Kinsey argued people should not think of
sexuality as normal or abnormal but define
it by what people are doing.
What is Kinsey’s famous contribution?
development of the Heterosexual–Homosexual Rating Scale.
