Q&A Flashcards
I find it difficult to find and understand the essence of the lecture about intersectionality. Are there any specific messages that are the most important?
The basic concept of intersectionality is that we all have different identities which intersect with one another. For example, LGB youth on average have a lower mental health than non-LGB youth. However, within the LGB group there is a large variety in terms of sex, ethnicity, SES background, etc.
People who experience 2 identities that put them at risk for discrimination or other negative effects, are not double at risk (1+1=2), but tend to be at a higher risk (1+1=3).
Fayaaz mentioned the example of queer youth of color. Thus, it is important to note the diversity within groups that are marginalized in society. In research, most studies are done on white, wealthy people and this means that much still remains unknown about those groups that may experience most stigmatization in our society.
The same goes for lecture 6. Do you have to know every detail of the development of each country’s CSE?
Understand the analogy between learning how to teach a child to cross the street and how to educate them about sexuality (e.g., the idea that education contributes, but is not a guarantee for safe street crossing / a healthy sexual development); investment is needed across the entire society – for street crossing this involves, for example, invest in reducing the prevalence of drunk driving and in improving the quality of the infrastructure. For a healthy sexual development of youth, besides sex education, investment is needed in youth-friendly health services, reducing gender and LGB+ discriminatory attitudes, etc.
- Oftentimes, alarming trends tend to ‘help’ to put sex education on the agenda. For example, in Nigeria there was an increase in HIV and therefore, the government was forced to take action and invest in sex education. Unfortunately, alarming trends are apparently needed in order to take action.
- Putting sweex education on the agenda or having sex education in national laws is not enough; it takes a lot of work to involve all stakeholders and actually make sex education happen. This is the case in resource-constrained and conservative contexts, but also in more progressive contexts (e.g. the Netherlands)
- Slide 54 is important; to make sex education work, all relevant stakeholders need to be involved; people should be proactive and stress the fact that we all have the same goal: we want our children to grow up safely and healthy.
- You should know what works against backlash (example: use strategic language; ‘life skills based education’ instead of ‘sex education’ to get critical people on your side)
In lecture 2A, they talked about the hormonal effects and then the organization hypothesis and the activational effects, but this was not entirely clear to me, could you briefly explain these 2?
Essentially, these hypotheses state that there are two critical periods for developing sex/gender-typed behaviour.
Organization is related to the hormones released in utero, and activational is what happens when hormones start being released again at puberty.
Organizational effects are dependent on the hormones that a fetus is exposed to during fetal development, and these hormones determines body shape (e.g. penis, vulva) and also brain structure.
After birth, males and females are quite similar, and then when puberty hits, the activational effects happen. This is when the groundwork laid during the organizational phase, is activated by puberty hormones. If the organizational components don’t happen, then at puberty, the hormones will not lead to sex-typical behaviour. And if the organizational things happen, but for some reason the pubertal/activational hormones aren’t released, then you won’t see sex-typical behaviour.
In lecture 2b it was stated that there are many more similarities between men and women sexually than differences, but at the end of the lecture it was also stated that sex differences do require sensitivity due to differences in sexual behavior and activity, how exactly is this?
Both the media and sex research tend to focus excessively on the differences in sexual behaviour between men and women, although in practice these differences are often small (see slide 8 of lecture 2b for more details).
Moreover, sometimes focusing on individual differences may blind us to looking at those societal structures and interactional processes that actually impact gendered behaviors.
However, some gender/sex differences do exist, for example in terms of having more sexual partners and attitudes towards casual sex. It is still important to understand these differences as they may have implications for individuals, for example in terms of risk behaviour and prevention (e.g. having more sexual partners may require different strategies to prevent STIs).
The articles from lecture 2A are a bit difficult for me. What are the main findings I have to know? And do I have to know everything about the menstrual cycle and the influence of hormones?
Firstly, biological details won’t be part of the (social science) exam (see also answer 4). When it comes to hormones, you only need to know what is explicitly mentioned in the lecture slides. It is particularly important to understand the myths about testosterone.
Could you elaborate on the differential susceptibility theory a little bit from lecture 4a? It is not completely clear what that theory states for me.
The differential susceptibility media effects model emphasizes the active role of young people in the selection of and interaction with media content.
For example, when assessing the effects of porn on young people’s sexuality, it is important to take into account that some people are interested in (specific types of) porn more than others. These personal factors may not only increase/decrease the likelihood that someone watches porn; they may also determine the impact watching porn may have on their (for example) attitudes and, in turn, their own sexual behaviour.
Thus, personal, developmental and social factors thus influence media use as well as the effect of media use.
Also, as different people react differently to media (e.g. specific types of porn), people’s individual reactions (= cognitive, emotional and excitative response states) mediate the effects of the media. An example: person X may be negatively affected by social media as he/she/they compare themselves negatively to others. As a result, their self-confidence is negatively impacted and this in turn impacts their sexual well-being. Person Y may see the same social media messages but does not compare him/her/themselves negatively and will thus not experience lower self-confidence, nor the lower sexual well-being.
I do not understand how sexual development is multidimensional and dependent on the context, can you please explain this a bit further?
In lecture 1B, Hanneke pointed out that some people tend to think only of adult sexual behaviour when it comes to sexual development, but when it comes to children, many of the relevant developments have more to do with gender identity and body image.
However, this is all considered part of sexuality (hence, multidimensional). Biological, social and psychological contexts all influence children’s sexual development: there is an interaction between the individual and the biopsychosocial context.
Important to note : People are influenced by their environment but can also actively choose their environment (not a one-way process).
I find it difficult to understand the essence of the social perspective on gender differences as many different aspects such as cultural differences and sexual double standard are cited, could the essence of this perspective be explained?
Rather than one ‘social perspective’, we tend to think of social perspectives as a set of ‘analytical lenses and theories’ that explain how some things (e.g. behaviors) that we often think of as ‘biological’ (e.g. how men and women behave in the bedroom and the sexual double standards associated with this) are actually social constructs.
Such social perspectives highlight, for example, how we (often unconsciously) learn and adopt societal norms from a very young age about how men and women behave, e.g. through socialization by parents, peers and institutions, and through (classical/operant) conditioning.
So the ‘social perspective’ includes various socialization theories that explain the socialization of the body, gender and sexuality, e.g. objectification theory & post-structuralist views. These theories are explained in slide 30 of lecture 2b and in the article by VanWesenbeeck (2009).
