Sex Flashcards
Functions
- Reproduction, pleasure, bonding or intimacy, self esteem
- Assert masculinity or femininity, power, dominance or hostility
- Risk taking for excitement, material gain or reducing tension
Sex and hormones
- Animals’ hormones are linked to sexual activity
- In human’s puberty triggers sexual interest
Masters and Johnson (1966)
- Studied 328 women and 312 men (mostly married couples) and recorded 10000 sexual reposes
- This led to the discovery of the four stages of sexual response: excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution
Males vs females
- Males are programmed for promiscuity and in most cultures favor youthful looking women with a specific hit to waist ratio
- Females are programmed for settling down and in most cultures look for cues that suggest protection and masculinity. However, when shown morphed faces, they did not find more masculine faces attractive
Criticisms of the sociobiology/evolutionary approach
-Can’t be falsified and focuses on ‘normal’ stereotypical heterosexual couples.
Learning
-Sexual behaviour can be learnt and modified through operant conditioning e.g. behaviour modification techniques used to treat sexual variations and disorders
Cognitive
-Influence of thoughts and perceptions on sexuality e.g. past experiences
Eysneck personality theory
- Suggested there are genetic and physiological differences in need for stimulation and emotional stability e.g. extroverts are psychologically dampened (less sensitive to stimulation) and Introverts more law-abiding and conventional
- Co-actional: physiologically primed to respond differently to social environment
Eysenck views of sexuality
- Introverts approach sex warily whereas extroverts are eager and passionate (antisocial sexual behaviour due to poor socialization, habituate and seek novelty
- Support: Self-report of 6000 students suggests results are reliable
- Criticism: sexist as women are described as prudish and objects
Freud
- Sex energy/libido is major influence on personality and behaviour
- Believed everyone is born bisexual and becomes heterosexual or homosexual depending on experience with parents or others
- Psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital
Liberalism
-o Combines liberation and regulation e.g. individuals discipline themselves and seek pleasure and satisfaction. Public life regulated but promotes freedom in private life
Liberalism: Victorian Era
-Emancipation of women 1882 (married women’s property act), but no public bathrooms for women, expected to withdraw during menstruation. Regulated working class women by stigmatizing illegitimacy and legislation against prostitutes
Liberalization of sexuality
- Aspects of sexuality liberalized e.g. homosexuality and others regulated e.g. pedos
- Liberation league and British society of the study of sex campaigned for liberalizing laws over illegitimacy, marriage, divorce and free love
- Germany, 1927, World League of Sexual Reform: Legal equality between males and females, provisions for single parents, greater access to sex education, abortion and contraception, control of prostitution and greater acceptance of sexual deviance
First research into pornography and erotica
- Short term effects of erotic behaviour but no impact on long term sexual behaviour
- Women are presented as willing victims of sexual violence and rape which may encourage assault (Ethical implications make empirical studies almost impossible)
- Rape myth: women protest to seem feminine, keep going and shell like it
Michel Foucault - social control
- Suggested sexuality is socially and culturally constructed (specific to time and place)
- This is a form of social control through (socialisation, Hystericization, Pedagogization and Psychiatrization)