The History of Sexuality (Weeks Chpt 2 pp 13-23) Flashcards
give 5 reasons why a history of reproduction is not a history of sexuality
- most erotic interactions don’t lead to procreation
- many forms of non-heterosexual sex
- asexuality has emerged as a sexual identity
- intimacy does not capture sexual practices (e.g. masturbation)
- cybersex has emerged as a practice
what encouraged looking at histories of sexuality?
- modern feminism and LGBTQ+ politics
- grass-roots politics
- impact of HIV/AIDS crisis
what do we mean that the history of sexuality is a subject in constant flux?
it’s a history of our changing preoccupations about how we should live, enjoy or deny our bodies, as about the past – tells us a lot about the concerns of the past
what is the colonial approach to studying sexuality?
made assumptuons about culture as “less civilized” or “primitive” and sought to study “primitive” cultures to understand the West’s history, legitimized ethnocentric and racist theories and practices of the West
Describe how we still haven’t fully escaped the effects of evolutionist controversies
- 20th century: ethnocentric racist theories and practices were legitimized by reference to the primitive condition of other races – Darwin commented that the blood of more primitive creatures flowd through the native peoples he’d met
- those who extolled the virtues of sexual freeedom of non-industrial socieities fell back on a belief that their peoples were somehow “closer to naure,” more “spontaneous” and free of stifling conventions of complex modern society
- feminists debates in the 70/80s about the permemnence of patriarchal male domination
What is the basis for the anthropological approach to studying the history of sexuality? what’s a limitation?
- tyring to understand each particular society in its own terms
- recognizing the diversity of sexual patterens all over the world
- limitation: living in your own existence which influences your interpretation
what were the postives and negatives of the anthropological approach to studying sexuality?
pros
- sympathetic unferstanding of the diversity of sexual patterns and cultures within Western socieities
- helped provide a critical standard for our own norms/values
cons
- reaffirmed the “natural,” exoticism and essentialism
what is a dispositif?
a depolyment or apparatus of sexuality (kinda like a construction)
What is the basis of the contemporary approach to studying the history of sexuality?
- questioning the naturalness and inevitability of the sexual categories and assumptions we have inherited so we can change it
- question: “what has shaped the history of the idea of sexuality itself?”
- opens the whole field of sexuality to critical assessment
what are the three questions that the contemporary approach asks?
- how is sexually shaped and articulated with economic, social, and political structure
- why do we think sexuality is so important
- what is the relationship between sex and power
describe the contemporary view on the relationship between biology and sexuality
biological conditions and limits what is possible, but the patterns of sexual life or gender identity are not dictated by biology – biology is a set of potentialities, only given meaning in social relationships
what are three key assumptions under the theoretical stance of sexuality?
- sex and society are not seperate domains with society controlling the “biological urges” of sex
- there are many different sexual forms, beliefs, identities, ideologies, behaviours and sexual cultures
- cannot understand sexual history through lens of pressure/release or repression/liberation
when Ford and Beach surveyed 185 different societies, were the majority or minority of sexual liasons restricted to single mate-ships?
minority (15%)
what does marriage look like amont the Nuer?
older women marry younger woman
what does the roman catholic church define the norms of sex in a relationship?
for one possible result…reproduction
