The Organization Of Sexuality Flashcards
What is kinship and family systems perspective on sexuality?
“Appears” as basic and unchanging:
- ‘natural’ gender and sexual socialization & experience
Pluralization of family patterns, including ‘families of choice’ = based on friendships & chosen kin
Family patterns are shaped & re-shaped by economic and social factors
Ex. faiths, rules of inheritance and by state interventions
= to regulate marriage and divorce
= to support the family by social welfare or taxation policies
= THESE ALL AFFECT PATTERN OF SEXUAL LIFE (ENCOURAGE/DISCOURAGE)
Incest taboo - universal law
BUT in reality this taboo ^ varies throughout history
- Middle Ages, Egypt = “preserve the purity of the royal line”
As ideas about kin/family change = so does sexuality
What is economic and social organization perspective on sexuality?
DOES NOT determine sexuality (which is too diverse)
DOES provide:
1. the context
2. opens opportunities
3. sets the limits
= w/in which sexual & intimate life is shaped
domestic and work patterns impact sexuality and sexual relations
economic and social life provide the basic preconditions and ultimate limits for the organization of sexual life
Degree of urbanization, rapid industrial and social change, migration and transnational flows of people
The relations between men and women are constantly afected by changes in economic and social conditions
What is social regulations perspective on sexuality?
Changes in religion, role of the state and moral consensus etc…
= new marriage/divorce patterns, sexual unorthodoxy
Critical shifts…
= away from church authority over sexuality
= towards secular authorities (medicine, psychology etc…)
BUT rise in religious fundamentalism globally
= ‘God is back’
(unintended consequences of social action)
- mostly in America
Informal regulation (norm/customs)…
(social exclusion, name calling, labelling and other public shaming)
What is politics perspective on sexuality?
The balance of policial forces at any time can determine the degree of legislative control or moral intervention in sexual life
These formal and informal methods of control exist within an ever-changing political framework
What is the cultures of resistance perspective on sexuality?
History of sexuality is not a simple history of control…
BUT also a history opposition and resistance to moral codes
Moral, legal, political, social regulation gives rise to resistance
Cultural resistance also comes from the emergence of the subcultures and networks established by the sexually marginalised
Give 3 reasons why sexuality is important…
- moral concern
- key moments in the dominant Western model of sexuality
- homosexual category and new binaries
What does it mean that “sexuality is the truth of our being”?
Society is more concerned w/ the lives of its members regulating all areas of their lives = including the sexual
Led to a heightened sense of sexual individualism and new claims for sexual citizenship = recognized as full citizens
Debates about sexuality = debates about nature of our society
The West has been largely preoccupied with “_____” people have sex
Whom
These societies seek the truth of subjectivity in the organization of sexual desires
European & American societies since the 19th century have been obsessively concerned with…
Whether a person is “_________, or __________”
increasingly in terms of whether they are “___________, or ____________”
Normal; or abnormal
Heterosexual; homosexual
The term ‘sexual instinct’ is derived from what?
Derived from male practices & fantasies
