Chapter Five
LECTURE OUTLINE
I. Sexual Development and Orientation
A. Children’s Sexual Development
http://youtu.be/I4WoHvS5paM
Links to an external site.
1. Knowledge about children’s sexual development is not as extensive as we would like it to be.
2. We do know that humans’ development into sexually expressive beings begins in childhood.
3. Children are maturing physically earlier than in the past.
B. Sexual Orientation
What do you think of this way of explaining sexual orientation:
http://youtu.be/xXAoG8vAyzI
Links to an external site.
1. As we develop into sexually expressive individuals, we manifest a sexual orientation.
2. Sexual orientation refers to whether a person prefers a partner of the same sex or the opposite sex.
a. Heterosexuals are attracted to opposite-sex partners.
b. Homosexuals are attracted to same-sex partners.
c. Bisexuals are attracted to persons of either sex.
3. We tend to think of sexual orientation as a dichotomy, as either gay or straight, when it may actually be more like a continuum.
4. A person’s sexual orientation does not necessarily predict his or her sexual behavior.
5. It is not clear whether sexual orientation is genetic in origin; the origins of both heterosexual and gay identities remain a puzzle. Nevertheless, people make choices regarding many aspects of sexual expression.
Watch this video on biology of homosexuality from National Geographic
http://youtu.be/saO_RFWWVVA
Links to an external site.
II. Theoretical Perspectives on Human Sexuality
A. There are various theoretical perspectives concerning marriage and families; the same is true for human sexuality. From the structure functional perspective, sex is a focus of norms; from a biosocial perspective, we consider that humans are designed for the purpose of transmitting their genes to the next generation.
B. The Exchange Perspective: Rewards, Costs, and Equality in Sexual Relationships
In the interpersonal exchange model of sexual satisfaction, satisfaction is seen to depend on the costs and rewards of a sexual relationship.
C. The Interactionist Perspective: Negotiating Cultural Messages
1. The interaction perspective emphasizes the interpersonal negotiation of relationships in the context of sexual scripts.
2. In the sexual context, the interactionist theoretical perspective on human sexuality holds that women and men are influenced by the sexual scripts that they learn from society.
3. Sex has different cultural meanings and plays a different role in different social settings.
D. Changing Cultural Scripts
1. Early American: Patriarchal Sex
a. Patriarchal sexuality is characterized by many beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors developed to protect the male line of descent.
b. Although it has been significantly challenged, the patriarchal sexual script persists to some extent in our society and corresponds with traditional gender expectations.
2. The Twentieth Century: The Emergence of Expressive Sexuality
Expressive sexuality sees sexuality as basic to the humanness of both women and men; there is no one-sided sense of ownership
3. The 1960s Sexual Revolution: Sex for Pleasure
a. People’s attitudes and behaviors regarding sex changed during the 1960s, becoming radically more permissive.
b. Not only did attitudes become more liberal and information more solidly grounded, but behaviors changed as well.
c. Today, sexual activity often begins in the teen years.
d. The most significant change in sexuality since the 1960s, among heterosexuals at least, has been in marital sex.
4. The 1980s and 1990s: Challenges to Heterosexism
a. During the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the liberation of the ‘60s encompassed lesbian and gay male sexuality.
b. Political activism has resulted in gays’ greater visibility.
c. Recently, the public’s attitudes toward homosexuality have become more favorable.
d. Comparing Gay Male and Lesbian Sexual Behaviors
Sociologists Blumstein and Schwartz compared four types of couples: heterosexual marrieds, cohabiting heterosexuals, gay male, and lesbian couples.
5. The Twenty-First Century: Risk, Caution–and Intimacy
a. While pleasure seeking was the icon of sixties sexuality, caution in the face of risk characterizes contemporary times. AIDS is a common fear.
b. Sexting is a relatively new phenomenon, which includes sending sexually provocative photographs and text messages via cell phone.
III. Negotiating (Hetero)sexual Expression
A. Many women and men today have internalized divergent sexual messages.
Cultural messages, both about gender and about sexual expression, are negotiated.
B. Four Standards of Nonmarital Sex
1. Abstinence
a. Regardless of circumstance, nonmarital sex is wrong for men and women.
b. Celibacy is a positive choice in the absence of an emotionally meaningful relationship.
2. Permissiveness with Affection
a. Permits nonmarital sex for men and women when they have a fairly stable emotional relationship.
b. Most widespread sexual norm among unmarrieds today.
3. Permissiveness Without Affection
a. Recreational or casual sex without relationship stability received much attention in the 1960s.
b. Today, among young people, this may be termed “hooking up.”
4. The Double Standard
a. According to the double standard, women’s sexual behavior must be more conservative than men’s.
b. Throughout the 1980s, researchers found the double standard to be declining and reported expectations to be similar for men and women.
c. Men and women may have different expectations, with men exposed to cultural conditioning that encourages them to separate sex from intimacy, while among women, sexual expression more often symbolizes connection with a partner and communicates intimacy.
C. Sexual Infidelity
1. Although infidelity is found in virtually any society and throughout our known history, the proscription against extramarital sex is stronger in the United States than in many other parts of the world.
2. Marriage typically involves promises of sexual exclusivity—that spouses and committed partners will have sexual relations only with each other.
3. There are certain risk factors, and new forms of sexual infidelity.
4. Many couples are able to recover from extramarital affairs.
IV. Sexuality Throughout Marriage
A. How Do We Know What We Do? A Look at Sex Surveys
1. In serious social science, researchers strive for representative samples.
2. The pioneer research surveys on sex in the United States were the Kinsey reports on male and female sexuality.
3. Conclusions based on survey research on sensitive matters such as sexuality must always be qualified by an awareness of their limitations.
B. How Often?
1. Social scientists are interested in sexual frequency because they like to examine trends over time and to relate these to other aspects of intimate relationships. American couples average about once a week.
2. Fewer Good Weeks
Coitus is less frequent (and there are fewer “good weeks”) with increasing age and with increasing number of years married.
C. Young Spouses
Young spouses engage in coitus more frequently than older and longer married partners.
D. Spouses in Middle Age
After the first year of marriage, couples can expect sexual frequency to decline.
E. Older Partners
A sexual frequency pattern is established in the first year of marriage. From then on life situations and events tend to reduce the frequency pattern, while almost nothing increases it.
F. What About Boredom?
1. One factor related to declines in some sexual behaviors is habituation-decreased interest that results from the increased accessibility of a sexual partner and the predictability in sexual behavior with that partner over time.
2. Remarried respondents report somewhat higher rates of sex frequency compared with people in first marriages who were the same age.
G. Sexual Satisfaction in Marriage and Other Partnerships
Despite declining sexual frequency, sexual satisfaction remains high in marriages over the life course.
H. Race/Ethnicity and Sexual Expression
1. There is variation between racial and gender groups when it comes to sexual activities.
2. African Americans and non-Hispanic whites are more similar than dissimilar in at least some aspects of their sexual behavior, and any dissimilarities are related to socioeconomic status, not race.
V. Sex as a Pleasure Bond
A. Sexual Satisfaction comes through a pleasure bond by which partners commit themselves to expressing their sexual feelings with each other.
1. In sharing sexual pleasure, partners realize that sex is something partners do with each other, not to or for each other.
2. Each partner participates actively, as an equal in the sexual union. Further, each partner assumes responsibility for his or her own sexual response. When this happens, the stage is set for conscious, mutual cooperation. Partners feel freer to express themselves sexually.
B. Making Time for Intimacy
1. It is important for couples to plan to be alone and intimate.
VI. Sexual Expression, HIV/AIDS, and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases
A. HIV/AIDS has now been known for about thirty years. AIDS is a viral disease that destroys the immune system. The HIV virus is transmitted through the exchange of infected bodily fluids.
B. AIDS is lethal: Almost 600,000 deaths have occurred due to AIDS through 2007.
C. Who Has HIV/AIDS?
1. Currently, more than 1,000,000 Americans are living with HIV or full-blown AIDS. Around 56,000 new infections occurring each year.
2. Primary risk groups in the United States are men who have sex with men: about 53 percent of cumulative AIDS cases through 2007.
D. HIV/AIDS and Heterosexuality
1. Some heterosexuals may be responding to the AIDS threat by waiting longer to have sexual contact with acquaintances, or opting for periods of celibacy.
2. The incidence of AIDS transmission is growing among heterosexuals, making up 31 percent of all new cases by 2007.
E. HIV/AIDS and Gay Men
1. There has been a recent increase (2004-2007) in the rate of HIV infection among homosexuals.
2. Life expectancy has increased for those who take medication.
F. HIV/AIDS and Family Crises
1. Some families will face crises and loss because of AIDS
2. Some married heterosexuals have lost partners to the disease or are helping infected partners fight health battles.
3. The burdens of AIDS are not all emotional, nor do they involve only physical care of victims; some are financial.
G. HIV/AIDS and Children
1. Most children with AIDS contracted the disease from their mothers during pregnancy, at birth, or through breast milk.
2. Children with AIDS have a unique array of treatment requirements and are often in the hospital.
VII. The Politics of Sex
A. Political and religious conflict over sexuality characterized the last few decades.
B. Politics and Research
There is a need for increased research about human sexual behavior, using national samples, but this is a politically volatile issue.
C. Politics and Sex Education
Political considerations also affect whether or not—and what kind of—sex education will occur in U.S. schools, colleges, universities, and other settings.
VIII. Sexual Responsibility
A. Making choices and feeling comfortable with them requires recognizing and respecting one’s own values instead of being influenced by others.
B. Each individual adult must determine the sexual standard they value, given a wide range of choices.
C. People must take responsibility for the consequences of their behavior, including the issues of pregnancy, becoming diseased, communicating disease to partners, and additional issues related to decision-making