Perspectives on Human Sexuality

1. 1 Perspectives on Human Sexuality

2. Sexuality, Popular Culture, and the Media • Sexuality is influenced and shaped by popular culture and the mass media • What kinds of sexuality does the media portray? • What messages does the media send? • What does the media not portray? • The media communicates sexual norms and stereotypes.

3. Media Portrayals of Sexuality • Increasingly frequent and explicit: • Television • Movies • Music • Magazines, tabloids, books • World Wide Web • Advertising

4. Time Spent with Various Media

5. Media Portrayals of Sexuality • Media images of sexuality can: • Produce sexual arousal and emotional reactions • Increase sexual behaviors • Be a source of sexual information

6. Jane D. Brown (2002) • The media alters patterns of social communication and interpersonal relationships • Finding: the media affects sexual behavior by: • Keeping sexual behavior visible • Reinforcing a consistent set of sexual and relationship norms • Rarely including sexually responsible models

7. Mass-media depictions are meant to entertain, not inform • “Real” depictions of sexuality aren’t presented. • However, media depictions create a social context for sexuality, telling us: • What behaviors are appropriate • With whom they are appropriate • Why they are appropriate

8. Television • TV is one of the most pervasive and influential mediums affecting our views of sexuality • Depictions of sexuality tend to be unrealistic • Brown & Keller (2000): • 2/3 of prime time programs contain sexual content • Only about 1/11 refer to the possible risks or responsibilities associated with sex

9. Television • Depicts stereotypes and reinforces norms, i.e. cultural rules or standards • Shapes adolescents’ sense of what is normal (Ward et al, 2002) • How it depicts stereotypes and reinforces norms varies by genre of program

10. Television Genres • Situation Comedies (Sitcoms) • Soap Operas • Crime/action-adventure programs • Cable Series Dramas • Commercials • Music Videos

11. Television Genres • Sitcom formula: Characters unknowingly violate conventional social rules and create chaos; Reinforces rules • Soap Operas: Sexual transgressions are the “lifeblood” of this genre, providing grounds for jealousy, revenge, and betrayal • 2001 study: 156 scenes of intercourse in 50 hours of soap operas, with only 5 references to contraception or safer sex.

12. Television Genres • Crime/Action-Adventure: Few intimate relationships; those that exist are primarily based on sexual attraction • Cable Series Dramas: Focus on sex as a social issue, addressing pregnancy, extramarital liaisons, prostitution, and other issues head-on and sensationally • Commercials: Manipulate sexual images to sell products

13. Television Genres • Other TV Genres: • Reality shows: often play on the vulnerabilities of single people • Day-time talk shows: use unconventional sexuality to provoke viewer interest • News programs: report on rapes, child sexual abuse, pornography, sex therapies, and opinion polls on sexuality • Conservative Christian religious programming: sexual abstinence for the unmarried, opposition to homosexuality and abortion

14. Music Videos & Video Games • Music Videos • Appeal to the eye and the ear • Rely on flashy and sexualized imagery to sustain audience interest • Sexual imagery is used to sell the song and the artist • Video Games • Promote sexist and violent attitudes, stereotypical gender roles

15. Hollywood vs. Independent Films • Mainstream films: • Nudity: • Considerable female nudity • Little male nudity, penis rarely shown • “War between the sexes” • Pursuit of women by men • Culminates in passionate nonmarital sex and living happily ever after • Sex scenes filmed from male perspective

16. GLBT People in Film • Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender characters have been historically absent from mainstream films • If not absent, then portrayed as one-dimensional or sinister • Recently, several films integrate characters’ GLBT identity in multi-dimensional portrayals

17. Internet Sex • Cybersex: expressions of sexuality while responding to images or words on a computer • Includes online commercial websites as well as sexuality education and self-help groups • Over 12 million sex related websites (1999) • The “Triple-A Engine” makes cybersex popular: • Access • Affordability • Anonymity

18. Internet Sex • Virtual Reality (VR) sex: uses sensory stimulators such as goggles, gloves, and body sensors to create sexual virtual reality

19. Dial-a-Porn • Commercial telephone sex lines that enable the caller to anonymously “talk dirty” with someone • Phone worker is paid to respond to the caller’s fantasies • Creates a sense of “pseudo-intimacy” with the voice

20. Sexuality Across Cultures and Times • What is considered “natural” varies between cultures • In America, kissing is considered erotic • The Mehinaku of the Amazonian rain forest consider kissing to be a disgusting sexual abnormality • Culture molds and shapes our sexual interests

21. Culture & Sexual Interests • All cultures assume that adults have the potential for: • Becoming sexually aroused • Engaging in sexual intercourse for procreation • Cultures differ in terms of how strong they believe sexual interests are • These beliefs affect the level of expressed desire within a culture

22. Cultural Differences • The Mangaia of Polynesia • Male and female adolescents experience high levels of sexual desire • Young women and men are expected to have high levels of sexual experience and skill prior to marriage • The Dani of New Guinea • Little interest shown in sex beyond its reproductive capacity • Extra-relational sex is rare • Female orgasm unknown

23. Cultural Differences • Victorian-era Americans (nineteenth century) • Believed that women naturally had little sexual desire • Women with sexual desire classified as suffering from “nymphomania,” or “furor uterinus” • Believed that men had raging, uncontrollable sexual appetites • Women’s duty to tame men’s impulses

24. Cultural Differences • Victorian beliefs still influence American culture. Examples: • Belief that men are “naturally” sexually aggressive • Belief that women are “naturally” sexually passive • The sexual double standard • Value placed on women’s sexual “inexperience”

25. Sexual Orientation • Sexual orientation: • The pattern of sexual and emotional attraction based on the gender of one’s preferred partners • Heterosexuality: • Emotional and sexual attraction between men and women • Homosexuality: • Emotional and sexual attraction between persons of the same sex

26. Sexual Orientation • Bisexuality: • An emotional and sexual attraction to both males and females

27. Homosexuality, Bisexuality & Culture • In contemporary American culture, heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation receiving full social and legal legitimacy • Same sex relationships are relatively common, yet do not receive general social acceptance

28. Homosexuality, Bisexuality & Culture • Ancient Greece • Same-sex relationships between men represented highest form of love • Based on love, reciprocity, and mentorship between an older and a younger man • The erotic bond evolved into friendship as the young man became an adult • Men were also expected to be married to women & have female courtesans • Wives for homemaking and children • Courtesans for sexual pleasure

29. Homosexuality, Bisexuality & Culture • The Sambians of New Guinea • Sexual orientation is malleable through the lifespan • Young boys engage in sexual activity with older boys • Engage in sexual activity with boys and girls as adolescents • Engage in exclusive male-female relationships as adults and lose their desire for men

30. Gender and Culture • Gender: • What makes a person a man or woman goes beyond simple anatomy. • Gender is the set of culturally-influenced characteristics associated with being male or female

31. Gender and Culture • Transsexual people • Within the U.S. there are approximately 15,000 people who identify as transsexual • Genitals and gender identities are discordant • A person born with a penis self-identifies as a woman • A person born with a vulva & vagina self- identifies as a man • Some transsexual people undergo surgery to alter their breasts or genitals • Discussed more fully in Chapter 5

32. Gender and Culture • “Two-Spirits” • Biological males who assume female dress, gender role, and status • Accepted as a “man-woman” and given spiritual status in several cultures worldwide • Includes some Native American, Filipino, Lapp, and Indian cultures • Some females considered “two-spirit,” but more rare than with males

33. Societal Norms and Sexuality • Diversity across cultures and times • Calls into question what is inherently natural or normal • Words like “natural,” “unnatural,” “normal,” and “abnormal” are value judgments • They often state how we feel about behaviors, rather than objectively describing those behaviors

34. “Natural” Sexual Behavior • How do we decide if a sexual behavior is natural or unnatural? • Students responded: • “If a person feels something instinctive, I believe it is a natural feeling.” • “Natural and unnatural have to do with the laws of nature. What these parts were intended for.” • “I decide by my gut instincts.” • “I think all sexual activity is natural as long as it doesn’t hurt yourself or anyone else.” • “Everything possible is natural. Everything natural is normal. If it is natural and normal, it is moral.”

35. “Natural” Sexual Behavior • Our sexual norms appear to be natural • Because we have internalized them since infancy • Because they are part of “the cultural air we breathe” and like the air are invisible • Because we have learned our culture's rules so well they seem instinctive

36. “Normal” Sexual Behavior • For social scientists, “normal sexual behavior” is behavior that conforms to a group’s average or median patterns of behavior • Not related to moral or psychological judgments

37. “Normal” Sexual Behavior • Many people feel pressure to behave like the statistical norm • Ironically, most of us actually don’t know how others behave sexually • Most people do not talk about their sexual activities, especially those that they perceive as being outside the norm.

38. Sexual Behaviors and Variations • Researchers view human sexuality as characterized by sexual variation, i.e. sexual variety and diversity • Understand sexual activities as existing on a continuum of frequency and behavior • People’s activities can be typical or atypical of the group average—does not necessarily indicate deviance

39. Sexual Behaviors and Variations • Many activities thought of as “deviant” are engaged in by most of us to some degree: • Exhibitionism • Voyeurism • Fetishism

40. Authors’ Standard • The authors of the text believe that the basic standard for judging various sexual activities is • Whether they are between consenting adults, & • Whether they cause harm • It is up to the individual to evaluate the ethical or moral aspects of behavior in accordance with his or her values.

41. Summary • Popular culture both encourages and discourages sexuality • Sexual behaviors and norms vary through time and from culture to culture • Understanding diversity allows us to acknowledge that there is no such thing as inherently “normal” or “natural” sexual behavior • Sexual behavior strongly influenced by culture