FORUMS FOR HUMAN SEXUALITY HEALTH

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Chapter One

Perspectives on Human Sexuality

Sexuality in Popular Culture Is Shaped by the
Mass Media, So We Should Ask:

  • What kinds of sexuality are portrayed by the media?
  • What messages about sexuality are sent?
  • Who are the messages intended for?
  • What messages are ignored or avoided?
  • What shapes the selection by the media?

Mass Media Portrayals of Sexuality Occur in Multiple Forms

  • Television
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Magazines, tabloids, books
  • Hand held technology
  • World Wide Web
  • Advertising

Media Portrayals of Sexuality:

  • Sell products

  • Produce sexual arousal
  • Increase sexual behavior
  • Provide sexual information
  • Correct or incorrect

Media Effects Live by:

  • Keeping sexual behavior visible
  • Reinforcing sexual and relationship norms
  • Including irresponsible models

Mass-media Depictions Are Meant to Entertain, Not Inform

  • Rarely present reality scenarios
  • Perpetuate the status quo
  • Create a social context by defining:
  • What behaviors are appropriate
  • With whom they are appropriate
  • Why they are appropriate

Television

  • Increasing exposure
  • Increasing sexual content
  • Rare presentation of risk
  • Rare presentation of responsible action
  • Unrealistic presentation of sexuality

Television

  • FCC regulation of public airwaves
  • Enforces regulations via fines
  • Responds to public grievances
  • Does not regulate cable
  • Parental responsibility

Television Genres

  • Comedy series
  • Soap Operas
  • Crime/action-adventure programs
  • Drama series
  • Commercials
  • Music videos
  • Games
  • Other

Television Genres Emphasize Different Types of Content

  • Comedy series – Taboos
  • Soap Operas – Sexual transgressions
  • Crime/action – Sexual variation
  • Drama series – Situations

Television Genres Emphasize Different Types of Content (cont.)

  • Commercials – Attitudes
  • Music Videos – Individual expression
  • Games – Exploitation & aggression
  • Other – Variations

  • Note absence of risk or responsibility

Feature Length Films

  • Sexy content
  • Nudity
  • Sexual double standard
  • Vulnerability
  • Rare presentations of risk or responsibility

GLBT People in the media

  • Historically absent from mainstream films
  • Historically presented stereotypically

  • New trend to present GLBT in positive ways

Online Sexual Activities

  • Global
  • Cybersex
  • Online sex Web sites/chat rooms
  • Meet new partners
  • Safety

Triple A Engine

  • Access

  • Affordability

  • Anonymity

Cybersex

Real time event involving two persons

engaging in sexual talk for the purpose of

sexual gratification

Online Sexual Activities Effect on Culture

  • Crosses distance
  • Promotes intimacy without physical contact
  • Creates a new level of plasticity and expression
  • Positive for expression of under represented groups
  • Negative if it becomes compulsive or addictive

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

Cell Phone Sex

  • Easy access
  • Privacy
  • Mobility
  • Potential billion dollar industry

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

Cultural Differences: Mangaia of Polynesia

  • Adolescence have a high level of sexual desire
  • Adolescents are instructed on how to please their partner
  • A woman may leave a man who does not satisfy her
  • Adulthood is marked by a decrease in sexual desire

Cultural Differences: The Dani of New Guinea

  • Little interest in sexuality
  • Sex for reproduction
  • Extra relational sex and jealousy is rare
  • Female orgasm is unknown
  • 5 year sexual abstinence between pregnancies

Cultural Differences: Victorian Americans

  • Women had reproductive desire rather than sexual desire
  • Women with sexual desire classified as suffering from “nymphomania, or furor uterinus”

  • Men were viewed as animal like
  • Men had raging, uncontrollable sexual appetites

Victorian Americans: Long Lasting Effects

  • War between sexes
  • Madonna – Whore dichotomy for women’s roles
  • Women’s responsibility to tame men’s impulses
  • Sexual double standard

Sexual Orientation: The Pattern of Sexual and Emotional Attraction Based on the Gender of One’s Preferred Partners

  • Heterosexuality: between men and women

  • Homosexuality: between persons of the same sex

  • Bisexuality: both males and females

Contemporary American Culture

  • Heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation receiving full social and legal legitimacy
  • State by state recognition of civil unions
  • Who knows which states currently have legislation?

Homosexuality,
Bisexuality, and Culture: Ancient Greece

  • Roles for men
  • Highest form of love: Same-sex relationships between men
  • Between an older and a younger man
  • Men were also expected to be married
  • Roles of women
  • Child bearing was associated with marriage
  • Courtesans

Homosexuality,
Bisexuality, and Culture: Sambians of New Guinea

  • Sexual orientation is malleable across lifespan
  • Young males engage in sexual activity with one another
  • Adolescence marks the occurence of sexual activities between males and females
  • Adulthood marks the end of sexual activities between males

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

Gender and Culture

  • The characteristics associated with being male or female
  • Culturally defined
  • Not always defined by genitals only
  • Fully explored in Chapter Five

Transsexual and Transgender Persons

  • Genitals and gender identities are discordant
  • A person born with a penis self-identifies as a woman
  • A person born with a vulva and vagina self- identifies as a man
  • Not the same as transvestite

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

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

Natural Sexual Behavior

  • How do we decide if a sexual behavior is natural or unnatural?
  • What is natural?
  • What is unnatural?

Natural Sexual Behavior

  • We have internalized the norm since infancy
  • Is a part of “the cultural air we breathe” and like the air is invisible
  • We have learned our culture's rules so well, they seem instinctive

Normal Sexual Behavior

  • Behavior that conforms to a group’s average or median patterns of behavior

  • Not related to moral or psychological judgments

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.

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

Sexual Behaviors and Variations

  • Many activities thought of as “deviant” are engaged in by most of us to some degree:
  • Exhibitionism
  • Voyeurism
  • Fetishism

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 aspect of behavior in accordance with his or her values.

Summary

  • Popular culture
  • Sexual behaviors and norms vary
  • Understanding diversity
  • Influence of culture

Summary (cont.)

  • Popular culture
  • Sexual behaviors and norms vary
  • 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