Description
SOCI 119:
Sexuality & Sexual Identities
UC SAN DIEGO
W I NT E R 2022
P ROFE S SOR: D R . JE N N RO S E N
Week 1
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SOCI 119:
Sexuality & Sexual Identities
UC S A N D I E G O
W I NT E R 2022
P ROFE S SOR: JE N N RO S E N
Week 2
Sex and Gender
Sex and Gender: what’s the difference?
▪ Sex refers to the anatomical and physiological
characteristics of “maleness” or “femaleness”.
▪Sex is determined by a combination of genetics and the presence
or absence of hormones testosterone and estrogen.
▪Gender can be divided into a number of different
components relating to ideas of masculinity and
femininity:
▪gender identity, gender presentation and gender role.
Gender
▪Gender Identity: the sense of ourselves as men, women or other
gendered beings.
▪Gender Presentation: The behaviors associated with masculinity and
femininity: speech, dress, movement…etc.
▪Gender Roles: the social roles expected of men and women in a
particular society.
▪ Gender socialization: the process of learning and internalizing the
norms of our gender.
▪ Gender is determined by a large variety of factors, both biological and cultural.
“Third” Genders
▪ Transgender is a broad term used to describe individuals
that identify with a gender that is not associated with their
assigned birth sex.
▪ Some societies recognize there being more than two
gender and/or sex categories…something other than
“man” and “woman”. The stigma associated with these
genders/sexes varies.
◦ See “sworn virgins” in Albania, “hijras” in India and Pakistan, “muxe” in
southern Mexico, “two-spirits” in several Native American cultures, and
others
Sexuality, Sexual Identity, and Sexual
Orientation
Sexuality can be broadly defined as how people experience and express
themselves as sexual beings.
◦ A marker of identity and set of beliefs and behaviors that relate to sexual
relationships and attitudes
Sexual orientation refers to who we are physically and spiritually
attracted to based on their sex and/or gender in relationship to our
own.
◦ Thinking about sexuality in the form of sexual orientation: (i.e. heterosexual,
homosexual, bisexual) is fairly recent concept (late 19th century)
Normative is a term used to describe behaviors and actions considered
to fit the “norm.”
◦ Heteronormativity is the idea that being heterosexual is natural and normal -and that other sexualities are Abnormal and Unnatural.
Four intertwining strands of sexuality
– Sexual desire or attraction
• To whom someone is attracted (physically and emotionally)
– Sexual activity or behaviour
• What a person does or likes to do sexually (acts and behaviours)
– Sexual identity
• How someone describes their sense of self as a sexual being (e.g., heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian,
gay, homosexual)
– Sexual experience
• Observations of others’ sexualities; education or training related to sexuality; experiences that may
not have been consensual
No clear boundaries!
The sexuality matrix
Desire
Behavior
Identity
Experience
7
Key Ideas
Social Construction: A phenomenon that may appear to be natural, normal,
obvious to those that accept it, but it’s actually an invention or an artifact of a
particular culture, society, and/or historical period.
◦ Something has meaning because society/culture says it has meaning. For
example, “women are emotional” and “boys will be boys.”
Social Control: Social mechanisms that regulate individual and group behavior
using rewards (i.e., positive reinforcement) and punishments (i.e., arrest, loss
of social ties).
▪
▪
▪
▪
Informal/individual
Formal/institutional
Rewards
Punishments
Important Sociological Questions
▪ What is defined as sex?
▪ What is considered appropriate sexually?
▪Who regulates appropriate sex?
▪How do a society’s members learn sexual behavior and
rules?
Answers depend on social context!
Sexual Variability
▪ It is problematic to focus only on sex as “acts” and behaviors
▪ When we focus on acts we create distinctions (i.e.,
heterosexual, homosexual) and that creates hierarchies.
▪ Focusing on Acts also converts acts into roles and subcultures
that do not reflect reality and lose meaning over space and
time.
▪ Cross-cultural continuum of attitudes towards sex highlights its
socially constructed nature
▪ Ranging from sex is dirty (even between marital partners) to sex
is pleasurable and fun (and not solely for procreation)
Social Context and Relations
Impact of early Colonial American culture in shaping sexuality
▪ Settlement patterns
▪ Rural farms versus small towns
▪ Building materials
Impact of Industrialization
▪ Move away from agrarian society reframed how sexuality was seen –
separate and distinct from other areas of life.
▪ Private versus public spheres.
Industrialization and Urbanization
Social Structures Regulating Sexuality:
Marriage
• Until about 150 years ago, marriage was not about two people in
love.
• The purpose of marriage: meet the needs of the group by forming
alliances with other groups.
• Through the ages, marriage was an economic and political alliance:
dowry, land, mutual defense and enough people to produce wealth,
work the land, exchange goods.
• Husband and wife depended on each other to run the family
enterprise, neither could do it alone.
Social Structures Regulating Sexuality:
Marriage (Cont’d)
•Most important source of social security, medical care and economic
support and survival.
•Being so important for so many people, marriages were not decided
by the man and woman alone based on attraction.
•Love and lust were abundant, but unrelated to marriage.
Social Structures Regulating Sexuality:
Marriage (Cont’d)
Factors that helped usher the love marriage:
◦ industrialization: individual has more value
◦ affluence: less dependence on family
◦ literacy: romantic novels
◦ later, movies
◦ increased longevity
◦ secularization
◦ women financially independent
◦ Lower birth rate
Social Construction of Sexual Identities
Dominant ideas about sexuality:
◦ Sexual behaviour “naturally” follows sexual difference (male and
female)
◦ Sexuality is “natural,” innate – biological instinct to reproduce; a
psychological drive
◦ Deviations from the “natural” or “normal” indicate “immorality,”
“depravity” or “disorder”
◦ Identity is not fixed and unchanging, it is a product of (dominant)
social meanings
◦ Sexual identities do not simply name sexual practices
Week 2 Readings
• Box 1: How Do Heterosexual Undergraduate Students Define Having
Sex?
• 2: “Bringing Intersexy Back”? Intersexuals and Sexual Satisfaction
• 3: The Perils and Pleasures of Sex for Trans People
• 4: I am Gay – But I Wasn’t Born This Way
• Box: Queer: Identity and Praxis
• 5: Bud-Sex: Constructing Normative Masculinity among Rural Straight
Men That have Sex with Men
• 6: “Straight Girls Kissing”? Understanding Same-Gender Sexuality
beyond the Elite College Campus
SOCI 119:
Sexuality & Sexual Identities
UC S A N D I E G O
W I NT E R 2022
P ROFE S SOR: JE N N RO S E N
Week 3
Last Week…
▪ Sex & Gender
▪ Gender identity, Gender presentation, Gender roles, Gender
socialization
▪ Sexuality
▪ Sexual orientation, sexual identities
▪ Social construction of sexuality (and gender)
▪ Mechanisms of social control
▪ History
▪ Impact of industrialization and urbanization on sexuality and sexual
identities
Investigating Sex
Sigmund Freud
Freud believed sexuality begins at birth and described five stages in psychosexual
development.
Oral stage: autoerotic focus on the mouth from birth to age 1.
Anal stage: between ages 1 and 3.
Phallic stage: ages 3 to 5, interest in the genitals.
Boy develops sexual desire for his mother (Oedipal complex) and fear of his
father, which leads to castration anxiety.
Girl develops desire for her father and fears her mother (Electra complex) and
develops penis envy.
Latency stage: sexual impulses not active.
Genital stage: at puberty, interest in sexual intercourse.
Investigating Sex
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)
◦ The Kinsey Reports: Statistical documentation of American sexual
behavior. Discovered extraordinary diversity in sexual behaviors.
Methods/Approach
◦ Sampling
◦ Representativeness & generalizations
◦ 18,000 sexual histories, 200 major subgroups
◦ Representative???
◦ POC, older, lower SES, Catholics & Jewish, conservatives
Kinsey’s Key Findings
◦ Showed a significant discrepancy between public standards and actual standards of sexual
behavior
◦ Advocated for the importance of masturbation, especially for women.
◦ Showed that labels of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” were inadequate ways of
understanding sexual behavior — Devised the “Kinsey Scale”
◦ Rejected idea of normal/abnormal dichotomy when it came to sexual differences
The Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale
Kinsey wanted to eliminate the concept of heterosexual and homosexual identities. He
argued there were only sexual behaviors, which exist on a continuum of sexual expression.
In his Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, individuals are rated based on other-sex
and/or same-sex sexual behaviors and psychosexual reactions such as sex dreams and
fantasies in the person’s sexual history.
William Masters (1915-2001) and
Virginia Johnson (1925-2013)
▪ Human Sexual Response (1966): Detailed the sexual response cycles of 382 male
and 312 female research subjects (non-random sample)
▪ Combined clinical observation with direct measurement of genital arousal using
electronic devices.
Key FINDINGS
▪ Similarity of male and female sexual responses
▪ Women achieve orgasms via clitoral stimulation
▪ Legitimized female masturbation
Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970)
◦ Argued that sexual problems were not the result of neuroses or personality disorders
◦ Rather, lack of information, poor communication, or relationship conflict contributed
◦ Used behavioral therapy to treat sexual problems with great success
Contemporary Research Studies
Five national surveys were conducted to illustrate research on the
general population of men and women, adolescents, and college
students.
◦ The National Health and Social Life Survey
◦ The National Survey of Family Growth (periodic)
◦ The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (biannual)
◦ National College Health Assessment
◦ The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior
Week 3 Readings
• 7: Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report
• 8: Large Scale Sex: Methods, Challenges, and Findings of Nationally
Representative Sex Research
• Box 8: Doing It Differently: Women’s and Men’s Estimates of Their
Number of Lifetime Sexual Partners
• 9: Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
• 10: Sexing Up the Subject: Methodological Nuances in Researching
the Female Sex Industry
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