As previously mentioned, the internal extension of the penis is surrounded by an elaborate network of muscles. This musculature is comparable to that in the female body, and strengthening these muscles by doing Kegel exercises can produce benefits for men similar to those experienced by women. In most men these muscles are quite weak because […]
День: 03.11.2015
Structuralist/Post-structuralist Theories
Sociologists still argue over the effects and desirability of a move from structuralist attention to ‘things’ (the material) to post-structuralist attention to ‘words’ and meaning (the linguistic).They might refer to this shift as ‘the cultural turn’ (Chaney, 1994; Nash, 2001) or ‘the linguistic turn’ (Barrett, 1992). In order to understand this linguistic/cultural turn it helps […]
Liselott Dellenborg
This understanding of sexuality and the self is not universal, but a specific Euro-American culture model. By reacting according to this model, Westerners commonly draw conclusions that give rise to misleading implications of female circumcision. An illustrative example can be drawn from an advert found in a Swedish newspaper. Instead of ‘Seminar on female genital […]
Kiss and Tell
ould it be that the questions researchers ask about sexuality are more important than the answers? Some researchers believe so, and research indicates that our questions about sexuality may indeed shape our thoughts (Ericksen, 1999). The following is an excerpt from Julia Ericksen’s Kiss and Tell, a book that explores human sexuality research. Sexual […]
Explained?
The word ‘theory’ can immediately strike fear into the heart, but a theory is really just an explanation, and the theories presented here are attempts to explain gender. We all theorize to some extent, trying to explain the world around us. Theorists do this too, but more systematically. There are various good books (for example, […]
Male Genital Modification: Cultural Beliefs and Practices
Throughout the world, people hold strong beliefs about the importance and implications of altering male genitals through a variety of procedures. These rituals and customs have been chronicled through the ages (Aggleton, 2007). (Female genital modification is also widespread, as discussed in Chapter 3.) The most common genital alteration is circumcision, the surgical removal of […]
Beyond Dualisms
Grosz postulates innate drives that become organized by physical experience into somatic feelings, which translate into what we call emotions. Taking the innate at face value, however, still leaves us with an unexplained residue of nature.112 Humans are biological and thus in some sense natural beings and social and in some sense artificial—or, if you […]
Conclusion: doing gender, gender being done to us, or gender doing us?
As a sociologist I am drawn to the idea that gender is something we do, although within social constraints. If people do gender they have to engage with ideas about how it ‘should’ be done, even if they find ways to do it differently. People also have to do gender within conditions not of their […]
Correlations
Correlations are often used when it is not possible to do an experiment. For example, because it is unethical to do a controlled experiment in a sexual abuse study, we would study a given population to see whether there is any correlation between past sexual abuse and later difficulties with intimate relationships. The limitation of […]
Material Overindulgence
Professional middle-class parents find it necessary to indulge their childrens material desires as a means of supporting their children’s enthusiasms and interests, as well as a way of enabling them to keep up with and, as the sociologist Allison Pugh suggests, join in conversation with their peers.18 At the same time, they worry about the […]