День: 04.11.2015

The first wave (1979-91): Colonialism, the decriminalisation of male homosexual conduct, and the creation of the ‘homosexual’ type

It is generally argued that male homosexuality was reasonably tolerated in ancient and Imperial China (Hinsch 1990; Samshasha 1997). However, the colonial government made buggery a crime in Hong Kong in 1842. In English law, buggery is a generic term for both sodomy (between two men or between a man and a woman) and bestiality […]

How Do We Learn Gender Roles?

You have probably heard the argument that behavioral differences between men and women are biologically determined, at least to some degree. Men cannot bear or nurse children. Likewise, biological differences in hormones, muscle mass, and brain struc­ture and function can influence some aspects of behavior. However, most theorists explain gender roles as largely a product […]

Radical feminism

Radical feminists argued that male control of women’s sexuality was a key factor in women’s oppression (see Dworkin, 1981; Kelly, 1988; MacKinnon, 1982). Kate Millet and Shulamith Firestone are the most visible of the first radical feminist theorists and certainly attended to sexuality, though Jackson (1998b: 19—20) suggests that Firestone is rather idiosyncratic. Millet’s (1972/1970) […]

Gender Roles

We have seen that social learning is an important influence on the formation of gen­der identity early in life, so that even by the age of 2 or 3 years, most children have no doubt about whether they are boys or girls. This influence continues throughout our lives, because we are influenced by gender roles—that […]

Outcomes of Sex Reassignment

Numerous studies of the psychosocial outcome of gender reassignment provide a basis for optimism about the success of sex-reassignment procedures. The single most con­sistent finding of these investigations is that most people who have undergone these procedures experience significant improvement in their overall adjustment to life (De Cuypere et al., 2005; Khoosal et al., 2011; […]

A Twist of Obligation

Lots of women, ourselves included, dread saying “no” because of the tangle of emotions that we discussed above. For many women, there is an added barrier to the self-affirming no: it’s the social, or maybe we should say sociological, obligation. Melissa James understands the emotion of sociological obli­gation as well as anyone. Melissa is a […]

The Limits of Blame and Shame

Т ИБ 1998 PUBLICATION of Margaret Keck and Kathyrn Sikkink’s Activ­ists beyond Borders affirmed global activists’ hopes that new global norms, such as those that frame gender violence as human rights violations, could have important long-term impact on state behavior. Aspirations more than real­ity, such norms represent a new transnational consensus about what it means […]

SEX IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND

There’s an enduring myth that the Victorians’ inhibitions about sex were so extreme that they actually covered up piano legs to discourage any association with the female ankle, but the truth is the Victorians had a powerful, if repressed, sexual appetite. After all, this was a time when prostitution was legal and the perusal of […]

OTHER SEXUAL PRACTICES

Mate Selection Recent theorizing and research, particularly among evolutionary psy­chologists, has focused a great deal on mate selection (i. e., on the features that most influence men and women in their choice of sexual partners and marriage partners). Much of social psychologists’ research on mate selection preferences has been conducted in the laboratory using samples […]