Children through the middle and late childhood years continue to masturbate, engage in heterosexual and homosexual contact, enjoy displaying their genitals and seeing those of other children, and sometimes even attempt intercourse. Prepubescence is the age of sexual discovery; most children learn about adult sexual behaviors such as intercourse at this age and assimilate cultural […]
День: 07.11.2015
Saying No
Many of us have difficulty saying no to others. Our discomfort in communicating this direct message is perhaps most pronounced when it applies to intimate areas of relationships. This is reflected in the following anecdotes: Sometimes my partner wants to be sexual when I only want to be close. The trouble is, I can’t say […]
Not ‘personal troubles’ but public issues: childcare
One challenge of patriarchal society’s representation of a ‘personal trouble’ came through feminist insistence on the need for access to twenty-four hour, free childcare. Women have borne most of the responsibility for childcare (see Brown et al., 2001; Oakley, 1972; 1980). There is no reason why, having given birth to the children, women should have […]
Self-examination
A man who wants to know exactly how things are put together down in his scrotum can find out most easily by sitting in a hot bath and feeling himself. Besides being informative, such a voyage of discovery can help in identifying any abnormality at an early date, assuming of course that one has some […]
Public/private
The division between ‘public’ and ‘private’ is artificial; the terms only make sense through opposition to each other. The public is that which is not private and vice versa (Pateman, 1988). For feminists ‘the private’ usually referred to the domestic sphere, but there are other usages of the term which refer to civil society, for […]
Psychosexual Development: Becoming More Private
Freud believed that children enter a sexual “latency” period after about age 6, when sexual issues remain fairly unimportant; they reemerge with the coming of puberty (see Chapter 2). The latency thesis may have been formulated because as the child matures, overt sexual behavior lessens. However, such behavior may lessen because it becomes less tolerated […]
Feminist Discourse/Practical Discourse
Simone Chambers At his most ambitious, Habermas claims that the ideal of a consensually steered society is inherent to discourse ethics.1 What would such a society look like? What would it require of citizens? What place does or should consensus have in our pluralistic world? Although not for the most part inspired by Habermas, many […]
“I’m Sexually Objectifying People”
“I am looking at you right now in a sexual way whether you like it or not. Never mind the fact that I don’t know your name, care to know your name, or have any idea who you are. I don’t really care about you. You serve as an object for my sexual pleasure. I […]
Of safe sex and ‘bedroom power’
There is a perceptible link between women’s sexual helplessness in most developing countries and lack of control over their sex lives and reproductive behaviours. For a long time, African countries have continued to record very high rates of fertility and currently there are soaring rates of HIV/AIDS infection. Demographic literature indicates that global efforts have […]
Focus on Future Changes You Can Make
An excellent way to close discussion of a complaint is to focus on what the two of you can do to make things better. Perhaps this is the time to say, "My new job is really important to me, but our relationship is much more important. Maybe we can set aside special times each week […]