Issues relating to sexuality are constantly in the headlines, are the topic of heated controversies, and are the focus of national policy decisions. A perusal of almost any forum of our society underscores the highly volatile nature of these issues. Recent jury verdicts have awarded millions for a woman sexually harassed by a law firm. A Supreme Court decision on a case originating in Nashville, TN, held that plaintiffs did not have to demonstrate psychological harm in order to prove sexual harassment. Researchers have found their study protocols debated on the floor of Congress. The former Speaker of the House, in an oblique allusion to the menstrual cycle, stated that women could not serve in combat trenches. And even the former Surgeon General of the United States, Jocelyn Elders, was removed from her position following her endorsement of the idea of including information about masturbation in sex education. Beyond these examples, we find that the meaning and experience of sexuality is changing for individuals. For example, a new survey found that approximately 37% of teen females have first intercourse primarily because of peer pressure rather than out of affection for their partners. Furthermore, there are differences of opinion regarding what behaviors are included in having sex. Clearly, cultural notions of what constitutes sexuality and the elements deemed acceptable affect not only individuals, but also aspects of larger social agendas.
Women’s sexuality is a topic of increasing importance for several reasons. First, psychology as a science has only recently begun to include women as primary participants, rather than as comparisons to a male standard. For this reason, research on women’s sexuality is in need of a careful reflection with regard to epistemology, life course development, and the social order. Second, political economics and social changes in society have affected women’s lives tremendously. It is important to determine the extent to which these forces have affected women’s personal development and interpersonal experiences, especially with respect to sexuality.
The intent of this volume on sexuality, society, and feminism is not to provide advice about how to have more and better sex, but rather to transform our understanding of sexuality: how it is negotiated, developed, and evoked; and what it means in a contemporary social framework. The role of society in women’s sexuality has been to suppress and deny, and, more important to set the framework and rules by which sexuality is negotiated and thus has determined the forms of sexuality that are possible. For example, Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger (1993) have suggested that a hidden assumption of heterosexuality frames all relationships. Further, the assumption is not only that the framework is heterosexual but that it is between women and masculine men, thus implicitly reproducing issues of dominance and subordinance.
For this volume, we have followed a number of guidelines similar to those outlined by Judith Worell and Claire Etaugh (1994) as key components in transforming knowledge, including
1. challenging traditional knowledge;
2. focusing on the experience of women’s lives;
3. acknowledging power as a basis for social arrangements;
4- recognizing gender as having multiple conceptions that are socially constructed;
5. attending to language and creating a public awareness of hidden phenomena; and
6. promoting social activism.
We take a pluralistic position with respect to methodology. We do not look for the uniquely best form of feminist methodology. We suggest that it is better to ask whether or how epistemology operates in the service of feminism. We assume that language is particularly important in the process of conceptualizing sexuality and that examination of language can highlight contradictions that reveal hidden meanings and assumptions.
Our general approach to sexuality follows the idea others have applied to gender (Crawford, 1995; Crawford & Unger, 1995; West & Zimmerman, 1977). Specifically, sexuality is a meaning system that organizes interactions and governs access to power and resources. Sexuality is not so much an attribute of persons, but rather exists in transactions between people. We further agree with Mary Jacobus and her colleagues, E. F. Keller and
S. Shuttleworth (1990), that the arena of the body (masculine or feminine) is often a battlefield where a variety of struggles, not all having to do with gender or sexuality, are played out and that the body reflects the matrices of power at all levels.
It is the purpose of this volume to contribute to contemporary fern — inism by extending the discourse of constructionist accounts in psychology. In a sense, this entire volume is a way of going forward to new understanding of sexuality. We adopt the view that sexuality is actively constructed and emergent within contexts. In other words, sexuality is repeatedly negotiated and redefined; sexuality changes developmentally over the life span (explored in section II); it has various meanings and manifestations (as exemplified in section III); and it can be used in a larger sense to reinforce violence against women (see section IV). We also believe that new constructions of sexuality have the potential to transform the way women themselves think, feel, and behave.