LEONORE TIEFER
Ideology works precisely by making us believe that what is socially created, and therefore subject to change, is really natural, and therefore immutable. (Weeks, 1995, p. 34)
The guiding metaphor of scientific nativism, that the body and its natural processes provide a “base” or “foundation” which determines the superstructure of social relations, in fundamental ways misrepresents the relationships between bodies and social processes. (Connell & Dowsett, 1992, p. 54)
What do we know about sexuality and how do we know it? In our[2] time, most people turn for answers to sex experts, who, they assume, rely
on contemporary prime sources of authority: science and professional training. People assume that experts know and draw on valid and reliable contemporary sex research methods such as surveys, laboratory research, and outcome studies in the clinical arena. Earlier sex research was primarily based on individual case studies, but they have gone out of favor. The contemporary public believes that experts’ answers to questions about sexuality are professional, which means completely neutral with regard to sexual values, or on the side of sexual health. Who could argue with that?
In this chapter I will propose, by contrast, that viewing sex experts as having no particular ax to grind is as naive and inaccurate as believing Congressional investigative committees have no ax to grind or that journalists present just the facts. Rather, I will argue that professionals and anointed sex experts in the 20th century are neither neutral nor atheoret- ical in their research and formulations, but that they actively promote particular constructions of sexuality depending on their primary discipline and its frame of reference. Although the study of sexuality is multidisciplinary, there are certain core ideas I will label the “sexological model of sexuality.”
This sexological model of sexuality is not simply a mirror held up to nature, but is a distinct perspective[3] on sexual life that privileges biological and psychological factors while making universal claims about sexuality. These emphases come through in the discussion of purposes for sexuality (procreation, pleasure, intimacy, health, and tension release), causes of sexuality (evolution, physiological factors, and early-life psychology), types of sexuality (normal and abnormal forms of arousal and sexual activity), and experts on sexuality (medical and other professionals). This perspective de — emphasizes or ignores sexuality as a means of fulfilling multiple and diverse motivations, the role of culture in determining sexual roles and enactment scripts, the effects of real-world power on lived sexualities, and the role of commercial factors in shaping current sexualities. Yet, we are so familiar with this psychobiological model and take it so for granted that it is difficult to acknowledge that alternate perspectives exist or are dealing with equally or more important variables.
In this chapter I will argue that the sexological model is not well suited to women’s experiences of sexuality because of the realities of gender politics. The sexological model has neglected diversity among women in theory, and has neglected methods that take women’s various social situations into account. Women need models that emphasize cultural and political realities and how they affect bodily and psychological experience.
Part of the obstacle to a feminist (or any alternative) model is that proponents of the sexological model dominate the field and define the proper theoretical terms and research methods. Feminists wishing to replace the sexological model will have to “destabilize the plausibility of [its] strategies of explanation” (Haraway, 1986, p. 115) before they can expect any interest in their revised language and models of research.