Within the positivist model of studying the true nature of sexuality and looking for variables with the greatest explanatory power, the sexological model of sex research has focused on identifying basic mechanisms of sexuality presumed to be universal to the human species. The scientific paradigm led sexologists to assume that once general laws were established, factors influencing individual and group variation would be identified and sexuality would be thoroughly mapped. Whether the sexual phenomenon of interest was choice of partner, premarital pregnancy, frequency of masturbation, or sexual desire, the work proceeded through surveys or laboratory research so as first to identify the most universal and significant variables.
With this focus, it is not surprising that biobgical factors and group differences have dominated sexological research. Issues such as the influence of prenatal hormones on sex differentiation in the brain have been studied in innumerable animal species and the results generalized into mammalian laws (van den Wijngaard, 1991). With gender differences in humans the outcome variable, a biological mechanism would be proposed by animal studies, years of research would be dedicated to working out specific details, individual differences would be ignored by group averaging, and any inquiry into cultural factors would be postponed indefinitely. The presumed existence of general mammalian laws gave validity to animal research, and the endless parametric studies (specificities of hormones, time periods, behaviors, etc.), although actually dealing with the details of particular species and research conditions, were expected to generalize someday and somehow to the vicissitudes of human lives.
Beginning in the 1940s, feminists pointed out that much of what was discovered in animal sex research was anthropomorphic, and that cultural gender relations were being projected onto observations of animals (Har — away, 1989; Herschberger, 1970 [1948]). Such projections distorted the observations of animal lives; in addition, but when the results were generalized back to humans, stereotypic sex differences were falsely said to be scientifically proven (Fedigan, 1992). An immense amount of such research on general animal mating patterns (now often within the sociobiological framework) still continues, providing endless repetitious newspaper columns that shore up the public’s support for the sexological model (Fausto — Sterling, 1992).
Assumptions about universality are communicated by the pervasive use of context-free technical definitions in contemporary sexological model sex research (Connell & Dowsett, 1992). Homosexuality is defined as sexual activity between persons of the same sex. Masturbation is defined as self-stimulation of the genitals to orgasm. Erection is defined as hardness of the penis. The fact that these phenomena and experiences may be very different for people of different cultures, centuries, ages, genders, and social locations is considered unimportant (when it’s even considered at all)— the operational definition is the real one, and everything else is merely a modification.
To put it another way, the sexological model assumes that socio- historico-cultural context is background, and that something meaningfully called basic principles are foreground in terms of understanding sexuality. Either generality is assumed (as with college student populations participating in every type of sexuality study), or group results are compared (as when surveys of safe sex behavior in San Francisco are compared with Brazil) so basic patterns can be identified by eliminating the effect of region, religion, age, marital status, and so on.