Davidson and Layder (1994) propose that “on the one hand, popular beliefs about sex are shaped by the findings of [sex] research, on the other, research into sexuality is powerfully influenced by the moral and normative values of the society in which it is undertaken” (p. xi). This circular relationship will make it extremely difficult to determine the impact of the sexological model on real people’s lives and sexualities. From clinical work and sexuality teaching over the past two decades, it is my impression that the sexological model of sexuality has become the infrastructure of most people’s everyday ideas about sexuality. It is the sexual Weltanschauung.
Despite differences in age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or social class, most people appear to accept the 10 points of the sexological model listed earlier and place the narrative of their own sexual life within its framework (Plummer, 1995). The sexological model pervades our thinking and rationalizes and justifies our choices so completely that it is only with extreme difficulty that we even contemplate alternatives.
Health and science media are largely responsible for promulgating the themes of the sexological model of sexuality as they comment on the sexual developments of the day, and as they advertise (selectively) new research results and treatment approaches. The tabloids and the serious news outlets, for example, are partial to sexologic ideas that emphasize pharmacologic and other medical breakthroughs, biological bases of sex differences, sex as a matter of health, the importance of sexual and gender identity, and the central role of evolution in establishing our sexual patterns and preferences (Coward, 1985; D’Emilio &. Freedman, 1988; Fausto-Sterling, 1992; Vance, 1984).
One of the most obvious challenges for feminist sex research in the future is to demonstrate the actual impact of sex research and the sexological model on women’s sexual lives and expectations. To do this, sex research will have to turn to models offered by academic traditions that have taken as their subject mass culture and its influences on behavior and imagination. Many recent analyses of women-oriented mass media such as popular music, soap operas, romance novels and magazines, prime-time television, and film have analyzed these media’s messages about gender (e. g., Brown, 1990; Cantor, 1987; Modleski, 1984). Although such analyses have noted in passing the pervasive sexual double standard, women’s difficulties with sexual assertiveness and pleasure, and the ubiquitousness of sexual danger, there are far more studies of how media construct gender than how they construct sexuality. Studies of sexual scripts (e. g., how sexual activities are initiated, how scripts are determined, what are participants’ expectations and evaluations) have been dominated by a focus on gender differences rather than any examination of cultural, subcultural, or media sources for the scripts (e. g., Cupach & Metts, 1991).
There are few attempts to show how the sexological model has wormed its way into individuals’ sexual consciousnesses. Plummer (1995), among others, has described how sexological literature shaped attitudes and expectations in the pre-sexual-liberation era for gay and lesbian people. He also quotes from numerous autobiographies of transsexuals showing how the sexological model of one, fixed gender identity informed their selfexaminations and life decisions, as have many others writing about transsexuals (e. g., Hausman, 1995).
My work in urology departments over 13 years has showed how the development and promotion of medically fixable erections influences men’s expectations for a perfectable penis (Tiefer, 1995). Also, I was often surprised in my (separately conducted) clinical interviews with men and their sexual pamers (usually, but not always, wives) as to how much they re garded sexuality as a matter wholly of individual desire and satisfaction, and how much they thought it was determined by biological factors. Eh renreich, Hess, and Jacobs (1986) provided only one feminist voice of many to celebrate the impact of the research of Masters and Johnson on women’s sexual entitlements and orgasmic potential. Their statement “here was a body of objective, and by most standards, respectably scientific find ings on which to rest the case for a radically new, feminist interpretation of sexuality (p. 69),” is an indication of the type of impact they believed this work to have had.