Perhaps it is inevitable, given this biological framework, that univer­salized physical subsystems would become significant in themselves. Espe­cially in the clinical literature on causes and treatments of sexual dysfunc­tions, sexuality becomes the successful performance of fragments in two different ways. First, there is the definition that having adequate perfor­mance components of desire, arousal, and orgasm […]

Biology is considered fundamental and bedrock according to the reigning sexological model, both in terms of distal (prenatal and early life) and proximal (at the time of the sexual event or experience) control over sexuality. Sociobiologists and others insist that genetics and prenatal en­docrinology create brain structures which determine aspects of sexuality such as sexual […]

Another way to describe the search for universals is that the social — cultural-historical contexts of both researcher and research participant are ignored by the sexological model. The fact that a questionnaire is com­pleted in a classroom, a home, or a bar is not considered relevant to the facts that are produced. Sexual laws and […]

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, […]

One of the most important reasons to identify and name the sexo­logical model is to reveal patterns of inclusion and exclusion in its research design and concepts. If the sexological model has promoted research paths of limited usefulness to women or has actively devalued paths important for women, then feminists must become committed to developing […]

The sexological model is distinctively Western and 20th century, and we have already seen many of its seeds in the political realities of the decades of animal sex research. The emphasis on evolution is a modernism marker, as is the importance of sexual and gender identity issues, and the relationship between sexuality and such modem […]

Laboratory sex research with animals affected sex research methods later used with people in important ways. Carolyn Wood Sherif (1979) described how specialty areas with lower prestige seek to improve their status “by adopting the perspectives, theories, and methodologies as high on the [status] hierarchy as possible” (p. 98). Prevented by public opinion, practical obstacles, […]

Bullough (1994a) describes pre-Kinsey American sex research on peo­ple as taking two forms: “moralistic” research and “fact-finding” research. In the first category he puts proponents as well as opponents of the move-merits for legal, educational, and public health reform who sought infer- mation about sexual practices (especially socially disapproved practices such as contact with prostitutes […]

When Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues, authors of the most signifi­cant and trend-setting sex survey in 20th century America, discussed sex­uality knowledge in the introductory chapter of their first research volume (Kinsey et al., 1948, pp. 21-34), they indicated that “a sex library.. . would have to cover materials drawn from practically all of the […]

Central to the sexological model is an insistence on proper methods. How did they become established? Such questions are not unique to sex research, of course, and the recent work in the social studies of science (e. g., Knorr-Cetina & Mulkay, 1983), including psychology (Morawski, 1989), directs our attention to the role of the culture […]