Just as deconstructing Freud’s views on incest provides opportunities for new interpretations of sexuality, so does Kenneth Plummer’s (1991) deconstruction of current conceptualizations of childhood sexuality. Plum­mer presents a model that explores how a biological potential becomes scripted as the child develops a sense of self. Plummer recognized that sexuality has a physiological and behavioral […]

One of the earliest modem discourses on women’s sexuality can be found in Freud’s writings. In his early years, he encountered many patients beleaguered by physical disorders for which there was no apparent cause. Using free association, he found dramatic evidence of widespread incest in middle-class European society. However, he later declared (some argue in […]

Social constructionism offers theorists a way to get beyond simplistic debates. If we recognize that humans are biological beings born into a social world, biological and social factors cannot be considered in separation. The question becomes how do social and political environments interact with the biologically developing organism to socially construct a woman or man […]

Just as class and ethnic concerns are related to the discourse on sex­uality, they also affect the definition and treatment of social problems. Looking at culture, class, ethnicity, and variations in sexualities is impor­tant in developing models of sexuality that have practical applicability. Ignoring within group differences has seriously undermined efforts to pre­vent HIV infection […]

Within group sexual differences present another challenge to the tra­ditional biological perspective. Feminist wisdom has begun to benefit from the recognition that knowledge is pluralistic and that women do not con­stitute a homogeneous class. Expectations, resources, and the experience of oppression can and do vary depending on age, culture, class, ethnicity, physical ability, and sexual […]

Changes across time in the way people think about homosexuality also challenge the traditional notion of a universal, unchanging sexuality. Until the late 19th century, passionate romantic friendships between women were seen as a normal and a healthy part of a middle-class woman’s life (Jeffreys, 1985 as cited in Kitzinger, 1994). On the rare occasion […]

One need not look to the sexual practices of other cultures to find sexual practices that deviate from what the traditional perspective defines as normal. Transgenderists provide a particularly good example. Transgender is a term used to describe individuals who challenge the categories of sex and gender in a variety of ways. Transgenderists are men […]

Numerous studies have documented different cultural patterns of erotic development and sexual orientation, challenging the notion of sex­uality as a universal biological given. The work of Herdt (1984) is partic­ularly illustrative. He identified 53 distinct societies in the Pacific and New Guinea that have “age structured homosexual practice.” In a longitudinal study of the Sambia […]

There are, however, challenges to this mechanistic, biological view of sex. Alternative perspectives described below suggest that the postnatal environment makes a huge contribution to one’s gender identity and sub­sequent sexuality. The focus is on the social context of behavior and sug­gests that women and men are essentially alike, except in basic reproduc­tive functions (menstruation, […]

In earlier periods of human history the social and political organiza­tion of sexuality was accomplished largely by religion. However, there has been a gradual shifting of this function to secular realms and the infor­mation age of facts. This movement of sexuality from the realm of the religious to the secular was accomplished largely by making […]