There are numerous links between social constructionism and femi­nism. Feminists have recognized that traditional, modernist approaches to science have rendered women invisible in significant ways. This invisibility of women in science has discouraged women from being knowers (i. e., scientists in search of knowledge), restricting them to being objects of knowledge (Henwood & Pidgeon, 1995). […]

Approaches to knowledge have varied over the centuries, with reli­ance on combinations of superstition, animism, religion, or meditation, and, more recently, rationality, logic, and empiricism. Each approach is characterized by certain kinds of procedures, rules of inference, and values regarding what constitutes the most compelling source of information or data. In some cultures, for example, […]

JACQUELYN W. WHITE, BARRIE BONDURANT, ANDCHERYL BROWN TRAVIS Sexuality is an ambiguous term. It can refer to a variety of phenomena, including sexual identity, sexual preference, and sexual behavior. Depend­ing on one’s theoretical perspective, sexuality may be defined in physio­logical, intrapersonal, or interpersonal terms. Following from these per­spectives there are questions regarding what constitutes sexuality. […]

The consequences for women of current constructions of sexuality are not matters of benign variations in satisfaction or convenience. There is a dark side that operates to exclude and marginalize women by virtue of demeaning harassment and implicit as well as explicit threats to physical safety. In chapter 13, Kurth, Spiller, and Travis explore the […]

The third section of this volume builds on the perspective that sex­uality is socially constructed and that meanings are negotiated and rene­gotiated. Sexuality is elicited, expressed, maintained, or suppressed by vir­tue of societal context. Furthermore, the meaning and function of sexuality vary according to this context. In chapter 9, Crawford explores the ways in which […]

One strategy for escaping the pervasive focus on gender difference is to formulate questions and models that address the development of sexual phenomena over the life course of girls and women. In chapter 5, the authors summarize the literature on the developing sexuality of adolescent girls, observing that virtually all of the research and federal […]

Chapters in this section focus on aspects of epistemology, especially chapter 1, and other chapters review evolutionary and biological ap­proaches to sex and gender, meta-analytic approaches to human sex dif­ferences in sexuality, and feminist considerations of sexology and the med — icalization of sexuality. In chapter 2, Danny Moore and Cheryl Travis point out that […]

Issues relating to sexuality are constantly in the headlines, are the topic of heated controversies, and are the focus of national policy decisions. A perusal of almost any forum of our society underscores the highly volatile nature of these issues. Recent jury verdicts have awarded millions for a woman sexually harassed by a law firm. […]