A second consequence of these assumed gender differences is that it is difficult for a woman to determine what constitutes her own sexuality. Since man’s autonomous sexuality is culturally defined and woman’s is not, women (and men) may be expected to have difficulty understanding and conceptualizing women’s sexuality. Women’s autonomous sexuality is cul­turally silent and […]

Justification for Rape Belief in these biologically derived gender differences in sexuality is consistent with rape myths indicating that it is a woman’s fault if she is raped. It is her fault in the context of an expectation that women must set limits on inappropriate sexual behaviors. As discussed, it is presumed that women have […]

Gender roles for sexuality are based on a heterosexual model and are consistent with a belief in the biological explanation. Gender roles pre­scribe an active, agentic, autonomous sexuality for men based on a sexual identity associated with characteristics of assertiveness, dominance, power, and insistence (Lott, 1987). Gender roles for women prescribe a reactive sexuality in […]

Biology is the dominant basis for understanding sexuality in our cul­ture. By biology I mean evolved, physiologically based dispositions that provide explanations for sexual phenomena such as level and object of sexual desire. Thus, a reductionistic approach is assumed in which capacity for sexual desire is biologically based. Tiefer (1987; chapter 4 this book) has […]

It is a common cultural assumption that men have a stronger sexual drive than women. In fact, numerous sources support the conclusion that men have more permissive attitudes about sex and engage in more sexual behaviors than women. In their meta-analytic review of gender differences in sexuality, Oliver and Hyde (1993) found that men had […]

PATRICIA J. MOROKOFF The purpose of this chapter is to explore issues of sexual assertiveness and sexual decision-making for women. I will begin by presenting evidence for gender-based differences in sexual behavior followed by a discussion of how such differences are culturally assumed to derive from a biological basis. What I will refer to as […]

In 1989, I expressed my hunch that heterosexism created problems for heterosexual women as well as for lesbians (Brown, 1989). This hunch seems to be more accurate as the culture continues to strive to alternately rid itself of or reembrace sexist and heterosexist imperatives. Heterosexu­ality, as currently defined in U. S. culture, is a male-dominant […]

The movement away from a dichotomized construction of lesbian sexuality as either impotent or dangerous has provided images of the sex­ually agentic lesbian that are largely divorced from the heterosexist nar­rative. In the pages of On Our Backs, Bad Attitude, Girljock, and other similar lesbian owned and created erotic publications are images unavail­able within a […]

The addition of feminist analysis to the social construction of women’s sexuality has proven to be a mixed blessing for lesbians. On the one hand, the second wave of the U. S. White women’s movement pro­vided, after some initial prodding, a place for many White and (usually) middle-class lesbians to encounter one another in a […]

What is astonishing is that within this context there also developed a rich social discourse about lesbian sexuality that did reflect the lived experiences of some lesbians. It represented attempts to recapture the nar­rative from heterosexist forms and redefine women as sexually present and powerful when sexual with other women. Joan Nestle (1987, 1992) has […]