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 sexuality something that is scientific and medical. Mary Boyle (1994) outlines four major themes characteristic of 20th-century literature on sexuality:
1. Sexuality is associated closely with gender relations.
2. Sexuality can be understood through science.
3. Sexuality is an energy system.
4- Sexuality is a property of individuality.
Implicit in this body of literature are messages that men are naturally dominant and women are naturally submissive. It additionally implies that achieving femininity lies in surrendering the body (and the self) to men; that women are a sexual problem and need men to teach them mature sexual responsiveness. Finally, it conveys the message that women who reject these roles will be psychologically flawed (Boyle, 1994). Just as 20th — century literature has reinforced gender relations, it has also reflected a growing trust in science and medicine.
During the 20th century, initial scholarly interest in sexual life developed from a medical perspective. Although seen as objective and scientific, the medical perspective on sexuality perpetuates political and social ideology. The earliest medical concerns with sexuality dealt with pathology and treatment. Early advocates of a more encompassing approach, such as Hirschfeld (Hirschfeld & Lombardi-Nash, 1991) who in 1910 advocated for the decriminalization of homosexuality, were not popular with their contemporaries. They were seen as confusing science and propaganda (Haeberle, 1981; see also chapter 4, this volume). The tools of science, as they were then understood (i. e., anatomy, physiology, biology), were used to avoid (or in some cases disguise) social and political issues.
Nevertheless, social and political issues did underlie developments then just as they underlie developments now. Jacobus et al. found that “scientific formulations of sexual differences shift in accordance with changes in the economic organization of society—but also… in response to technological developments” (Jacobus et al., 1990, p. 5). “Despite shifting technological, economic, and political forces, however, there has been an historical persistence of certain aspects of gender ideology that have been subtly retained, revived, or recast in different eras” (Jacobus et al., 1990, p. 6). It appears that prevailing social and political forces denied acknowledgment of certain aspects of human sexual behavior that research had suggested (i. e., multiple orgasms in women and homosexual experiences among men). Early efforts to stop more psychosocial approaches to sexuality were largely successful. This persistent gender ideology helped naturalize scientific constructions of sexuality.
Leonore Tiefer (1988) evaluated both the impetus and the consequences of efforts to keep sex research apolitical. She noted that “sex research has developed a profoundly neutral, studiously apolitical, and what I would term ultra scientific stance” (p. 20). An essentially biological account of sexual behavior resulted: “Sexuality has been constructed as the sort of thing both animals and people have and do: behavior, orgasm, hormones, brain-behavior relationships” (p. 22). “In the process, what has been ignored are the historical, cultural, and interpersonal dimensions of sexuality. Human sexuality is construed as a universal, inherent, biologically driven essence expressed in numerous direct and indirect ways” (p. 21).
This approach views sex as a biological process, rooted in anatomical differences and in the reproductive cycle. Different proportions of male and female hormones entering the brain exert masculinizing and feminizing influences on the personality and behavior of the developing child. This developmental pattern is seen as part of the natural scheme of evolution. Sex differences present at birth are cited as supporting evidence. This per
spective acknowledges that humans are flexible enough to manifest differences in gender roles, but “the evidence presented. .. indicates that the learning of a gender role is a culturally fostered ontogenetic phenomenon of development superimposed on a prenatally determined pattern and mechanism of sexual behavior” (Diamond, 1965, p. 166). The argument continues that hormonal processes are set in motion by genetic determinations. These processes not only influence the development of internal sex organs and external genitalia, but also enter the brain and alter its anatomic structure and, eventually, cognitive function. Thus, certain masculine and feminine characteristics, as well as sexual orientation, are congruent with each other and natural in origin. From this perspective sexuality is assumed to be a biological given that shapes sexual desires, including choice of love objects.
Sexuality also began to be conceptualized as an expression of pleasure and of individual identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The emphasis in traditional, context-free science on the biological determination of sexuality fit in nicely with the growing rhetoric on the naturalness of sexual pleasure. As pleasure was accepted as a natural part of human behavior, it became an important marker of individual identity. Any deviation from perceived normalcy was seen as an indication of a character flaw. This individualistic view of the self, especially in psychological research, led to an emphasis on the individual to the exclusion of the social and cultural context (Henriques, Holloway, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Kitzinger, 1988). Individualization decontextualizes and depoliticizes sexuality, lends support to the dominant group, and obscures power dynamics and their consequences.
From this perspective, constructing sexuality as a central aspect of a person serves to control that person’s behavior. Even the current reconstructions of lesbianism from a pathological disorder to a life-style choice is suggested to be another expression of an individualist bias that serves to decontextualize an inherently political activity (Kitzinger, 1987). Research and therapy focusing on the lesbian’s self and identity emphasize individual sources of distress and individual avenues for change while minimizing institutional, social, and cultural sources of oppression and the need for social change. This individualistic bias serves as a method of social control for lesbians just as the pathological model did in the past (Kitzinger, 1987). Scientific debates on homosexuality have revolved around methodological issues instead of discussing the social and political function of beliefs about homosexuality (Kitzinger, 1990). These discussions reinforce science as the norm, ignore the “invalidity of positivist-empiricism” and fail to “create practical alternatives which will offer real opportunities for radical social and political change” (Kitzinger, 1990, p. 75).
The idea that the self is realized most fully in terms of individualism free of context and the idea that sexuality is a central component of selfhood lead to a conclusion that sexuality is similarly individualistic and independent of context. The individualistic conception of the self also figures in the psychological assumption that sexual intercourse is healthy and should be engaged in by normal individuals. The prevailing logic is that the self is primarily an individualistic phenomenon; sexuality is a core characteristic of the self; therefore, sexuality is an individualistic phenomenon. It follows that sexual intercourse is healthy and should be engaged in by normal individuals and likewise that heterosexuality is natural. A primary assumption of this perspective is the naturalness of heterosexuality. Within this perspective, homosexuality is problematized because it departs from the natural course of development. The press for a sexuality located within a decontextualized individual is very strong, although the everyday language regarding sex consistently implies (at minimum) a relational context. For example, the man with a bad back says he will have to forgo sex for a time; the divorced man says he urgently needs sex. What is meant in each case is intercourse with a partner.
This individualistic perspective not only defines, but restricts, what is viewed as acceptable sexual behavior. Furthermore, male behavior is taken as the norm and female behavior is understood in comparison, usually with the conclusion that women are deficient in some way. Such a perspective also argues for inevitable differences in male and female sexuality. This “anatomy is destiny” perspective relies on studies of animals across the phylogenetic scale, human infant sex differences, anthropological studies in search of universal sex differences, and studies of hormone-behavior relationships.
A number of other implicit assumptions about sexuality that derive from a modem scientific approach can be seen in the work of some of the most well-known sex researchers. For example, Alfred Kinsey’s (Kinsey, Pomeroy, &. Martin, 1948) work is clearly based on the idea that sex consists chiefly of those behavioral acts associated with intercourse (Miller &. Fowlkes, 1980). Other behaviors are not real sex. Masters and Johnson refined this same implicit and unacknowledged assumption by admitting to their initial studies only those participants who regularly had orgasm during coitus (Masters & Johnson, 1966). That is, orgasm is natural or real sex—studying anything else would not be studying sex. Although these studies assumed a cloak of objectivity and empiricism, the most androcentric bias can be found in the imbuing of will and intentionality to genital body parts (Boyle, 1994). For example, Masters and Johnson (1966) described the female physiological response of vasocongestion as an “invitation to mount” (1966, p. 69) and stated that a full erection of a penis is the physiological evidence of a psychological “demand” for intromission (Masters & Johnson, 1970, p. 195).