In my essay, I intend to examine what sexuality is and how its meanings relate to sex and gender. In doing this, I will first present a definition of sexuality and different axes of sexuality. Then, I will analyse sexuality’s link with gender as well as sex by deconstructing these terms into distinct categories. Furthermore, I will explore the interrelated impact that these terms and categories have by taking an intersectional approach.
Sexuality is and has been a major theme within our culture. Thanks to social research, we have been provided with crucial evidence to help in better understanding the concept of sexuality and its complexity. Despite this, popular stereotypes and perceptions regarding sex, gender, and sexuality remain resistant and continue to persevere within society. In stating this, my intent is to raise awareness and demonstrate a better understanding of sexuality’s complexity.
Table of contents
Introduction
Sexuality and its axes
Meanings of sexuality in relation to gender and sex
Conclusion
References
Introduction
Sexuality is and has been a major theme within our culture. Thanks to social research, we have been provided with crucial evidence to help in better understanding the concept of sexuality and its complexity. Despite this, popular stereotypes and perceptions regarding sex, gender, and sexuality remain resistant and continue to persevere within society. In stating this, my intent is to raise awareness and demonstrate a better understanding of sexuality’s complexity.
In my essay, I intend to examine what sexuality is and how its meanings relate to sex and gender. In doing this, I will first present a definition of sexuality and different axes of sexuality. Then, I will analyse sexuality’s link with gender as well as sex by deconstructing these terms into distinct categories. Furthermore, I will explore the interrelated impact that these terms and categories have by taking an intersectional approach.
Sexuality and its axes
Sexuality represents diverse meanings that are influenced by individual, social, cultural, and historical aspects. It is multifaceted, socially situated, constructed in the sense of varying across cultures and times, and dynamic in terms of changes even within individuals (Van Anders 2014). When analyzing sexuality, its different meanings become apparent in relation to sexual acts and activities, sexual desire and preferences, erotic power, health and reproduction, as well as discourse.
Rubin (1984) asserts that sexuality in the 19th century became political through societal policing of sexual activity and acts by encouraging abstinence, condemning masturbation, and eliminating prostitution. She introduces the term sex negativity which stands for the framing and labelling of sexual acts and activity overall as unhealthy, dangerous, and inherently sinful in Christian traditions. This framing of sexuality influenced social practice and perception of sex acts and activity. For example, back then, some parents denied children to develop and experience their sexuality by tying them to their beds at night to prohibit masturbation (Rubin 1984).
Despite this, people did naturally engage in sex acts, but mostly within the institution of marriage, the framework of reproduction, and with a minimum amount of pleasure was it socially accepted. Although some of the practices were abandoned, sexual acts and activity are still treated with suspicion. The notion of sinfulness of sex acts perseveres without religion since culture incorporated these notions. Rubin (1984) stresses that sexual activity to this day is stigmatized and appraised with exception to ‘some excuses such as marriage, reproduction, and love’ (Rubin 1984, 150).
This appraisal of sex acts is structured by a ‘hierarchical system of sexual value’ (Rubin 1984, 151). The tip of the hierarchical pyramid is for married, reproductive heterosexuals, followed by unmarried, monogamous heterosexual couples, and then most other heterosexuals. Homosexual couples in established relationships could be in the realm of respectability whereas promiscuous male and female homosexuals constitute the second lowest ‘sexual caste’. This pyramid ends with the most negative stigmatized groups such as transgender people, ‘transvestites’, and sex workers (Rubin 1984). Depending on where they stand in this hierarchy, an individual’s sexual activities are either rewarded or punished and perceived as being natural or unnatural. Forms of rewards manifest in respectability, social and physical mobility, institutional support, and material benefits. Individual’s activities of the lower ‘castes’ subject them to disreputability, restricted social and physical mobility, criminalization, and economic sanctions. This socially created notion implies that there is a ‘proper’ way of having sex and engaging in sexual activity disregarding any sexual variation. The further away certain sex acts and activities are from a socially created and accepted norm, the more it is depicted, perceived, and framed as negative, ‘abnormal’, and immoral (Rubin 1984).
Coherently, the moral appraisal of sexuality affects sexual desires and preferences. Stearns (1995) asserts that heterosexuality is privileged in the perception as ‘normal’ and affectionate whereas homosexuality and bisexuality is constructed, portrayed, and perceived as innately promiscuous. The sexual stigma that is put on homo- and bisexuality manifests in the wide beliefs that bisexuals are non-monogamous and homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, are pederasts (Stearns 1995).
Rich (1980) critiques heterosexuality as an institution and its negative consequences on women and men. She introduces the term compulsory heterosexuality which draws attention to the way in which society is organized around heterosexuality rendering all other sexualities as deviant, or as Rubin (1984) said, outside the ‘charmed circle’. Her argument is that heterosexuality is framed as such an integral, expected, and universal part of society that it stays unquestioned by many individuals. In her view, women especially do not discover their sexuality because compulsory heterosexuality keeps them from being sexual without connection to male pleasure. She notes that this is the reason why in particular lesbian sexuality is framed and stigmatized as the result of bitterness towards males, denying them their sexual agency (Rich 1980).
Lorde (1984) links female unspoken and concealed sexual feelings with the suppression of the female erotic power and its related suspicion in patriarchal societies. She states that the erotic is a source of personal and political power. Further, it should not be confused with pornography constituting the opposite of erotic power directly related to the suppression of real feelings. Lorde (1984) introduces the erotic as ‘providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any personal pursuit with another person, the sharing of joy, […that] forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessen the threat of their difference’ (56). According to her, western patriarchal societies stigmatize the erotic resulting in female sexual oppression and exploitation in a male dominated society. She emphasizes that erotic empowerment must be female because it has been women who were instilled to fear their sexuality, pleasure, and desire for the patriarchal script of sexuality (Lorde 1984).
At this point, I need to assert my concern after reading Lorde’s account on erotic power. It lies in her failing to engage with male experiences with regards to sexuality as erotic power in a more differentiated way. Whilst I agree with the author in terms of female sexual oppression, I disagree with her interpretive framework to narrowly frame men as invulnerable to the patriarchal system. With that said, and Lorde being the only academic account on this specific axis of sexuality, I argue for more impartial research on this issue.
Sexuality is deeply intertwined with sexual and reproductive health which is defined as states of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being in every respect to the reproductive system (UNFPA 2016). For this, the following needs to be warranted: the ability of ‘a satisfying and safe sex life, the capability to reproduce, and the freedom to decide if, when, and how often to do so’ (UNFPA 2016). In practice, this calls for unrestricted access to information on sexual health such as transmitted diseases, access to affordable contraception, and to care regarding pregnancy, delivery and the baby.
The philosopher Foucault examines sexuality as a discursive object and a distinguished sphere of life. In his work, he interrogates ‘why sexuality [is] so widely discussed and what has been said about it’ (Foucault 1978, 11). He argues that the urge to talk about sexuality and the repressed nature of sex enabled the very structure that it was seeking to decipher (Bristow 1997). According to Foucault, the discourse on sex has been ambiguous insofar that it broaches the issue of sex while at the same time avoiding it. This lead to a disconnection and development towards a scientific viewpoint which treated sexuality as a biological entity, and solely focused on deviances, perversions, and pathological abatements. His critique of the traditional framing of sexuality as ‘a natural libido yearning to break free of social constraint’ (Rubin 1984, 149) is based on his argument that sexual desires are not innately biological. He asserts that generative aspects of the social structuring of sex, such as the emergence and production of new sexualities, are being disregarded by focusing the discourse on the repressive elements of sexuality (Foucault 1987).
Drawing on Foucault, Rubin stresses his argument that sexuality is socially and culturally constructed and not merely biologically constituted (Rubin 1984). Further, Butler argues that ‘sexuality is always constructed within terms of discourse and power, where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phallic cultural conventions’ (Butler 1990, 30).
There are two things this perspective does not deny. With the first being the fact that physical and biological aspects are an innate part of human sexuality. Moreover, it seeks to draw attention to culture’s meanings that shape individual experiences of sexuality, as well as sexuality’s content and institutional forms. Secondly, Foucault’s position is oftentimes misconstrued in the sense that he underestimates or negates the reality of sexual repression. To the contrary, his intent is to put sexual repression in a larger dynamic by emphasizing the way in which sexuality in western societies ‘has been structured within an extremely punitive social framework, and has been subjected to very real formal and informal controls’ (Rubin 1984, 150).
Meanings of sexuality in relation to gender and sex
In this section, I intend to demonstrate how meanings of sexuality relate to gender and sex. For this, I will take a multidirectional and interrelated approach from sexuality to either category when and if appropriate. Due to the limited scope of this essay, I will not be referring to all of sexuality’s meanings.
How does sexuality relate to gender?
Gender stands for the way people perform their sex1 or gender and is referred to as a culturally influenced performing of masculinities and femininities, but also as the cultural construct of behavioral norms and expectations accorded to women/girls and men/boys (Muehlenhard 2003). Further, it is “a continuum in which there are different degrees to which one transgresses or breaks the social norms related to the ‘ideal’ woman and man” (Nirantar 2014). These expected behavioral norms are created in the society and are upheld through means of punishment and privileges. This system not only polices but also internalizes these norms on male and female bodies. Wilchins (2000) describes gender, then, as a ‘language, a system of meanings and symbols, along with the rules, privileges, and punishments pertaining to their use – for power and sexuality` (35).
The cultural and social construction of sexuality in terms of desires influences gender formation. For example, the visual representations of women in the sex and media industry show the distinction as well as the overlaps of sexuality and gender (Asadi 2015; Nirantar 2014). The American ‘culture of sex’ brought women’s nudity to the market with aggravating women ‘being viewed as objects, play things, and toys in the hands of men’ (Asadi 2015, 40). The mainstream media changed in terms of displaying female sexuality and gave “female anatomy […] a new look in order to make it socially acceptable according to the ‘Barbie’ image” (Asadi 2015,40).
Further, Asadi (2015) asserts that this change in discourse, the dehumanizing objectification of women, created a stronger power imbalance in male and female sexuality. He describes an increase in sexual assaults, rapes, and domestic violence against women and connects it to ‘America’s rape culture’. A survey showed that rape ‘embodies traditional male characteristics of power, domination, and control that are highly valued in society’ (Asadi 2015, 41) as well as the cultural belief about rape to hold women responsible for it. Consequently, women are informally controlled in public spaces due to the instilled and present fear of rape that is attached to their gender and sexuality. The tension between danger and pleasure is established in the sexual discourse of women which is pertinent to mention. It can be argued that this socially induced fear of rape and violence against women is a consequence of over-sexualization and objectification of women (Asadi 2015). This lack of positive norms about sexual experiences for women (Martinó Villanueva 1997) affects women’s sexual and reproductive health. These consequences undermine women’s sexual health in terms of a safe sex life and their freedom to agency. This is supported by studies on female negative sexual experiences in which 13.2 % of the women reported that they engaged in sexual activity against their will and 50 % mentioned an unwanted sexual activity, mostly involving men they knew (McDermott, Sarvela, and Bancharya, 1988; Murnen, Perot, and Byrne 1989).
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1 A person is cis-gender if their sex aligns with their gender. In that case, their gender can be described as performing their sex.