Chapter 1 Perspectives on Sexuality in a Cultural and Historical Context
Take a moment to jot down your answers to the following questions:
Do you think the government should be able to pass a law that says it’s illegal for two consenting adults to engage in mutual masturbation or perform oral sex on one another? Which year did this become legal in all states in the United States: 1915, 1965, 1986, 2003, or 2010?
If a 21-year-old has sex with an 18-year-old, and both are consenting, should the 21-year-old have to go to jail? What if the two people are 21 and 15? What if both are 15?
Why do young male monkeys play with trucks more than dolls, and does this have anything to do with toy preferences in human children?
Is it unusual for a woman to feel aroused and have an orgasm while breast-feeding?
Is a woman or a man more likely to have a one-night stand or hookup?
If you know any adult male-female couples who live together, who does the laundry in these couples? Is it done more often by one sex than the other?
Understanding full answers to these questions in human sexuality requires exploring history, culture, biology, evolution, religion, and psychology. For example, the first question has a simple answer—2003—but the cultural and legal regulation of consensual sexual behavior actually stretches over thousands of years, having taken many forms in different cultures and undergone multiple changes in the history of the United States. With regard to the second question, there is no simple answer, as age of consent laws vary widely in different U.S. states and even more widely between countries. For the third question, an accurate answer cannot be distilled into a paragraph, as it relates to a complex tapestry of culture and biology and requires a consideration of biology, sociology and the structure of societies, psychology including cognitive processes and social learning, cultural anthropology and cross-cultural comparisons, and understanding the interplay between group differences and individual variation. The answer to the fourth question is “no”; to understand why requires studying anatomy and neurochemistry. The fifth question has two answers: that males are more likely; and that males and females are equally likely. It depends on experimental methodology, which reveals interesting differences between males and females in factors that affect interest in casual sex. We examine the details in Chapter 6 “Sexual Relationships, Love, and Communication”. The answer to the sixth question requires exploring gender roles across cultures and understanding the effects of economic development and technology.
You may be reading this because you have an interest in sexuality. If you are a university or college student, chances are you are also reading this text because a professor has assigned it and you are hoping to achieve a good grade. We hope you find it interesting and informative as well as designed in a way that helps you maximize your goals for a good academic outcome, whether the professor is assigning it as supplemental reading for additional background or as a primary text that is closely related to exams and lecture material. Students often approach a subject with different levels of preparation, so we begin in a manner that is accessible for someone with no prior background in the field and then build in depth so that this text is also revealing for advanced students. It is our goal to provide a view of human sexuality that fully integrates the biological and evolutionary basis of sexuality with an appreciation for individual variation, psychological factors including social learning and cognition, and an understanding of how many aspects of human experience vary cross-culturally. We particularly take time to include evidence about preindustrial cultures as well as contemporary cross-cultural differences. We consider issues that face the United States and the English-speaking world and also those that affect people in developing economies, who form a majority of the human population. Understanding many topics in sexuality requires exploring history and religion. This history is often colorful and surprisingly similar to many current debates. We try to strike a balance between formality and accessibility, including references to current colloquialisms and contemporary concerns, so the text is relevant to your life whether you are 18 years old or 80. We aim to be respectful of differences in religious belief and to help readers explore the perspectives of different religions, yet we do not shy away from the controversy that some teachings have been contrary to empirical evidence about the nature and history of human sexuality.
Although this text has a single author, we use the first-person plural “we” as is the custom for authors attempting to present a formal synthesis of the research of thousands rather than a personal opinion. Of course, complete objectivity is impossible, and in many specific instances, researchers disagree. In those cases, we describe disagreements, and on topics that are clearly matters of personal beliefs, we identify that this is so “in our opinion.” In other cases, evidence is sufficient for an objective consensus, and the “we” clearly communicates that scholars have little scientific debate. For some particularly contentious issues, such as performing genital surgery in infants with disorders of sexual development, we have a “from our point of view” section, which explores a particular point of view in depth, differentiating it from the main text, which focuses on facts and research.
We start each chapter with an overview of the chapter’s sections. We begin this chapter with a section that considers some of the difficulties of studying sexuality cross-culturally, and we explore in depth the influence on modern gender roles and sexuality in much of the world of the Abrahamic religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as ancient Greco-Roman culture. Next, we have a shorter section that highlights some cultural differences by continent. Third will be a section that highlights some of the famous names in sexology (the study of sexuality) and examines how many of the questions studied in the past are still relevant today. Lastly, we wrap up the chapter with a look at some issues in sexuality in the modern world that relate to politics, rights, and responsibilities. Our intention is not to have a complete treatment of all these issues in the first chapter but rather to provide a first introduction and a background that will be useful as we revisit many of these topics in greater depth later in the text.