Sexual Orientation By Simon De Bevour 's The Second Sex Essay

According to Halperin, “the 'sexuality' of the classical Athenians...was constituted by the very principles on which Athenian public life was organized” (Halperin 419). By this he is referring to the fact that sexuality in the Ancient Athens society was socially constructed, but not in the way that it is understood to be socially constructed in modern thought. The so-called sexuality of the Ancient Greek peoples in Athens was directly related to how the society worked, how it was built and how it was understood. Halperin provides a quote from a French anthropologist who is named Maurice Godelier in order to make this point more apparent. This quote states that “it is not sexuality which haunts society, but society which haunts the body's sexuality” (Halperin 419). This statement re-emphasizes the fact that sexuality is a socially constructed concept, entirely dependant upon the society in which it is created in order to be best understood. The history of sexuality, therefore, is a brief history in the sense that the idea of sexuality is constantly being rethought and changed. Halperin sums up the concept of sexuality very well when he says that “[it]...is not a cause but an effect” (Halperin).

To a certain degree, seeing how these matters have progressed since the 1960s gives a good vantage to predicting where they will go in the future. In conclusion, I will look at the future of change on these matters, by examining what seems to be the "avant garde" regarding matters of sex and gender, the phenomenon of transsexualism. I hope an examination of transsexualism will point out some of the contradictions that still continue to exist in American ideas about matters of sex.

The topic of sexual orientation is both sensitive and controversial. This is evident in events, such as the Pride Parade, and also in media, where authoritative figures preach against it and speak of its “sinful nature” (Emmanuele, Blanchard, Camperio-Ciani, & Bancroft, 2010). Sexual orientation exists in various forms, it differs in the way it is viewed by different cultures, and researchers propose different perspectives to explain the emergence of an individual 's sexual orientation. In the discourse of sexual orientation,

Human sexuality is a common phrase for all, and anything, pertaining to the feelings and behaviors of sex for the human race. Sexuality has been a topic that has been discussed and studied for as far back as 1000 years B.C. and is still being studied today. As the discussion of sexuality has progressed through history, theories have been created based on research and experiments that scholars have implemented, based on their own perceptions of human behavior. Out of the many theories that pose to explain sexual behavior, Sexuality Now explained ten that are seemed to be the most overlapped, and built off of theories. Of these theories, two that were discussed in the text were the behavioral and sociological theory. These two theories cover some of the basic ideas of what could possibly influence a person’s sexuality.

In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche first arrives from Laurel Missouri and immediately becomes the antagonist. As the play goes on Stanley starts to go against Blanche. At the end of the play Blanche becomes the victim. In the end, Stanley sent Blanche off to a mental asylum. This plays demonstrates domestic violence. In the beginning of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams shows how society accepted it and ignored it.Stanley, one of the characters in the play, found domestic violence to be a positive and very sexual part of him and his wife, Stella's, relationship. Throughout the play, Williams shows that he believes that it is wrong.

Thoughts regarding sexual orientation contrast were gotten from traditional thought, Christian belief system, and contemporary science and pharmaceutical. Men and ladies were thought to occupy bodies with various physical make-ups and to have generally unique qualities and excellencies. Men, as the more grounded sex, were thought to be clever, gallant, and decided. Ladies, then again, were more administered by their feelings, and their temperances were relied upon to be celibacy, humility, empathy, and devotion. Men were thought to be more forceful; ladies more uninvolved. These distinctions were reverberated in the issues to which each sex was thought to be inclined. Men were inclined to brutality, tenacity, and narrow-mindedness, while ladies' wrongdoings were seen as the consequence of their propensity to be administered by their bodies and their feelings, outstandingly desire, over the top energy, and

Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, author Tennessee Williams does a wonderful job developing the character of Stanley Kowalski. To me, his character seemed most like that of a true person. On the other hand, Stella, Stanley's wife, is mainly displayed as being the loving type, and because that is basically the only character trait she displays, it is difficult to really understand her as a person. The character of Stanley Kowalski is developed much like a real person, having numerous personality traits.

Social upheaval in many senses was explicit through the beginning of the twentieth century; two world wars had - for a short time - shifted the balance of power between men and women. Women were increasingly employed to fill positions which had previously been considered masculine. This was not to last however, and by the fifties men had reassumed their more dominant role in society. People were finding new voices at this time by taking pre-existing forms and pushing the boundaries to re-voice established literary forms. Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire around the time this reversal was occurring in American society. Williams was a homosexual from the deep south of America, and his play is about physical, emotional

The way we are introduced to sex can vary greatly person to person. Due to our differing upbringings, my group for class felt these distinctions through our discussion. Evidently, our regional influences, religious upbringing, socio-economic statuses, and diverse exposure to media influenced how we each were exposed to sex.

Tennessee Williams was born as Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. He is the son of Cornelius Coffin Williams and Edwina Dakin Williams. As he grew up, he heard stories about the volunteer work of his father as well as the forty-five men his mother dated before she finally decided to settle down (Forman 1). His parents separated in 1909 before his older sister Rose was born. The separation was caused by Cornelius’ problems with womanizing, drinking, and gambling (Forman 3). His mother went to live at her father’s rectory in Columbus. He grew very fond of his grandparents, Reverend Walter Dakin and Rose Otte Dakin. Soon, Williams started to dread the days that his father would

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

Tennessee Williams was a well known Modern English playwright. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi and moved to St. Louis, then to Memphis, and later graduated from the University of Iowa in 1983. Williams began to turn his short stories into plays and later on into films. His wildest audiences were in contemporary dramatic literature. Williams’s plays have been produced in England, France, Hally, Germany, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Cuba and Mexico. One of William’s most intriguing plays is Streetcar named Desire. Streetcar was produced around 1947. The “setting of Streetcar” is a combination of raw realism and deliberate fantasy” (Riddel 16). The main character of the play is Ms.

Throughout history, definitions of sexuality within a culture are created and then changed time after time. During these changes, we have seen the impact and power one individual or group can have over others. In the Late Nineteenth Century into the Early Twentieth Century, we see multiple groups of people and or authorities taking control over the idea of sex and how they believe society is being impacted by sex. At this point in time, society had groups of people who believed they had the power to control how society as whole viewed and acted upon sex. Those particular groups and ideas changed many lives and the overall definition of sexuality within that culture.

Known as the Two Sex theory, devised by historian Thomas Laqueur, female sexuality would be characterized purely by a woman’s reproductive potential, where the concept of an innate maternal instinct would become the new prioritized ideal. The female orgasm was renounced by a new essence of masculine superiority. This notion can be asserted with the Phallocentric inclination of the late 18th century, examined by historian Tim Hitchcock, as period characterized by penetration and precedence of the phallus. This “both encouraged and made possible the denigration of female sexuality and perceived passivity.” Consequently this caused the de-emphasis of female sexual pleasure and desire. However, female sexual identity would reemerge with potency, attributed to social flux, the emerging field of sexology and disposition of the interwar years.

Sexual orientation parts had many records of Asian American ladies battling against customary patriarchal dispositions. In the Asian people group