Sexuality In The 19th Century

What do you think of when you hear the word sexuality? You can either think of it in a negative light or a positive one. Growing up my family never talked about sexuality, it was only when you want to have a baby you get married to a man that you love and that was that. There was never any in between with sexuality. Sexuality is a lot more complex than I was originally told. So what is Sexuality, where does it come from and how has it changed over time? These are some of the questions that I hope to unfold in my essay, first starting off with past

Contemporary understandings of sexuality are not the same as back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Understandings and terminology in the past hold multiple differences and similarities than our current contemporary understandings.

Unlike sex, the history of sexuality is dependant upon society and limited by its language in order to be defined and understood.

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.

·         Since 1973, how does the American Psychiatric Association view homosexuality? (Page 221) A normal variant of sexual orientation

Albert Kinsey helped change the American Public’s preconceptions on sexuality by publishing two bestselling books from 1947 to 1953 on the topic. Titled “American Sexual Behavior” and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”, these books both confirmed and challenged the generally held beliefs dealing with marriage, sexual gratification, and sexual orientation. Sex was deemed important for a healthy marriage, adultery was frequent and homosexuals weren’t weird anomalies.

The change in society’s views on sexuality during the 1960s created a moral shift in which people and cultural values shifted away from many traditional biblical ethics. With inspiration from African American and their movements in civil rights, many young women sought to achieve gender equality with males despite the society’s cookie-cutter view of women as housewives in the 1950s. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique as an outlash against the view of the traditional American housewife. Friedan took inspiration from Holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis of the psychological abuse imposed by the Germans on their prisoners and compared the average suburban home to “comfortable concentration camps” (Wolfe). Alan

Early efforts to understand the range of human sexual behavior came from European doctors and scientists, including Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfield (American Psychological Association, (APA), n.d). Sexuality is an important aspect of a person’s identity. Many challenges had were overcome for the LGBT population to express that part of their identity.

Women constantly face a double standard when it comes to sexuality, it's been this way for years. In fact in the Victorian era there is a huge double standard where women seemed to be on interested in sex and we're to have a high standard of sexual behavior unlike the men in that time who had powerful sexual drives and it was almost the social norm for them to have multiple sexual partners. Even today there still a double standard, it has gotten better with feminism any quality but men are still seen as superior when they have multiple sexual partners unlike women who are looked at as sluts and whores because they have multiple sexual partners. Trying to use the slut shaming, which is where women are downgraded by both men and women because

Sexuality is very diverse, in some instances normality is based on the cultural context of the individual's society. In "The other side of desire" by Daniel Bergner, the author goes in depth into the lives of four individual's whose lust and longing have led them far down the realms of desire. The current paper addresses the four individual's Jacob, the Baroness, Roy, and Ron each exhibits a paraphilia that may or may not meet the full criteria in the DSM-5. Furthermore, each's specific paraphilia is conceptualized and explained in depth. Also, countertransferential issues anticipated before working with these individual's is analyzed and clarified. Also, the apprehension of sexual arousal and sexual behaviors is conceptualized into normality

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.

Married Love was an unprecedented book, which inadvertently redefined female sexuality. Often regarded as the precursor of sex-manuals, Married Love launched Stopes’ enormously successful career as a writer. Published in 1918, Married Love reviewed the intertwining relationship of marriage, sex and contraception, which in Stopes’ view were the fundamental components of a fulfilling and rewarding marriage. Like all discourse, Married Love is heavily embedded within a distinct historical and cultural context. Darwinian theory and the development of eugenics had a phenomenal impact on Stopes. Recognising the equal sexual desire of women would make Married Love greatly influential in the shaping of modern perceptions into female sexuality.

Another important concept is understanding what is normal. The “normal” leads to expectations that males and females have for one another. By not meeting these expectations thoughts of being different can be provoked. Improving education and public knowledge will decrease the suffering by such individuals (Baumeister, et al., 2001). Barr, Bryan, and Kenrick (2002) researched what is the expected sexual peak of men and women. The researchers did three different studies on what participants thought the age of sexual peak was. The first study consisted of 60 members from the Psychology Department at Arizona State, the second consisted of 73 undergraduates at Arizona State, and the third consisted 53 members recruited from the 73 undergraduates. Each group was given a questionnaire asking at what age do you think male/female sexual peak is, and at when do you think males/females experience the highest sexual frequency (Barr, et al., 2002).

Throughout history it is evident that human sexuality changes do to religious, governmental and societal influences. The perception of human sexuality has gone through many changes such as being very open and unlabeled activity; to being very “conservative” and a topic that shouldn’t be talked about in public or at all. In any case, human sexuality has always been a topic of interest because humans are sexual beings who want to understand the consciousness of themselves as male or female and see their personal response when encountered in erotic experiences with other individuals. Unlike many other species whose sexual force is strictly for reproduction, human’s sexual drive seems to be driven by many factors that intertwine with each other which leads to very different outcomes. Do to these obscure human emotions and personal gratification, sex is always shown every culture’s art, literature, social norms, and laws.

A través de la historia y en algunas culturas la sexualidad en los adultos mayores está visto como un tabú, ya que se piensa que al llegar al climaterio la vida sexual se detiene, junto al ciclo reproductivo de la mujer. Sin embargo, se ha demostrado que una vida sexual activa en la tercera edad es muy común y a la vez saludable. A continuación, se espera demostrar que a pesar de las consideraciones hechas, en los adultos mayores la sexualidad aún se encuentra presente en su vida. Todo esto dado que la vida sexual en los adultos mayores se encuentra subvalorada por la sociedad. Los argumentos centrales para la sustentación de las anteriores afirmaciones son: las limitaciones fisiológicas presentes hacen que la sociedad ignore la vida sexual de los adultos mayores, la vida sexual en adultos mayores está influenciada por su contexto social en general y la importancia que tiene la vida sexual en la vida de la población mayor.