Contemporary Understandings Of Sexuality In The Late 19th And Early Twentieth Century

Sexuality is defined as one’s sexual character which possesses the structural and functional traits of sex. In the Renaissance, this definition was accompanied with ideologies of gender. This incorporated knowledge led to their notions of the female being inferior to the male based on what was

The world now becomes a state of change or flux. Human beings act toward others and objects on the basis of the meanings that such things have for them but meanings are being continually constructed and modified through interaction. The fundamental approach is simple put: nothing is sexual but naming makes it so. Sexuality is a social construct learned in interaction with others. This is not to deny biological facts. It is simply to assert that things do not have sex meanings in their own right. They have to be bestowed upon them through sexual encounters. The mind has to define something as sexual before it is sexual in

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

Sex. It is everywhere. We see in television shows. In magazines. On the Internet. But sex is still seen as a taboo subject in our society. I believe that being educated about sexuality is vitally important to one health. Understanding one’s body and how it impacts your life. To understand how your beliefs about sexuality and sex have developed one needs to look back over the years and how your beliefs were engrained in your life. This essay will be based on my reflection by looking back on my sexual history on how and what have significantly impacted my development of sexuality. The focus will be on my reflection of answering the sexual history questions and how I have changed and developed over the years. It is important to analyze and reflect to understand how I came to be today, that the past has created my ideas and beliefs about sex and sexuality that have shaped me.

Beginning in the mid eighteenth century, much of Europe underwent a sustained series of changes in the way goods are produced known as the industrial revolution. During this movement, technological advancements greatly impacted the coal, heavy metals and textile industries as machines replaced hands as the main mechanism of operation. Consequently, a worker’s level of skill soon lost value and factories that demanded individuals performing menial tasks at a fast rate dotted the landscape. Females became more prominent in the workplace, especially because their smaller hands were better suited for textile factories and their smaller bodies allowed for easier movement in coalmines. Middle class males viewed female workers as a threat to morality, family structure and gender roles while the women saw their employment as a necessary means to provide for themselves and their families. This difference can best be explained by a cultural worldview that increasingly emphasized science and inherent differences between the two sexes. Furthermore, the firsthand accounts depicted by the females stand as the most reliable illustrations of work in the nineteenth century because they take into account the needs of the working class.

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.

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

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

Human sexuality is defined as the capability of individuals to experience their sexuality and be able to express themselves as sexual beings (Hyde & DeLameck, 2006). Our interest in this topic is because with time, there has been a change in rules that control human sexual behaviour. The status quo in our contemporary society is much different as compared to an earlier state of conditions, and the change has, as a result, brought the evolvement in human sexuality. People 's view on virginity has changed greatly with a decrease of importance in regards to its preservation. Sexuality is essential to the economic, cultural, social and political organization of society or country. Our sexuality plays a fundamental role in all our lives regardless of age, sex or race. It forms a basic part of our personality and the decisions we make in what we do. One’s sexuality also consumes much of their time through behaviour or thoughts; at times every aspect of our lives seems to revolve around our sexuality. Studying sexuality is very important since human sexuality majorly contributes to social as well as personal problems. A lingering question concerning this topic is to what extent is virginity determined by the status quo and the rules that control human behaviour?

In the Gendered Nature of Sexual Scripts by Michael W. Weiderman, the author talks about what societal factors influence males and females view of sex and their genitalia. The perception of one’s views on their genitalia is related to the sexual script that they are assigned and how society deems they should feel about sex. If one were to deviate from their assigned sexual script, the social ramifications may be detrimental to how they are perceived not only to society, but to the opposite sex.

In today’s society things are being expressed and experienced at younger ages, than ever before in our time. Children and teenagers are discovering their sexuality at very early ages. Sexuality is the discovering of who you are and what makes you different from everybody else.

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.

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.

Upon entering this course, my understanding of human sexuality was decent; I was aware of certain aspects of sexuality such as being straight, gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, etc. Nevertheless, I did not realize how expansive sexuality is; it never occurred to me that sexual health, prostitution, marriage, rape, sex trafficking, divorce, families, etc., all fell under the umbrella of human sexuality. Books and essays such as Renee Hill’s Walk Together and David Shneer’s “Out of School” showcased the multiple facets of human sexuality and how terms like queer are not directly related to homosexuality. While sexuality and homosexuality are linked, frequently, people mistake them as being synonymous; before entering this class, I was searching for a definition of sexuality, and often in the thesaurus section of dictionary websites homosexuality and or sexual orientation was considered a synonym of sexuality. Formerly, I too would have agreed they were the same, however, after taking this course, I concluded that homosexuality is just one topic in the broad discussion of sexuality. My understanding of sexuality now is that it