Human Sexuality

Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives

Anne Bolin, Patricia Whelehan, Muriel Vernon, Katja Antoine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000360394
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This groundbreaking second edition of Human Sexuality continues its broad and interdisciplinary goal of providing readers with a comprehensive overview on sexuality as a core part of our individual identities and social lives.

Edited by anthropological experts on the subject, this unique textbook integrates evolutionary and cultural aspects to provide a fully interdisciplinary approach to human sexuality that is rare in this area of scholarship. Fully updated throughout in line with developments in the field, this second edition includes fresh material exploring new sexual identities, sexual violence and consent, Internet pornography, conversion therapy, polyamory, and much more. In addition to providing a rich array of photographs, illustrations, tables, and a glossary of terms, this textbook explores:

• pregnancy and childbirth as a bio-cultural experience

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• life-course issues related to gender identity, sexual orientations, behaviors, and lifestyles

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• socioeconomic, political, historical, and ecological influences on sexual behavior

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• early childhood sexuality, puberty, and adolescence

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• birth control, fertility, conception, and sexual differentiation

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• HIV infection, AIDS, AIDS globalization, and sex work.

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Utilizing viewpoints across cultural and national boundaries and taking into account the evolution of human anatomy, sexual behavior, attitudes, and beliefs across the globe, Human Sexuality, Second Edition, remains an essential text for educators and students who wish to understand human sexuality in all of its richness and complexity.

1 Introduction

Chapter Overview

• 1 Introduces human sexuality from a biological, psychological, and cultural perspective.
• 2 Discusses how the social control of human sexuality forms the fundamental basis for the functioning of human groups and group life.
• 3 Discusses ethnographic and comparative approaches to the cultural patterning of human sexuality. Highlights anthropologists such as Malinowski, Benedict, Mead, Ford and Beach, Martin and Voorhies, and Frayser.

The Anthropological Perspective

In one ruling by the Supreme Court, sex was declared “a great and mysterious motive force in human life [that] has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest” (in Demac, 1988: 41). As children, we hear our parents speak euphemistically about the “birds and the bees,” and as adolescents we may share late-night discussions with our friends about the “secrets” of intimacy; as adult North Americans, our concerns are expressed in an array of new “self-help” books on the subject, which flood the market every year. Problems with human sexuality, such as sexual addictions and sexual desire disorders (lack of interest in sex), have captured the imagination of the television, radio, and Internet news media as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V-TR (2000), the “Bible” of diagnostic criteria for mental health professionals in the United States since 1968 (Tiefer, 2004: 133). Obviously, the subject enthralls more than just Dr. Phil and Oprah; controversies abound around sex-related issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, in the United States. In addition, questions arise concerning the impact of rising HIV rates globally and how access to sexually charged content through the Internet will affect human sexual expression today and in the future.

Our intent is to offer a unique way of understanding ourselves as sexual beings through the perspective of anthropology. Some of our readers may not be familiar with what anthropology entails and might be wondering what exactly Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark or Holland’s Krippendorfs Tribe has to do with a serious anthropological approach to sex. For those of you unfamiliar with anthropology, we welcome and invite you to explore an exciting new viewpoint that you will find very interdisciplinary in approach. Anthropology is probably the most interdisciplinary of all the fields engaged in studying sexuality (also referred to as sexology). Sexology spans the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities. For those of you majoring or minoring in anthropology, we hope that our book inspires you to conduct further research on the subject of human sexuality.

Sex as Biology, Psychology, and Culture

Confusion about what anthropology is stems from the interdisciplinary nature of the field. An anthropological approach is one that incorporates an understanding of humans as both biological and cultural beings. The term bio-cultural is often used to describe this perspective. However, we are not suggesting that these are the only two dimensions for interpreting sex; indeed, sex has a very important psychological component as well. As anthropologists, we regard the psychological component as part of how culture shapes our personalities in characteristic ways yet also allows for the diversity of individuals as unique genetic entities. There is a feedback relationship between culture, psychology, and the individual.

Therefore, to express the complexity of the relationship between biology and culture to human beings, we have added the psychological dimension to our mix, hereby highlighting the contributions of psychology and psychological anthropology to the study of human sexuality. This accentuates the importance of the individual in society by emphasizing her/his relationship to the cultural context, including personality, motives, attitudes, values, perceptions, and emotions. It is because of these individual differences that cultures are so dynamic and ever-changing. Human beings are not just robots, blindly enacting their cultural scripts; they innovate, invent, resist, subvert, rebel, and negotiate just as they may reproduce and subscribe to aspects of their cultures (Basirico and Bolin, 2002). We have reframed our bio-cultural terminology as “biological, psychological and cultural” to better reflect the role of individuals within society (see Figure 1.1. For further discussion, see Chapter 2).

Although a biological, psychological, and cultural approach in anthropology may not be appropriate for all subjects anthropologists might research, such a view lends a fuller and more complete understanding for a number of topics. Biological, psychological, and cultural perspectives are widespread in fields such as medical anthropology, biological anthropology, the anthropology of sex and gender, psychological anthropology, and clinical anthropology.

Figure 1.1 The individual in society.

Source: Anne Bolin with Elon University Department of Instructional and Campus Technologies, 2006.

The interweaving of biology, psychology, and culture into a bio-psycho-cultural perspective is the distinguishing feature of this book and the theme that unifies the diversity of studying human sexuality through an anthropological lens. The term “sex” has many meanings. Sex is part of our biology. It is a behavior that involves a choreography of endocrine functions, muscles, and phases of physical change. It is expressed through the “biological sex” of people classified as male or female (Katchadourian, 1979). Despite this physiological component, the act of sex cannot be separated from the psychological and cultural context in which it occurs, thereby incorporating meanings, symbols, myths, ideals, and values. Sex expresses variation across and within cultures, and among individuals.

An anthropological definition of sex is necessarily broad and includes the cultural, psychological, and biological aspects of sex. We shall offer you a definition of sex but urge you to remember that defining sex is far more complex than our definition suggests. For example, our definition cannot limit sex to only those behaviors resulting in penile-vaginal intercourse; in doing so, we would eliminate a variety of homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual behaviors that are obviously sexual but not coital. Therefore, we shall define sex as those behaviors, sentiments, emotions, and perceptions related to and resulting in sexual arousal, as defined by the society or culture in which it occurs. We qualified our definition by referring to cultural definitions of sexual behaviors since these differ a great deal among ethnic groups and cross-culturally. For example, “petting,” as we know it in industrialized societies, is not universal, that is, it is not necessarily considered a form of arousal among all other peoples of the world. As you read this book, you will begin to broaden your understanding of yourself, your own society, and the multicultural world in which we live.

Anthropological Perspectives on Human Sexuality

The study of human sexuality is cross-disciplinary. Six major perspectives dominate the study. They include the biological, with a focus on physiology, hormones, and anatomy; the psychosocial, which emphasizes the developmental aspects of sexuality and the interaction of the effect of cognitive and affective states with social variables on the individual; the behavioral, which stresses behavior over cognitive and emotional states; the clinical concern with sexual problems and dysfunctions; the sociological, with a focus on social structures and the impact of institutions and socioeconomic status factors on sexual behavior; and the anthropological, which includes evolutionary and cultural approaches, with emphases on sexual meanings and behaviors within the cultural context. Culture is the shared reality of people that includes both ideas and patterned behaviors within a group, community (geographical and ideological), and/or region. Therefore, by culture, we mean the skills, attitudes, beliefs, and values underlying behavior as well as the behaviors themselves. These are learned by observation, imitation, and social learning. This preliminary definition is elaborated upon further in this chapter and Chapter 2.

In today’s global community, it is increasingly important for us to incorporate multicultural perspectives into our knowledge base. Since this approach is at the heart of anthropology, we offer a brief historical overview of some of the more well-known cultural anthropologists who have shaped the study of human sexuality. The contributions of anthropologists studying the evolution of human sexuality are discussed in Chapter 3.

Anthropology as a discipline developed in the nineteenth century. From its inception, anthropologists have been interested in the role of human sexuality in evolution and the organization of culture. Darwin, most well-known for the biological theory of evolution (see Chapter 2 for definition and Chapter 3 for discussion), also formulated theories on culture that included ideas on human sexuality. These were presented in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1874 [1871]). Darwin argued that morality is what separates humans from animals. In his theory of morality, he regarded the regulation of sexuality as essential to its development. According to him, marriage was the means for controlling sexual jealousy and competition among males. Over the course of moral evolution, restrictions on sexuality were first required of married females, then later all females; finally, males restricted their own sexuality to monogamy. Darwin’s approach incorporated notions of male sexuality and assertiveness, and female asexuality. These views reflected Darwin’s own cultural beliefs about sex and gender (Martin and Voorhies, 1975: 147–149).

Other nineteenth-century anthropologists also produced theories of social evolution that included the regulation of sexuality. John McLennan (1865), John Lubbock (1870), and Louis Henry Morgan (1870) conceived of societies as having evolved through stages. These stages represented increasing restrictions on sexuality as societies progressed from the allegedly “primitive” stages of promiscuity to modern “civilization,” characterized by monogamy and patriarchy (Martin and Voorhies, 1975: 150). These theories were flawed in that they regarded European culture as superior and viewed social evolution as an unwavering linear trend of “progress.”

The twentieth century brought new approaches to the study of human sexuality as anthropology shifted from grand evolutionary schemes with little rigor to empirically oriented studies. This transition led to a new methodology, for which anthropology has gained acclaim. Bronislaw Malinowski is the acknowledged parent of the anthropological research method known as ethnography. Ethnography is the research method of participant-observation in which the anthropologist becomes entrenched in the lives of people in their research community. The ethnographic method serves as the basis for an ethnography, the detailed study of the culture of a particular group of people. Malinowski is known for his analysis of sex as part of the ethnographic context. His groundbreaking work titled The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage and Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea was first published in 1929. Although others in the 1920s wrote about indigenous peoples and their sexuality, their approaches, unlike Malinowski’s, were not based on firsthand research but rather on missionary and travelers’ reports or short-term field projects (Weiner, 1987: xiii–xiv). Malinowski’s two-year term living with the Melanesian Trobriand Islanders and his scientific and systematic methods of data collection left an important legacy for the field of anthropology and the study of human sexuality.

Malinowski was interested in the relationship of institutions such as kinship to cultural customs, including sexual behaviors. His perspective stressed the importance of the cultural context and emphasized how social rules ordered sexuality among the Trobriand Islanders. What appeared to Europeans as unrestrained sexuality were in fact highly structured premarital sex rules and taboos based on kinship classification (Weiner, 1987: xvii). Malinowski seriously challenged the dominant nineteenth-century cultural evolutionism of McLennan, Lubbock, and Morgan. He rejected the notion that early human life was represented by sexual promiscuity. The Trobriand Islanders illustrated that even the most non-technologically complex peoples regulated their desires through systems of kinship. Rather than promiscuity as a prior condition, Malinowski focused on the patterning of sexual relations in creating the family (Weiner, 1987: xxv–xxvi).

He was also influenced by another trend impacting anthropology: that of psychoanalysis. He was impressed with the psychoanalytic openness to the study of sex but was critical of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the incest taboo and the Oedipus complex. In a nutshell, Freud’s argument is that little boys unconsciously experience a desire to marry/have sex with their mothers and want to murder their fathers, whom they regard as rivals. In Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), Malinowski “argued that Freud’s theory of the universality of the Oedipus complex needed revision because it was culturally biased. Freud based his theory on the emotional dynamics within the patriarchal western family” (Weiner, 1987: xxi). This resulted in a heated debate with psychoanalyst Ernest Jones. Malinowski again argued that the Oedipus complex was a result of the European patriarchal family complex. The Trobrianders presented quite a diff...