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Lectures and Literature Youth and Sexuality
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Alle hoorcolleges en literatuur van het vak Youth and Sexuality (gevolgd in 2021).
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Youth and Sexuality NotesLecture 1: youth sexuality and gender
Definitions
Sex (‘sekse), sex (‘seks’) and gender
- Sex/seks: short for sexuality, often narrowly understood as activities towards
sexual arousal.
- Sex/sekse: set of biological characteristics defining human beings as male or female
- Gender: the social-cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, and connected
processes and effects
A lot of confusion about what people are talking about in gender or sex differences.
Sexuality
- Much more complex than what happens between the sheets.
- WHO, 2006: “… a central aspect of being human throughout life, that encompasses
sex, gender identities and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and
reproduction?”
- Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs,
attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles, and relationships. It has many levels.
- While sexuality can include all these dimensions, not all of them are always
experienced or expressed.
- Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social,
economic, political, cultural, legal, historical, religious, and spiritual factors.
Sexual health
- State of wellbeing; physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being in relation to
sexuality
- It is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity.
- Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual
relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual
experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.
- For sexual health to be attained and maintained, sexual rights of all persons must be
respected, protected, and fulfilled.
- Although this is a wide definition of sexual health, the outcome that is studied is
narrow: STI’s/HIV; unplanned pregnancies; sexual violence; sexual function,
satisfaction (since recently)
Importance
- Emotional: Associated with highest happiness and deepest sorrow
- Strongly entwined with gender roles and women’s social position (participation in
society)
- Important health issue: high costs, both in somatic health care (SHC) and in mental
health care (MHC).
- Important issue in education, policing, and jurisdiction (forensic sexuality)
- Interwoven with (other) important issues
o Population (density), ecological relevance
o Human rights, sexual justice, civilization
o Global health, burden of disease
,Importance sexuality in adolescence
Erik Erikson: sexuality is a lever in adolescent development
- Sexuality development statues independence from parents
- Development of personal morality
- Identity development
- Development of the capacity for meaningful intimate relationships
- It is crucial in finding the balance between autonomy and connectedness (as it is in
all relationships, but more present in sexual relationships.)
- Adolescent intimate relationship serves as a training ground for adulthood
- Sexuality functions as a crowbar to development of identity and intimacy
A short historical summary
The social regulation of sexuality
- Is of all times; degree of moral restrictions varies
- Affects women and non-heterosexuals primarily
- A variety of explanations for restrictions:
o Authority/states want to protect patriarchal power (status quo) by managing
sexual freedom
o fear of chaos and anarchy, preventing this by regulation of sexuality freedom
o evolutionary perspectives: concept of paternal uncertainty is crucial,
women’s sexuality regulated to know for sure who is the father of offspring.
This is against the organization of our society = undesirable
o historical perspective: dependency of women on men and connectivity to
male dominance.
o pure misogyny
- Tightening of sexual rules in the 19th century (second half): Victorian era
(industrialization: need for strong males)
o Children and youth seen as a-sexual fundamentally
- Codes less strict in first half of 20th century: first feminist wave, more sexual and
gender freedom etc.
Scientific development first half 20st century
- From religious moral → medial psychiatric
- German psychiatrists build the foundation of sexology
o Von Kraft-Ebing, Hirschfeld, Freud, Reich
- Abrupt ending of first episode of sexology due to World War 2
- After World War 2: leading role for Americans
o Kinsey (first social scientific), Money, Masters, & Johnson
- Simone de Beauvoir La Deuxieme Sèxe (1949)
Gender: evolution of a concept
John Money 1953: first to use gender as a concept.
- “all the non-genital and non-erotic activities that are defined by the conventions of
society to apply to males or females.”
- 50s and 60s USA: used in clinical work with transgenders
- 70s: feminist antithesis to biological determinism
, - Overall: from modern to postmodern perspectives
o Gender as individual attribute
o Gender as social norm
o Gender as process: doing gender = to continuous, daily enactment of gender
roles and the sexual double standard
The 60s and 70s: flower power time
- Many taboos disappear
o Second feminist wave
o Contraceptive pill introduced → sexual revolution
- Discovery Human Sexual Response Cycle (HSRC)
o 1966: Masters & Johnson Human sexual response
- Emergence social-constructivist perspectives
- 1974: homosexuality deleted from DSM
- Growing attention for sexual violence and consequences
- Still: sexuality mainly focused on adults
The 80s and 90s
- Increasing migration, a lot of important UN conventions, strengthening Human
Rights perspectives
- Changing perspective of women: women have reproductive rights
- 1981: discovery HIV
- Increasing medicalization (1988 Viagra) and its criticisms
o “Selling sickness”
- Adoption concept “sexual health”: ‘SRHR’ on the rise
- Hesitantly, young people are acknowledged as sexual beings. HIV prevention played
a role in this because it made it impossible to ignore youth anymore.
Sexual rights
- Sexual rights are human rights (WHO, IPPF, WAS)
- Sexual right comprises reproductive rights
Sexual rights are:
- Freedom from:
o Discrimination and stigma
o Coercion
o Violence
- Freedom to:
o Satisfying sex life
o Adequate information and education
o Supplies, medicine, health care (abortion care)
, o Self-determination in relation to sexual partners, sexual orientation,
relationships and living arrangements, reproduction (timing and amount)
Era 2.0
- Far-reaching globalization
o As world population reached 7 billion, 43% of WP under 25 years old. In some
regions this is about 75% of the population
o Technologization, mediatization, commercialization
- Sexual risks central to research on young people’s activities
- Moral panics about young people and sexuality
o Always a point of worry for older generations throughout history
o Related to the rise of new media (there’s always a new “new media”)
o Supposedly harmful sexualization
o Fear of downfall of childhood innocence
o Felt need to protect adolescent girl in particular
Are children sexually innocent?
After Freud (around 1900), attention for children’s sexual feelings relegated to the
background
- Internalizing need to protect children and the view of children being asexual.
- Convictions that children are asexual, innocent, and vulnerable, but evidence of their
interest, excitement, and desire. Children are touching and exploring themselves
without actual purposive masturbation
- This leads to uneasiness, rejection, negative reactions from parents and others
- Two schools of sexual education for children
School 1: Framing children as sexual innocents makes them feel vulnerable
o Deprived them of necessary knowledge and skills
o Innocence is eroticized.
School 2: sex education should be postponed as long as possible
Ambivalence and controversy around female sexuality
“Why protect adolescent girls in particular?”
→ Madonna-whore dichotomy: when it comes to women, there’s a difference between
good versus bad women behavior. This distinction is not present for men.
The sexual double standard and heteronormativity
- Sexual double standard: norms that evaluate women sexual behavior different from
men
- Heteronormativity: the whole system of norms and practices that shapes sexuality in
a normative direction with the following aspects
o Males and females seen as fundamentally different and complementary
o Sex is seen as a male urge, prerequisite for masculinity
o Female sexuality is seen as the counterpart: modest, passive, vulnerable, sexy
but not sexual, sex damages reputation
Hefty debates:
- Sexual violence, sexualization-objectification (pornography, prostitution), victim-
agent binary
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