Lectures Youth & Sexuality
Lecture 1a Sexuality Research in the Past Century and Now & Gender Differences
What do we mean by Youth? What age group?
A. children/teens 0-18
B. adolescents 12-25
C. young (almost-) adults 16-30
D. all of the above → youth is a fluid concept
Sexuality can be a lever (stimulans/drukkend middel) in adolescent development
• Independence from parents
• Development of personal morality and identity
• Development of meaningful intimate relationships
• Crucial in finding balance between autonomy and connectedness
• Also, the first steps in terms of exploring desires and boundaries (consent)
What concepts are we talking about?
• Sex/sexuality: act of having sex (heterosexual)
• Sex (gender): biological characteristics
• Sexual health: dealing with sexual risks (SRHR)
o Sexual disfunctions/sexual violence/ healthy sex (pleasure-based)
• Sexology: sex therapy, treatment of sex disfunctions
WHO working definition of sexuality (2006)
• “…a central aspect of being human throughout life 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, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships.
• While sexuality can include all of 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.”
Historical overview
• 1900-1940
o First period of large growth of scientific interest, sexology research and societal
influence
o Dominated by physicians, which was a divergence from the past (in which sexuality
was mostly a moral issue)
• Post-WW2
o More interdisciplinary (also biology, psychology, sociology)
o US leading in sexology (Kinsey, Money)
o Europe: first feminist wave e.g. Simone de Beauvoir (La deuxieme sexe, 1949)
• Sexual liberation (’60)
o Sexual revolution, second feminist wave, oral contraceptives
o Masters & Johnson, “discovery” human sexual response
• 1973-2000
o Social-constructionist versus medicalization/ evolutionary perspective
o Simon & Gagnon: The social sources of human sexuality
o 1974: Homosexuality removed from DSM (no longer considered a mental disorder)
o More attention for sexual violence and inequality (Shere Hite, susan Brownmiller)
• Recent developments
o Professionalization sexology
o “discovery” of the full anatomy of the clitoris
o More attention for sexual pleasure and inequality, e.g., orgasm gap
, First scientific developments (1900-1940)
• From religious-moral to medical-psychiatric
• German psycho-analysts layed foundation for sexology: Von Krafft-Ebing, Freud → often
considering female desire deviant
• 1906: Birth of sexology as a science Bloch: Das sexualleben unserer Zeit Hirschfeld & Bloch:
Founded Sexual Science Institute Havelock Ellis, Bloch & Hirschfeld: research on
homosexuality
• First steps of moving away from LGBT as disease, immoral or a crime
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) → pioneer of sex research
• Biologist, zoologist and sexologist
• Wrote the Kinsey report → based on 5000-6000 interviews
• It was revolutionary, because he moved the field from medical to interdisciplinary
• Taxonomy of human sexual behaviours (including paedophilia and rape)
• Homosexuality as a scale
• Controversial in his time: revelations about masturbation, orgasm, premarital sex,
homosexuality (37% of all men have had homosexual orgasm), differences and similarities
between men and women, and more
John money (1921-2006)
• Psychologist, sexologist
• Ground-breaking clinical empirical studies on gender identity development among intersex
children
• Introduced the term ‘gender’ (1955): all those things that a person says or does to disclose
himself or herself as having the status of man or woman. It includes, but is not restricted to,
sexuality in the sense of eroticism.
• Criticized for e.g. David Reimer sex reassignment study
o A boy was raised as a girl to check if gender is fully based on nature. But at age 14
the boy decided to call himself a boy.
o Experiments were unethical in this time, but he introduced the term gender. He was
important in term of saying gender is not the same as biological sex
• Questioned Freud → so, he was about the social perspective
William Masters & Virginia Johnson
• 1966: ‘discovery’ of the human sexual response cycle
o Stage 1: Excitement
o Stage 2: Plateau
o Stage 3: Orgasm
o Stage 4: Resolution
• A natural physiological process, can be blocked by psychological inhibitions
• Controversial methods: observing people having sex
• Layed foundations for behavioural therapy of sexual dysfunctions
o Described stages and these layed foundations
The 70’s Henry Foucault, Jonh Gagnon, William Simon Shere Hite, Susan Brownmiller
• Emergence of social-constructivist perspectives
o Became a more social concept
• Dismissed the Freudian idea of ‘sexual instinct’
• Growing attention for sexual violence, sexual equality (m/f)
• Sexuality: product of societal regulation, norms, meaning, and the freedom/ right to express
themselves
• Sexual behavior = social behavior
o Sensitive for interpersonal and intra-psychological cultural script
1974: removal of homosexuality from the DSM
• After heated debate, 58% of 10.000 APA psychiatrists voted that homosexuality is no longer a
‘ mental disorder’
• Increased awareness:
o What is normal and abnormal?
