Lecture 1
Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political,
cultural, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors.”
1. The importance of (studying) sexuality in young people
Sexual health: “…a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality.
‘Outcomes’ mostly studied are much narrower:
• STIs/HIV
• Unplanned pregnancies
• Sexual violence
• Sexual function and satisfaction
Sexuality: an important issue:
• Highest happiness and deepest sorrow..
• Entwined with gender roles and women’s social position
• Important health issue; high costs SHC and MHC
• Likewise for education, policing and jurisdiction
• Interwoven with (other) important issues:
-Population, ecological relevance
- Human rights, ‘sexual justice’, civilization
- Global health, burden of disease
Sexuality is important in adolescent development:
• Independence from parents
• Development of personal morality
• Identity development
• Development of the capacity for meaningful intimate relationships
• Crucial in finding the balance between autonomy and connectedness
• Adolescent intimate relationships a training ground for adulthood
• Sexuality functions as a crowbar to development of identity and intimacy
2. A short historical overview
The social regulation of sexuality…
• Is of all times; degree of moral restriction varies
• Affects women and non-heterosexuals primarily
• A variety of explanations
• Tightening of rules during 19th century; Victorian era
• Children and youth seen as a-sexual (
• Codes less strict first half 20th century
• Rise of contraceptive care and sexological science
Scientific developments first half 20th century
,• From religious-moral to medical-psychiatric
• German psychiatrists laid foundation sexology
• von Krafft-Ebing, Hirschfeld, Freud, Reich
• WW2 ends first fluorescence abruptly
• After WW2 leading role for Americans
• Kinsey, Money, Masters & Johnson
• Simone de Beauvoir La Deuxième Sexe (1949)
Gender: evolution of a concept
• 50ies and 60ies USA: used in clinical work with transgenders
• 70ies: feminist antithesis to biological determinism
From modern to postmodern perspectives
• Gender as individual attribute
• Gender as social norm
• Gender as process: ‘doing gender’ = the continuous, daily enactment of gender roles and the sexual
double standard
The 60ies and 70ies
• Many taboos disappear
• 2nd feminist wave, the contraceptive pill, sexual revolution • ‘Discovery’ sexual response cycle (SRC)
• 1966: Masters & Johnson Human sexual response
• Emergence social-constructionist perspectives
• 1974: homosexuality deleted from DSM
• Growing attention for sexual violence
• Sexology still mainly focused on adults
The 80ies and 90ies
• Increasing migration, VN conventions, strengthening Human Rights perspectives
• 1981 discovery HIV
• Increasing medicalisation (1998 Viagra) and its criticisms
• Nature-nurture debates intensify
• Adoption concept ‘sexual health’; ‘SRHR’ on the rise
• Hesitantly, young people are acknowledged as sexual beings…
Sexual rights
• Sexual rights are human rights (WHO, IPPF, WAS)
• Sexual rights comprise reproductive rights
Refer to :
• ‘freedoms from: ’discrimination & stigma, coercion & violence
• ‘freedoms to’...
• a satisfying sex life
, • adequate information and education
• supplies, medicine, health care (aw abortion care)
• Self determination irt sexual partners, sexual orientation, relationships and living arrangements,
reproduction (timing and number of children)
Era 2.0
• Far-reaching globalisation, migration
• World population reaches 7 billion; 43% under 25 years of age!
• Technologisation en mediatisation
• Recurrent moral panics about young people and sexuality
• Related to rise of ‘new’ media
• More prudishness?
• Persistent belief in ‘child innocence’
• Persistent ambivalence and controversy around female sexuality
Sensitivity for sex differences in sexuality is necessary (Cfr. Vanwesenbeeck, 2011)
• Substantive, research-technical and political-emancipatory reasons
• And because of existing evidence:
• Cognitions and cognitive processes
• Sexual behaviour and activity
• (Negative) experiences and evaluations
• Plasticity versus rigidity
Drawbacks of a focus on sex differences:
• Polarization, stereotyping, tunnel vision, expectancy confirmation
• Too little attention to diversity, other factors than ‘sex’, sexuality as a process
• Methodological bias
• Evident preoccupation and exaggeration
• Sex differences are sometimes big but more often small
Week 1 literature:
● Doing Gender in Sex and Sex Research - Ine Vanwesenbeeck.
Gender is central to sexuality, and vice versa, but there are a number of difficulties with the treatment
of gender in sex research. Apparently, it is hard to find a balance between two conflicting needs.
First, obviously, it is necessary to make distinctions between women and men, for political as well as
research-technical and theoretical reasons. A second requirement, at odds with the first one, is the
necessity to understand gender and its relation to sexuality and the body as much more complex
than simplistically referring to two sets of individuals. This is all the more necessary when one
realizes the possible drawbacks of exaggerating the differences between the sexes (in particular
when they are biologically explained), because of stereotyping, stigmatizing, and expectancy
confirmatory processes. This essay identifies and discusses 10 difficulties in the treatment of gender
in sex research, reflects on their origins, and reviews theory and evidence with the aim to (1) consider
the relative strength of gender/sex as an explanatory variable compared to other factors and
processes explaining differences between men and women on a number of sexual aspects, (2) inform
an understanding of gender and its relation to sexuality as an ongoing, open-ended, multi-determined,
