Social Problems

#9 Sex and Sexuality

This topic will explore specific issues related to sex and sexuality in our society. In the western world we have a very simple idea about sex. In our society there are only two sexes male or female. These two sexes can only have sex with the other. According to symbolic interactionists every society has scripts for sexual behavior.

How are sexual identities created and recognized?
What makes a relationship socially legitimate?
How do online communities shape identity formation?
How do societies draw boundaries around sexuality?

Readings

Reading: Chapter 5 Sexual Orientation & Inequality

Reading: Chapter 9 Sexual Behavior
Reading: Chapter 12 Intro to Sociology Button
Additional readings will be posted to canvas

Sociological Theories and Sex

Major sexuality related social problems

Prostitution (sex trafficking)
Sex tourism –men traveling to other countries to have sex with young girls (boys)
Porn
Rights of sexual choice
Sexually transmitted diseases
Abortion –women’s sexual rights
Some define the existence of homosexuality as a social problem.

Evryday pornography

During this session we will talk about what Jane Caputi calls "Everyday Pornography"

Her idea of “everyday pornography” refers to the argument that pornography is not limited to explicit sexual materials. She suggests that there is social worldview and cultural practice that normalizes domination, objectification, and the sexualized subordination of women in everyday life. The reading for this discussion is posted.

Jane Caputi’s argument is not simply “sexual content = pornography.” Instead, her argument is that: Pornography is a broader cultural logic that can shape how society organizes gender, power, and sexuality. This is why she calls it “the pornography of everyday life”, because she argues these patterns become normalized and embedded in ordinary everyday social experiences.

Sexuality and Subliminal Media

We will also discuss subliminal sexual images in children's shows like Disney movies. The image on the left is from the original cover of the little Mermaid movie. There was a clear penis on the cover and once you saw it you could not unsee it. This was such a scandal that they did change the movie cover.

Sexual Scripts

We will briefly discuss sexual scripts and various expectations for sexual behavior. Over the years sexual scripts have also presented unequal expectations for women. Sexual scripts are socially learned guidelines or expectations that shape how people understand, perform, and interpret sexual behavior, relationships, attraction, and intimacy.

Often things that defined women’s sexuality were painful, dangerous or deadly to the women themselves.

https://sl.bing.net/dmCTzZ6RaEu

Cross culturally sexual scripts & expectations vary depending on the culture and belief system. We have problems with sex in our culture because we want people to follow our general scripts for sexual behaviors. When we examine different cultures sexual scripts it is important to try to be objective. Our scripts will also look very strange to them.

Sexuality - Limits to Sexual Freedom

How are sexual issues sexual identity, transsexuality and homosexuality a social problems? The truth is that the state of someone's sexual identity is not the actual social problem. It is the reaction to that state that is the actual problem. It is actually killing and harming people, it is limiting their human rights, it is the preventing them from just living their individual lives. During this session we will focus on the social problems related to the "ism's" related to sex and sexuality.

shepard killers mckinner and henderson.webp

The case might never have been more than a local tragedy and sensation except for one thing. Matthew Shepard was Gay and apparently targeted by his assailants, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney because he was “a faggot.” The case became a national cause célèbre and the impetus for adding sexual orientation or identity to protected status under state and Federal hate crime statutes.

https://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2021/10/matthew-shepardan-involuntary-martyr.html

They hated his sexuality so much they had to kill him! How can we explain this type of sick behavior?

Our culture and religious beliefs determine how we treat people who are outside of the social norms. The late pastor Fred Phelps spent his entire life preaching against homosexuality, which he thought was the worst sin. He also taught everyone in his orbit to hate gays as well.

About 18.4% of victims in single-bias incidents were targeted because of sexual orientation, making it the third-largest bias category after race/ethnicity and religion.

Sociologists and criminologists caution that hate crimes are generally considered underreported. Many victims do not report incidents to police, and reporting practices vary across jurisdictions. Therefore, FBI statistics are usually interpreted as the number of reported hate crimes, not necessarily the total number that occurred. Think about the number of crimes we don't know about.

Kids today are picking up social cues that tell them that their sexuality is their own choice and they don’t have to fit solely into one group or another. This is a new script for American society but other cultures have long recognized that sex, sexuality or gender was much more than simply male female. Many youth are also now defining themselves as asexul.

Many young people are abstaining from sex all together. They just don't feel the desire to do it. Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity. It may be considered a sexual orientation or the lack thereof. Why is this happening?

Objectum Sexuality - Being attracted to and having sex with objects.

We will also discuss taboo sex. Are there actual sexual acts that might be considered illegal in the USA? Could some of the traditional taboos also be changing?

Objectum sexuality (OS) is a term used by some individuals who describe themselves as experiencing deep emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction toward specific inanimate objects rather than toward other people. Objectum sexuality is the experience of forming romantic or sexual attachments to objects such as buildings, bridges, vehicles, monuments, machines, or other nonhuman objects. This is a relatively new social phenomenon so is it a social problem? Should it matter if your neighbors wife is a car? Should we have laws that regulate objectum sexuality? Should they be able to join into relationships with things?

Future Sex - Where are we going as a society?

Soon we will be dealing with the issue of artificial sexuality. What will relationships look like when we get fully interactive sentient robots. How is modern technology going to change our sexual behaviors. We don't really know how common, socially accepted, and transformative those relationships will become. But they will have some impact.

What will happen when we have perfected fully functional robot sex partners? Things we can program to do exactly what we want... when we want it.... no disease or pregnancy. Something to think about. People are addicted to Xbox, and their phones now etc..

Davecat married his doll wife. He has subsequently taken on another doll wife. He is dealing with actual dolls. (Not robots)

Sex Robots Are Here – And They're Changing Everything https://youtu.be/7lOgcne3w3Q?si=uEWDH0U-9ZBXk21Z

What could possibly happen?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/znwnpw/silicone-love-davecats-life-with-his-synthetic-wife-and-mistress

This was 2017. Today we have actual robot strippers. There are also several proposals for robot brothels.

Discussion Post

Assignments

Lets think about all the things that could happen with sex robots. Is having sex with a robot cheating? What if you came home from work and found your partner with a sex robot? Would you care? Would you consider it cheating why or why not? Could the sex doll be named in the divorce settlement... what if your partner became addicted or fell in love with the robot? What about robot strippers or prostitutes? Should sex work still be illegal if it does not include "real" people? Should people be allowed to have underage sex robots? Why or why not?

Everyday Porn Powerpoint

Assignment: PPT Everyday Pornography in Your Environment

100 points

You must read the Caputi article to do this assignment. The goal of this assignment is to find empirical visual evidence to support or negate the points made in the article.

In your local environment do you see evidence of everyday porn? Create a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation of the “everyday porn” in your environment. You can use, pictures you take yourself, scanned images, images from the Internet or magazine images to create your PowerPoint.

According to Caputi, we are bombarded with sexualized images everywhere and they have become part of our normal visual landscape. (So much so that we no longer actually “see” the images any more.) We accept these sexualized images as normal and natural and no longer ask ourselves if the images have deeper meanings or implications for society. In our globalized urban environment advertising is pervasive and fills every inch of our available blank space. Billboards, bus adds, adds on poles, tv, newspapers and magazines all display commercial ad images that have meaning in society. For Caputi, these adds carry “symbolic meaning” that represent the social devaluation of women. (& too a lesser degree men)

“The world view what I term everyday pornography underlies not only the oppression of women and sex negativity, but infuses practices of consumerism, racism, homophobia, abuse of animals, militarism and environmental devastations” (pg. 435)

Gender Porn: “… Gender porn images point to domination, violence, and control of space as intrinsic and defining components of masculinity” ( pg. 437)

Create a PowerPoint that showcases the everyday porn in your local community and address the following questions: Submit this PPT to e-courses and bring the PPT file to class on a storage disk so you can share your photos with the class. (Use any advertising images available to the public in your local community.)

What did you think about the reading?
Do you think Caputi over exaggerated her argument?
Where did you collect your images?
Who are the intended audiences for some of your images?
Who are the subjects of the images?
Are the images you selected liberating and sexually positive or overall harmful? Why
Did you find evidence of gender porn, submission, pornographic objectification… and the other things Caputi talked about?
Discuss how you feel about the images you selected.

Do you think everyday porn desensitizes everyone to pornography? If it does it matter?

Remember Caputi is not talking about traditional pornography. (So do not visit pornographic sites or magazines for this assignment) She is focusing on the subliminal images, or images we take for granted that are all around us.

“The world view what I term everyday pornography underlies not only the oppression of women and sex negativity, but infuses practices of consumerism, racism, homophobia, abuse of animals, militarism and environmental devastations” (Caputi pg. 435)