Theorizing the Social Construction of Sexuality
Today, the leading edge of scholarship views sex as fundamentally social. We’re born with bodies but it is society that determines which parts of the body and which pleasures and acts are sexual. And, the classification of sex acts into good and bad or acceptable and illicit is a product of social power; the dominant sexual norms express the dominant social groups. If we are supposed to grow up to be heterosexual, and if we are expected to ink sex to love and marriage, this is because specific groups impose these social norms. Beliefs that there are natural and normal ways to be sexual are ideologies. How we come to have such beliefs, and their personal and social consequences, are important questions for the study of sexuality. Indeed, the question of who gets to define what is sexual and which institutions are responsible for regulating our sexualities are key sociological and political questions.
—Steven Seidman, Introducing the New Sexuality Studies(12)
Required Readings
Weeks Sexuality, Foreward, Preface, Ch. 1 “TheLanguages of Sex”(1-10), Ch. 2 “The Invention of Sexuality” (11-40)Seidman et al. New Sexuality Studies General Introduction(xi-xiii), Part 1: Sex as a social fact, Introduction and Chs. 1-3 (1-25)Research paper information at http://www.languages.uncc.edu/ksstephe/sex/GSpaper.doc
Additional Resources
Sample Journal Entry 1
Sample Journal Entry 2
Due This Week
Weekly journal entry including main points from readings, to be submitted electronically, and observations about your own sexuality and understanding of sexuality, to be kept in a private journal.