I am Kunal Vakharia, an international student from India. I am an Aeronautical engineer by profession and currently I am pursuing Aviation Operations course at Seneca college. Sexology has always driven my interest and thus, this course has helped me to learn a lot about Human Sexuality. Human Sexuality is a multifaceted concept and plays a very crucial role in everyone’s life. It can be driven by various factors like values and beliefs, attitudes, experiences, physical attributes, sexual characteristics, societal expectations. The purpose of this paper is to share my thoughts and experiences that has impacted my sexual identity and also express my understanding of sexual complex human being and effects of social location on my identity. …show more content…
During my early teens, all I understood from the term sex was that,’ it is the intimate relationship shared by a man and a woman’. And that only married people can share such intimacy. But later I realized that sexuality is not just about Sex, but it is about one’s choices, attitude, social beliefs etc. All in all, it is the total of who you are, what you believe, what you feel, and how you respond. (optionsforsexualhealth , 2016) I still remember my adolescence days, it was the time when I was very inquisitive and was driven to explore things related to sex like, finding my sexual interests, first masturbation, getting intimate etc. Growing up in a conservative society, I had minimum perhaps no sex education. Thus, internet was my only source of learning. This is how I came across porn videos and I realized my sexual inclination for women and that I was straight. I understood and also experienced my first masturbation while watching such …show more content…
There are a lot of factors that has driven to these value changes. First and foremost being age and maturity. No doubt with age, my mindset, likes, dislikes, preferences everything has changed. Teenage was more of exploring and experimenting thing, but now it is more about me and my partner’s comfort zone and choices. Apart from this, another major cause for these changes is the cultural difference. Moving to Canada has brought in a lot of changes in me. This country has people from all over the world, multi-cultural, different mindsets and perhaps this is why I have learnt to think from wider horizon. In this 1.5 years, I have learnt to adapt to different perceptions. Based on the new social environment and my personal values all that I follow and believe is that every individual has the right to decide their sexual interests. All what matters is that one indulges in sex only with the partner’s consent and does not force or be forced upon by
Since the dawn of man, sex has played a crucial role in society. Before they learned to read or write humans were engaging in sex and without it none of us would be here. In today’s society, sex has grown to become much more complicated. If I were to ask a group of people on the street what they believed sex was? I bet they would have a hard time answering. The question puzzling society today is how do we define sex? Can we define sex? These are questions raised in Tracy Steele’s article “Doing it: The Social Construction of S-E-X”. This article is about the current questions and issues that have been raised about sex within today’s society. In this paper I will summarize the key points of the article, while sharing my own thoughts and opinions of Steele’s findings.
In the article “An Anthropological Look at Human Sexuality” the authors, Patrick Gray and Linda Wolfe speak about how societies look at human sexuality. The core concept of anthology is the idea of culture, the systems of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors people acquire as a member of society. The authors give an in depth analysis on how human sexuality is looked at in all different situations.
Masters and Johnson were a pioneering team in the field of human sexuality, both in the domains of research and therapy. William Howell Masters, a gynecologist, was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1915. Virginia Eshelman Johnson, a psychologist, was born in Springfield, Montana in 1925. To fully appreciate their contribution, it is necessary to see their work in historic context. In 1948, Alfred C. Kinsey and his co-workers, responding to a request by female students at Indiana University for more information on human sexual behavior, published the book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. They followed this five years later with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. These books began a revolution in social awareness of and public attention given to human sexuality. At the time, public morality severely restricted open discussion of sexuality as a human characteristic, and specific sexual practices, especially sexual behaviors that did not lead to procreation. Kinsey's books, which among other things reported findings on the frequency of various sexual practices including homosexuality, caused a furor. Some people felt that the study of sexual behavior would undermine the family structure and damage American society. It was in this climate - one of incipient efforts to break through the denial of human sexuality and considerable resistance to these efforts - that Masters and Johnson began their work. Their primary contribution has been to help define sexuality as a healthy human trait and the experience of great pleasure and deep intimacy during sex as socially acceptable goals. As a physician interested in the nature of sexuality and the sexual experience, William Masters wanted to conduct research that would lead to an objective understanding of these topics. In 1957, he hired Virgina Johnson as a research assistant to begin this research issue. Together they developed polygraph-like instruments that were designed to measure human sexual response. Using these tools, Masters and Johnson initiated a project that ultimately included direct laboratory observation and measurement of 700 men and women while they were having intercourse or masturbating. Based on the data collected in this study, they co-authored the book Human Sexual Response in 1966. In this book, they identify and describe four phases in the human sexual response cycle : excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. By this point in time, the generally repressive attitude toward sexuality was beginning to lift and the book found a ready audience.
Unlike sex, the history of sexuality is dependant upon society and limited by its language in order to be defined and understood.
Milstein, Susan A. Taking Sides Clashing Views in Human Sexuality. Ed. William J. Taverner and Ryan W. McKee. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
Looking at our past, there have been dramatic changes in the way humans view sex. Long before the 1900s individuals framed their views based on the religious institution. Due to the fact that they strongly centered their idea of sexual thought on religion, they believed that the only purpose of having sex was to procreate. As the 1920’s approached, there were various factors that changed the way individuals viewed sex. The “new women” known, as flappers were women who were confident in who they were. They changed their attire as well as their social attitude. In the 1920s, the flappers redefined sex; customs and traditions were broken and new norms were created by society.
The beginning of this short research essay began with the author explaining what the essay will be about. This essay primarily focuses on the differences and similarities of sexuality between men, women, gays, and lesbians. It also focuses on time, because throughout time, human sexuality has changed. New scientific evidence has also helped give new insight to the human mind and their most basic needs.
There are several theorists that have presented models on sexual identity development. Many of the models have stages of sexual identity development suggesting that certain characteristics are present during a specific period. However, Anthony D’Augelli presents a model that suggests processes rather than stages. These processes take place over the span of one’s life and not necessarily in any specific order or fashion. D’Augelli’s (1994a) life span model of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) identity development takes into account “the complex factors that influence the development of people in context over historical time” (Evans et al, 2010). According to D’Augelli’s (1994) theory, identity formation includes three sets of interrelated variables that are involved in identity formation: personal actions and subjectivities, interactive intimacies, and sociohistorical connections. Personal subjectivities and actions include individuals’ perceptions and feelings about their sexual identities as well as actual sexual behaviors and the meanings attached to them. Interactive intimacies include the influences of family, peer group, and intimate partnerships and the meanings attached to experiences with significant others. Sociohistorical connections are defined as the social norms, policies and laws found in various geographical locations and cultures, as well as the values existing during particular historical periods (Evans et al, 2010).
The behaviors of the Pokot wives and husbands illustrated in the article “Human sexuality in cross-culture Perspective” show the norms of sexuality behaviors that are different from the U.S norms. The Pokot wives believe that their behaviors are right things to be done or are the appropriate sanctions given to a husband who is not able to sexually satisfy his wife. However, the US perceives these behaviors differently. In the US perspective, it is considered to be a deviance that is against the law within the society. It is considers to be domestic abuse which might lead some individuals involved in this behaviors to be given a negative sanctions like sending them to prison.
Sexual attraction is an everyday part of life that has different effects on each person. In the following paper I am going to discuss the different types of sexual attraction for adolescences ages 12-20, early adulthood ages 20-30, mature adulthood 30-65, and older adults age 65 and older. Sexual attraction: which sex are you attracted to, or are you attracted to both men and women? Then we have sexual behavior: what sex are your partners? And finally, we have sexual identity: how do you think of yourself are you gay, straight, or bisexual? Some of us develop feelings of attraction to a one type of sex before we self-label
In today’s society things are being expressed and experienced at younger ages, than ever before in our time. Children and teenagers are discovering their sexuality at very early ages. Sexuality is the discovering of who you are and what makes you different from everybody else.
Then we have sexual behavior: what sex are your partners? And finally, we have sexual identity: how do you think of yourself are you gay, straight, or bisexual? Some of us develop feelings of attraction to a one type of sex before we self-label our sexual identity. Others engage in sexual behavior before they’re sure how they want to self-identify. There’s no standard for how sexual orientation emerges, and it can often be a fluid process, with attraction, behavior, and identity changing over time (Burriss, 2015). Attraction occurs in adolescence and can occur with a first romance or first sexual experience. It is common for adolescents to experience same-sex attractions. Some gay youth experience opposite-sex attractions, sometimes before same-sex attractions. Teens are moving toward forming their own sexual orientation and identity. Previous studies report that more than 60% of the boys acknowledged opposite-sex attractions and 80% of same-sex–attracted girls. Boys reported that the start of heterosexual attractions happened around the same age as same-sex attractions and occurring usually one to two years earlier than girls. They become overly concerned with whether they are attractive and place more importance on their peer group. Many adolescents may even fall in love for the first time. It is common to experiment sexual and many will have intercourse during adolescence (Kaufman & Tulloch,
In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...
The Internet may have a positive effect on the American society in ways that it helps people access many different kinds of information, but a different kind of information can be regarded as useful or even destructive to our society: sexual content. In this paper, I want to discuss how the online world of sexually explicit content has affected society. I want to search into whether or not sex on the Internet has increased sexuality in society and whether or not is has made more people encouraged more to lose sight of the importance and emotionality of sex. I also want to touch on the positive and informative forms of sexual content on the Internet and what positive effects they have in our society. In conclusion, I will discuss what could be done to help keep young kids away from harmful sexual content that they should not be viewing at young ages that might harm them in various forms (that are introduced in this paper) later in life.
How did I become the sexual person I am today? This is a question I have never asked myself before. It was not until writing this essay that I realized how I have been influenced, how I have grown and have become the sexual person that I am today. I came to realize that I was influenced by a variety of factors throughout my lifetime. Some of these factors include family values and expectations, social media, friends and personal experiences. These are all important to me because they shaped my way of thinking and how I felt about sex and its meaning.