Webster’s dictionary defines love as “affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.” Wikipedia, however, defines love as “an emotion of strong fondness and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection.” Who’s right? Love is an abstract noun, meaning that there is no concrete form of love. Therefore, who’s to say who’s right or wrong? Love can only be defined by the people who claim to fall into it. But, researchers can investigate the reasons behind it. Most aspects, such as physical appearances and animal instinct, can be explained by the chemistry of the human body, but aphrodisiacs are another story altogether.
Anyone who has studied psychology has heard Sigmund Freud’s theory that all girls fall in love with their daddies and all boys fall in love with their mommies. Although most would automatically disagree, cognitive psychologist David Perrett has a different opinion. He has developed new software that allows people’s faces to be morphed to his heart’s content. In one of his experiments, he morphed a subject’s face into that of the opposite sex and shuffled that picture in with a random selection of others. He then asked the subjects to identify which was most attractive to them. In every case, the subject would choose the morphed picture. Perrett theorizes that this is because people are most comfortable with faces and features that they have grown up around: their parent’s, sibling’s, and their own faces. (Perrett) Although, facial features are not the only elements in determining attractiveness and different people have different criteria for each aspect. There are aspects such as hair style or color, eye shape or color, ...
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... Journal of the History of Sexuality. 9.1/2 (2000): 25. Web. 8 Nov. 2011. .
Meredith, Michael . "Human Vomeronasal Organ Function: A Critical Review of Best and Worst Cases." Chemical Senses. 26.4 (2001): 433-445. Web. 8 Nov. 2011. .
Morris, J. C. "To Morris, Amanda N.." 10 May 1863. Letter 1 of Special Collections. Ed. Anne Lawrence. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2000. Web. 8 Nov. 2011. < http://spec.lib.vt.edu/cwlove/jcmorris.html>.
Perrett, David. "What makes us attractive — or not?." Los Angeles Times. Interview by Lori Kozlowski. 10 Dec 2010. Web. .
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
know beauty in any form”(86). We are so conditioned to see female beauty as what men
Facial symmetry is also linked to agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness, so good-looking people generally find it easier to make friends and hold down jobs. Attractive people are most likely to succeed because some companies are looking for models to be on the cover of their magazines. They are always making money just to be on the cover of a book that people always complain about and they would just say that should I try this product do you think it will help my stubborn fat and try to lose it by taking this daily with food or water. Researchers say that they can tell if people are attractive or unattractive because they watch guys looking at women and giving facial expressions to tell the other person what they think about the girl or girls.
Halperin, D. M. "How To Do The History Of Male Homosexuality." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6.1 (2000): 87-123. Web.
Long, Robert C. "Sexuality In The Victorian Era." Innominate Society. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. .
Howell, James W. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, & Sexuality through History. Ed. William E. Burns. The Medieval Era ed. Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008. Print.
Halperin, David. "Is There a History of Sexuality?." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry
Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.
Spence, H. D. M. Daniels. London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1909. Print. The.
Somerville, Siobhan. "Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body." Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University, 2009. 284-99. Print.
... decades ago. This book is one that will allow the reader to view many aspects of sexuality from a social standpoint, and apply it to certain social attitudes in our society today, these attitudes can range from the acceptance of lesbian and gays, and the common sight of sex before marriage and women equality. The new era of sexuality has taken a definite "transformation" as Giddens puts it, and as a society we are living in the world of change in which we must adapt, by accepting our society as a changing society, and not be naive and think all the rules of sexuality from our parents time our still in existence now.
Some people get the word love mixed up with lust. People do this because they tend to forget that when in love, sex is never a necessity but an accessory to the feeling. Lust and love have so many differences it is considered ridiculous. Some people say that they love someone just to get the physical action that is so commonly wanted but never really needed. Lust is something that is completely physical, while love is the complete opposite. Love is a feeling so euphoric that everything, but at the same time nothing m...
Foucault, Michel. "We 'Other Victorians'" and "The Repressive Hypothesis."The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1980. 3-13, 17-49.
The Definition of Love Love by definition is an emotion explored in philosophy, religion, and literature, often as either romantic love, the fraternal love of others, or the love of God based on the definition found in The Encarta Encyclopedia. As I explored the definitions through the Internet, books, and articles, I noticed the definitions changed quite a bit, but yet had the same basic understanding. The definition I found in The Encarta Encyclopedia is probably the most simple and most basic. It refers to love in the whole aspect, which is Godly, fraternal, and romantic. All of which can only be defined by one word and that is love.
This field of Sexology, developed from German and French influences, developed a taxonomy and categorization of sexual ‘deviance,’ in which homosexuality was at first seen as pathological and unnatural. This notion of a ‘degenerate’ sexuality and deviances, political, legal and social groups began to understand homosexuality in medicalized terms. Krafft-Ebbing, Ulrichs, Freud. Paedophilia and greeks.