What is sex? What is gender? What is sexuality? What do we mean by LGBTQIA? How are these concepts related to the workplace? How have our understandings of these terms changed over time, and how have these changes impacted work and culture? To help you answer these important questions, this course will introduce you to the exciting field of gender, sexuality, and women's studies, and to LGBTQIA identities. We will use a range of interdisciplinary concepts, tools, and methods to understand and analyze how identity shapes our experiences in culture and in the workplace. Because we all live with gender expectations, this course is crucial for any profession, and for understanding the world around us. Also, you will learn key concepts that will help you to interpret and understand the world we share.
Sexuality
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From the course by University of Pittsburgh
Gender and Sexuality: Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
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From the lesson
Changing Landscapes, Identities, and Discourse
This week, we introduce a set of key terms (specifically, LGBTQIA) and explore the significance of these terms in a wider social and political context. This sets the groundwork for the following weeks by providing a shared language to discuss key issues in gender and sexuality studies and by introducing a range of critical issues that are directly related to gender and sexuality.
Meet the Instructors
Julie BeaulieuLecturer
Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program
Susan MarineGuest Lecturer
Assistant Professor and Program Director, School of Education and Social Policy, Merrimack College
[MUSIC]
This lecture is on the key term Sexuality.
Sexuality is also commonly referred to as sexual orientation or sexual identity.
Generally when people refer to sexuality they are talking about both romantic and
physical desires and attractions.
Typically sexuality or sexual identity is clearly linked to biological sex category.
In other words different sexual orientations like heterosexual or
homosexual describes sexual attraction via sex category.
They announce whether you're attracted to men or to women.
Because of this the two most prominent sexual orientations are same sex
oriented and opposite oriented.
Or what some call homosexual and heterosexual sexualities.
In some cases the terms homo or same and hetero or
opposite are not quite adequate concepts.
Not everyone feels that their sexual attractions or
love interests are carefully captured by these two categories.
For this reason there's an ever growing list of sexual identities.
In this lecture we will go over some basic ideas about sexuality.
And we will explore the regulations of sexuality and
how this regulations had shaped our views about sex.
Again, some basics.
Sexuality and composites both romantic and physical desires and attractions.
Some sexual identities specify romantic and
or sexual object choice heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian.
While others express romantic and or sexual desires or
acts as they relate to dominant understandings of sex.
For example queer refers to romantic and or sexual identities or
practices that differ from existing customs.
Or sexual identities that differ from what the communities accepts as normal or
common.
Because queer always depends on what counts as normal in a given time and
location.
What counts as queer is also always historically and culturally specific.
Pansexual expresses romantic and or sexual desires that are not influenced or
determined by sex or gender.
Asexual defines people with neutral or
non-existent sexual desires and/or attractions.
Sexuality is highly regulated by historically and
culturally specific ideas about sex.
Here some key things to know.
Cultural norms shape how we judge and interpret sexual acts and desires.
What this means is that some types of desire and sexual acts are considered
normal and natural while others are deemed abnormal or different.
Numerous binaries of good versus bad sex exist to support the idea
that there are right and wrong ways to desire or right and wrong ways to love.
For example natural versus unnatural, reproductive versus nonreproductive, moral
versus immoral, coupled versus uncoupled, and romantic versus recreational.
For people who believe that the purpose of sexuality is for procreation.
The binary of reproductive versus non reproductive is the most central.
Of course lots of reproductive sex happens outside of marriage.
So for others even if the sex is reproductive
it's still judged as wrong because it is not occurring within marriage.
Unfortunately we spend less time discussing what should be the most central
binary of good versus bad sex which is consent.
We can disagree philosophically on the merits of these other binaries.
But we should all agree that consent is critical to the well being and
safety of all.
When sexuality is judged and assigned value this results in sexual hierarchies.
Systems of organization that rank certain groups according to different criteria.
In most cultures as an example,
heterosexual people are valued more than homosexual people.
You rarely hear of people being harassed, insulted or
injured because they identify as heterosexual.
On the other hand identifying as LGBTQIA can be dangerous in most parts
of the world.
Hierarchies that rank sexuality, foster discrimination and
violence from gay hate crimes to hidden bias in hiring practices.
All countries regulate sex through laws and most countries have
a history of legislation aimed at regulate normal sexuality.
These laws are often called anti sodomy laws.
In 2003 the US Supreme Court invalidated all remaining anti sodomy laws which
have historically been determined by individual states.
It's very important to note that anti sodomy laws do not require sex to be
nonconsensual to be illegal.
What this means is that these laws criminalize private sexual
acts between consenting adults.
I encourage you to research your country's legal history on this topic.
Conversation about sexuality also focus on age.
Of course certain sexual acts should be considered illegal and punishable by law.
Most of us agree that non consensual sex acts should be illegal and
processed as crimes.
It also notes that non consensual sex can be sex by force, or rape, or
sex between an adult and a minor, statutory rape.
The statutory rape law is a primary example of the social aspects of
sexuality.
In looking at these laws provides an example of how sex laws are shaped by
social and historical factors.
In the US age of consent or
the age that one can legally consent to sexual activity varies state by state.
Age can be simple and chronological, the actual age of the victim or
it can refer to an individuals mental capacity.
People with disabilities can be defined as unable to consent to sex
regardless of their chronological age.
There is a range of exceptions that can also come into play when
determining the legal boundaries of statutory rap.
The Romeo and Juliet exception protects sexually active couples
when both are minors at the beginning of a relationship.
But then one becomes a legal adult during their relationship.
Marital exemptions make the legal definition of consent even
more complicated.
In the US, the legal age to marry is 18.
However, in most states a parent or
legal guardian can sign papers permitting a minor to marry.
This is still legally restricted by age,and in most cases the minor
must be 16 or 17.
However in other states this age is lower including in New Hampshire
where the legal age to marry for girls is 13 and 14 for boys.
In practice this producer is quite a bit of confusion round age and consent.
Historically the age of consent has also changed dramatically.
Today most US states have laws that require sexual
actors to be between the ages of 16 to 18 to consent to sexual activity.
But only a little less than 150 years ago the age of consent was between ten and
12 in most US states.
I think we can all agree that age of consent laws are beneficial.
What I am trying to highlight here is how they have changed over time and
how they vary by cultural location.
Societal norms define the legal age of consent.
Historically anti miscegenation laws have regulated and
criminalized inter racial marriage.
Anti miscegenation laws have a long history in North America.
But they were also on the books in Nazi Germany and
in the apartheid system in South Arica.
A recent film entitled Loving provides a representation
of anti miscegenation laws in the US.
This historical drama represents the history behind the repeal of the last
anti-miscegenation laws in the US which were deemed unconstitutional in 1967.
The regulation of sexuality has also impacted medical therapeutic practices.
As an example conversion therapy a medical practice that
promises to cure people who are homosexual is still legal in most of the US.
To summarize my comments on the regulation of sex some forms of sexual regulation
actually protect young people from predatory adults.
Other forms of sexual regulation like the states involvement.
And a free rule of adults who date or
marry outside of the race are lost against success between adults of the same sex.
Clearly punish and impress people who are not actively harming others in society.
Sexual regulation all solving to social and
religious views which tend privilege one form of sexuality over all others.
Another key aspect of sexuality is sex education.
In the US sex education is very uneven.
Some students will receive comprehensive education in schools.
While others will be told very little about sex.
The latter is typically called abstinence only sex education.
The Sex-Positive Movement advocates for the acceptance of all sex acts and
sexualities that are both safe and consensual.
Sex positive politics focus on decreasing stigma while increasing attention to
public safety and public health.
Decreased stigma which permits more open sex education, benefits public health.
Advocating for
sex positivity should not lead to the assumption that everyone should have sex.
To conclude where the biggest debates in popular discussions of sexuality focuses
on what causes sexual orientation.
Some scholars claim that sexual orientation is an aid
of biological force that ensures procreation.
Other scholars claim that sexuality while expressed physically it's not biological
but social.
In other words all of our ideas about sex and
our sexual interests are a product of human relations.
There is a long medical history that focuses on the cause of homosexuality.
Whether sexuality is determined by nature or biology or culture or
possibly a bit of both is highly contested.
We might never know exactly what produces our different sexual orientations.
And even if we do not know the origin of these differences
we can still collectively work toward a theory of benign variation.
This is a concept developed by theorist skilled women
in the classic essay thinking sex.
Benign argues that variation is the common and
fundamental aspect of all living things.
We are different by design and after all these differences are benign.
Social institutions that rank these differences
give our benign variation meaning.
In other words prejudice transforms benign differences between people into
inequalities.
[MUSIC]
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