Sex and Sexuality

Sex vs. Gender in Sociology

Although there is a separate study set specifically dedicated to exploring the concept of gender on StudySmarter, it is important to start any relevant explanation by refreshing our understanding of the difference between sex and gender.

Sex and Gender: Are They Different?

The conflation of sex and gender is a common mistake - it persists in academics, in bureaucracy, and even in popular discourse.

Fig. 1 - The conflation of sex and gender obscures the diversity of experiences based on sex, gender, and sexuality.

Upon a close reading of the definition of 'gender', it's not difficult to see that the concept is a social construction. There are a few occurrences that can confirm this:

• Someone's sex, as determined by their biological traits, does not always line up with their gender.
• Expressions of gender have always differed between cultures and over time. For example, wearing a skirt is usually considered a feminine expression in the United States. However, the man who wears a kilt in Scotland isn't associated with femininity for doing so.
• The binary of 'male' and 'female' is restrictive in that it excludes numerous lived experiences.

Sex and Sexuality: What's The Difference?

The concept of sexuality as distinct from sex and gender was made popular by Simone de Beauvoir, who argued that women are not born but are 'made'. Further contributions were made by famous scholars such as Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, who identified the link between sexuality and the self.

Sex and Sexuality in Sociology

In sociology, the study of sex and sexuality focuses on sexual attitudes and practices instead of the physiological or biological understandings of these concepts.

Sexual Attitudes and Practices

Even though sexuality is a universal cultural phenomenon, different periods and cultures experience and express it very differently. Whether this concerns sexual consent, homosexuality, masturbation, or premarital sex, attitudes toward all of these practices are historically and culturally contingent.

However, sociologists have found that certain sexual attitudes and practices transcend borders, such as incest and extramarital sex.

The norms, values, and dominant ideologies of a society determine the types of sexual attitudes and practices that are normalized in that society. The avenues for this process of normalization are primary and secondary socialization, whereby people learn and adopt a society's key norms and values through their family, education, workplace, religion, media, and beyond.

The Relationship between Sex and Sexuality

The relationship between sex and sexuality begins to stand out when we closely examine the legislature governing each concept.

Fig. 2 - Female sexuality is often shunned in American society.

Sex and Sexuality in the United States

The United States has legally and/or institutionally restricted sexual activity much more than other industrialized countries. For example, many American citizens disapprove of sex before age 16, extramarital sex, and homosexuality.

Female sexuality is particularly restricted and disapproved of in U.S. society. There is a double standard when it comes to attitudes about premarital male and female sexuality - particularly outside a committed relationship - whereby the former is congratulated, and the latter is often stigmatized. This results in women having, on average, significantly fewer sexual partners than men throughout their lifetimes.

While younger generations take on new ideas and perceptions of sex and sexuality, some dominant ideologies remain - particularly those regarding monogamous relationships and eventually 'settling down' in the future.

Importance of Gender and Sexuality in Education

Despite the rapid modernization of several countries around the world, progressive ideas about sex lag far behind. A subject of debate in the United States is not whether sex education should be taught in schools, but what kind of sex education should be taught.

Teaching Abstinence

A key issue in sex education is teaching safe sexual practices. There are different approaches to this, such as:

• encouraging complete abstinence from sex.

• an abstinence-plus approach, where abstinence is the best method, but safe-sex practices are still taught,

• focusing on responsible and safe sex without an emphasis on abstinence.

Theoretical Perspectives on Sex and Sexuality

As we know, theoretical perspectives are the building blocks of sociology. As such, they all approach topics in unique ways. Let's take a look at the various theories on sex and sexuality.

Structural Functionalism on Sex and Sexuality

Functionalists see the family as the most important source of social cohesion and stability in society. As such, functionalists suggest that sexual behavior needs to be regulated in order to main social stability in the context of marriage and family.

Talcott Parsons (1955) is a functionalist theorist who has long defended the nuclear family and the traditional gender roles that it promotes. He suggests that it is not only important to regulate their sexual activity for the sake of the family, but also that the family should conduct this regulation in itself. This involves discouraging sexual activity outside the family unit (such as premarital or extramarital sex). To this end, the bond of the married couple is strengthened and, as a result, so are the processes of socialization for their offspring.

Conflict Theory on Sex and Sexuality

Conflict theorists suggest that sexuality is just one more domain where power and oppression can be exercised. Those who take up the dominant view and/or identity (in this case, cisgender heterosexuals) have the power to influence systems and structures which can replicate that worldview on a large scale.

Symbolic Interactionism on Sex and Sexuality

Interactionists study the meanings that people attach to concepts - in this case, the concepts of sex and sexuality. To this end, they find that masculinity and heterosexuality are the symbolic norms in American society.

Symbolic interactionists also look at the devaluation of femininity to better understand attitudes towards sex and sexuality in society. They suggest that people often use slurs to feminize gay people, particularly men, in a derogatory way, labeling them as 'hypersexual', which can often lead to members of the LGBTQ+ community establishing negative self-images and dislike towards themselves.

This occurrence can be understood using Charles Cooley's (1902) concept of the looking-glass self, which describes how external labels impact people's perceptions of themselves.

Queer Theory

Queer theory is an interdisciplinary perspective focused on dismantling traditional, essentialist ideas of sex, sexuality, and gender. This is done by examining the several ways in which biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation are not inherently interlinked in the lived experience.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was a very influential queer theorist. She argued that someone's sexuality cannot simply be reduced to the sex of their desired partner. There are many other ways of understanding sexualities. Below is a list of some of those.

• How influential is sexuality in someone's overall self-identity?

• The role that sex plays in individuals' lives, in terms of how they think about it, how they feel about it, and how important it is to them.

• The extent to which people situate themselves into the dominant paradigm of gendered activities and meanings.

As we can see, a key aim of queer theory is to situate our current understandings of sex and sexuality and to open up new avenues and perspectives for understanding these concepts.