Ch12.3: sexuality

Question 1

sexuality

Answer 1

viewed as a person’s capacity for sexual feelings and the orientation of those feelings

Question 2

sociologist’s focus on sexuality

Answer 2

focus on sexual attitudes and practices rather than physiology or anatomy aspects

Question 3

sexuality around the world

Answer 3

• different normative standards differ across the world
• Sweden is thought to be the most liberal with attitudes

Question 4

sexual double standard

Answer 4

defined by Ira Reiss, a pioneer researcher in sexual studies, as prohibiting premarital sexual intercourse for women but allowing it for men

Question 5

structural functionalist standpoint on sex and sexuality

Answer 5

• stress the importance of regulating sexual behaviour to ensure marital cohesion and family stability
• Talcott Parsons argued that regulation of sexual activity is an important function of the family
• homosexuality poses a potential dysfunction and disrupts the procreative role and unifying force a traditional family provides

Question 6

history of homosexuality in Canada

Answer 6

• 1841, homosexuality was criminalized
• 1879, sodomy was prohibited
• 1980, Canadian Criminal Code made “acts of gross indecency” between men illegal, same was prohibited between women in 1953
• between 1950s and 1960s, homosexuals were treated as national security risks
• 1969, Criminal Code was amended to relax the law against homosexuality
• 2005, same sex marriage legalized

Question 7

critical sociology standpoint on sex and sexuality

Answer 7

• sexuality is another area in which power differentials are present where dominant groups work to promote their worldview and economic interests
• sexuality was viewed as a hidden agency that defined the viability of an individual’s personality
• abnormal sexuality was associated with mental disease, threats to stability and biological pathologies

Question 8

dominant gender schema

Answer 8

• the ideological framework that states that there are only two possible sexes, male and female, and two possible genders, masculine and feminine

Question 9

symbolic interactionism standpoint

Answer 9

• focus on the meanings associated with sexuality and sexual orientation
• experience of gender and sexual outsiders reveal the subtle dramaturgical order of social processes through which all gender identity is sustains and recognized by others
• focus on slurs used to describe homosexuals

Question 10

Vivienne Cass’s social stages of the coming-out phase

Answer 10

1. identity confusion, the person denies or resists the growing suspicion of homosexuality
2. identity comparison, the person examines the series of available identities they fit in with
3. identity tolerance, the person recognizes homosexuality and seeks more information
4. identity acceptance, the person claims public acknowledge of their sexual identity
5. identity pride, the person strongly identifies with their identity group and devalues of others
6. identity synthesis, a person’s sexuality is naturalized

Question 11

Charles Horton Cooley’s “looking-glass self” on sex and sexuality

Answer 11

suggests that constant exposure to derogatory labels, joke, and pervasive homophobia would lead to a negative self image or self-hate

Question 12

queer theory approach on sex and sexuality

Answer 12

• rejects dominant gender schema
• highlights the need for a more flexible and fluid conceptualization of sexuality, allowing for change, negotiation, and freedom

Question 13

queer theory

Answer 13

• a perspective that questions fixed (normative) definitions of gender and sexuality

Question 14

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s opinion against monolithic definition of sexuality

Answer 14

she identified other ways in which people’s sexualities were differnt

Question 15

Why did Queer theorists adopt the term “Queer?”

Answer 15

Because they reject the dominant gender paradigm and the binary construct of sexuality

Question 16

In the video “Fifty Shades of Gay,” iO Tillet Wright talks about creating a photographic exhibit of the faces of LGBTQ people. What similarities among LGBTQ people were identified through the project?

Answer 16

Other than a shared experience of prejudice and discrimination, there weren’t other universal commonalities.