Sexuality and Gender

2009 ◽  
pp. 304-315
Author(s):  
Laura McClure
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Gender

In discussing sexual identity, this article focuses on specific issues in understanding how individuals could be constructed as sexual beings. The ancient Greeks themselves had no specific or overarching terms for either gender or sexuality, yet distinctions based on biological sex were deeply embedded in the linguistic, cognitive, political, and social structures of their society at all periods. Just as biological sex precedes sexuality in many accounts, so men were thought to come into being before women in Greek mythology. Meanwhile, the sexual practices of the ancient Greeks attracted the attention of scholars much earlier than questions about the status and position of Greek women.

scholarly journals ‘You're not sure that you are gay yet’: The perpetuation of the ‘phase’ in the lives of young disabled LGBT + people

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Toft ◽  
Anita Franklin ◽  
Emma Langley
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Authentic Identity ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Lgbt People ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Identity Shifts

Contemporary discourse on sexuality presents a picture of fluidity and malleability, with research continuing to frame sexuality as negotiable, within certain parameters and social structures. Such investigation is fraught with difficulties, due in part to the fact that as one explores how identity shifts, language terms such as ‘phase’ emerge conjuring images of a definitive path towards an end-goal, as young people battle through a period of confusion and emerge at their true or authentic identity. Seeing sexuality and gender identity as a phase can delegitimise and prevent access to support, which is not offered due to the misconception that it is not relevant and that one can grow out of being LGBT+. This article explores the lives of disabled LGBT + young people from their perspective, using their experiences and stories to explore their identities and examine how this links to the misconception of their sexuality and gender as a phase. Taking inspiration from the work of scholars exploring sexual and gender identity, and sexual storytelling; the article is framed by intersectionality which allows for a detailed analysis of how identities interact and inform, when used as an analytic tool. The article calls for a more nuanced understanding of sexuality and gender in the lives of disabled LGBT + young people, which will help to reduce inequality and exclusion.

Making LGBT Rights into Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Langlois
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International System ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Key Aspects

This chapter commences by examining the status LGBT rights have achieved within the United Nations (UN) human rights system and reviews some key aspects of their trajectory. It considers how best to interpret the varying roles LGBT rights can play in the international system, given their new status, with a critical reading of Hillary Clinton’s famous and much lauded “gay rights are human rights” speech to the UN General Assembly in 2011. It then moves on to what LGBT rights as human rights might mean in those parts of the world where this status receives little if any formal institutional recognition, using the case of the Southeast Asian region, where a new human rights regime has been established but where non-normative sexuality and gender have been willfully excluded from its remit. The chapter considers what the politics of human rights mean for sexuality and gender-diverse people in this region with reference to two senses in which human rights claims are political: (1) activists and advocates push against the status quo to have sexuality and gender issues included in the human rights discussion and (2) resistance to this inclusion is often played out by a politicization of sexuality and gender that obscures other pressing issues. This chapter demonstrates both the profound and important advances that have been made for LGBT individuals and communities and the ways in which these successes generate political dynamics of their own, which must be carefully navigated in order to sustain the emancipatory potential of the movement.

Late Twentieth-Century Controversies in Sexual Ethics, Gender, and Ordination

2019 ◽  
pp. 317-332
Author(s):  
Lesley Orr
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Women's Ordination ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
The Church

During the second half of the twentieth century, a seismic shift in outlook, norms, behaviours, and laws transformed Western societies, particularly in relation to sexuality and gender relations. These changes were characterized and facilitated by escalating rejection of dominant sources of moral authority, including organized religion. This chapter considers the Church of Scotland’s response to the ‘permissive society’. It attempted to grapple theologically with questions concerning marriage and divorce, homosexuality, and women’s ordination, confronted unavoidably with profound questions concerning gender, power, and sexuality. These debates generated controversy and division as the moral consensus fractured. Fault lines opened up between conservatives who defended the validity of Christian moral certainties, and others who embraced more liberal and contextual interpretations of Scripture and tradition. Previously silenced or subordinated voices emerged, challenging but failing to provoke radical institutional change at a time of rapid declension in the status and cultural influence of the national Church.

Orienting Toward Possibility: Girls and Bisexuality at School

2021 ◽  
pp. 152483992110450
Author(s):  
Laura Mamo ◽  
Jessica Fields ◽  
Jen Gilbert ◽  
David Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Sexual Health ◽  
Sexuality Research ◽  
Sexual Health Education ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Narrative Intervention ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender

While many more high school girls identify as bisexual than as lesbian, queer, or other marginalized sexual identities, girls who identify as bisexual remain peripheral to sexuality research and to many sexual health education programs. Nevertheless, research suggests that bisexuality is a distinct claim and experience for girls, marked by highly gendered discourses of sexuality and queerness. Based on the Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia storytelling project that invited students, teachers, and community members in three U.S. high schools to enter a private booth and share stories of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning) sexuality and gender, this article explores the work the identity “bisexual” and the category “bisexuality” accomplish for girls when claimed for themselves or another or put into circulation at school. We consider the range of meanings and identifications mobilized by bisexuality and, drawing on insights of critical narrative intervention, explore how sexual health and sexuality educators might receive girls’ narratives of bisexuality as capacious and contradictory—as claims to identity, as uncertain gestures toward desire, and as assertions of possibility and resistance. We show that in the assertion of bisexuality, girls align themselves with the surprise of desire and position themselves to resist the disciplining expectations of heteronormative schooling. Critical narrative intervention, with its focus on using stories to challenge the status quo, allows educators and researchers to recognize in girls’ stories of bisexuality, the potential of new approaches to sexual health education and social belonging.

scholarly journals Problematyka (nie)męskości w procesie psychoterapii

2015 ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Mateusz Kobryn
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Common ◽  
And Gender

The author tries to demonstrate the relations between sociological concepts of constructing men’s gender identity and the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The complexity of the processes (intra-individual and social), in which a man recognizes his gender identity and sexual orientation, causes many theoretical and practical problems which require an interdisciplinary analysis. The article presents the dilemmas associated with different variants of modern man's gender identity and the difficulties for psychotherapists to negotiate them. The author points to the potential of sociological theories calling for the rejection of the category of biological sex, which can serve as inspiration for psychotherapists working with individuals being outside the common scheme of sexuality and gender.

scholarly journals Amargas mistidas. O desalento africano em Desesperança no chão de medo e dor de Tony Tcheka

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Ewa A. Łukaszyk
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
National Language ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Male Role ◽  
Guinea Bissau ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender

The essay focuses on selected poems from the volume Desesperança no chão de medo e dor published in 2015. Tony Tcheka offers a bitter comment on the reality of his native Guinea-Bissau that, for analytical sake, is confronted with other voices of the country. The topics discussed are: the crisis of collective identity, as well as such values as freedom and solidarity; the deficient status of Kriol as a supposed “national” language; sexuality and gender issues, such as promiscuity and insufficiency of male role models; the status of traditional beliefs and tribal identifications.

Sexuality and Gender

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Biological Sex ◽  
Sexual Roles ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Previous Scholarship

The Oneirocritica is a remarkably rich source of evidence for Graeco-Roman ideas about gender relations and male and female sexuality. For Artemidorus, as Foucault recognized, the key to the symbolic meaning of a sex-act in a dream is not the biological sex of the participants, but their relative social status. This chapter deals with Artemidorus’ classification of sex-dreams (varieties of sexual intercourse which are considered to be ‘in accordance with’ or ‘contrary to’ law and/or nature), as well as the symbolic significance of different sexual acts and positions; it is argued that Artemidorus’ sexual ethics are more strongly heteronormative than they have often been considered in previous scholarship. This chapter also explores the marginalization of women’s dreams (and female sexuality) in the Oneirocritica, as well as Artemidorus’ implicit and explicit assumptions about gender relations and female social and sexual roles.

scholarly journals Pro Domo Sua: Narratives of Sexual Abstinence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Indìo Massimo Poppi
Keyword(s):  
Unwanted Pregnancy ◽  
Work Productivity ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexual Abstinence ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Aids Risk ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Sexual abstinence is generally interpreted as a health-promotion practice, in particular to avoid HIV/AIDS risk and unwanted pregnancy and parenthood. This paper offers insight into narratives and interactional fantasizing that challenge common conceptions of sexual abstinence. The data come from several interviews and group discussions conducted in a netnographic context, altogether involving 21 European, middle‐ and upper‐middle‐class women who have never engaged in sexual intercourse or who are sexually experienced but have discontinued sexual practices for some reason. The women’s narratives and interactional fantasizing about sexual abstinence can reveal positive societal effects such as opposing sexualisation of culture and pressure for sex, but also more individual perspectives such as promoting self-esteem, psycho-physical well-being, work productivity and career prospects. Narratives and interactional fantasizing seem to play an important role in examining how sexual abstinence can impact society, especially people’s perception of sexuality and gender roles.

scholarly journals Girlfags and guydykes: “Too queer for straights and too straight for queers”

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Siri Lindqvist ◽  
Charlotta Carlström
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Lesbian Women ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
And Gender

The aim of the article is to highlight the experiences of those who call themselves “girlfags” and “guydykes” and to interpret the identity labels associated with these terms. Online, the communities that refer to themselves by these terms all define the labels and what they signify in terms of identity differently. These include descriptions of people who consider themselves gay but “in the wrong body”, for example, when a woman is sexually oriented toward gay men or when a man is sexually oriented toward lesbian women, most often with a gender or queer element to the definitions. Little to no previous research can be found on these identities, and what is known is mainly found on internet blogs and forums. The participants were sought through a Facebook forum, resulting in a total of 11 interviews with two guydykes and nine girlfags. The results were analyzed within the framework of social constructionism and applied with Butler’s (1990) concept of the heterosexual matrix and van Anders’ (2015) Sexual Configurations Theory (SCT), involving concepts of gender/sex sexuality, nurturance, and eroticism. The results show that those who identify as girlfags and guydykes are proud of their identity, but the complexity of the identity nevertheless affects many aspects of their lives. The respondents reveal how the labels involve one’s sense of self and gender identity. In addition, they touch upon transgender issues, sexual identity, sexual orientation, and other relational aspects. These identities break gender norms, sexual practices, and even sexual orientations within the LGBT context. The results indicate the need for further research on transgender issues; in particular, the relational and social aspects of the girlfag and guydyke identities.

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