Perceived Changes in Sexuality during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Adults in the United States

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased partnered sexual behavior and increased the use of enhancement (e.g., toys). This has been partly attributed to reduced social interactions and stress. However, individuals’ perceptions of changes are missing in research. This study aims to examine how adults perceive changes in their sexuality during the pandemic. We conducted a nationwide survey of US adults from April–June 2020 (N = 326). This qualitative study examines the open-ended responses using thematic analyses. The following themes emerged from the data: (1) changes in the purpose of sex; (2) changes in sexual identity; (3) decreases in sex drive and desire; (4) increases in sex drive and desire; (5) fluctuations in sex drive and desire; (6) increased sexual experimentation and reflection. The stress, changes in home responsibilities and living situations, and time spent with partners (more or less) has affected individuals by increasing or decreasing their sex drive and desire. Participants responded to changes with self-reflection and awareness, and incorporating new practices (e.g., technology, kink). The purpose of sex has shifted in order to gain intimacy or connect, or to pass time. These changes were perceived as both positive and negative, and more research is needed to determine the durability of these changes.

Soldiers, Sailors, B-Girls, and Out-of-Bounders

As the Second World War led to massive migrations, port cities swelled with workers and military personnel. Newly arrived residents sought leisure and social connections, and entertainment districts, such as San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Fillmore, and North Beach, expanded as well. Freed from the watchful eyes of hometown family and neighbors, many saw bars and nightclubs as sites of social and sexual experimentation. Military and municipal authorities, concerned to maintain both the racial color line and sexual discipline, began to monitor San Francisco’s intersectional nightspots. But nightspot owners and their patrons also pushed back, resulting in the formation of both formal and informal socially conscious networks and institutions that used entertainment districts as places of connection, protection, and liberation.

Art and the Artist

This chapter explores how Keith Vaughan overcame his disillusionment in the early 1940s and revived his hopes of being a painter through engagements with art theory that enabled him to construct through journal-writing an ideal type of the artist that he could emulate. Embracing this conceptualisation, Vaughan enjoyed a post-war period of success, but by the early 1960s was consumed by feelings of self-loathing which he explored in his resurgent journal-writing, resulting in a tumultuous period of unprecedented productivity and restless sexual experimentation. The first section of this chapter reveals how Vaughan constructed his ideal type of the artist during a crucial period in 1943, drawing inspiration from art history, art criticism, and appreciation of Paul Cézanne to laud the necessity of search and struggle to the artist’s mission. The second section describes how Vaughan neglected his journal whilst he enjoyed success in the British art world. The third section re-joins Vaughan in 1962, finding him profoundly dissatisfied with his life and work and attempting to re-assert control over both by drawing on sexology and psychoanalysis to make his journal an account of experiments in autoeroticism, subjectivity and sensation that once again reconfigured his conception of art and the artist.

Peer sexual harassment predicts African American girls’ psychological distress and sexual experimentation

Peer sexual harassment (PSH) occurs frequently and across contexts during adolescence. The current study examined the relations among PSH in school, psychological distress, sexual experimentation, and sexual risk-taking in a sample of African American middle and high school girls. Results indicate that negative body appraisals mediated the relationship between PSH and psychological distress, suggesting that PSH is one way to operationalize interpersonal sexualization and sexual objectification. PSH was directly associated with sexual experimentation, but the association between PSH and sexual experimentation was not mediated by negative body appraisals. Neither PSH nor negative body appraisals were related to sexual risk-taking. This suggests that frequent exposure to high levels of sexualization and sexual objectification, in the form of PSH, is associated with more psychological distress and sexual experimentation, but not with sexual risk-taking, regardless of how girls feel about their bodies.

An Anecdotic Revue

This chapter describes Pippin, the first of Bob Fosse’s two book musicals from the 1970s (Chicago being the second). Both shows engaged with cultural and social currents and were constructed around self-conscious, quasi-Brechtian staging concepts that emphasized their show business frameworks. Pippin was his most deliberately theatrical and nonrealistic show yet. This loose, revue-like look at the life of the son of Charlemagne in eighth-century France was set in a permanent limbo, told by an anachronistic troupe of players. It sported a contemporary edge as it followed the quest of the idealistic, hippyish Pippin to “find himself,” confronting themes resonant with the youthful counterculture: questioning war and religion, rebellion against parental authority, and sexual experimentation. Fosse’s push for complete control of his projects led to clashes with composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz over the show’s tone and message. Fosse prevailed, infusing Pippin with a dark, cynical quality and giving it a decidedly ambivalent ending.