Modern Sexuality Research Articles

An association between male homosexuality and reproductive success

The existence of homosexuality in humans poses a problem for evolutionary theory. Exclusive male homosexuality has a catastrophic effect on reproduction and yet inherited factors appear to contribute to it. Previous attempts to resolve this conundrum are inconsistent with aspects of evolutionary theory. Additional limitations are as follows. Until recently, accounts of homosexuality have paid little attention to the probable existence of adaptive bisexuality in ancestral populations, from which further variations in sexual orientation may have evolved. Secondly, previous explanations have concentrated on the ancestral environment of two to three million years ago as the determinant of modern sexuality, when more recent influences are likely to have had considerable impact. I argue in favour of a longitudinal rather than cross-sectional model of the ancestral environment. Thirdly, they have often ignored the possibility of variable phenotypic expression, whereby those individuals with a genetic propensity for homosexuality exhibit different and adaptive qualities on most other occasions. It has been demonstrated in previous studies that homosexual men have superior linguistic skills compared to heterosexual men. This may be the result of an adaptive feminising effect on the male brain and apply to many practising heterosexuals. Other adaptations to the recent ancestral environment may include enhanced empathy, fine motor skills and impulse control. By drawing together these contributing factors an evolutionary basis for homosexuality can be demonstrated.

The beauty of friendship

The importance of friendship in the later work of Michel Foucault is increasingly being recognized, but the relationship between friendship and Foucault's concept of `life as a work of art' is not well understood. Friendship, traditionally associated with `masculine' virtue, can be seen to undergo significant change in connection with the emergence of modern sexuality. I suggest that Foucault's work alerts us to the fact that friendship is a key site for challenging the stability of the modern gender regime and the institution of heterosexuality that underlies it. By drawing on insights from Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, I elaborate upon the significance of both friendship and the work of art in Foucault. I argue that the intrinsic connection of the aesthetic with beauty is central to Foucault's `aesthetics of existence'. A focus on beauty enables us to see how friendship can be understood in terms of the work of art.

The State of the Union: Sexuality in American History

Books reviewed in this article:Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Early AmericaBeryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920Sharon R. Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in AmericaM. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson, Teaching America about Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Ruth

The pornographic context of sexual offences : Reflections on the contemporary sexual mentality

This essay-like article explores the pornographic context of sexual violence. The analysis is based on Giddens' book about the development of intimacy and sexuality in late modernity. Sexual morality nowadays combines a tolerant mentality towards pornography and a claim for prudence in the daily relationship between the sexes. This 'schizophrenic' moral situation gives a special meaning to sexual violence, which can be seen as a realisation of pornographic humiliation and as a rude offending of the norm of equality in modern relationships. The strong consensus on the protection against child pornography and paedophile violence stems from this paradoxical situation. The radical development taking place in our sexual mentality is placed within the context of relationships that are becoming more equal, and against the background of the resulting higher standards set for partners.

Premodern Sexualities ed. by Louise Fradenburg, Carla Freccero

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER for interpretation.Her commentary on these scenes hits this limit.En­ ders anticipated this; she fends off the criticism that she has chosen to "decontextualize them... divorc{ing} them from the religiosity that inspired such a genre" (p. 6).Still, her work would have been enriched by some consideration of the legitimizing model of sacrifice, however modest. The Medieval Theater ofCruelty is a hard, provocative read in the best sense.It risks large strokes of an argument that explains our fascination with pain in the world.It delivers wonderfully.I count on Enders to show us why the groundwork of intellectual history still matters today. HELEN SOLTERER Duke University LOUISE FRADENBURG and CARLA FRECCERO, eds., with the assistance of Kathy Lavezzo.Premodern Sexualities. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.Pp.xxiv, 276.$70.0 0 cloth, $19 .95 paper. One of the most exciting and productive movements in recent medieval and early modern scholarship has been a historicist rethinking of culture in relation to queer sexuality.Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freccero's collection of essays, Premodern Sexualities, takes an important place in this emerging field of study. Originating as a special issue of GLQ (1 :4 (1995}), the collection appears here in expanded form, with seven new essays and with the original introduction and five essays, at times sig­ nificantly revised and expanded. Fradenburg and Freccero's "Preface" and "Introduction: Caxton, Fou­ cault, and the Pleasures of History" constitute the volume's strongest contribution. Defining the "chief purpose" of Premodern Sexualities as "help{ing} us think further about what we mean when we say that sex has a history and that we need to know more about it" (p.vii), they emphasize especially the ways in which queer theory has pointed us to­ ward a recognition of the activepleasure we might take in doing histori­ cal work (p.viii): We do not ... pursue the history of sexuality just because we must; we study it because we know that what we must or ought to do is intimately related to 478 REVIEWS what we want to do.And we want history; the joy of finding counterparts in the past, for example, problematic though it may be, is not simply to be dis­ missed as anachronism....History ...is an erogenous zone, and knowing this helps us understand sexuality itself a lot better.It might also help us better understand the kinds of ethical strucrures at stake in historical thinking.For example, the argument that modern desires and perspectives can and must be set aside ifwe are to read the past properly is itselfrevealing, for it suggests that historical knowledge is often founded on the renunciation, the ascesis, of "self' Fradenburg and Freccero consider how history might be done other­ wise-and not just by "traditional" historians but also by those working with models indebted to queer theory, especially the first volume ofMi­ chel Foucault's History ofSexuality. Following a dominant understanding of Foucault, many have insisted on a clear line of demarcation between an era of modern sexuality and a time "before sexuality," when sexual "acts, rather than identities, are targeted for cultural attention" (p.xx). Fradenburg and Freccero call for a fuller analysis of whether such a dis­ tinction best characterizes the difference between "modern" and "pre­ modern" sexualities.More radically, they interrogate the dependence of both traditional and queer historicism on an "alteritism" that makes the past essentially different from the present. Calling attention to the otherness of different times, places, and cultures, such alteritism treats the recognition of similarities or continuities as a "transhistorical" im­ position ofourselves on others.Fradenburg and Freccero insist, however, that forging common cause with the past might be not an imposition of self on other but an identification, charged with "dangers and plea­ sures," that is also potentially a "subversive reinscription" of our under­ standing of both past and present (p.xviii). The essays collected in Premodern Sexualities address the issues raised by this introduction with varying degrees of success.Most disappoint­ ing in the collection as a whole is the failure-despite the bringing together of essays by scholars of both the early modern and the medi...

Fiction and Projection: The Construction of Early Modern Sexuality in "Elizabeth" and "Shakespeare in Love"

Fiction and Projection: The Construction of Early Modern Sexuality in "Elizabeth" and "Shakespeare in Love"

Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America.

Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America.

Review: Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America, by Sharon Ullman

Review: <i>Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America</i>, by Sharon Ullman

Sexually transmitted infection in the elderly

“Age brings changes at 70 just as at 17. But you never outgrow your need for intimate love and affection.”1 There is little medical literature concerning sexually transmitted infection in the elderly. The paucity of published information may reflect the low clinical workload this population generates within genitourinary medicine (GUM) services, but also suggests a more general lack of interest in the sexual health of elderly patients. This degree of scientific neglect reflects the attitudes of medical practitioners and those of the patients themselves. The older generation may have grown up with the belief that sex was something improper or unmentionable. They are often uncomfortable sharing this aspect of their lives which, as a topic, may have been rarely discussed in the past with either peers or healthcare professionals. In direct contrast, the contemporary media project sex and sexuality in a way that encourages discussion and debate. Articles addressing modern sexuality emphasise appearance, fitness, and most predominantly youth. These articles are mostly written by, for, and about the young …

Citysex

Discussions focusing on the relation between city and sexuality are rare in social and cultural studies. In this article I argue that the modern city is inherently and inevitably sexualized, and that modern sexuality is largely an urban one. The characteristics of this sexuality are described and discussed in the light of urban life world theory (Simmel, Wirth, Kracauer, Benjamin etc.), sexual constructionist theory, feminist analyses, gay studies and pornography. The particular quality of `sexuality' in urban sexualization is identified along Heideggerian lines as a fundamental ` Gestimmtheit' (`being tuned') of modern being-in-the-world, that is of being-in-the-city. In conclusion, some implications of the intimate relation between city and sexuality are discussed. Thus, theories of everyday life and life world, as well as prevailing idioms of modernist and postmodernist cultural critique, are problematized. Throughout the article, the style and methods of the exposition comment on the problematics concerning the representation of sexuality; and trends towards a `discoursification' of sexuality are criticized.

Response to Richard Levin's "(Re)Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts"

I do not know whether Professor Levin read my article or merely strip-mined it for references to his guiding trope, unthinkable, but as he seems to misunderstand my argument and a related one made by other scholars of early modern sexuality, I welcome the opportunity to clarify certain issues. Contrary to the contention in (Re) Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts, I do not suggest that lesbianism was unthinkable in the early modern period; indeed, the point of my essay is to show that under certain conditions same-gender female desire was thinkable, and to delineate the discourses in which it was repre sented. I demonstrate that in certain instances female-female desire is

:Sodometries: Renaissance Texts Modern Sexualities

:<i>Sodometries: Renaissance Texts Modern Sexualities</i>

Passion and Power: Sexuality in History

Part I: Sexuality and Historical Meaning 1. Passion and Power: An Introdtion - Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons 2. Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History - Robert A. Padgug Part II: Emergence of Modern Sexuality, 1790 to 1930 3. The Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman: Sexual Assault in New York City, 1790 to 1820 - Marybeth Hamilton Arnold 4. Charity Girls and City Pleasurer: Historical Notes on Working Class Sexuality, 1880-1920 - Kathy Peiss 5. Movements of Affirmation: Sexual Meanings and Homosexual Identities - Jeffrey Weeks 6. From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female Deviance - George Chauncey, Jr. 7. We Were a Little Band of Willful Women: Heterodoxy Club of Greenwich Village - Judith Schwartz, Kathy Peiss, and Christina Simmons 8. Black Community and the Birth Control Movement - Jessie M. Rodrique Part III: Sexual Conflicts and Cultural Authority, 1920 to 1960 9. Modern Sexuality and the Myrh of Victorian Repression - Christina Simmons 10. Venereal Disease: Wages of Sin? - Elizabeth Fee 11. Uncontrolled Desires: Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960 - Estelle B. Freedman 12. Homosexual Menace: Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America - John D'Emilio 13. Reproduction of Butch-Fern Roles: A Social Constructionist Approach - Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis Part IV: Private Passions and Public Debate, 1960 to the Present 14. Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women Is Different - Ann Barr Snitow 15. (De)Constructing Pornography: Feminisms in Conflict - Duphne Read 16. Gay Villain, Gay Hero: Homosexuality and the Social Construction of AIDS - Robert A. Padgug

Paternity, jokes, and song: A possible evolutionary scenario for the origin of language and mind

Abstract The nature of modern language and human sexuality, combined with G. H. Mead's 1934 conjecture that the existence of human minds presupposes prelinguistical progenitors who had become “objects to themselves,” allows construction of a sociobiological model of the evolution of mind and language from Australopithecus to modern humanity. The model has an early and long stage characterized by short metaphorical utterances delivered in the cadences of song, and a recent stage initiated by the emergence of grammar characterized by staccato speech and potentially long utterances. We argue that grammar enabled the disambiguation of long utterances and led to a compensatory increase in the rate at which they were delivered; this in turn led to phonemicization and encephalization. A solution to the problem of duality is also offered. The hyperstability of Lower Paleolithic tool-kits is explained as a by-product of the mimetic transmission of the first stage protolanguage, many features of which are retained in similarly mimetic features of contemporary speech. Modern ceaseless, rational invention, apparent since the Upper Paleolithic, is explained as a by-product of grammar and the resultant emergence of “ideons,” or manipulable ideas. A three-component model of human evolution is offered in which a coevolutionary interaction among genes, memes, and ideons may be capable of explaining many puzzling features of the human condition.

Some Opinions and Perspectives on Modern Sexuality

Some Opinions and Perspectives on Modern Sexuality

The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in Western Societies

The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in Western Societies

Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840. Alan MacfarlaneFor Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present. John R. GillisThe Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality. Edmund Leites

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsMarriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840. Alan Macfarlane For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present. John R. Gillis The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality. Edmund Leites Susan Dwyer AmussenSusan Dwyer Amussen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 60, Number 4Dec., 1988 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/600456 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1988 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

DOES EVIDENCE MATTER? PURITANISM REVISED, REVILED, AND DECONSTRUCTED

Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. xii + 291 pp. Illus. Toby L. Ditz. Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750-1820. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. xvi + 213 pp. Leon Howard. Essays on Puritans and Puritanism, eds., James Barbour and Thomas Quirk. Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. xiii + 221 pp. Ann Kibbey. The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. xi + 203 pp. Amy Schrager Lang. Prophetic Woman: Anne Hutchinson and the Problem of Dissent in the Literature of New England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. xii + 237 pp. Edmund Leites. The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. xi + 191 pp.* Teresa Toulouse. The Art of Prophesying: New England Sermons and the Shaping of Belief. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. xii + 211 pp. When confronted with evidence that he had spoken words which might be construed as support for Anne Hutchinson, John Cotton replied angrily that the problem was with his audience, not him. For "if men that hear me, do instead of my words take up words of their own and carry them to infer other conclusions," both contradiction and confusion ensue. Cotton insisted that he could not be faulted if Hutchinson and others heard his calls for a spiritual awakening as a license to preach their own spiritual superiority.1

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality

Journal Article The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality, by Edmund Leites. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, xii + 196 pp. $17.50 Get access Martin Ingram Martin Ingram Queen's University of Belfast Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 49, Issue 1, Spring 1988, Pages 83–84, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711112 Published: 01 March 1988