Science Of Sex Research Articles

(001) Black Women's Experiences of Sexual Anxiety

Abstract Introduction Sexual anxiety is one of the root causes of female sexual dysfunction (Pyke, 2020). Increased anxiety during sexual intercourse can cause women to avoid sexual activity altogether (Gerrier et al., 2015; Sanoff, 2016), experience reduced sexual satisfaction (Brassard et al., 2015), and lead to sexual difficulties such as anorgasmia, lack of arousal, and lack of sexual desire (McCabe, 2005). However, little is known about sexual anxiety beyond the narrow White male-focused quantitative research on sexual performance anxiety. Research fails to account for intersecting sociocultural oppression Black women face that may precipitate anxiety within a sexual context. For Black women, who experience sexual stereotypes about their sexual prowess (Collins, 2000), pressures to conform Eurocentric body standards (Awad et al., 2015), and reproductive health disparities that often precipitate sexual pain (Eltoukhi et al., 2014), examining sexual anxiety requires an intersectional lens, from onset to treatment (Hargons et al., 2022). Objective To counter the deficit-based narratives of Black women’s sexualities this study takes an intersectional approach and is rooted in Black feminist perspectives to center the voices of Black women in sex science and advance the research on Black women’s sexuality through a holistic lens. The purpose of this study is to understand Black women’s experiences of sexual anxiety using a phenomenological approach. This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by being the first study to our knowledge to 1) explore Black women’s experiences of sexual anxiety, including their self-reported precipitants and coping strategies, and 2) develop a working definition of sexual anxiety for Black women that capture the nuances of this phenomenon among them. Methods Data comes from Phase 2 of a larger explanatory mixed methods study on Black women’s sexual pain and sexual pleasure. To be eligible for Phase 1, participants had to be 1) premenopausal, 2) under the age of 50, 4) identify as a cisgender Black woman, and 5) live in the Southern region of the US. N=24 Participants completed a 60-min Zoom interview in April 2021. Interview data was analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results Participants reported three components of sexual anxiety as a phenomenon: 1) causes of sexual anxiety, 2) characteristics of sexual anxiety, and 3) coping strategies (see Figure 1). Causes of sexual anxiety contained five elements: partner unfamiliarity, oppressive body standards, rape culture and fears of sexual violence, pressure to meet societal sexual expectations, and anticipation of sexual pain. Characteristics of sexual anxiety included elements such as somatic, emotional, and cognitive symptoms and resultant behaviors. Coping strategies ranged from individual-level strategies to partnered coping strategies. Additionally, we composed a working description of sexual anxiety based on participant responses which account for sociocultural factors distinct for Black women. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of investigating, preventing, and treating barriers that exacerbate sexual difficulties, such as sexual anxiety, so Black women can engage in pleasurable sex and feel safe, mentally present, and confident during sexual experiences. Implications for intersectionality-informed interventions and suggestions for mental health professionals and partners will be discussed. Disclosure No

Z doświadczeń specjalistów w aspekcie nauki o płci

In the practice of a family doctor in the context of sexology and sexuology, there is a need for interdisciplinary cooperation. Interesting interdisciplinary experiences of specialists are presented. Science about gender – sexuology is an interdisciplinary science that describes human sexuality in its psychological, sociological, pedagogical, ethical and moral, legal, ethnographic, anthropological, biological, religious and medical aspects. The science of sex – sexology, is indeed an interdisciplinary science that captures human sexuality in the psychological, sociological, pedagogical, ethical and moral, legal, ethnographic, physical, anthropological, biological and religious aspect. The full development of sexuality is essential to achieve individual and interpersonal well-being and social. Its full development depends on satisfying the basics human needs such as: – desire for intercourse, – intimacy, – expression of feelings, – tenderness and love. Because health is a fundamental human right at any age, the same fundamental right must be his sexual health. Sexual rights are universal human right at any age, based on inalienable freedom and dignity and equality of all human beings.

Academic Freedom Is Social Justice: Sex, Gender, and Cancel Culture on Campus.

I teach in and co-direct the undergraduate program in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. During the promotion of my recent book on testosterone and sex differences, I appeared on "Fox and Friends," a Fox News program, and explained that sex is binary and biological. In response, the director of my department's Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging task force (a graduate student) accused me on Twitter of transphobia and harming undergraduates, and I responded. The tweets went viral, receiving international news coverage. The public attack by the task force director runs contrary to Harvard's stated academic freedom principles, yet no disciplinary action was taken, nor did any university administrators publicly support my right to express my views in an environment free of harassment. Unfortunately, what happened to me is not unusual, and an increasing number of scholars face restrictions imposed by formal sanctions or the creation of hostile work environments. In this article, I describe what happened to me, discuss why clear talk about the science of sex and gender is increasingly met with hostility on college campuses, why administrators are largely failing in their responsibilities to protect scholars and their rights to express their views, and what we can do to remedy the situation.

PENTINGNYA PENDIDIKAN ETIKA SEKSUALITAS MENURUT HINDU BAGI GENERASI MUDA HINDU

In the midst of free development in today's era of globalization, there have been many widespread sexual deviations committed by young people. Lack of sex ethics education which has caused many problems and violation of norms. It has also led to a free and unhealthy sex life and disease. This sexual deviation often occurs among young people such as pregnancy out of wedlock, abortion, rape, cohabitation and others. Factors for the occurrence of these sexual deviations can be seen in the internal factors contained within themselves and external factors contained in their environment. Sex and the issues related to it should be studied well before one enters marriage. Many young people are familiar with sex, but their introduction to sex is not deep into the science of sex. The desire to know sex is a tendency of basic human traits, so it's time for this to be satisfied by providing proper sex and health education. Lack of education about sex among young people causes and exposes themselves to be obscene, cheap, free, and creates a permissive attitude of free sex that makes them lie and destroy. This unfortunate situation will eventually lead to conflict between young people and their families, especially parents.

Intersex Justice Pedagogy

Abstract This article coins the term Intersex Justice Pedagogy and outlines this practice as a decolonial and intersectional teaching and learning praxis that affirms bodily integrity and bodily autonomy as the practice of liberation for intersex people of color. The author examines the personal, political, and pedagogical exigency for a pedagogy that centers voices from overlapping and interlocking intersex, queer, trans, nonbinary, and feminist communities of color, and takes a critical approach to examining paradigms of power, sovereignty, and “the science of sex” in a social world. Using specific examples of texts and approaches to teaching and learning, this article inspires an examination of pedagogical approaches, not only to teaching intersex and trans studies, but also to teaching social justice, with an emphasis on bodily autonomy and bodily integrity from multiple disciplinary/interdisciplinary locations and perspectives.

Scientia sexualis and ars erotica: Indonesian young people resisting the discourse of sexual desire

ABSTRACT Based on a qualitative study conducted with Indonesian young people, this article explores the ways in which the discourse of sexual desire – that constitutes sexual self as categorisable into LGBT+ identities – may be contested in the participants’ sexual becoming. Employing Michel Foucault’s comparison of scientia sexualis (science of sex) and ars erotica (erotic art), participants’ narratives are analysed to explore new possibilities of sexual subjectivity without both categorising into or rejecting LGBT+ subject positions. The findings show that participants have taken up a subject position offered by the discourse of sexual desire, but they simultaneously resisted its scientia sexualis mechanisms by positioning the art of sexual pleasure, rather than specification of desires, at the centre of their becoming sexual subjects.

Specyfika nauki o płci – seksuologii i zarys jej historii

In family medicine, an important group of issues are those in the field of sex science or sexology. General practitioners encounter in their practice issues related to regularities and disorders of sexual development in the sphere of both somatic and mental health. Both men and women entrust their doctors with their sexual problems. It is advisable that the medical history conducted by a general practitioner should be extended to include sexological aspects. Unfortunately, the lack of proper health and sex education is still a problem. Sexological issues are taboo for many patients. Meanwhile, although sexology is a relatively young discipline, it has its own history Four periods can be distinguished in the development of sexology: I. The prehistoric period, characterised by little information about sexual life of people in prehistoric times; II. The period of pre-scientific observations and inquiries, which ended at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries; III. The period of "pre-sexological" knowledge, in which sexology was not separated from other sciences; IV. The period of sexological knowledge, in which sexology gained the rank of an independent discipline due to theoretical foundations and the development of scientific methodology.

A Survey Course for STEM Students to Understand Diversity and Inclusion Through Readings, Discussion and Reflection.

Scientific discovery, innovation and success are enhanced when diverse groups participate.Promoting diversity and inclusion requires understanding both obstacles and best practices. One way to achieve success is to ensure that students in STEM fields recognize bias, understand why a diverse workforce is critical, and know how to support diversity and inclusion.This hybrid class is an overview of gender in science in engineering. Weekly lectures and in‐class discussion coupled with online discussion with peers are critical components of student learning. The topics include STEM statistics, best practices, research, implicit bias, a brief history of women in STEM, feminist theory, and the science of sex and gender. An emphasis that opinions and statements must be supported by factual references. Primary literature, videos, guest lecturers, interviews, books and white papers are used as sources. The final student project is a proposal to create change via outreach, education, policy or research.Support or Funding InformationUM DearbornThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Sugar, spice and everything nice: how to end ‘sex testing’ in international athletics

ABSTRACTIn many settings, decision makers look to science as the basis for making decisions that are made difficult by their social or political context. Sport is no different. For more than a half century, sports officials have looked to science to provide a clear distinction between men and women for purposes of determining who is eligible to participate in women’s athletic competitions. However, the science of sex provides overwhelming evidence that there is no such clear biological demarcation that differentiates men and women. Despite this evidence, the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2011 implemented a form of ‘sex testing’ based on androgens, and specifically, testosterone levels in females. This paper evaluates this policy, finding it contradictory to scientific understandings of sex and counter to widely held social norms about gender. The paper recommends an alternative approach to determining eligibility for participation in women’s sports events, one more consistent with the stated values of sports organisations, and more generally, with principles of human dignity.

This Is Not A Women's IssueWhy the New Science of Sex &Gender Matters for Everyone.

This Is Not A Women's IssueWhy the New Science of Sex &Gender Matters for Everyone.

PL-06 The Sexologist Standpoint: On the Need to Adopt the Trans-Disciplinary Model

In 1907, Ivan Bloch1, a dermatologist with profound knowledge of other disciplines realised that a full understanding of human love and sexual behaviour would be impossible from the standpoint of biology alone, and the proposal to develop a centralised point of view in the science of sex was put forward and initiated the attempts to integrate knowledge in a new field: sexology. This seminal idea created enthusiasm and followers all over the world, but accomplishing this ideal has become more and more difficult as the amount of knowledge, the variety of methodologies and its level of complexity and sophistication has rendered almost impossible to create a “single specialist” that can grasp the contributions of the many disciplines that produce relevant knowledge on sexuality related topics. In view of this difficulty, disciplines’ approaching complex areas of knowledge have moved from the uni-discipline, to the multi-discipline, then the inter-discipline and recently to what is termed the trans-discipline 2

The science of sex and gender in human health: online courses to create a foundation for sex and gender accountability in biomedical research and treatment.

BackgroundSex and gender differences play a significant role in the course and outcome of conditions that affect specific organ systems in the human body. Research on differences in the effects of medical intervention has helped scientists develop a number of sex- and gender-specific guidelines on the treatment and management of these conditions. An online series of courses, “The Science of Sex and Gender in Human Health,” developed by the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health, examines sex and gender differences and their implications. Thus far, three online courses have been generated. The first course offers an overview of the scientific and biological basis for sex- and gender-related differences. The second course is focused on disease-specific sex and gender differences in health and behavior and their implications. Finally, the third course covers the influence of sex and gender on disease manifestation, treatment, and outcome.MethodsData were obtained using website analytics and post-course surveys.ResultsTo date, over 1000 individuals have completed at least one course. Additionally, 600 users have received continuing education credit for completing a course in the series. Finally, the majority of respondents to the online course survey have indicated that the courses considerably enhanced their professional effectiveness.Conclusions“The Science of Sex and Gender in Human Health” online courses are freely available sources of information that provide healthcare providers and researchers with the resources to successfully account for sex and gender in their medical practice and research programs.

Sexual Nature? (Re)presenting Sexuality and Science in the Museum

The past 15 years have seen dramatic changes in social norms around sex and sexuality in the UK and worldwide. In 2011, the London Natural History Museum (NHM) contributed to these debates by opening the temporary exhibition Sexual Nature, which aimed to provide ‘a candid exploration of sex in the natural world’ whilst also drawing in an under-represented audience of young adults. Sexual Nature provides an opportunity to explore Macdonald's ‘politics of display’ in the mutual construction of (public) scientific knowledge, society and sexuality, at a time of intense contestation over sexual norms. Whilst Sexual Nature both reflected and contributed to major reframings of sexuality and what science can say about it, the assumption that it would be possible to present this topic as morally neutral, reliable and uncontested, in line with traditions of public science, proved to be problematic. The language of the exhibition moved back and forth between human/animal similarity and difference, and between scientific and cultural tropes as the NHM tried to maintain epistemic authority whilst also negotiating the moral boundaries of acceptable sexual behaviour. The topic of sex pushed the museum far beyond its usual expertise in the natural sciences towards the unfamiliar territory of the social and human, resulting in an ad hoc search for, and negotiation with, alternative sources of expertise. Boon et al.’s co-curation approach to exhibition building has the potential to extend the NHM's audience-driven strategy, whilst also producing a more coherent and nuanced exhibition about the science of sex.

The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe's East, past and present

The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe's East, past and present

Translation as techné: female sexuality and the science of social progress in colonial India

In this article, I analyze processes of translation that shaped the science of sex in eastern India between the 1880s and the 1930s. I trace the impact of translation – the rendering of words between the language of English and Bengali as well as the travel and transformation of concepts – through close textual analysis of influential Bengali-language medical and scientific textbooks on nymphomania, female sexual excesses, and the evolution of Indian society. The translation of sexual categories was a techné by which Bengali intellectuals produced categories of social behavior and identity as equivalent and homogenous. Through claims of equivalence in translation, Bengali scientists argued for the commensurability of Indian social practices with universalist schemes of social evolution and civilizational progress. This process of exchange pivoted on the figure of the sexually deviant woman, who became a key site of translation and categorical equivalence. In thinking translation through techné, I foreground how a semiotics of female sexuality produced ‘the social’ as an object of inquiry in colonial India.

Active Bodies: A History of Women’s Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America by Martha H. Verbrugge (review)

Reviewed by: Active Bodies: A History of Women’s Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America by Martha H. Verbrugge Heather Munro Prescott Martha H. Verbrugge. Active Bodies: A History of Women’s Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xi + 391 pp. Ill. $55.00 (978-0-19-516879-2). The release of this book could not be more timely: in 2012, the United States celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Title IX, which mandated equal opportunity for women’s athletics; and the International Olympic Committee proudly reported that the Summer Olympics in London was the first to have female athletes from all countries participating in the games. At the same time, the representation of female athletes in the media is still tinged with lingering racism and sexism, as media spend as much time on clothing and hairstyles as they do on athletic accomplishments. Verbrugge traces the historical trends that have led to this mixed legacy. [End Page 292] Verbrugge focuses her study on the careers and ideas of women, white and black, who taught physical education from the late nineteenth century to the present. She thereby makes a major contribution to our understanding of the history of female professionals in this period. She departs from other histories of physical education by placing the evolution of the field within America’s unique social and cultural milieu. Those familiar with the history of women in medicine will find many similarities between the experiences of female physicians and those of Verbrugge’s subjects: in fact, a significant number of the physical education pioneers were trained in medicine. Like medicine, the field of physical education in the late nineteenth century was still establishing itself as a respectable, scientific profession, and requirements for entry into the discipline were nebulous. Women and African Americans took advantage of physical education’s protean status to make a place for themselves in this emerging discipline. Like female physicians, women in physical education challenged gender norms by pursuing careers and being physically active. Thus, physical education became a viable career for athletic girls. Verbrugge departs from other histories of physical education by drawing on the work of Cynthia Eagle Russett, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Londa Schiebinger, and others on the relationship between health professions and the science of sex and race differences. Physical education attempted to enhance its professional status by drawing on the emerging sciences of the human body. These sciences called into question the “fitness” of female and nonwhite minds and bodies for college-level study. By physically embodying educated, active, healthy womanhood, women physical educators helped to undercut some Victorian notions about the female body. Yet, in order to make a place for themselves in the profession, women also had to emphasize the innate differences between men and women. This led female physical educators to create gender constraints of their own. White female physical educators upheld a professional ideal called “Phy Ed-iquette,” which was used to a bolster white, middle-class, heterosexual model of gender in teacher candidates. Black women physical educators imposed similar professional expectations on their students, epitomized by the concept of “Beauty Health” promoted by Maryrose Reeves Allen at Howard University. Like Phy Ed-iquette, Beauty Health equated femininity with middle-class, heterosexual norms. However, Beauty Health “also articulated a keen racial consciousness” (p. 88) and mission of racial uplift by finding beauty in black women’s physical features. Verbrugge concludes by explaining why we are still far from achieving full equality for female athletes and physical education professionals. She demonstrates that Title IX was a mixed blessing for women’s athletics: while this landmark reform in education law greatly expanded opportunities for female athletes, it also made teaching and coaching girls and women’s sports more attractive to men. Male coaches benefitted from professional networks and hiring practices that favored men. Title IX also led to the merger of men’s and women’s athletic departments, thereby marginalizing female athletic leaders even further. Thus, while the number of coaching positions for women’s teams expanded greatly, women’s share of those positions plummeted. The situation was especially bad for African American women: their representation in top positions hovers...

Precipitous Sensations: Herman Mann's The Female Review (1797), Botanical Sexuality, and the Challenge of Queer Historiography

In 1800, printers in both New York and London released a republished edition of The Unsex'd Females, a political tract by Richard Polwhele, a London curate. Published anonymously in 1798, Polwhele's extremely popular poem was a vitriolic attack on Jacobin gender politics, reserving the largest part of its ire for one of the most notable unsex'd females of the decade, Mary Wollstonecraft. Historians and literary critics of Jacobin and anti-Jacobin politics alike have explored at great length the relationship between The Unsex'd Females and the essay to which it, in large part, responds: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Often overlooked, however, is that both the form and the content of Polwhele's poetic diatribe also parodically address another controversial and quite popular piece of literature from the 1790s: Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants (1789), an epic poem based on Linnaean taxonomy that described the sex lives of plants in pornographic detail. To Polwhele, Wollstonecraft's radical feminist politics and Darwin's lavishly copulating flora both reflected the same social ill: the violation of NATURE'S law (7) of feminine modesty. Tnough Wollstonecraft's work became cukurally associated with lasciviousness due to popular knowledge of her many romantic affairs, Polwhele's anxiety about the implications of the rise of popular interest in was derived from the science itself. Because of the 1735 publication of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, which introduced a sexual of taxonomy that identified plants by the presence or absence of their reproductive organs, emerged as a science, and cultural practices of plant exchange, dissection, and illustration exploded among the middle class and the wealthy. (1) If we keep this in mind, Polwhele's critique of radical feminism takes new shape when we consider his complaint that modesty was imperiled by Wollstonecraft's call for women's education. The American edition of The Unsex'd Females is permeated with assertions of his haughty disapproval of women practicing botanical science in the name of education. Describing a class, he writes that young students With bliss botanic as their bosoms heave, Still pluck with mother Eve, For puberty in sighing florets pant, Or point the prostitution of a plant; Dissect its of unhallow'd lust, And fondly gaze the titillating dust. (10-11) This series of lusty images--heaving bosoms, forbidden fruit, pant [ing] , prostitution, and the plant's organ of unhallow'd lust--render Polwhele's tract perhaps more pornographic than even Loves of the Plants, the poem it satirizes. In the American edition, Polwhele footnotes this passage, explaining that botany has lately become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the system of plants can accord with modesty, am not able to comprehend. In a somewhat voyeuristic validation of this claim, he also notes that, I have, several times, seen boys and girls together (n10). Polwhele's disgust at coeducational botanizing clearly demonstrates that the implicit sexuality of botanical taxonomy also spurred an explicit cultural awareness of as not only a science of sex but also an outlet for human practice. (2) This essay takes the transatlantic interest in popular as a point of departure in its examination of alternative sites for the study of American sexuality before the rise of formal sexology. (3) Focusing on the American interest in the sexual of popular in the wake of the Revolutionary War, turn to a lesser known unsex'd female of the 1790s, considering the historical problem posed by Deborah Sampson, the real-life, cross-dressing, lesbian-like protagonist of Herman Mann's The Female Review; or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady (1797). …

The science of sex

The ‘sex and science’ focus series in EMBO reports will highlight the biological and social importance of sex, and the contribution of science to understanding its influence.

The Science of Sex: T. C. Boyle on his Inner Circle, Alfred Kinsey, and the Fine Line Between Fact and Fiction

In an interview following the publication of The Inner Circle, T. Coraghessan Boyle's 2004 novel about Alfred C. Kinsey, the novelist discusses his book's semihistorical 1940s/1950s background of the Kinsey research team and compares the novel's themes with his other fictionalizations of U.S. historical figures. Boyle considers the dramatic aspects of Kinsey's bisexuality, and how his public image as detached purveyor of scientific knowledge about sex may have conflicted with his private taboo and experimental bisexual behavior. Professor Boyle has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, and his work, including 19 books of fiction, has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages. The article, reprinted from L.A. Weekly (Sept. 3–9, 2004), was retrieved August 1, 2007 from http://tcboyle.com/page2.html?4.

European sexualities, 1400-1800

Introduction 1. Marriage and the family: the nexus of the sexual 2. Religion and sexuality 3. The science of sex 4. Sex and crime 5. Deviancy and the cultures of sex Conclusion: regimes of sexuality.