Sexual Morality Research Articles

Positions on sexuality education in a Chilean school: a collaborative ethnography from a partial perspective

ABSTRACT The present study analyzes how an educational community in the Valparaiso Region of Chile produces knowledge and forms of understanding sexuality education from its multiple positions. Addressing the ethical dimensions of sexuality education is crucial to understanding how it is conceptualised and implemented in diverse educational contexts. A qualitative methodology was used, employing a collaborative ethnography design that included teachers, students, parents, and legal guardians. The results reveal that although the positions on sexuality education appear similar, they differ significantly in how they are operationalised into visible and intervenable problems. Moreover, these findings highlight the existing controversies among all involved actors. These differences, conceptualised as ethics of sexuality, are discussed, and their implications for the Chilean school system are analysed.

The Partisans of Death

Abstract This article considers the relationship between the “impious” (ἀσεβείς) of Wisdom of Solomon 1:16–2:24 and Epicurean philosophy. Though most recent commentators reject the idea that the impious are portrayed as Epicureans, they fail to consider this passage within the context of Hellenistic Epicureanism (Lucretius, Philodemus) and its discontents (e.g., Epictetus, Plutarch). The author shows that the impious’ materialistic account of the human soul and its destruction at death draws heavily on Epicurean ideas and imagery and that aspects of their exhortation to hedonism recall Epicurean sexual ethics. Furthermore, though the way of life that the impious endorse does diverge significantly from Epicurean hedonism properly understood, such caricatures of Epicurean philosophy are themselves common tropes of anti-Epicurean polemic. It is concluded that the sage has chosen to present a hostile group of advocates of Epicurean philosophy as the paradigmatic adversaries of true wisdom and justice.

The “Pre-Codeness” of Only Yesterday (1933) in the Light of Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948): Discrepant Consciousness, Sexual Morality and the Hollywood Production Code

The “Pre-Codeness” of Only Yesterday (1933) in the Light of Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948): Discrepant Consciousness, Sexual Morality and the Hollywood Production Code

She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality

Abstract As a contribution toward survivor-centered approaches to the study of religion and sex abuse that centers historical Tibetan Buddhist women, this article focuses on key passages from the autobiography of Sera Khandro Dewai Dorjé (1892–1940), through which a nuanced vision of Vajrayāna technologies of sexuality emerges. Drawing on insights from feminist historiography, this article listens to Sera Khandro’s portrayal of Vajrayāna sexual ethics, including her critiques of the hypocrisy of lust-driven men masquerading as celibate monks and sexual yoga virtuosos, as well as her articulations of sexual yoga as potentially liberatory. Through these passages we will hear the many ways Sera Khandro refused sex, even when it was proffered in the name of salvation, with the aim of making it harder to weaponize the weight of Buddhist tradition to justify sexual predation.

Sexual Futures and Creative Practice: Engagements in World-Building

ABSTRACT This paper outlines the inception, process, and key findings of five creative arts workshop held with 28 students in 2022 at Newcastle University. Participants engaged in crafting exercises and semi-structured discussions about sexual ethics grounded in lived experience. Sexual consent and novel models of sexual ethics were discussed, as well as an approach called a pleasure and care-centred ethic of embodied and relational sexual Otherness. Using an iterative form of thematic analysis, four core themes were identified: namely, culture and ethnocentrism, gendered sexual scripts/sexual-gendered scripts, heteronormativity, and pleasure. Analysis of the art objects also yielded findings related to anger, gendered norms, communication, and obligation. This project examined how university students felt about consent as the dominant model of sexual ethics and explored other possibilities using discourse and crafting to engage with lived experience. This article aims to capture these findings while also placing the workshops and its findings in methodological and socio-cultural context.

Abortion, Reproductive Justice, and Justice-Based Sexual Ethics in the Episcopal Church

This article offers a critical theo-ethical reflection on abortion from a reproductive justice (RJ) perspective. Focusing on the socio-political structure that shapes abortion discourses and legislation and affects women’s agency over their reproductive ability, I complicate the ways of thinking about abortion. The abortion debate reveals what we, as the church, value, how we embody God’s love and justice, and how we should live. In search of the answers to these questions, the article engages in women of color’s theory and activism for RJ through the theological, the political, and the sexual. Finally, the article suggests that the Episcopal/Anglican church reconsider abortion as a social justice issue and meditate on its commitment to God’s justice in light of RJ.

Sexual ethics and lived experience: empowering sexual futures

sexual ethics and lived experience: empowering sexual futures

"Psychoanalysts are always at the same time doctors and patients and can be cured as doctors." An analysis of Karl Kraus's antipsychoanalytic aphorisms (1905-1930).

Karl Kraus was one of the most important and influential personalities in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century; he was the founder and life director of the magazine Die Fackel, famous for leading important debates with writers, poets, journalists, and psychoanalysts. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud wanted to win Kraus's sympathy because he believed that having him on his side was essential for psychoanalysis to penetrate the artistic and cultural circle of Vienna. As will be shown in this article, the alliance between the two was never consummated and, on the contrary, they became antagonists, with Ernst Jones naming Kraus "Freud's greatest enemy." In this paper, mentions of Freud and psychoanalysis in Die Fackel between 1905 and 1930 were identified and subsequently, 26 aphorisms written by Kraus through the post-structural linguistic approach were analyzed. A sample from the digital collection AAC-FACKEL of the Austrian Academy Corpus was used. Early writings reveal that Kraus came to regard psychoanalysis as an ally in his struggle against Austrian sexual morality, yet he was always wary of its invasion of the intimate lives of individuals. Kraus criticized Freud's explanation of female hysteria and instead considered that the root of female suffering was due to their inability to give themselves individuality. It can be concluded that although Kraus was a severe critic of psychoanalysis, at many times he viewed some of its postulates with sympathy, to the point that he considered his aphorisms to be a kind of attenuated psychoanalysis; that is, without the exaggerated presence of sexual elements or interpretations.

“The loving queer gaze”: The epistemological significance of queer joy

AbstractThis article contends with queer joy as an epistemology to highlight an affective experience that grounds a basis for revising dominant approaches to sexual ethics. Drawing on findings from a mixed‐methods study with 100 2SLGBTQ+ young adults from Canada and the US, we argue that queer and trans people mobilize queer sexual joy as an epistemology of script breaking that led participants to explore freedom and play, enjoy novel forms of care and communality, and to challenge oppression. We found that 2SLGBTQ+ young adults are undermining dominant sexual cultures which perpetuate gender‐based violence through cisheteronormative logics of objectification and dominance. Rather than simply producing misery, normative sex and gender regimes produced a disorientation among 2SLGBTQ+ young adults which was fruitful for breaking sexual scripts and developing approaches to sex and relationships grounded in greater authenticity, creativity, reciprocity, play, and joy. We propose that by taking queer joy as a way of knowing, we may learn how queer and trans people negotiate the performativity of gender and sex, their own bodily knowledge, and the epistemic injustices that have precluded this knowledge from being valued. Pushing against the “joy deficit” in sociology that constrains the field to the study of the misery that minority communities face, this paper not only demonstrates what sociologists might learn from the texture of queer and trans lives, but also how these lessons can help to undermine cisheteronormativity as a root cause of gender‐based violence.

Abstinence for the sake of modest success: a Chinese anti-masturbation group’s path to individualisation

ABSTRACT Based on three-month online participant observation in “Jie Se Ba,” a male-dominated pornography abstinence forum with 6 million users, this article explores how low-status men in China recode the requirements of Chinese individualisation by using China’s traditional ethics in order to make individualisation accessible to themselves. I examine their aspirations as desiring selves, their means of self-mastery and the community culture they have established. Due to a lack of financial power, educational background, and cultural resources, members of this group disengage from mainstream desires for financial success and middle-class-style self-fashioning practices. Instead, by appropriating traditional Chinese sexual ethics, they set more modest family-centred aspirations and adopt jiese, or masturbation abstinence, as a means of practicing self-mastery to build their striving selves. In their efforts to integrate themselves into Chinese individualisation, they accept and express a set of conservative gender-sex and familial ethics. This article argues that such a situation is caused, at root, by a social mechanism within Chinese individualisation that restricts, excludes and stigmatises low-status groups.

Book Review: Black, Quare, and Then to Where: Theories of Justice and Black Sexual Ethics

Book Review: <i>Black, Quare, and Then to Where: Theories of Justice and Black Sexual Ethics</i>

A Study on the Changes of Gender Morality in China: Centered on the Male Experience in the "Love Letter" Incident (1900-1930)

In the 20th century, China was an era of significant social changes, experiencing the impact of abolishing old and establishing new in politics, economy, culture, and other aspects. In terms of sexual morality, traditional sexual morality was criticized by Chinese youth and intellectuals, while new sexual morality was disseminated among young people. The love letter incident that occurred in such a social context is a representative event of young men and women actively breaking traditional sexual morality and constructing new sexual morality. This article takes two love letter events that occurred in China in the early 20th century and the 1920s as research objects, focusing on the experiences of young men in the love letter events. Using the method of seeking differences, it first clarifies the thoughts and expressions of young men on the issue of love in the love letter text. Secondly, it analyzes the views and debates of public power and social elites on the events in the love letter events, thereby revealing the end of the old sexual morality and the development of new sexual morality in modern China. In the two love letter events, the content of the young man's love letters both demonstrated his longing for new sexual morality. Qu Jiang faced criticism, while Qiu Gongyi received sympathy. The different experiences of the male protagonist in the two love letter events reflect the progress of China's modernization process in terms of neutral moral concepts.

Islam, Visual Morality and Gender Identity in Cyberspace: The Agency, Controversy and Popular Piety of Ria Ricis

Abstract Hijab wearing women are often key players in the digital market ecosystem and popular culture in Indonesia, as well as being a battleground for discourse on contemporary relations between Islam and gender. By analyzing the controversy and development of Instagram celebrity and YouTuber Ria Ricis, this article discusses sexual morality and visual culture in cyberspace that shows the latest developments in the use of hijab, popular piety, and the lifestyle of young millennial Muslim women. This article seeks to contribute to refreshing the literature on Islamic studies and gender studies in Indonesia with the intersection of Islam, gender, and digital media. This study argues that in the midst of the controversy over Muslim woman’s sexual morality in Indonesian cyberspace, Ria Ricis shows her agency by positioning herself as a millennial hijabi woman with popular piety and participating in spreading Islamic messages according to the digital market ecosystem while maintaining a cheerful and sensational millennial identity and character.

A Real New Woman: Covert Progression and Character in Henry James's "Paste"

Abstract: Henry James's "Paste" (1899) displays enormous complexity, if we consider the possibility of a "covert progression" or counter-narrative, in which the character of Mrs. Guy is not antagonist, but protagonist, and potentially an admirable example of the late-nineteenth-century "New Woman." James is sometimes associated with anti-feminist views; yet here he creates a bold and defiant alternative to subjugated femininity and to conventional Victorian sexual morality. Whether readers are meant to find this figure appealing, however, is ultimately left open, as is much in this short story, which explicitly highlights the difficulty of assessing "value" in either human or material terms.

Song, Dance, and Sex: The Social Role of the Carole in Thirteenth-Century Clerical Thought and Vernacular Literature

ABSTRACT In the thirteenth century, the carole dance and its refrain songs simultaneously delighted the characters of vernacular French literature, troubled the morals of clerics, and engaged the analytical powers of music theorists. Revising existing scholarship that stresses the differences between these three accounts, this article demonstrates their interlinked uses of caroles to explore musical and sexual ethics. First, clerical authors employed caroles as microcosms of their wider attempts to control sexual and musical behaviour, as expressed both in marriage reforms and a broad range of music-theoretical, confessional, and homiletic texts. Second, the ethical associations that clerics established for caroles allowed vernacular literary authors like Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil to use these dances to undercut and satirize clerical attempts at social control. Finally, these ethical discourses enabled music theorists to produce layered analyses of the social role of caroles, as in this article’s closing rereading of Johannes de Grocheio.

The end point of it is abstinence: a qualitative analysis of underlying factors influencing Christian leaders’ adoption and implementation of sex and sexuality education in Bolgatanga, Ghana

Adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health challenges are of global public health concern and good quality sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education has an important role to play in addressing these negative sexual health outcomes. Yet in most Sub-Saharan African countries including Ghana, there is limited implementation of SRH education. Several environmental factors hinder the implementation of SRH education with the attitudes expressed by religious leaders having a major impact. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 Christian leaders in Bolgatanga, Ghana, to explore the factors influencing their decision to adopt and implement SRH education. Findings show that although Christian leaders were aware of (unsafe) sexual practices among adolescents, they held a conservative position on SRH education. While leaders were open to educating adolescents about sexual health, most held the opinion that SRH education for adolescents should be limited to abstinence-only and not acknowledge sexual activity or promote contraceptive use. Beliefs related to sexual morality, the perceived cause(s) of teenage pregnancy, and perceived responsibility for SRH education influenced Christian leaders’ thinking about SRH education. Implementing SRH education programmes to address young people’s sexual behaviour will require intervention programmes to change Christian leaders’ beliefs and attitudes towards SRH education.

The Lex Scantinia and the Public Response to Stuprum

The lex Scantinia was one of the earliest (and arguably one of the most infamous) laws criminalizing sexual misconduct in Roman society. Modern scholars know little about the specifics of the law itself, largely because all evidence for the law, the behaviors it prohibited, and any mechanisms for enforcement/punishment must be gleaned from a few scattered references appearing in a variety of literary sources. This paper examines the literary legacy of the lex Scantinia against the legislative context in which the law may have been created. It suggests that the consensus about what constituted sexual morality and the drive to assert state authority were not necessarily synonymous with a deep commitment to and prioritization of this standard in everyday life.

Static or mobile positions for the male asylum seeker?

This article examines how concepts of gender and sexuality are increasingly being mobilised as symbolic values in Danish immigration politics. The Danish national self-perception rests on an idea of widespread tolerance, especially regarding gender and sexuality. However, understandings of gender and sexuality as represented in Danish immigration discourse draw clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders. As of 2017, Danish asylum centres introduced compulsory teaching of so-called ‘Danish sexual morals’ as an attempt to prevent sexual violence by educating asylum seekers in sexual conduct. Based on fieldwork conducted in a language and culture class at an asylum centre, the analysis demonstrates how the teacher simultaneously reproduces and challenges concepts of differing national sexualities as they appear in the teaching material, and how the students push back against culturally specific conceptualisations of gender and sexuality by offering personal narratives countering those ascribed to them in the stereotypical representations.

Social media construction of sexual deviance in Hong Kong: a case study of a Facebook discussion

This study explores how social media constructs sexual deviance and violence against women. Based on vigorous debates on Facebook about the cheating of case two Hong Kong celebrities, we analyzed how cheating and promiscuity are constructed as sexual deviance on social media in Hong Kong through a politics of claims-making. Research has demonstrated how promiscuity and cheating are facilitated through the Internet. It has yet to show how social media sustains compulsory monogamy and constructs promiscuity and cheating as deviance to induce violence against women. Our study contributes to understanding how CM is sustained and how it constructs sexual deviance in scoial media. We discovered that discussing taboo sexual practices through Facebook involves mainly punitive informal social control and only strengthens the stigmatization of them, regulating gender and sexual morality, sustaining compulsory monogamy, and oppressing women and practitioners of marginalized sexual behaviors. We call for updated measures on social media outlets like Facebook to regulate cyber violence and encourage civilized discussions on taboo sexual topics.

“I Thought They Would at Least Love Me”: The Gay Experiences of Heteronormative Regimentation in Indian Families, a Phenomenological Ethnography

This paper inquires into the heteronormative regimes of sexual morality, focusing on the experiences of gay and queer men within the locus of family. Drawing upon a phenomenological ethnography involving interviews with the Indian gay community, this study demonstrates the disciplinary power of sexual morality over queer lives. It examines the varied strategies of moral regimentation within the locus of family, including regimenting through silencing, moral dictation, and penalizing. These strategies reflect the prevailing conservative and sex-negative attitudes in Indian society, particularly patriarchal expectations toward men and the pressure for marriage, which augments familial and social burdens on gay men, resulting in emotional distress. The cumulative effects lead to gay men living double lives, presenting a socially accepted façade while repressing their authentic queer selves, indicating a guilty conscience and internalized homophobia. These experiences correlate with risky sexual behavior, substance abuse, and overall compromised mental health. This phenomenological inquiry highlights the role of the family as a locus of moral control of queer individuals and contributes to the sociological understanding of morality as a power-relation.