Sexual Proclivities Research Articles

Historic British Royal Memes

Historic British Royal Memes

:Neither the Time nor the Place: The New Nineteenth-Century American Studies

:<i>Neither the Time nor the Place: The New Nineteenth-Century American Studies</i>

Empathy for a Black Woman Victim of Police Sexual Violence: The Roles of Crime-Related Stress and Stereotype Attributions.

Police sexual violence has been ranked as the second most common form of misconduct among police officers. Moreover, there is evidence that Black women are at heightened risk of being victims of such police violence. A report titled Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women has brought international attention to the minimal empirical focus on such police violence toward Black women. To address this lacuna in the literature, using an incident of police sexual assault of a woman, we assessed whether victim's race and participants' level of crime-related stress (i.e., stress due to crime victimization) would influence empathic responding toward the victim. Prolific participants (N = 411) first completed a measure of crime-related stress. They then read an article describing a White police officer's sexual assault of a Black or White woman. Next, participants completed a racial stereotype-related measure (i.e., Black women's higher sexual proclivity) and a stereotype-unrelated measure (i.e., perceived victim untrustworthiness), and reported their victim-directed empathic responding. At high stress levels, participants reported less empathy for the Black (relative to White) victim. At low stress levels, there was greater Black victim-directed empathy. The race effects on empathy were mediated by heightened attribution of Black women-related stereotypical beliefs to the Black victim at high stress levels and by diminished attribution at low stress levels. In sum, we addressed the lacuna in the literature on police sexual violence against Black women while providing evidence that stress can play a critical role in the occurrence of the oft-cited outgroup-directed empathy deficit.

Freedom in Laughter: Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, and the Civil Rights Movement

This book explores the transformative role of comedy in the US civil rights movement by comparing and contrasting the careers of popular comedians Bill Cosby and Dick Gregory. Although Cosby and Gregory took very different approaches to civil rights, the former addressing the movement indirectly and the latter directly, Freedom in Laughter argues that both comedians “made extraordinary strides in helping America laugh and learn” and that their “pioneering, politicized contributions in the arena of comedy demand their recasting as leading cultural activists in the nation's civil rights era” (111). The overall argument is one that will be of great interest to students and scholars of American humor studies, and the account of Dick Gregory's career will be of special interest to those who study how comedy and politics can be intertwined. Although even for a short book, there is little to no original research and, regrettably, Frierson can too easily praise comedians, such as in his congratulating Cosby for sidestepping the direct involvement that worked so well for Gregory's career and political goals, it does nevertheless provide timely insight into an important and influential era of American humor history.The book takes us through the lives and careers of these two famous comedians, centering on their stand-up comedy but including accounts of their similar childhoods and their very different careers in comedy and politics. Gregory put civil rights and race issues at the center of his comedy and his life, consistently displaying a remarkable moral and physical courage; not only did he give away millions of dollars to move the cause forward but he put his own personal safety on the frontlines of conflict. Although acknowledging that Cosby generally went out of his way to avoid direct participation in the civil rights movement, Frierson wants to argue that Cosby too had a “politics of representation,” one that “highlighted his humanity rather than his race” (59). The effort to rescue Cosby is a bit forced, and the accounts of both careers are often flavored with unhelpful cliché and hagiography. That said, Frierson is more persuasive when he argues that “Gregory's fearless leadership shattered conventional constraints within and beyond the arena of comedy” (80) than he is when he argues that “Cosby calculated each of his show business moves as part of a plan to strike it rich and effect racial advancement” (81). The overall point here is a good one—that is, that “the dichotomy between the comedians belongs in historical debates on twentieth-century strategies for African American uplift” (59)—but it is unnecessary to suggest they were the same in terms of strategy, commitment, and courage, and it is also inaccurate.One of the great joys of this book is its account of Gregory, whose career deserves an elaborated treatment. In addition to becoming an extremely successful and very well-known stand-up comedian, Gregory was a front-line activist who was shot “while attempting to mediate between law enforcement and a rioting crowd of African Americans” (55), a mayoral and presidential candidate (79-80), and the recipient of a $100 million contract to sell “Dick Gregory's Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet” (114-15). A harsh and forthright critic of capital and the state, he argued that “capitalism respects only wealth, not human values,” evidence of which for him was that he was respectable only because he was “making big money” (79). Gregory's sometimes brilliant and often wild career recalls those of many other larger-than-life humorists, in particular Mark Twain's, and will always be of deep interest to American humor scholarship.The book's tendency to protect Cosby despite the inevitably unflattering contrast to Gregory is regrettable and results in some clumsy writing, including the cliché-ridden account of Cosby's disgrace, which describes how “beginning in 2014, a firestorm of reports about his sexual proclivities irreparably tarnished his image” (127-28). The missed opportunity here is not one in which Gregory would be held up high and Cosby brought low, but one in which the two contrasting careers would serve as an index of the fact that a humor industry inextricably bound to a broadly white supremacist, capitalist state has been challenged by a diverse set of individuals and practices that broadly embraced the civil rights movement. Freedom in Laughter does some fine work in its discussion of the partnership between comedy and civil rights and will hopefully spark a robust, ongoing conversation on the subject.

Pink Chat: Networked Sex Work before the Internet.

New network technologies were often seen as contributing to a feminization of labor. Early online sex work complicates that argument. The early online sex work examined in this article masculinized what was traditionally women's work, while training workers and clients in the fluid, feminized communication skills that became a cornerstone of technologically-mediated office work. In the 1980s and 1990s, France's state-run videotext network, Minitel, connected millions to a wide array of public and private services. Its erotic chatrooms were among the most popular, profitable, and prominent. Throngs of citizens paid by the minute to chat anonymously with each other or, unwittingly, with mostly male professional hosts who tailored their digital personas to indulge their clients' sexual proclivities. This article reconstructs the chat hosts and their labor at the nexus of gender ideologies and emerging network technologies. These online self-presentations provide instructive parallels to today's shadow labor on digital platforms.

Making equal rights to health an election issue in NZ local body elections

Abstract In New Zealand there are 20 district health boards (DHBs) with local elections every 3 years. There is low voter turnout for these, we suspect because the public has low cognizance of the role DHBs have in governing their health and disability system. Good governance ensures everyone whatever ethnicity, gender or sexual proclivity, from birth to old age, able or disabled, mentally well or unwell, drugfree or addicted, has equal rights of dignified access to healthcare. Without public engagement in DHB elections, the community risks having candidates elected that also don't understand their role through a preventative public health framework or human rights lens. The United Community Action Network (UCAN) developed a human rights framework and Health Charter for people driven into poverty by the costs of staying well in NZ. The framework outlines 6 social determinants of health needing protection through policy, to ensure all enjoy their rights to health. UCAN and the Public Health Association of New Zealand (PHA) partnered to raise public and the candidates' awareness during 2019 elections, of these social determinants causing inequity in health outcomes. A series of short explainer-videos were created for sharing through social media during the election build-up period, helping to promote PHA Branches' public Meet the Candidates events. Post-election, a longer film was produced to send to the elected DHB members. Our theory of change centred on spotlighting health inequity for voters, so that they would elect DHB members who had the greatest understanding and commitment to addressing this issue. With shareable videos we aimed to attract audience, raise awareness and debate the policy solutions to health inequity with candidates, enabling more informed choice amongst the voting public. Post-election, we maintain supportive relationships with the elected DHB members that promised their commitment to our Health Charter during their campaigns. Key messages Using videos and social media, local body elections provide an opportunity to promote everyone’s right to affordable healthcare, supporting and informing voter decision-making. UCAN's Health Charter is an advocacy resource for raising awareness of the social determinants of health inequity and poverty for people with mental illness, addiction and disability.

Learning and the Lifespan: What's Sex Got to Do With It?

Engagement in sexual behavior can impact neurosteroidogenesis, in particular production of the prohormone testosterone (T) and likely its subsequent metabolism to 5α-androstane-3α-17β-Diol (3α-Diol) or aromatization to estradiol (E2). Androgens and their metabolites vary across the lifespan and impact many behaviors, including cognition, anxiety, and sexual behavior. Thus, we hypothesized that mating may alter cognitive performance via androstane neurosteroids in an age- and experience-dependent manner. We first investigated if exposure to mating during memory consolidation could enhance performance in the novel object recognition task (NOR). Male rats were trained in NOR and then immediately exposed to mating-relevant or control stimuli. Following a 4 h inter-trial interval (ITI), male rats were tested for object memory. Male rats that were exposed to a receptive female during the ITI had better performance in NOR. We then investigated if these effects were due to novelty associated with mating. Male rats were exposed to mating-relevant stimuli and identified as sexually responsive (SR) or sexually non-responsive (SNR) based on a median split of engagement in mating with the stimulus female. We found that a brief history (10 min session daily for five consecutive days) of sexual history substantially influenced performance in the NOR task, such that SR males had better performance in the NOR task, but only when presented with the opportunity to mate during the ITI. As T levels substantially decrease with age in male rodents, we investigated whether the effects of long-term sexual experience (10 months) influenced neurosteroids and NOR performance in mid-aged (12 months old) males. Mid-aged SR males maintain neural T; however, they have decreased neural E2 and decreased cognitive performance at 12 months compared to mid-aged SNR rats. In sexually experienced rats, those with better cognitive performance had greater levels of T metabolites (e.g., 3α-Diol in mated SR males, E2 in mid-aged SNR rats). While naïve males that were mated during the ITI had better cognitive performance, T metabolites were decreased compared to controls. These findings suggest that T metabolites, but not the prohormone, may influence learning dependent on sexual proclivity, experience, and proximate opportunity to mate.

The Importance of Context in Moral Judgments

There is a gap between morality as experienced and morality as studied. In our personal and professional lives, moral judgments are embedded within a specific context. We know the who, what, where, and when and often can infer the why; we know the broader context of actions; and we may have a specific relationship with the actors. However, scholarly theorizing is often built on inferences from participants’ responses to decontextualized, impoverished stimuli. In our quest for uncovering general psychological truths, moral psychologists have examined evaluations of poorly guarded trolleys, strangers with odd sexual proclivities, and endorsement of abstract principles. The four articles included in this section demonstrate the power of contextualizing morality. In the current article, I place these papers within a broader framework for how scholars can contextualize morality research. I then argue why contextualizing morality matters: not only do contextualized questions better reflect the nuances of reality but also contextualized judgments might be key for improving predictions of moral behavior and understanding moral change.

&lt;em&gt;Sex and the Constitution&lt;/em&gt; by Geoffrey R. Stone

The title, Sex and the Constitution, minimizes both the scope and importance of this book. Even the subtitle, Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century, does not completely correct the misimpression about its content. More than a legal treatise, this book examines sexual behavior from the beginning of Western civilization as well as how various cultures have informally and legally regulated sexual behavior. As the title indicates, the emphasis is on the US Constitution and its interpretation. In part 1, “Ancestors,” Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, summarizes sex and the law from the ancient world to the Christian era, concluding with the Enlightenment in England. Part 2, “Founders,” crosses the Atlantic to recount the diverse, surprisingly unfettered sexual proclivities of the American colonists and how the founding fathers dealt with individual freedoms in the Constitution. Traditional morality returns in part 3, “Moralists,” as religious beliefs, starting in the 1790s, dominate the culture and its laws; but cracks begin to appear in the 1950s at the conclusion of this section. The final three parts of the book focus explicitly on how judges have interpreted the Constitution in the areas of sexual expression, reproductive freedom, and sexual orientation from around 1960 to the present.

‘A divine attraction between your soul and mine’: George Whitefield and same-sex affection in 18th-century Methodism

This article considers the blurred lines between male friendship and homoeroticism in 18th-century Methodism. It considers possible cases of transgressive male sexual acts among Methodist preachers, evaluates contemporary claims made about the sexual proclivities of leading Methodists, and considers the social location of 18th-century Methodism as a dangerous underworld of deviant religiosity whose centres of activity were often perched on the edge of sites of social exclusion. The ‘effeminacy’ of George Whitefield and the lack of heterosexual passion in his life are offered as a mode of examining the homosociality that existed within the heteronormative world of 18th-century Methodism.

Perceived pornography realism as a mediator of the association between pornography use and problematic sexual behavior among male adolescents

OBJECTIVE. High rates of pornography use among male adolescents have been reported in the literature. Due to a lack of real-life experiences, early exposure to pornography may contribute to the development of unrealistic ideas about sexuality and problematic sexual behaviors. This study explored the mediating role of perceived pornography realism in the association between pornography use and early sexual debut, sexual aggressiveness, and sexting. DESIGN AND METHOD. Meditational models were tested using structural equation modeling. Participants were 928 high school male sophomores from Zagreb who reported expose to pornography (Mean age=16.1). Pornography use was measured by the frequency of use two years ago, in the past six months, and two weeks (α=.79). Validated 4-item scales were used to assess perceived pornography realism (α=.86) and sexting (α=.74). Early sexual debut (≤14) and proclivity to sexually aggressive behavior were measured with single items. RESULTS. Pornography use was directly associated with sexting (β=.29 ; p<.01) and sexual aggression (β=.11 ; p<.01). Pornography use was also linked to perceived realism of pornography (β=.22 ; p<.01), which in turn was associated both with sexting (β=.12 ; p<.01) and aggressive behavior (β=.10 ; p<.01). Albeit small, indirect effects were statistically significant, indicating (partial) meditational role of perceived pornography realism. No evidence of direct or indirect links between pornography use and early debut was found. CONCLUSIONS. Pornography use was indicated to be associated with some problematic outcomes. The findings support the need for educational programs aimed at developing critical reception of sexual representations in adolescents.

Взаимосвязь особенностей психосексуальной идентичности подростков и сексуальных наклонностей их родителей

Взаимосвязь особенностей психосексуальной идентичности подростков и сексуальных наклонностей их родителей

Myths of Male Same-Sex Love in the Art of the Italian Renaissance

Visual culture has much to contribute to an understanding of the history of sexuality. Yet, to date, the depiction of pederasty in the art of the Renaissance has not been covered adequately by dominant theoretical paradigms. Moreover, the interpretive approach of traditional art historical discourse has been both limited and limiting in its timidity toward matters concerning the representation of sexual proclivity between males. This article will address the ways in which Italian Renaissance artistic depictions of some mythological narratives were enmeshed with the period’s attitudes toward sexual and social relationships between men.Particular attention is paid here to the manner in which, under the veneer of a mythological narrative, certain works of art embodied a complex set of messages that encoded issues of masculine behaviour and performance in the context of intergenerational same-sex erotic relationships. The primary case studies under investigation for these concerns of gender and sexuality in this particular context are Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth (1545), and Giulio Romano’s drawing of Apollo and Cyparissus (1524). By incorporating pictorial analysis, social history, and gender and sexuality studies, new possibilities will be offered for evaluating these artworks as visual chronicles of particular sexual and cultural mores of the period. Furthermore, this article will consider how visual representation of these mythic narratives of erotic behaviour between males conformed to the culturally defined sexual and social roles relating to the articulation of power that permeated one of the greatest milestones in art history.

Boccaccio’sDe Claris Mulieribusas a Possible Additional Source for Byron’sSardanapalus: A Tragedy

LORD BYRON’s play Sardanapalus: A Tragedy contains a dream sequence in which the eponymous ruler meets his grandmother, ‘Semiramis, the man-queen’ (I.i.43). These lines refer to ‘the son who slew her for her incest’, and depict her attempt to seduce her descendant. The established source of the play, Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historia,1 makes no mention of either Semiramis’ transgressive sexual proclivities or her death at the hands of her son-lover, so Byron must have learnt of these events from a different source. One such could have been Voltaire’s 1749 drama, Semiramis: Tragédie. However although this play alludes to the possibility of inadvertent incest through mistaken identity, it explicitly states that no such incest occurs, and concludes with the accidental rather than deliberate murder of Semiramis by her son. An alternative source which contains both the incest and the deliberate murder, specifically attributing the latter to the former, is Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century Latin work De Claris Mulieribus.

Mary Wigman: Expressionist, feminist, theatre artist

Abstract This article considers Mary Wigman’s career and her work’s relationship to canonicity in both dance and theatre studies with a focus on her position as a female authorial artist in Weimar-era Germany. The article compares Wigman’s early group work The Seven Dances of Life (1921) with Oskar Kokoschka’s seminal expressionist play Murderer Hope of Womankind (1909), arguing that the works have inverse relationships to textuality and to canonicity. This article also explores Wigman’s closeted bisexuality, suggesting that an acknowledgement of the artist’s sexual proclivities is integral to understanding her resistance to the traditional power structures of the theatre and her development of alternative power structures and homosocial female communities.

The Right Stuff? The Original Double Jay as Site for Youth Counterculture

The Right Stuff? The Original Double Jay as Site for Youth Counterculture

Masculinity, Appearance, and Sexuality: Dandies in Roman Antiquity

I n t h e e a r l y s e c o n d c e n t u r y ce the biographer Suetonius wrote of Julius Caesar that “he was somewhat overnice in the care of his person, being not only carefully trimmed and shaved, but even supposedly having superfluous hair plucked out. . . . They say too that he was remarkable in his dress, that he wore the broad-striped tunic, with fringed sleeves reaching to the wrist, and always had a belt overtop [super eum cingeretur], though rather a loose one [quidem fluxiore cinctura], and this, they say, was the occasion of Sulla’s mot, when he often warned the optimates to beware the ill-girt boy [ut male praecinctum puerum cauerent].” Plutarch, a Greek biographer who lived and wrote in the late first century Ce, talked of Caesar’s soft white skin and related how he used to scratch his head with one finger and daintily arrange his hair. Caesar’s effeminacy and sexual proclivities were so well known that the elder Curio in one of his speeches famously referred to Caesar as “every woman’s man and every man’s woman”; other authors note his reported sexual liaison with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia.

Woman, Divided: Gender, Family, and Multiple Personalities in Media

In the opening scenes of Showtime's United States of Tara (2009-2011), a weary woman faces the camera and drolly narrates her dilemma. Tara (Toni Collette) explains that she is an artist who works on elaborate murals for wealthy clients. She handles her workload and caters to difficult customers, but she can't seem to micromanage her teenage daughter's sexual proclivities. At this confession she breaks down, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she reopens them, she has become a different person: no longer the defeated mother, but the brazen teenager T, who trots off to befriend Tara's daughter. Over the course of the pilot episode, Tara vacillates wildly from one personality to the next, her mental illness playing out not in a therapist's office but in familiar settings like family dinners, ballet recitals, and bowling alleys.United States of Tara, created by edgy screenwriter Diablo Cody (author of Juno) and produced by Steven Spielberg, is just one of the latest popular media portrayals of women with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, commonly known as multiple personality disorder. Several aspects set this series apart from the typical depiction of mental illness. It is significant that the series begins with Tara telling her own story, rather than a psychologist or a male authority narrating the events. Tara appears first as an artist, then as a mother: her mental illness becomes one aspect of her character rather than defining it. And, as the opening monologue and domestic setting suggest, Tara does not struggle in isolation, but talks with her husband and teenage children about her transitions and treatment.Although United States of Tara's creators emphasize that the story is a dark comedy, not a documentary, they claim to have consulted DID patients and experts in developing the series (Diablo Cody). Tara has the potential to foster empathy for mentally ill people and awareness of the long-term effects of childhood abuse, but it may also reinforce popular misconceptions about multiple personalities at time when the diagnosis itself is controversial. Despite its contemporary sensibilities, the series clearly draws from classic media narratives about DID. Tara's initial triad of personalities and domestic setting make the series a contemporary counterpart to the 1957 film The Three Faces of Eve, featuring a meek housewife and mother who harbors three personalities (The Three Faces of Eve). A character in Tara's pilot episode reads the 1973 novel Sybil, the landmark case of a deeply fragmented young woman that spurred greater diagnoses and treatment of DID (Schreiber; Nathan). Tara resembles Sybil: her personalities gradually multiply beyond the initial three, and she identifies childhood sexual abuse and parental neglect as the sources of her trauma.These popular media depictions of DID, spanning multiple decades, tell much about evolving understandings of mental illness and the treatment of a rare disorder. However, these films and TV programs also serve as a commentary on women's changing roles. For example, Eve's rebellious alter ego enables her to escape an unhappy marriage and reflects many women's growing discontent with domesticity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tara's creators claim her multiple personalities symbolize the varied roles that modern mothers are expected to assume, from fierce protector to domestic goddess (Diablo Cody). Although Sybil lacks such direct symbolism, the story of a deeply fragmented young woman was popular at the height of second-wave feminism, when sweeping changes in women's roles caused many viewers to question their own identities (Szalavitz). Furthermore, as both Sybil and Tara assume male alter egos, they undermine the assumed stability of conventional gender roles. Popular media depictions of DID function as symbolic narratives that speak to women's broader concerns about independence, family and femininity.Gender, Skepticism, and DissociationIt is not a coincidence that the most memorable DID cases involve women: Female patients account for 90 percent of reported multiple personality cases, and researchers note that women tend to display far more distinct personalities than males, averaging fifteen separate identities (Showalter 162). …

Our Inalienable Rights Can Never Be Recovered

We live in a Surveillance State in a Surveillance World. The Surveillance State dragnets the lifestyles and beliefs of each of us – political views, associations, books and periodicals, friends, acquaintances, medical concerns, sexual proclivities, marital relations, and religious worship and beliefs. Those dragnets are protected by secrecy, lies, blackmail, financial and political extortion, torture, defamation, prosecutions, imprisonment without due process, and a lack of any effective safeguards. In a congressional hearing, when Senator Ron Wyden asked the National Security Administration director whether the agency was collecting data on Amercans’ phone calls, the NSA chief falsely denied it. After his lie had been exposed, he admitted it, with no apparent embarrassment. When Edward Snowden released the documents that revealed the existence of the problem, President Obama said that he was pleased that a healthy debate had started. He then promptly smeared and hounded Snowden for having started the debate. In addition, the government tried to obtain the death penalty and, in the alternative, 136 years in prison, to punish another whistle-blower, Pfc. Bradley Manning. While waiting 16 weeks for his trial to begin, Manning was stripped of his clothes and held in solitary confinement. The surveillance dragnets are ever-expanding and omnipresent. They can never be removed or restricted, and our Constitution, with its Bill of Rights and separation of powers, has been lost forever.

The New Percy Grainger Companion. Ed. by Penelope Thwaites.

The most intriguing aspect of The New Percy Grainger Companion is not so much the diversity of authors and entries, but rather the assertions made on the dust jacket. Here, we learn that Grainger ‘is one of the least understood figures in musical history’. Is he? That ‘he was a man born out of his time’. Was he? And finally, that ‘many of his ideas, musical and social, sit far more easily in our contemporary world’. Do they? I’ll negotiate these tired clichés in due course, but for now it should suffice to acknowledge the contribution made by the book in offsetting (or at least working around) them. Whether or not there is some irony in this—what the book giveth the dust jacket taketh away—there remains a stimulating, if at times troublingly uncritical, collection of writings that coincides approximately with the fiftieth anniversary of Grainger’s death. Penelope Thwaites flags in the introduction that her intention was to encourage readers to ‘experience Grainger’s music—whether as executants, professional or amateur, or as involved listeners’ (p. 1, her emphasis). The approach taken is disarmingly pragmatic in that the essays, which steer clear of topics such as Grainger’s mother, wife, sexual proclivities, athleticism, and Blue-eyed English, are penned by an array of individuals who have come into contact with Grainger and his music in a range of professional capacities.