STUDY OF SEX AND SEXUALITY: PEOPLE CONTRIBUTED TO OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SEXUALITY
Katharine Bement Davis (1860-1945)
Davis completed the first major study on women’s sexuality. In 1929, she published her study “Factors in the Sex Lives of Twenty Two Hundred Women.” She gathered data for more than 10 years about the sex lives of middle-class women. She also worked extensively with prostitutes in prisons. She examined such topics as sexual desire, masturbation, frequency of intercourse, use of birth control, marriage, sources of sexual instruction and information, and same-sex intimate relationships.
Her study challenged the narrow reproductive view of women’s sexuality common at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was our first real glimpse into the sex lives of real women.
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935)
Hirschfeld was a German sexologist who founded the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin in 1919. He studied human sexuality in order to provide counseling for sexual problems. He published one of the world’s first sexological journals to encourage open debate about sexual issues. He also believed masturbation and homosexual behavior were normal and healthy He challenged many of the repressive ideas about sexuality of his time. The institute’s and most of Hirschfeld’s research were destroyed by the Nazis in 1935.
Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)
Kinsey has been the most influential American sex researcher of the twentieth century. His research was unique and groundbreaking. In extensive live interviews, he and his team of researchers took thousands of case histories of the lives of women and men. No one else, before or since, has questioned such a huge sample of people so thoroughly about their sexuality. Although his sample did not precisely reflect the full range of diversity of the American people, he and his team provided us with important data from which we have learned a great deal.
William Masters (1915— ) and Virginia Johnson (1925— )
Masters and Johnson are responsible for our understanding of the human sexual response cycle. They used mini-cameras and other electronic devices to observe what was going on inside and outside the body during the various phases of sexual arousal.
They noticed and measured functions in the bodies of women and men that no one else had been able to observe. They first develop the concept of sex therapy by working with couples to help the overcome sexual problems, including sexual dysfunction.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Foucault was a French philosopher who wrote three volumes on t history of sexuality. He challenged Freud’s view that women and m are sexually repressed by their cultures. He theorized about the n of power in sexual relationships. He suggested that power does r always come from the top down, but from the bottom up as well. He believed that people have sexual power as individuals, despite sex law or cultural norms.
Although his ideas were not always based in scientific or historical fact, Foucault’s work enabled many people who belonged oppressed sexual minorities to view themselves as powerful individuals, capable of resisting dominant sexual norms.
Foucault died of AIDS in 1984.
The rich and changing traditions, history, and beliefs described this chapter have shaped our society with extremely diverse messages and values about sex and sexuality. The differences between the various messages and values may often seem confusing and conflicting. We will look at the ways in which people develop their own sexual identities within this world of sexual diversity.
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