3.1 Chapter Introduction
Chapter Overview: Let’s Talk About Sex
Sex is an intensely personal and private topic. On an interpersonal level, sex can be pleasurable and create connections between people. In public, it can also be a divisive and politically charged topic. Sex is also used as a weapon or as a means of social control. The sociology of gender is concerned with how socially constructed norms about sex, sexuality, and sexual orientation impact individuals, interpersonal relationships, communities, and societies.
This chapter will explore socially constructed patriarchal norms about sexuality that reinforce heteronormativity and the social construction of gender as binary. In this chapter, you will also consider how LGBTQIA+ people have led an intersectional social movement that has demanded full inclusion in society and the right to fully embody their gender and sexual orientations. In so doing, they challenged the patriarchal status quo in contemporary culture.
Key Terms
This section contains a list of foundational key terms from the chapter. After reviewing them here, be on the lookout for them as you work through the rest of the book.
- affirmative consent: consent given for each sex act each time.
- coming out: a social process of recognizing and sharing sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
- cross-dressing: an archaic term to describe men who dressed as women or women who dressed as men.
- Ecological Systems Theory: a theory that describes the social world as a layered system, in which each layer is a set of social domains that impact the individual.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
- Discuss sex and sexuality from a sociological perspective.
- Describe the evolution of the social movement for LGBTQIA+ rights in the U.S.
- Identify how patriarchal social norms contribute to sexual violence.
- Apply the social-ecological model to the prevention of sexual violence.
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Introduction
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Introduction” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
All Rights Reserved Content
Figure 3.1. “Ourbodiesourselves-1973” from Our Bodies, Ourselves is included under fair use.
refers to a person’s personal and interpersonal expression of sexual desire, behavior, and identity.
applies the tools of sociology to explore how gender, including sexuality, gender expression, and identity, is socially constructed, imposed, enforced, reproduced, and negotiated.
emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to other people; often used to signify the relationship between a person’s gender identity and the gender identities to which a person is most attracted (Learning for Justice 2018).
the social enforcement of heterosexuality, in which there are only two genders, that these genders are opposites, and that any sexual activity between people of the same gender is deviant or unnatural.
the meanings, attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a