Social contructurism day 3 sex

gagnon and simon

• -rejects that psychosexual drives are fixed biological attributes
• *socially acquired

• -rejects a universal understanding of sexuality
• *culturally and historically contingent

-develops idea of sexual script

• -following a script to show that we like, want to have sex, or get ot know someone
• *do specific things to acquire these goals

-socio-cultural blue print

-historical and cultural (structural)

-interpersonal (external)

-intrapsychic (internal)

• -what is considered sexy or sexual varies with time and culture
• *small feet, small waist

• -organization of mutually shared conventions that allows 2 or more actors to participate in a complex act involving mutual dependence
• *involves both verbal and nonverbal gestures, actions convey willingness or not

-beware that same sequence of acts may vary by person

• -motivational elements that produce arousal or at least commitment to the activity
• *involves some level of interpretation as to what arusal means
• **involves figurin out whats sexy to you and ability to interpret that

-sociologist

-earliest persons to put forth the idea of sexual identities are labels

sexuality is something acquired, you learned it through the labeling process

ex) homosexuality

-history professor at UIC

-one of first historians to propose a strutural and historical perspective on the mergnece of a gay identity

-sexual identities are contingent upon history and culture

-same sex acts have always existed throughout history but what we come to call gay is a modern invention

-having a gay identity is only possible becasue of capitalism

1. transition from family-based economy to capitalist free labor economy

2. individual (rather than family) as the basic unit of production in society

3. Shft from viewing family as economic necessity to viewing them as source of love and affection

4. Enabled people to support themselves outside of heteropatrichal family unit

5. Possible for some to organize a personal life around erotic/emotional attraction for same sex. Same time formed, homophobs