sexuality

Despite increasing societal acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities, a new study reports that adolescents and young adults with shifting sexual identities are more likely to experience depression. The study, conducted by sociologist Bethany Everett, used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to examine sexual identity, relationships, and mental health among 11,727 youth. By comparing gay, lesbian, and bisexual respondents reporting stable sexual identities with those whose sexual identities shifted or changed, Everett found that only those who changed toward same-sex-oriented identities were at increased risk of depression.

Everett explained her findings to The Economic Times, describing how negative stereotypes may weigh heavily on adolescents: “There is a certain amount of stigma attached to sexual fluidity that may impact mental health during this developmental period.” She also noted how social support might ease sexual identity transition, suggesting that, “supporting people during this time-period may be critical for improving their mental health.”

It’s been a few weeks since CNN highlighted a new report by the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center on the income from underground commercial sex economies. Perhaps it was the pain of doing my taxes this week (down to the wire, I know) that jogged my memory. But the report estimates that this underground economy in Atlanta alone nets those working in the sex trade—from pimps to erotic massage providers—$290 million per year, with pimps making an average of $33,000 a week.

Until now, there has been little information about the size and scale of the sex economy. Though this report examines only eight cities across the U.S. (notably omitting Las Vegas), is one of the first forays into quantification. Meredith Dank from the Urban Institute told Time magazine,

With knowing the size of the economy, you get better a sense of what you’re dealing with and how big this market is. Law enforcement now knows they can potentially seize $290 million in Atlanta that can be used toward providing services and education.

Beyond what police asset seizures might do for city infrastructure, the studies also point out the enormous numbers of people working in the sex trade. Due to the secretive nature of their work, they may live outside the social systems of taxes, safety net benefits, and healthcare.

Many romantic couples who live together without being married do so out of wariness about the high divorce rate. Cohabiting, for these couples, can be a “trial” relationship period in which they decide their compatibility before marrying.

Until recently, previous research conclusions and popular conception held that cohabiting couples who eventually married experienced higher divorce rates than those who did not live together before marriage.

A new study by University of North Carolina-Greensboro sociologist Arielle Kuperberg proves this assumption false. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth, Kuperberg analyzed the divorce rate among 7,000 people who had been married at least once. Kuperberg also incorporated other variables, such as the date the couple moved in together. Contrary to 1970s research, Kuperberg found no link between cohabitation and divorce.

Cornell University sociologist Sharon Sassler, in pursuit of research for her book on cohabitation, interviewed more than 150 cohabiters. She found that persons with college degrees date longer before moving in together. Those with degrees date for an average of 14 months compared to 6 months or less for non-degree holders.

As cohabitation becomes more common among couples, sociological research is investigating and dispelling myths about the intricacies of romantic relationships, turning common (and fallacious) knowledge on its head.

Finding more lessons from TV (in this case, shows like 30 Rock and Girls), we’re seeing how women are investing more in careers and/or casual encounters than commitments to deep romantic relationships. At face value, this looks like a great example of women’s empowerment as our society comes to terms with the fact that—well—the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin said it better than I can.

But as Leslie C. Bell writes in The Atlantic, this hesitance to pair off isn’t necessarily happening because young women are “masters of their own destiny.” Instead, the trend may be due to a new social norm that “ambitious young women in their 20s shouldn’t want relationships with men.”

Citing work from Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong, who found that young women “believed relational commitments were supposed to take a backseat to self-development” (see their article, with Paula England, in Contexts magazine, Summer 2010), Bell argues that seemingly-progressive norms can cause undue stress when we assume individual interests are always in tension with social needs, and individual needs should always take priority.

Many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life.

Bell’s point isn’t that women should go back to the old priorities either. Instead, they should recognize when it is healthy to balance a human need for social relationships with individual development. The sisters do it for themselves, but they shouldn’t always have to:

I would never advocate that women return to the stereotype of the single woman pining for romance… the successful woman who is in a relationship is not the same as the pining woman. She’s the one who is acknowledging the full range of her desires.

Women watch porn and go to strip clubs. They also pay for sex. Sociologist Kassia Wosick from New Mexico State University says this reality is now becoming part of the television canon, making it more “real” for the rest of society. Shows like HBO’s Hung and Showtime’s Gigolos revolve around women as sexual consumers. In an interview with Las Cruces Sun, Wosick explains her motivation:

I wanted to do research like this as opposed to just going out and asking women about their experiences to see the way the media constructs this, because media is essentially supposed to be a reflection of our everyday lives….

Still, we might ask, is this what women want to watch or what they’re given to watch? Through content analysis and focus groups, Wosick has found that women do feel connections with the shows. The racy viewing might be exactly what they need to chip away at a taboo of sexual consumerism and enjoy some the same pleasures that men are allowed—in fact, the images might be empowering and support egalitarianism:

Women participating as sexual consumers challenges traditional notions of gender and sexuality, which I argue is key in equalizing gendered power dynamics within society.

Providing sexual services in exchange for money is illegal in many parts of the world, “oldest profession” or not. And where prostitution is legal, it is often not regulated, leading to a whole new set of problems. On the other hand, being a long-term, extramarital lover may be frowned upon, but it’s generally not illegal. Sociologist and sex researcher Li Yinhe argues (as reported by the online edition of the South China Morning Post) that if mistresses and prostitutes are in the “same supply-chain”—that is, they essentially provide the same service—then prostitution should be decriminalized. In her talk at a “Love and Culture” forum, Li went on to discuss modern marriage, which she also sees in socio-economic terms:

…[T]he sociology professor said that judging from its current form, [marriage] would soon break away from its “shackles” and become more “free”… “The reason we had marriage was [traditionally] to bear children and allow each generation to inherit private property,” she said.

“If there are other uses for property and less cohabiting couples raising children, then the institution of marriage is likely to become extinct,” she added.

I never thought I’d be writing the words “fellatio” or “cunnilingus” for an academic purpose (or frankly ever), but here I find myself exploring recent musing on the decline of the, ahem, blow job. Near the end of March, Esquire’s Geoff Dyer reported that the act has fallen on hard times: in an informal survey of 10 of his male friends, 8 preferred pleasing their partners to receiving oral sex.

It’s easy for sociologists to pooh-pooh the methodologies of this “survey,” as surveying 10 friends is hardly scientific.  Further, an increase in cunnilingus does not necessarily signal a decrease in fellatio.  But still, several intellectuals have recently explained why they think Dyer’s article might be on to something.  In an essay on his own website, Pasadena City College history and gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer explained,

In an era of rising male body dysmorphia, we know that more men than ever before are self-conscious about their appearance; it’s conceivable that anxiety about their size (driven by comparison to well-hung porn stars) or even how their penises’ smell has some guys anxious to avoid the intense focus that comes with a woman’s mouth on their manparts.

In essence, Schwyzer thinks that cunnilingus has become a new way for men to demonstrate sexual competence and deal with performance anxieties.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel also believes that Dyer may be on to something, though he finds some fault with an assumption in Schwyzer’s article: that giving and receiving head mean the same thing.  In fact, sexuality research suggests that the meaning of the act may not be symmetrical.

When straight men describe their experiences with oral sex, they talk about power. This holds whether receiving fellatio: “I feel so powerful when I see her kneeling in front of me,” or performing cunnilingus: “Being able to get her off with my tongue makes me feel so powerful.” Heterosexual men tend to experience the giving and receiving of oral sex as an expression of their power. By contrast, straight women perceive both giving and receiving oral sex from the position of powerlessness—not necessarily because they are forced into these acts, but because “it makes him happy” to receive oral sex and to perform it. So oral sex, like intercourse, allows him to feel “like a man,” regardless of who does what to whom.

So what happens to men’s sexual experience when women desire reciprocity and actually want to perform oral sex?  According to Kimmel, in a traditional sense, sex was a conquest for men.  But is there still victory if women like the “conquering”?

It’s difficult to say, though if the answer is “no,” perhaps we need to rethink what sex means to straight men.  Kimmel asks,

Can we both conquer and surrender to pleasure? Or can we dispense with martial metaphors… entirely, and simply pleasure and be pleasured? In other words, can heterosexual men embrace the liberatory promise of queer sex—the freeing of sexual pleasure from gender inequality?

As Kimmel puts it, can there really be anything sexier than equality?

Based on a year of field-work with 16- to 18- year olds, Mark McCormack, a sociologist at Brunel University (UK), argues that homophobic attitudes are on the decline in British secondary schools. As The Economist explains, McCormack’s new book, The Declining Significance of Homophobia, “describes an atmosphere of affection between male students both gay and straight, who no longer feel they need to act like sport-mad brutes to be accepted by their peers.”

Admittedly, some pupils still use the word “gay” to express disapproval -but they apply it to things like homework, and it is rarely a dig even when directed at people. Among these boys homophobia bore the same stigma as racism.

McCormack points to the media and the Internet as sources of the shift in attitudes:

First, there are many more openly gay performers, politicians and TV characters, which helps to normalise homosexuality. Second, the internet lets lonely provincial teenagers reach beyond their town limits. Social-networking websites encourage frankness about sexual orientation, and YouTube is a fount of videos featuring transgender confessionals and boys coming out to their mothers.

McCormack does not claim that harassment or bullying based on homophobia is no longer an issue, but that the situation has improved. And, he argues, “it is wrong and counter-productive to harp on about the dangers gay teenagers face, if it prevents many from coming out of the closet.”

In related research, our own Kyle Green reported late last year in Contexts‘ Discoveries section on research from Eric Anderson, who tracked high school athletes’ attitudes toward openly gay teammates over time, finding a dramatic drop in homophobia even in contact sports in just 10 years. It appears this trend is bearing out “across the pond.”

In an interview discussing whether teen sleepovers can actually prevent teen pregnancy, CNN’s Ali Velshi says flatly, “This is a little bit counter-intuitive.” But as his interviewee, UMass sociologist Amy Schalet (who wrote on this subject in Contexts in “Sex, Love, and Autonomy in the Teenage Sleepover” in the Summer of 2010), explains, “Let me clarify: it’s not a situation where everything goes… It’s definitely older teenage couples who have established relationships and whose parents have talked about contraception.” Which is to say, as Velshi puts it, sex and sex education in countries like the Netherlands, in which parents are more permissive—or as Schalet says, “parents are more connected with their kids”—about allowing boyfriends and girlfriends to sleep over, take “a holistic approach.”

Schalet’s research, explored more deeply in her new University of Chicago book Not Under My Roof, takes a look at American parenting practices surrounding teen sex and the practices of parents in other countries. Using in-depth interviews with parents and teens and a host of other data, she finds:

The takeaway for American parents… isn’t necessarily “You must permit sleepovers.” Many parents are going to say, “Not under my roof!” That’s why it’s the title of my book. The takeaway is that you can have more open conversations—you should probably have more open conversations—about what’s a good relationship, sex and contraception should go together, what does it mean to be “ready,” how to get rid of some of these damaging stereotypes (gender stereotypes). Those are all things that are going to help promote teenage health and better relationships between parents and kids.

Schalet is clear that parental approaches are nowhere near the only factor in the stark differences in teen pregnancy rates between the U.S. and the Netherlands, but says they are, in fact, particularly important. “Kids are having sex, clearly,” Velshi says. And that’s precisely the point, no matter whether parents believe their kids should be able to have sex in their own homes, Schalet believes: “I think what you emphasize is that, above all, the conversation is important, and the conversation itself does not make kids have sex.” Ideally, she points out, that conversation will take place at home with parents, but a holistic talk about sexuality, relationships, and health can also take place in schools, with clergy, and in many other locations.

[T]he harm to public health may have already been done. When politicians or celebrities raise alarms about vaccines, even false alarms, vaccination rates drop.

Recent research published by Siegwart Lindenberg, Janeke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, social scientists in the Netherlands, has confirmed that “star status” can really boost a cause (Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2011). Unfortunately, in this case, Bachmann’s public status lends credibility to her scientific missteps and will likely, the New York Times says, set back HPV vaccination efforts by years.