Sexual variants abuse and dysfunctions

Sexual variants abuse and dysfunctions essay assignment

Sexual variants abuse and dysfunctions essay assignment

12.1 Why is it difficult to define boundaries between normality and psychopathology in the area of variant sexuality?

·  12.2 What do we mean by sexual and gender variants?

·  12.3 What are the three primary types of sexual abuse?

·  12.4 What is a sexual dysfunction?

Loving, sexually satisfying relationships contribute a great deal to our happiness, and if we are not in such relationships, we are apt to spend a great deal of time, effort, and emotional energy looking for them. Sexuality is a central concern of our lives, influencing with whom we fall in love and mate and how happy we are with our partner and with ourselves.

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In this chapter we shall first look at the psychological problems that make sexual fulfillment especially difficult for some people—the vast majority of them men—who develop unusual sexual interests that are difficult to satisfy in a socially acceptable manner. For example, exhibitionists are sexually aroused by showing their genitals to strangers, who are likely to be disgusted, frightened, and potentially traumatized. Other sexual or gender variants may be problematic primarily to the individual: Transsexualism, for example, is a disorder involving discomfort with one’s biological sex and a strong desire to be of the opposite sex. Still other variants such as fetishism, in which sexual interest centers on some inanimate object or body part, involve behaviors that, although bizarre and unusual, do not clearly harm anyone. Perhaps no other area covered in this book exposes the difficulties in defining boundaries between normality and psychopathology as clearly as variant sexuality does.

The second issue we shall consider is sexual abuse, a pattern of pressured, forced, or inappropriate sexual contact. During the last few decades, there has been a tremendous increase in attention to the problem of sexual abuse of both children and adults. A great deal of research has addressed its causes and consequences. As we shall see, some related issues, such as the reality of recovered memories of sexual abuse, are extremely controversial.

The third category of sexual difficulties examined in this chapter is sexual dysfunctions, which include problems that impede satisfactory performance of sexual acts. People who have sexual dysfunctions (or their partners) typically view them as problems. Premature ejaculation, for example, causes men to reach orgasm much earlier than they and their partners find satisfying. And women with orgasmic disorder get sexually aroused and enjoy sexual activity but have a persistent delay, or absence, of orgasm following a normal sexual excitement or  arousal phase .

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Much less is known about sexual deviations, abuse, and dysfunctions than is known about many of the other disorders we have considered thus far in this book. There are also fewer sex researchers than researchers for many other disorders, so fewer articles related to research on sexual deviations and dysfunctions are published compared with the number of articles on anxiety and mood disorders or schizophrenia. One major reason is the sex taboo. Although sex is an important concern for most people, many have difficulty talking about it openly—especially when the relevant behavior is socially stigmatized, as homosexuality has often been historically. This makes it hard to obtain knowledge about even the most basic facts, such as the frequency of various sexual practices, feelings, and attitudes.

A second reason why sex research has progressed less rapidly is that many issues related to sexuality—including homosexuality, teenage sexuality, abortion, and childhood sexual abuse—are among our most divisive and controversial. In fact, sex research is itself controversial and not well funded. In the 1990s, two large-scale sex surveys were halted because of political opposition even after the surveys had been officially approved and deemed scientifically meritorious (Udry,  1993 ). Conservative former senator Jesse Helms and others had argued that sex researchers tended to approve of premarital sex and homosexuality and that this would likely bias the results of the surveys. Fortunately, one of these surveys was funded privately, though on a much smaller scale, and it is still considered definitive even though it was conducted in the 1990s (Laumann et al.,  1994 ,  1999 ). Another attack led by social conservatives occurred in 2003, when several federal grants were criticized because they focused on sex (Kempner, 2008). A legislative attempt to defund five of the grants barely failed.

Despite these significant barriers, significant progress has been made in the past half-century in understanding some important things about sexual and gender variants and dysfunctions. The contemporary era of sex research was first launched by Alfred Kinsey in the early 1950s (Kinsey et al.,  1948 ,  1953 ). Kinsey and his pioneering work are portrayed in a fascinating way in the 2004 award-winning movie Kinsey. However, before we discuss this progress, we first examine sociocultural influences on sexual behavior and attitudes in general. We do so to provide some perspective about cross-cultural variability in standards of sexual conduct and how these perspectives have changed over time. Such examples will remind us that we must exercise special caution in classifying sexual practices as “abnormal” or “deviant.”

 

Loving, sexually satisfying relationships contribute a great deal to our happiness, but our understanding of them has advanced slowly, largely because they are so difficult for people to talk about openly and because funding for research is often hard to come by.

Sociocultural Influences On Sexual Practices and Standards

Although some aspects of sexuality and mating, such as men’s greater emphasis on their partner’s attractiveness, are cross-culturally universal (Buss,  1989 , 2012), others are quite variable. For example, all known cultures have taboos against sex between close relatives, but attitudes toward premarital sex have varied considerably across history and around the world. Ideas about acceptable sexual behavior also change over time. Less than 100 years ago, for example, sexual modesty in Western cultures was such that women’s arms and legs were always hidden in public. Although this is by no means the case in Western cultures today, it remains true in many Muslim countries.

Despite the substantial variability in sexual attitudes and behavior in different times and places, people typically behave as though the sexual standards of their own time and place are obviously correct, and they tend to be intolerant of sexual nonconformity. Sexual nonconformists are often considered evil or sick. We do not mean to suggest that such judgments are always arbitrary. There has probably never existed a society in which Jeffrey Dahmer, who was sexually aroused by killing men, having sex with them, storing their corpses, and sometimes eating them, would be considered psychologically normal. Nevertheless, it is useful to be aware of historical and cultural influences on sexuality. When the expression or the acceptance of a certain behavior varies considerably across eras and cultures, we should at least pause to consider the possibility that our own stance is not the only appropriate one.

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Because the influences of time and place are so important in shaping sexual behavior and attitudes, we begin by exploring three cases that illustrate how opinions about “acceptable” and “normal” sexual behavior may change dramatically over time and may differ dramatically from one culture to another. In the first case, America during the mid-1800s, “degeneracy theory”—a set of beliefs about sexuality—led to highly conservative sexual practices and dire warnings about most kinds of sexual “indulgence.” In the second case, we look briefly at the Sambia tribe in New Guinea, in which a set of beliefs about sexuality prescribe that all normal adolescent males go through a stage of homosexuality before switching rather abruptly to heterosexuality in adulthood. Finally, in the third case, we consider changes across time in the status of homosexuality in Western culture.

Case 1: Degeneracy and Abstinence Theory

During the 1750s, Swiss physician Simon Tissot developed degeneracy theory, the central belief of which was that semen is necessary for physical and sexual vigor in men and for masculine characteristics such as beard growth (Money,  1985 ,  1986 ). He based this theory on observations about human eunuchs and castrated animals. We now know, of course, that loss of the male hormone testosterone, and not of semen, is responsible for the relevant characteristics of eunuchs and castrated animals. On the basis of his theory, however, Tissot asserted that two practices were especially harmful: masturbation and patronizing prostitutes. Both of these practices wasted the vital fluid, semen, as well as (in his view) overstimulating and exhausting the nervous system. Tissot also recommended that married people engage solely in procreative sex to avoid the waste of semen.

A descendant of degeneracy theory, abstinence theory was advocated in America during the 1830s by the Reverend Sylvester Graham (Money,  1985 ,  1986 ). The three cornerstones of his crusade for public health were healthy food (graham crackers were named for him), physical fitness, and sexual abstinence. In the 1870s Graham’s most famous successor, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, published a paper in which he ardently disapproved of masturbation and urged parents to be wary of signs that their children were indulging in it. He wrote about the 39 signs of “the secret vice,” which included weakness, dullness of the eyes, sleeplessness, untrustworthiness, bashfulness, love of solitude, unnatural boldness, mock piety, and round shoulders.

As a physician, Kellogg was professionally admired and publicly influential, and he earned a fortune publishing books discouraging masturbation. His recommended treatments for “the secret vice” were quite extreme. For example, he advocated that persistent masturbation in boys be treated by sewing the foreskin with silver wire or, as a last resort, by circumcision without anesthesia. Female masturbation was to be treated by burning the clitoris with carbolic acid. Kellogg, like Graham, was also very concerned with dietary health—especially with the idea that consumption of meat increased sexual desire. Thus, he urged people to eat more cereals and nuts and invented Kellogg’s cornflakes “almost literally, as anti-masturbation food” (1986, p. 186).

Given the influence of physicians like Kellogg, it should come as no surprise that many people believed that masturbation caused insanity (Hare,  1962 ). This hypothesis had started with the anonymous publication in the early eighteenth century in London of a book entitled Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution. It asserted that masturbation was a common cause of insanity. This idea probably arose from observations that many patients in mental asylums masturbated openly (unlike sane people, who are more likely to do it in private) and that the age at which masturbation tends to begin (at puberty in adolescence) precedes by several years the age when the first signs of insanity often appear (in late adolescence and young adulthood) (Abramson & Seligman,  1977 ). The idea that masturbation may cause insanity appeared in some psychiatry textbooks as late as the 1940s.

Although abstinence theory and associated attitudes seem highly puritanical by today’s standards, they have had a long-lasting influence on attitudes toward sex in American and other Western cultures. It was not until 1972 that the American Medical Association declared, “Masturbation is a normal part of adolescent sexual development and requires no medical management” (American Medical Association Committee on Human Sexuality,  1972 , p. 40). Around the same time, the Boy Scout Manual dropped its antimasturbation warnings. Nonetheless, in 1994 Jocelyn Elders was fired as U.S. Surgeon General for suggesting publicly that sex education courses should include discussion of masturbation. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church still holds that masturbation is sinful.

Case 2: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia

Melanesia is a group of islands in the South Pacific that has been intensively studied by anthropologists, who have uncovered cultural influences on sexuality unlike any known in the West. Between 10 and 20 percent of Melanesian societies practice a form of homosexuality within the context of male initiation rituals, which all male members of society must experience.

The best-studied society has been the Sambia of Papua New Guinea (Herdt,  2000 ; Herdt & Stoller,  1990 ). Two beliefs reflected in Sambian sexual practices are semen conservation and female pollution. Like Tissot, the Sambians believe that semen is important for many things including physical growth, strength, and spirituality. Furthermore, they believe that it takes many inseminations (and much semen) to impregnate a woman. Finally, they believe that semen cannot easily be replenished by the body and so must be conserved or obtained elsewhere. The female pollution doctrine is the belief that the female body is unhealthy to males, primarily because of menstrual fluids. At menarche, Sambian women are secretly initiated in the menstrual hut forbidden to all males.

In order to obtain or maintain adequate amounts of semen, young Sambian males practice semen exchange with each other. Beginning as boys, they learn to practice fellatio (oral sex) in order to ingest sperm, but after puberty they can also take the penetrative role, inseminating younger boys. Ritualized homosexuality among the young Sambian men is seen as an exchange of sexual pleasure for vital semen. (It is ironic that although both the Sambians and the Victorian-era Americans believed in semen conservation, their solutions to the problem were radically different.) When Sambian males are well past puberty, they begin the transition to heterosexuality. At this time the female body is thought to be less dangerous because the males have ingested protective semen over the previous years. For a time, they may begin having sex with women and still participate in fellatio with younger boys, but homosexual behavior stops after the birth of a man’s first child. Most of the Sambian men make the transition to exclusive adult heterosexuality without problems, and those who do not are viewed as misfits.

Ritualized homosexuality among the Melanesians is a striking example of the influence of culture on sexual attitudes and behavior. A Melanesian adolescent who refuses to practice homosexuality would be viewed as abnormal, and such adolescents are apparently absent or rare. In the United States ritualized homosexuality of this type would be stigmatized as homosexual pedophilia, but Melanesian boys who practice it appear neither to have strong objections nor to be derailed from eventual heterosexuality. Obviously, homosexuality in Sambia is not the same as homosexuality in contemporary America, with the possible exception of those Sambian men who have difficulty making the transition to heterosexuality.

Case 3: Homosexuality and American Psychiatry

During the past half-century, the status of homosexuality has changed enormously, both within psychiatry and psychology and for many Western societies in general. In the not-too-distant past, homosexuality was a taboo topic. Now, movies, talk shows, and television sitcoms and dramas address the topic explicitly by including gay men and lesbians in leading roles. As we shall see, developments in psychiatry and psychology have played an important part in these changes. Homosexuality was officially removed from the DSM (where it had previously been classified as a sexual deviation) in 1973 and today is no longer regarded as a mental disorder. A brief survey of attitudes toward homosexuality within the mental health profession itself will again illustrate how attitudes toward various expressions of human sexuality may change over time.