Sexuality is defined, expressed, and experienced as a personal but also as a social and political phenomenon (Siedman, 2010, p. 11). The film 40-year-old Virgin presents a strikingly unique twist on Western norms and values related to sexuality. Specifically, 40-year-old Virgin focuses on male heteronormativity, and the notion of the male as being expected to be sexually virile and sexually ravenous from puberty onwards. When the title character is forced to admit in public that he is a virgin at forty years of age, he exposes himself as a sexual deviant. His virginity is an ironic form of sexual deviance, however. He has no culturally acceptable excuse for being a virgin, as a monk might have. ather than being expressed as an externalizing perversion such as a sexual fetish, Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) expresses his sexuality via inadvertent abstinence. The film both supports and subverts several of the Western sexual…...
mlaReferences
McGann, PJ (n.d.). The sexual natural attitude.
Padgug, R.A. (1989). Sexual matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History. Chapter 2 in Passion and Power. Peiss, K. & Simmons, C. Eds. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Schwartz, P. & Rutter, V. (1998). The Gender of Sexuality. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.
Seidman, S. (2010). The Science of Sex: Sexology and Psychoanalysis. Chapter 1 in The Social Construction of Sexuality. 2ed. New York: WW Norton
Sexuality & PC-TV
Facts About Human Sexuality
This section will consist of facts about human sexuality, such as what are the dominant ideas and themes felt about sexuality; what are the criticisms; and what significant changes have been happening about sexuality over time. All facts listed in this section are pulled from Our Sexuality by Robert Crooks and Karla Baur.
In order to accurately speak about the changes that the media, specifically television, has brought about in the way Americans view sexuality, one must first have a broad view of the way sexuality is defined by the general public. This is not an easy task, as many commonly held beliefs about sex are antiquated or blown out of proportion by none other than the media itself. To get accurate facts one must go back to science, where these issues are studied regularly.
First, is there one widely held belief about sexuality that can be…...
mlaWorks Cited
Block, Jenny. "One Million Moms Attacks JCPenney Over Ad With Lesbian
Mothers." Huffpost Gay Voices. Huffington Post, May 3, 2012. Web. 6 May
2012. .
Class notes. 2012. 1-34. Print.
These issues are highly politically complex, and the author makes it clear in this chapter that these issues are no less psychologically complex for the individuals that must make choices regarding them. The ability for these issues, especially that of abortion, to polarize society is quite large, and individual values and sentiments are often lost in the larger picture, it seems. Like other sexual values, the author attempts to make it clear that thoughts, attitudes, and practices of contraception and abortion can and do develop and change over time, and they form highly important parts of an individuals social and psychosexual identity in the modern world.
Chapter 12: Solitary Sex and Shared Sex
After long discussions on theory, development, and psychological as well as social issues in sexuality, this chapter delves more explicitly into actual sexual practices without losing sight of the psychology or the other factors of sexuality that influence these…...
So, rather than deny the existence of non-male/female attraction we have to examine for a deeper understanding the very nature of attraction itself. Is the sex of the person to whom you are attracted important or even relevant? "Sexuality [is not] learned in the same contexts, it is not practiced for the same purposes, it is not maintained by the same social forces, and it does not cease to be practiced at the same moments in the life course for the same reasons. The social construction of sexuality (and even if sexuality exists as a separable domain in a culture) and its connections to nonsexual conduct are specific to the cultural and historical circumstances of a particular social order," (Kauth 223).
We, then, cannot accurately predict our own sexual behavior as it is absolutely mixed together with a truly infinite number of variables.
For the hermaphrodite, sexual attraction can sometimes be…...
mlaBibliography
Dreger, Alice Dormurat. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Ellis, Albert. "The Sexual Psychology of Human Hermaphrodites." Psychosomatic Medicine 7 (1945): 108-125.
Gilbert, Scott F. Hermaphroditism. 2008. 18 Nov 2008 http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=175&search=hermaphroditism.
Haft-Pomrock, Yael. "Is it the Age of the Hermaphrodite?" Oct 2002. MHPublications.com. 18 Nov 2008 http://www.mhpublications.com/Hermaphrodite.htm.
Another way casual sex can impact a relationship is when a person decides to betray the trust of their partner and commit adultery. The allure of a "no strings attached" sexual encounter with a relative stranger can entice people to wrong those they love, and this temptation is one of the leading precursors to divorce.
d.) How does a person know when a sexual act is appropriate or permissible?
This subject is highly sensitive, and must be left to each individual to decide. Personal boundaries exist for a reason, and although one person may find hugging or backrubs to be appropriate actions, another person can easily consider them to constitute harassment or assault. If somebody feels an instinctive sense of violation when a sexual act is performed, they have every right to voice their concern and end the act on their own terms. Everybody should be aware of their sexual partner's…...
Sexuality Addiction
Sexual Addiction
Hypersexuality or sexual addiction refers to the dysfunctional preoccupation with sexual desire, usually in combination with search for non-intimate or casual sex; objectified partner sex, pornography and compulsive masturbation for a period of not less than six months (Lowinson, 2005). This obsessive adult blueprint of behaviors and thoughts continues notwithstanding efforts to self-correct challenging sexual conducts (Hess, 2011). Sexual addiction causes negative life upshots, physical and emotional health problems, relationships instability, or legal or career problems. Sexual addiction is viewed as a process of addiction to sex. As a result, sexual addicts spend a lot of their time involved in the search for romance and sex as opposed to the sexual act. Such people are fanatical to the dissociative high and nuerochemicals produced through their powerful sexual ritualistic conduct and sexual fantasy life. Sexual addictions entail an adaptive effort to control mood and address stressors via the exploitation…...
mlaReferences
Coombs, R. (2004). Handbook of addictive disorders: A practice guide to diagnosis and treatment. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Hess, S. (2011). Diary of sex addict. Texas: JMS Books LLC
Lowinson, J. (2005). Substance abuse: A comprehensive textbook. London: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Obviously, these are not thing that would (or usually should) be discussed openly with strangers or even friends on an indiscriminate basis. However, patients must understand that there is no need for concern or shyness as it relates to a counselor that is involved with sexual issues because openness and honesty is a prerequisite for getting complete and effective treatment. This is not to say that the terminology and tactics should be too casual or profane, but there should not be any limitation in what is covered and patients should not be made to feel gun-shy or otherwise inhibited about being honest.
Indeed, the author of this report was very careful to moderate the tone of the topic the author was surprised about because while the topics involved are usually not complicated, feelings like regret, shyness and antipathy can make the process complicated and hard to extricate one's self from.…...
Sexuality and Cinema
Laura Mulvey's arguments in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" are readily illustrated with reference to the 1991 Jonathan Demme film "The Silence of the Lambs."
Mulvey's starting point is psychoanalytic, and suggests that the image of the female is the way in which filmic meaning is constructed. This begins with Mulvey's critique of the "phallocentric" mode of thinking, in which a woman is understood to be nothing more than a castrated male, and is therefore the focus of horrified, and desirous, observation. Here, she views film itself as a technological construction designed to increase the activity of "pleasurable looking," even pushing it into the sexualized realm of voyeurism or scopophila: "The cinema satifies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect." This means that the narcissism of the viewer, understood to be male, is gratified by the way in which…...
Sexuality
As illiams puts it, "If Europeans and their descendant nations of North America accept something as normal, then anything different is seen as abnormal. Such a view ignores the great diversity of human existence," (73). One of the fundamental aspects of human existence is gender; another is sexuality. These two primary issues color the way people see the world, create identity, and communicate with others. Gender impacts social status and access to power. Dichotomizing sexuality and gender is dangerous, mainly because dualism is artificial. Very few women fulfill the stereotypical Barbie-like female role identity; and very few men correspond to their G.I. Joe counterpart. Most people do occupy a comfortable spot on the gender continuum. Yet when questioned about gender and sexuality, most people are tagged as male or as female. The growing interest in transgender has raised important questions about the flexibility of gender. Transgender individuals have a hard…...
mlaWorks Cited
"The Berdache: Gender-Mixing Among Northern Native Americans." Retrieved online: http://www.sinclair.edu/academics/lcs/departments/soc/pub/casilab/berdache/Berdache.pdf
Williams, Walter L. "The Berdache Tradition." Retrieved online: http://crl.ucsd.edu/~elman/Courses/HDP1/2000/LectureNotes/williams.pdf
" (Archbishop: sex ed should teach love, not mechanics)
What this suggests is that a different approach should be taken to sex education. This approach would be based on values and morals that place sex into a framework in which the responsibilities and importance of sexual activity is explained and understood. It is also of interest that the advocates of this view are of the opinion that values such as chastity and abstinence are the most effective methods of prevention against sexually transmitted diseases. As one commentator who advocates an abstinence based approach states; "An abstinence-based approach to sex education focuses on teaching young people that abstaining from sex until marriage is the best means of ensuring that they avoid infection with HIV, other sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy." ( Abstinence)
Another central critique of the present sex education policy is that "Sex education literature never teaches that any type of…...
mlaReferences
A Christian Response to Sex Education, viewed May 5, 2009,
Abstinence, viewed May 5, 2009,
Archbishop: sex ed should teach love, not mechanics, viewed May 5, 2009,
Sexuality and Gender
There are certain patterns in literature; themes which present themselves over and over again despite the time period in which they were written and the cultural background of the author who wrote it. One such theme is that of human sexuality and the gender categorization that is associated with sexuality and appropriate or acceptable behaviors. Throughout history, men have dominated over women and this is explored in works of literature throughout recorded time. Men had to be strong and virile, able to control their women and also to intimidate other men in order to be considered successful. Maleness, machismo, and masculinity were all synonymous in most of history. omen were consequentially subservient to the males in their life, be it their fathers, brothers, husbands, or any other man in the society in which they lived. According to the gender demands of the eras, women were required to be…...
mlaWorks Cited:
Jeyathurai, Dashini Ann. "Exorcising Female Power in The Faerie Queen: The Treatment of Duessa in the Book of Holiness." Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal. Northfield, MN: Carleton College. (3:2). 2008.
Ekici, Sara. "Feminist Criticism: Female Characters in Shakespeare's Plays Othello and Hamlet." Germany. 2009. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Middlesex: Penguin, 1968. Print.
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queen. Indianapolis: Hackett Publ., 2006. Print.
One critic states, for instance, that for the liberal nature of the film, the work does not actually promote the 'pro-choice' message that is so important to many women. This critic is Gloria Feldt, who is an author, activist, and is the former president of Planned Parenthood. She knows the experiences portrayed in the move well, in fact, firsthand, since she was a teenage mother once. Feldt states,
"The dialogue [in the film] is adorable - snappy, smart, funny, captivating - and who wouldn't enjoy that? But I was Juno once - that sixteen-year-old pregnant girl, and life isn't like that at all. It delivers messages to young women that aren't' realistic. Juno is an adorable fantasy […] the narrative implies that carrying a pregnancy to term and relinquishing the baby - giving it up for adoption - is nothing. But we know that it isn't so for a pregnant…...
mlaWorks Cited
Flanagan, Caitlin. "Sex and the Teenage Girl." New York Times. 2008. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. .
Giroux, Henry a. "Rewriting the discourse of racial identity: Towards a pedagogy and politics of whiteness." Harvard Educational Review: Cambridge. 1997. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. .
"Impact of Adoption on Adopted Persons.": A Factsheet for Families. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. .
Lipsitz, George. "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness." Temple University Press. 1998.
Even though the health strategy was explained clearly (better education, taking the patient's sexual health history), it was something that most nurses should already be doing or know how to do. The article did not provide any new revelations to this issue. They authors seemed to be telling the audience thing they should already have knowledge of. They have not done enough research to present the reading audience with any new information that will stand out and be useful in dealing with this topic. In order to garner more interest in the subject, a quantitative study should be done which includes in depth information on the population. Until this is done, it is futile to come up with suggestions on how to deal with the issue. Concrete evidence must be gathered to provide a more accurate assessment and solution to the problem.
In order to serve this population justly and take…...
mlaBibliography
Pangman, V.C. And Seguire, M. (2000). Sexuality and the chronically ill older adult: A social justice issue. Sexuality and Disability, 18(1), 49-59.
This neediness, rather than leading her to an unproductive affair, at least opens her eyes to the possibility of a new life, despite her mother's influence. Both sets of parents are smothering forces upon the two lovers: the Chinese man's father forbids his son to see the white girl, making their affair forbidden. Of course, this only makes their attraction all the more enticing, since both of them stand to lose everything if the affair is revealed.
Duras herself grew up in French Indochina during the 1930s, like her narrator. This immediately raises the question as to the degree that the book is autobiographical. Rather than explicitly call it a memoir, Duras allows for a certain amount of ambiguity as to its truthfulness Even if the 'bare bones' of the story are factual, Duras assumes a fiction writer's right to know what all of the character's in the tale are…...
mlaWorks Cited
Duras, Marguerite. The Lover. New York: Pantheon, 1998.
Zurn, Unica. Dark Spring. Translated and with an Introduction by Caroline Rupprecht. New York: Spare Change, 2008.
Ria's son, Brian has a similar take on the subject, believing that achieving the ideal male sexual relationship has been what drove his father out of the house and into the arms of a waiting woman. Though he clearly resents the situation, he is also clear that it makes perfectly good sense.
Then Brian decided that his father had left on account of sex. "That's what Myles and Dekko say. They say that he went off to her because she's interested in having sex night and day…(269)
This theme of leaving the sex as an indecent, though accepted aspect of female lives is a theme among many Irish writers. Though this may be changing, given the fact that some of the newer women writers are seeking to stop portraying Irish women as social prudes.
Given the multinational nostalgia market open to popular Irish writers, it is surprising that female authors aiming for the…...
mlaWorks Cited
Binchy, Mauve. Tara Road. New York: Random House, 1998.
Bitel, Lisa M. "Conceived in Sins, Born in Delights: Stories of Procreation from Early Ireland." Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.2 (1992): 181-202.
Bitel, Lisa M. Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.
Bradley, Anthony, and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, eds. Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
King Arthur has been a steady feature in pop culture since the original stories of him were told hundreds of years ago. In fact, he retains a mythical status because of the quasi-historical nature of the stories told about him, leading to many people wondering if King Arthur is actually a real person. The consensus appears to be that he was not an actual person, but that there were real people whose stories contributed to the stories of King Arthur. It is no surprise, then, that he continues to be a compelling character in books,....
Serial killers are a topic that has fascinated people, beginning before the term was even coined. They have been romanticized in pop culture, but their crimes seem to be rooted in a personality disorder that keeps them from empathizing with others. They kill in a variety of ways and, when left unchecked, the number of people that they can kill can get into the 100s.
Some subtopics to consider when writing about serial killers for your essay topic are:
Bullying is a serious issue that impacts approximately 20% of middle and high-school aged children each year. The extent of bullying can vary, but severe bullying can lead victims to commit suicide and leave lifelong scars on its survivors. This has led people to debate the most effective form of intervention for bullies.
Bullying used to be considered an individual problem, with schools taking few steps to intervene unless the bullying was physical and was egregious. In fact, many middle-aged adults seem to think of school bullying as something that is within the normal range of....
The key to writing a good argumentative essay is thoroughly understanding the pros and cons of the topic you are considering. That is because you are asked to take a position in an argumentative essay and support that position, while also being ready to meet challenges that would come from people taking a different position. Sex education is a surprisingly divisive topic given the evidence that supports sex education as being a positive for students. Much of this division is based in religious and moral objections to sex education, and, while it....
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