September 29, 2006
The History & Future of Sex
>from 1999
"...the field of sexology knows a lot more about the phenomenology of sex than it does about social science. We know more about what individual people say they do and how they feel than about the role sexuality plays in the pageant of world events. While this is legitimate knowledge, it means that sexology has a limited perspective. History, economics, law, technology, religion, and other large-scale social forces dramatically shape people's sexual consciousness and behavior--which is what we sexologists purport to study. And so examining the past and looking toward the future are essential for sexological sophistication.
+
One of the things we sexologists should be asking, is, which features of modern life are shaping the future of sexuality this very moment? What is it that we need to pay attention to in order to understand sexuality in the coming decade--or century? Examples might include:
Amazon.com & e-commerce; the mainstreaming of s/m; the disappearance of downtowns; life expectancy beyond age 100; tampons; artificial fertility technologies; female clergy; unsupervised free time for kids; virtual sex; low-fat diets; public jack-off clubs; talk radio; John Gray's Mars/Venus paradigm; Internet blocking software; chlamydia; the rise in cohabiting; female athletics; new pain medications; young adults moving back home; expanding definitions of date rape; the normalization of female masturbation; e-mail instead of written love letters; the end of the Cold War; the coming stock market crash; bisexual chic; people entering college in their 20s & 30s; increasing interracial dating & marriage; Internet penetration of daily life; RU486; the ubiquity of pornography; the decreasing stigma of extramarital sex; the increase in religiosity; the disappearing availability of abortion; female police & emergency personnel; repetitive stress injuries; cybersex; increasing acceptance of psychotherapy; pharmaceuticals that facilitate desire, arousal, & orgasm; expanding definitions of "child molestation"; tattoos and piercings; whites becoming a minority; managed health care & HMOs; abstinence education; bans on student-faculty dating; steroids
How are these things shaping our sexual future? And what else is currently shaping our sexual future in ways we don't realize?"
article by Marty Klein, Ph.D www.SexEd.org
~We're all experts about our own sexology? Amateurs? Personal sexology researchers certainly.
[photo not from above]