SEXUALITY AND ITS BELIEF

Sexuality and Its Belief



Sexuality and Its Belief

1. Sexuality Is As Much About Our Beliefs, Ideologies and Imaginations As It Is About the Physical Body: An Exploration

Human sexuality holds a great interest for anthropologists. As a biological reality and a reproductive force, sexuality affects all humans. However, there is much diversity in the experience, expression, and interpretation of sexuality throughout the world. Using a holistic perspective, meaning that various aspects of the human experience are considered to be interrelated and interdependent, anthropologists consider biological as well as cultural factors in an attempt to understand and explain the dynamics of human sexuality.

Middleton (2002) mentions some anthropologists are particularly interested in the interrelationship between sexuality and human physical and cultural evolution. Physical changes in the human species over time have influenced the nature of sexuality (Middleton, 2002). In turn, changes in sexual practices may have had an impact on the physical changes that humans have undergone.

If sexuality is a biological reality, it is nevertheless interpreted through the various cultural frameworks in which it is experienced. Therefore, human culture has an enormous impact on the diverse meanings attributed to sexuality and sexual behaviors. Anthropologists consider sexuality to be a central aspect of human social organization that influences, and is influenced by, various other aspects of society such as food-getting, family structure, and religious belief.

While all mammals, including humans, reproduce sexually, humans exhibit different patterns of sexuality than other members of this class of animals. Even among the primates—the order in which humans are categorized in the Linnaean taxonomic system and that includes apes and monkeys—humans are distinct when it comes to patterns of sexuality (Middleton, 2002).

These differences are considered by anthropologists and other scientists as being representative of adaptive strategies, or coping mechanisms, that humans have adopted over time in response to environmental, biological, and social pressures. While some scholars focus on these pressures individually, the discipline of anthropology generally acknowledges that they are likely to be interconnected. In other words, there may not be one individual source for the uniqueness of human sexuality.

In contrast to many other mammals, for example, human females are sexually receptive throughout the year, regardless of whether or not they are fertile. This characteristic is related to the loss of estrus among human females. That is, at some point in their evolutionary history, human females gained the physical capacity to conceal ovulation. The period of time during which females are fertile became unknown to males and, in most cases, to females themselves (Bancroft, Debra and Meredith, 2003). The process whereby females gained concealed ovulation may be linked to other physical changes that occurred through evolution such as the ability to walk upright and the loss of body hair.

2. Debates about Pornography and Its Regulation Are Debates about Freedom and Control: An Exploration

As a byproduct of this change, humans mate throughout the year and sexuality has implications that range further than its reproductive function. The social impact of this trait touches on marriage, family structure, economic structure, ...