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Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social History and Anthropology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Ellen Ross  and
Rayna Rapp
Ellen Ross
Affiliation:
Ramapo College
Rayna Rapp
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research
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Extract

“The personal is political” was a central insight of the wave of feminism which gathered momentum in the 1960s. Within that phrase is condensed the understanding that the seemingly most intimate details of private existence are actually structured by larger social relations. Attention to the personal politics of intimate life soon focused on sexuality, and many canons of sexual meaning were challenged. The discovery of erotic art and symbols as malecentered, the redefinition of lesbian sexuality as positive and life-affirming, and the dismantling of the two-orgasm theory as a transparently male perception of the female body were among the products of this critique.

Type
The Progress of Social Science
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 51 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

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References

2 The definition of what constitutes sexuality is currently under debate. Some analysts stress the biological basis of the experience, focusing on organic and neurological response; others, more committed to a psychoanalytic perspective, stress the role of fantasy—originating in childhood—in eliciting these responses. As the recent work of Michel Foucault suggests, however, both positions presuppose that “sex” as a category of human experience can be isolated and is uniform throughout history. We agree with Foucault's contention that the concept of what activities and sensations are “sexual” is historically determined and hence part of a changing discourse. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1Google Scholar: An Introduction, tr. Robert, Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).Google Scholar

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66 Ibid., p. 89.

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