Archives of Sexual Behavior最新文献

Despite its bad reputation, gossip plays an important role in communicating and policing the social norms, morals, and values of a community. People are likely to be particularly attuned to gossip that helps solve recurrent adaptive challenges. Among women, sexual assault is a pervasive threat to reproductive choice that exacts serious costs on women's reproductive fitness. Research has demonstrated that women fear sexual assault and are motivated to engage in behaviors to reduce the threat of being victimized. Here we propose that women may gossip about sexual assault as a means of protecting themselves and others. Participants read a series of vignettes describing instances of sexual assault of a female victim and were asked to indicate how likely they would be to share that information with a variety of recipients, and what factors motivated their sharing intentions. Results indicated that, overall, sexual assault gossip was especially likely to be shared with proximal female family and friends, as well as authority figures. Women were more likely to share sexual assault gossip than men, and this gender effect was strongest when sharing gossip with female family and friends. The strongest motivations for sharing gossip were to warn the recipient, damage the reputation of the perpetrator, and check agreement with the recipient, with women being more motivated to damage the perpetrator's reputation than men were. Women who expressed a greater fear of rape were more likely to share the information with all recipients except proximal male friends, and reported stronger motivations to share in order to damage the perpetrator's reputation and check agreement with the recipient. Results are consistent with the idea that women may use gossip to create a whisper-network of information exchange that helps women protect themselves and others.

The feminist approach to sexuality education challenges and changes power dynamics and inequalities embedded within sexuality, while social media serves as a tool for building online communities and raising awareness about feminist issues. Adopting a feminist approach to sexuality education, particularly through social media platforms, remains largely unexplored and underdeveloped. In China, where traditional sex education is often limited and stigmatized, sexuality has been influenced by a complex interplay of traditional gender norms, evolving social attitudes, and state intervention. The aim of this study was to evaluate both sex educators and their online followers' perceptions of the implementation of social media-based sexuality education using a feminist approach in China. Semi-structured online interviews were carried out with 10 educators and 18 young followers, followed by thematic analysis using NVivo. The findings indicated that social media-based sexuality education using a feminist approach might be used to help disrupt oppressive norms about gender and sexuality and foster a positive attitude toward women's sexuality. Chinese online sex educators strategically avoided the term "feminism" and creatively evaded censorship and spread their messages in alignment with government policies while advocating for gender equality. However, participants also highlighted the existence of barriers, including internal conflicts, gender imbalances, social stigmatization, and political constraints, which needed to be addressed in order to effectively implement this approach.

High sexual quality and activity predict psychological well-being in heterosexual middle-aged and older adults; however, these associations have not been documented in sexual minorities, who have faced lifelong stigma concerning their sexuality. This paper presents data from two secondary studies that explored the benefits of being sexually active and satisfied and the role of internalized homonegativity in a sample of middle-aged and older sexual minorities. Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey collected on 91 sexually active sexual minorities (ages 40–80) in same-sex relationships. Study 2 was a cross-sectional survey collected on 235 single and partnered sexual minorities (ages 40–90), which included sexually active (N = 101) and inactive (N = 134) participants. In Study 1, sexual satisfaction was associated with higher psychological well-being and dissatisfaction was more prominently associated with lower psychological well-being. In Study 2, we found that the sexually active participants had higher levels of psychological well-being, in addition to corroborating the Study 1 findings. Additionally, we also determined that sexual dissatisfaction was a mediator between internalized homonegativity and psychological well-being. These findings accentuate the benefits of retaining high sexual quality and activity for middle-aged and older sexual minorities. Although there are apparent advantages of being sexually satisfied, the relationship to psychological well-being is stronger and more of a concern for those who are dissatisfied, which is rooted in internalized homonegativity. These results can guide practitioners working with middle-aged and older sexual minorities to help them achieve successful aging trajectories by reducing their internalized homonegativity and promoting higher sexual quality.

People with intellectual disability face a variety of epistemic injustices-systems of knowledge and educational inequality-related to their access to sex education and perceptions of their sexuality. Sex educators are in a position to address these injustices; however, they may not be fully aware of their own epistemic ethics. Furthermore, there is little theoretical understanding of how sex educators provide instruction within an environment that exhibits hostility toward the sexual expression of those with intellectual disability. This grounded theory study of interviews with 58 people who taught sex education to people with intellectual disability sought to understand the role of educators in perpetuating and resisting epistemic injustice by utilizing sex education to either facilitate or restrict the sexual expression of people with disabilities. We identified four micro-contexts: centralizing capacity to consent, emphasizing risk, desexualizing (through) sex education, and acknowledging gender identity. In each micro-context, we explore mechanisms of how educators were either allied in support of autonomy (person-centered values, expertise, access to curricular resources, self-advocates as teachers and partners, subversiveness, and de-problematizing normative sexual behavior) or reified sexual stigmas (fear of sexual abuse and sexual perpetration, conscripting to asexuality, the paternalistic service system, and complex ethical dilemmas) in the context of hostility to sex education and sexual expression. These findings have implications for promoting prosocial sexual expression and access to sex education for people with intellectual disability.

Previous research has shown that people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be embodied within their sensorimotor experiences. For example, people tend to associate "toughness" with males and "tenderness" with females in their spoken and mental metaphors. In the current research, we investigated the role of culture in this embodied categorization of gender, focusing specifically on the role of social system and organization. Based on sociological findings that highlight the dominance of men in patriarchy, we hypothesized that Geba, a primitive patriarchal tribe in southwest China, were more likely to use the sensory experience of toughness for representations of gender categories than matched groups of Kham Tibetans. Across two studies, both groups of participants who were primed with the proprioceptive experience of toughness were more prone to categorize sex-ambiguous faces as male (vs. female) than those who received sensory feedback about the relative tenderness, which replicated prior finding in Western participants. Notably, the embodied effect of toughness on categorical judgments of gender was more pronounced in Geba Tibetans than Kham Tibetans, which suggests that social system may be an important determinant of social-categorical thinking about gender. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of cultural dynamic in accounting for embodied cognition.

Understanding the psychological conflicts associated with pornography consumption can help professionals tailor their interventions to address the mental health risks faced by individuals struggling with issues related to their pornography use. The main objective of this research was to investigate how pornography consumers are perceived from a social representation theoretical perspective and to examine variations in these perceptions—or social representations—according to gender, relationship satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction. All participants (N = 875 Romanians) were in a romantic relationship at the time of participation. Our results indicated that the social representation of pornography consumers varied significantly depending on gender, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. Also, our findings showed a potential psychological conflict in the long run, which can put individuals at risk for self-stigma, guilt, and subsequent mental health consequences. We discuss conclusions from both a theoretical and practical perspective, with a focus on the utility of our conclusions in the clinical practice context of psychologists, psychotherapists, and mental health workers when dealing with issues related to pornography use.

There is increasing interest in the interpersonal factors that shape the development of asexual individual’s sexual identity, including age, gender, and romantic orientation. In this study, we examined variability in timing and pacing of asexual identity development milestones, with a focus on the diversity present in the asexual population. Among a sample of 317 participants aged 18–59 from three distinct birth cohorts, we measured participants’ ages of asexual identity development milestones, including: first awareness of a lack of sexual attraction, first searching for orientation, first discovery of the term asexuality, first self-identification, and first disclosure. Participants from more recent cohorts reported earlier and accelerated pacing of milestones relative to those from middle and older cohorts. Subgroups defined by gender also varied in milestone timing, with cisgender participants experiencing asexual identity development milestones at a later age than gender non-binary cohorts. No significant difference in milestones were found among romantic orientation sub-groups, apart from the timing of identity disclosure. Romantic-identified asexual individuals disclosed their asexual identities much sooner than aromantic-identified asexual individuals following identification as asexual. By comparing differences within subpopulations, the results of this study extend upon our understanding of the various sub-identities that exist within the asexual population and attend to different experiences within the asexual community. This in turn contributes towards our understanding of how asexual people experience interpersonal relationships, their interactions with others, and how they develop a positive sense of identity.

Based on in-depth interviews with 40 men involved in the Chinese sex industry, this study compared how engagement in sex work impacts, whether positively or negatively, the career development and transition to adulthood of middle-class and lower-class emerging adults. Most middle-class sex workers had concrete career goals outside of the sex industry and were on track to achieve those goals using their educational credentials and social and cultural capital. In contrast, most lower-class male sex workers relied on the lucrative nature of sex work to accumulate capital for their long-term goals, such as starting small businesses. Lower-class sex workers without career goals often spent their income on addictive habits, such as video games, and their engagement in sex work was not conducive to their long-term career development. Extending the literature on emerging adulthood to the context of sex work, I argue that for emerging adults who engage in sex work consciously with career goals, sex work could be viewed as a form of job exploration, while for those who engage in sex work without clear career goals, their engagement could be better described as floundering.