Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 19 views

    Reflection New Perspectives On Understanding of Sexuality, Gender, Intimacies

    Uploaded by

    chris
    Using survey data collected in May 2021, this report examines the lifetime, five-year, and past-year experiences of discrimination among LGBT employees. It is one of the first studies to look at LGBT employment discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the year following Bostock v. Clayton County.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Reflection New Perspectives On Understanding of Sexuality, Gender, Intimacies

    Uploaded by

    chris
    19 views4 pages
    Using survey data collected in May 2021, this report examines the lifetime, five-year, and past-year experiences of discrimination among LGBT employees. It is one of the first studies to look at LGBT employment discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the year following Bostock v. Clayton County.

    Original Title

    P1801-0126

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Using survey data collected in May 2021, this report examines the lifetime, five-year, and past-year experiences of discrimination among LGBT employees. It is one of the first studies to look at LGBT employment discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the year following Bostock v. Clayton County.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    19 views4 pages

    Reflection New Perspectives On Understanding of Sexuality, Gender, Intimacies

    Uploaded by

    chris
    Using survey data collected in May 2021, this report examines the lifetime, five-year, and past-year experiences of discrimination among LGBT employees. It is one of the first studies to look at LGBT employment discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the year following Bostock v. Clayton County.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Reflection

    New perspectives on understanding of sexuality, gender, intimacies

    Studying this module has opened up new perspectives in my understanding of sexuality,

    gender, health, social change and intimacies. For instance, I have learned that while the

    expression of sexuality in humans may begin in biological sciences, it is significantly

    influenced by culture. The influence of culture on sexual expression happens in relation to

    behaviour, desire as well as meaning, and it is manifested in gender and norms related to

    gender. By taking the cross-cultural perspective, this course has greatly enhanced my

    understanding of how sexuality is related to culture and how it is expressed in gender.

    Growing up, my only understanding of sexuality and gender was the assignment of gender

    roles to male and female, which I believe is defined by the social and cultural context.

    However, going through the anthropology of sexuality has shown me that there are various

    theories of sexuality as an area of human experience and that certain sexual acts, relations and

    desires can be located in certain cultural and historical contexts. For example, Victorian

    sexuality, just like Victorian anthropology, was male biased and only concentrated on the

    views of men about women by men (Fee, 1973). It is also clear to me that class divisions end

    up producing different sexual cultures and that society structures as well as restricts sexual

    expression, just like the institutions and individuals that we interact with daily and they have

    a vested interest in our sexuality. An example is the ways in which the ideas of pleasure and

    danger in sexuality have drastically changed since the first appearance of HIV/AIDS as well

    as other sexually transmitted infections. I believe that from this module, I have gained

    knowledge regarding gender based structures of social classification in a global context and

    consequently developed a critical understanding of the way the lives of women and men are

    represented in ethnography.

    New insights on your main degree discipline


    One of the reasons I chose to undertake this module was to learn how to make analytical

    relations between the study of sexuality and subject matter and also with wider social

    scientific themes, such as in connection with social relatedness, economic change, kinship,

    modernity and uncertain social reactions to modernity. In addition, I also wanted to be able to

    relate ethnographic research on the daily intimate lives to an evaluation of an extensive

    selection of social issues. These aspects of the module, I believe greatly contribute to my

    main degree discipline, especially when it comes to enhancing my critical thinking regarding

    theories as well as implementation practices framework and practices that are presently being

    applied in this field. Furthermore, through this module, I have been able to develop a

    comparative appreciation regarding cultural diversity based on different contemporary case

    studies and many others in a historical context. I am also able to communicate efficiently in

    different written and oral formats on issues regarding anthropological studies of sexuality and

    gender. To this regard, I can commend this module as one that has created a better

    understanding of my degree and it has also provided key insights on what appertains to my

    field of study. For example, if I were to work on a research project, I would be able to

    effectively adjust research methods to the specificity of the research question on sexuality

    issues and also be able to compare the research experiences and findings of researchers on

    different social and cultural contexts.

    Understanding life experiences

    One of the things I have grasped from this module is that social constructs are real, and this

    helps in my understanding of my own life experiences regarding sexuality around me. Things

    like gender, class and race are all social constructions and based on this, they have significant

    impacts on people’s lives in a particular society. Having gone through an anthropological tour

    of different times and places in history, it is clear that the concepts of sexuality and gender

    are not only a social construction but also an aspect of our daily lives that influence what we
    do and how we respond to certain situations. For instance, sex is defined as observable

    physical traits that differentiate between humans as female and male, required for

    reproduction. Based on this, sex is typically acknowledged as dimorphic, although

    understanding the sex difference in humans would not be complete without gender or as

    suggested by Lavenda and Schultz (2013), the cultural construction of beliefs as well as

    behaviours that are considered proper for each sex. As I had mentioned earlier, in every

    society, we grow up into a system with socially constructed gender roles based on our sex

    hence end up behaving in a particular manner because that is the norm. To this regard, this

    course had not only deepened my understanding of the influences of social and cultural

    context on my sexuality, but it has also helped me to place the origins of gendered human

    sexual experience.

    Texts/readings

    Class material for this module has greatly driven my understanding of the anthropology of

    sexuality and to enhance this, I also read different book on the subject. I discovered that

    different authors prefer to approach the topic of sexuality from different angles although the

    objective of providing more knowledge and also to present their understanding remains the

    same. Using sexual experiences, Donnan and Magowan (2010) show that sex is both

    productive as well as reproductive of resulting social identities that, in turn, are limited by

    formal and informal sexual norms and beliefs. According to the author, practices that

    surround sexual embodiments are at some point, considered in terms of political, social,

    physiological and emotional aspects. This perspective informs my understanding that sexual
    cultures vary widely and that ways in which different sexual practices are connected.

    Lancaster and Di Leonardo (1997) also agree with the idea that aspects of sexual embodiment

    belong to the changing world of cultural meanings and a variety of social practices. Based on

    ethnographic research presented in this text, I learned that humans articulate particularly

    varied concepts of sexuality and that these understandings are significantly interconnected

    within compact cultural fabrics.

    References

    Donnan, H. and Magowan, F., 2010. The anthropology of sex. Berg.

    Fee, E., 1973. The sexual politics of Victorian social anthropology. Feminist Studies, 1(3/4),

    pp.23-39.

    Lancaster, R.N. and Di Leonardo, M. eds., 1997. The gender/sexuality reader: culture,

    history, political economy. Psychology Press.

    Lavenda, R.H. and Schultz, E.A., 2013. Anthropology: What does it mean to be human?.

    Oxford University Press.

    You might also like