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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedEssentialism vs. social constructionism in the study of human sexuality - The Use of Theory in Research and Scholarship on Sexuality
Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 1998 by John D. DeLamater, Janet Shibley Hyde
Sexual orientation. The biological theories of sexual orientation discussed earlier all include the assumption that there are two distinct types of people, heterosexual and homosexual, and that each person is one or the other. If a preference for partners of the same gender is genetic, or due to differences in hormone levels or brain anatomy, one would expect at least some similarities in gays or lesbians (not to mention heterosexual men and women) across cultures. Social constructionists, on the other hand, expect substantial variation across cultures in the behaviors associated with homosexuality and heterosexuality. Blackwood (1993) concluded, based on a review of the anthropological literature, that homosexuality varies greatly from one society to another:
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Patterns of homosexual behavior
reflect the value systems and social
structure of the different societies
in which they are found. The
ideology regarding male and female
roles, kinship and marriage
regulations, and the sexual division
of labor are all important in
the construction of homosexual behavior.
(p. 331)
In fact, there is tremendous variability within a single culture in sexual behavior and lifestyles. One can compare samples of gay and heterosexual men on quantitative measures such as number of sexual partners and find significant mean differences. Such gross comparisons encourage us to ignore or overlook the celibate and faithful gay men and the extremely promiscuous married heterosexual men. Such complexity is inconsistent with sociobiological and evolutionary models (Fausto-Sterling, 1986).
Furthermore, as noted earlier, proponents of biological theories of orientation assume constancy over (historical) time. They also assume constancy over the life of the individual. One is heterosexual or homosexual for life. There are societies in which sexual orientation seems fixed and is associated with institutionalized roles that one occupies across the life span. There are other societies, however, in which the boundaries between sexual orientations are fluid, and persons move back and forth during the course of their lives. One notable case is the Sambia, as reported by Herdt (1984). In this culture, male youth are initiated into a stage of exclusively homosexual behavior. Following marriage, there is a period during which they have sexual contact with men/youth and their wives. Following the birth of children, they become exclusively heterosexual. The Sambia have no concept of homosexuality as a lifelong trait or lifestyle.
The Social Construction of Gender
One of the topics of greatest interest to social constructionists has been gender and its social construction (e.g., Bohan, 1993; Lorber & Farrell, 1991; Unger, 1989). A common misunderstanding is that the social construction of gender means that gender-typed attributes are simply the result of socialization (Bohan, 1993). The social constructionist position, however, as articulated earlier in this article, is considerably more complex than that. Social constructionists see gender not as a trait of the individual--as essentialists do--but rather as a process external to the individual. Gender is defined by interactions between people, by language, and by the discourse of a culture.
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