Human sexuality
This evidence includes the cross-cultural correlation of homosexuality and childhood gender nonconformity, moderate genetic influences found in twin studies, evidence for prenatal hormonal effects on brain organization, the fraternal birth order effect, and the finding that in rare cases where infant males were raised as girls due to physical differences or deformity, they nevertheless turned out attracted to females.
[25] The third, called the corpus spongiosum (spongy body), is a tube that lies centrally beneath the others and expands at the end to form the tip of the penis (glans).
[36] The seminal vesicles secrete fructose for sperm activation and mobilization, prostaglandins to cause uterine contractions that aid movement through the uterus, and bases that help neutralize the acidity of the vagina.
Underneath this muscle and on opposite sides of the vaginal opening are the vestibular bulbs, which help the vagina grip the penis by swelling with blood during arousal.
Lack of sexual desire in men may be caused by physical issues like low testosterone or psychological factors such as anxiety and depression.
[68] As one form of behavior, the psychological aspects of sexual expression have been studied in the context of emotional involvement, gender identity, intersubjective intimacy, and Darwinian reproductive efficacy.
According to one study conducted on college students (Meston & Buss, 2007), the four main reasons for sexual activities are physical attraction, as a means to an end, to increase emotional connection, and to alleviate insecurity.
According to Time magazine and CNN, 74% of teenagers in the United States reported that their major sources of sexual information were their peers and the media, compared to 10% who named their parents or a sex education course.
Some underlying continuities or key regulatory standards contended with the tension between recognition of pleasure, interest, and the need to procreate for the sake of social order and economic survival.
[88][page needed] Once agricultural societies emerged, the sexual framework shifted in ways that persisted for many millennia in much of Asia, Africa, Europe, and parts of the Americas.
He found that most people masturbated, that many engaged in oral sex, that women are capable of having multiple orgasms, and that many men had had some type of homosexual experience in their lifetimes.
Masters and Johnson started to directly observe and record the physical responses in humans that are engaged in sexual activity under laboratory settings.
[103] In reaction, colonizers began to impose their own religious and social norms on indigenous communities, diminishing the role of two-spirit people in native cultures.
Cathy Cohen describes how the welfare queen stereotype demonizes poor black single mothers for deviating from conventions surrounding family structure.
One of their main purposes was to assert that the birth control movement was about empowering women with personal reproductive and economic freedom for those who could not afford to parent a child or simply did not want one.
Birth control finally began to lose stigma in 1936 when the ruling of U.S. v. One Package[119] declared that prescribing contraception to save a person's life or well-being was no longer illegal under the Comstock Law.
The stigma continued to lose credibility as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicly showed her support for birth control through the four terms her husband served (1933–1945).
[120] Today, all Health Insurance Marketplace plans are required to cover all forms of contraception, including sterilization procedures, as a result of The Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.
[126] Gay men from San Francisco and New York City created the Denver Principles, a foundational document that demanded the rights, agency, and dignity of people living with AIDS.
[127] In humans, sexual intercourse has been shown to have health benefits,[128] such as an improved sense of smell,[129] reduction in stress and blood pressure,[130][131] increased immunity,[132] and decreased risk of prostate cancer.
[139][140] A long-term study of 3,500 people between ages 30 and 101 by clinical neuropsychologist David Weeks, MD, head of old-age psychology at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland, said he found that "sex helps you look between four and seven years younger", according to impartial ratings of the subjects' photographs.
[160] The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, music video, pornography, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling, sex work and other occupations.
The "black letter" approach to law focuses on the study of pre-existing legal precedent and attempts to offer a clear framework of rules within which lawyers and others can work.
The law is often slow to intervene in certain forms of coercive behavior that can limit individuals' control over their own sexuality (such as female genital mutilation, forced marriages or lack of access to reproductive health care).
They may also see homosexuality as a form of mental illness, something that ought to be criminalized, an immoral abomination, caused by ineffective parenting, and view same-sex marriage as a threat to society.
[170][171][172] Elaine Pagels says, "By the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine had actually declared that spontaneous sexual desire is the proof of—and penalty for—universal original sin", though that this view goes against "most of his Christian predecessors".
Pope Francis teaches in Amoris laetitia against "an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations.
[180] The Anglican Church teaches that human sexuality is a gift from a loving God designed to be between a man and a woman in a monogamous lifetime union of marriage.
It states that people with same sex attraction are loved by God and are welcomed as full members of the Body of Christ, while the Church leadership has a variety of views in regard to homosexual expression and ordination.
[196] Muslims believe that sexual intercourse is an act of worship that fulfils emotional and physical needs, and that producing children is one way in which humans can contribute to God's creation, and Islam discourages celibacy once an individual is married.
