Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone to acts with another person in varying patterns of frequency, for a wide variety of reasons. Sexual activity usually results in sexual arousal and physiological changes in the aroused person, some of which are pronounced while others are more subtle. Sexual activity may also include conduct and activities which are intended to arouse the sexual interest of another or enhance the sex life of another, such as strategies to find or attract partners, or personal interactions between individuals. Sexual activity may follow sexual arousal.
Gender includes the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man, woman, or other gender identity. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures and gender expression. Most cultures use a gender binary, in which gender is divided into two categories, and people are considered part of one or the other ; those who are outside these groups may fall under the umbrella term non-binary. Some societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman", such as the hijras of South Asia; these are often referred to as third genders. Most scholars agree that gender is a central characteristic for social organization.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Judith Pamela Butler is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.
Gender neutrality, also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender. This is in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another. The disparity in gender equality throughout history has had a significant impact on many aspects of society, including marketing, toys, education and parenting techniques. In order to increase gender neutrality in recent years, there has been a societal emphasis on utilizing inclusive language and advocating for equality.
"Lipstick lesbian" is slang for a lesbian who exhibits a greater amount of feminine gender attributes, such as wearing make-up, dresses or skirts, and having other characteristics associated with feminine women. In popular usage, the term is also used to characterize the feminine gender expression of bisexual women, or the broader topic of female–female sexual activity among feminine women.
Philosophy of sex is an aspect of applied philosophy involved with the study of sex and love. It includes both ethics of phenomena such as prostitution, rape, sexual harassment, sexual identity, the age of consent, homosexuality, and conceptual analysis of more universal questions such as "what is sex?" It also includes matters of sexuality and sexual identity and the ontological status of gender. Leading contemporary philosophers of sex include Alan Soble, Judith Butler, and Raja Halwani.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is a book by the philosopher Judith Butler in which the author argues that gender is performative, meaning that it is maintained, created or perpetuated by iterative repetitions when speaking and interacting with each other.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
Childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) is a phenomenon in which prepubescent children do not conform to expected gender-related sociological or psychological patterns, or identify with the opposite sex/gender. Typical behavior among those who exhibit the phenomenon includes but is not limited to a propensity to cross-dress, refusal to take part in activities conventionally thought suitable for the gender and the exclusive choice of play-mates of the opposite sex.
Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations as a whole.
Pornography has been defined as any material in varying forms, including texts, video, photos or audio that is consumed for sexual satisfaction and arousal of an individual or partnership. Pornography would have varying effects in regard to things such as exposure and consumption. The effects of pornography on individuals or their intimate relationships depend on the type of pornography used and differs from person to person. The consumption of Pornographic material could have both positive and negative outcomes.
Sexual script theory is a theory introduced by sociologists John H. Gagnon and William Simon in their 1973 book Sexual Conduct. Its basic principle states that all social behavior, including sexual behavior, is socially scripted. The idea is that sexual scripts are guidelines for appropriate sexual behavior and sexual encounters. Sexual behavior and encounters become behavior which is learned as well as instinctive. Each partner in consensual encounters acts as if they are an actor in a play or film following a script, rather than acting on impulse alone. Research on sexual scripts and sexual script theory has concluded that sexual scripts are gendered.
Men and women use social network services (SNSs) differently and with different frequencies. In general, several researchers have found that women tend to use SNSs more than men and for different and more social purposes.
Gender essentialism is a theory which attributes distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men. Based in essentialism, it holds that there are certain universal, innate, biologically based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women. In Western civilization, it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece. With the advent of Christianity, the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes, male and female, created by God, and that individuals are immutably one or the other. This view remained largely unchanged until the middle of the 19th century. This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology, in Sandra Bem's words, "from God's grand creation [to] its scientific equivalent: evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed.
The social construction of gender is a theory in sociology about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media such as television, film, music, and advertising as objects or sexual beings, in order to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of the women being portrayed, and women in society. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well. The exploitation of women in mass media has been criticized by feminists and other advocates of women's rights, and is a topic of discussion in feminist studies and other fields of scholarship.
Feminist pornography is a genre of film developed by or for those within the sex-positive feminist movement. It was created for the purpose of promoting gender equality by portraying more bodily movements and sexual fantasies of women and members of the LGBT community.
Feminist technoscience is a transdisciplinary branch of science studies which emerged from decades of feminist critique on the way gender and other identity markers are entangled in the combined fields of science and technology. The term technoscience, especially in regard to the field of feminist technoscience studies, seeks to remove the distinction between scientific research and development with applied applications of technology while assuming science is entwined with the common interests of society. As a result, science is suggested to be held to the same level of political and ethical accountability as the technologies which develop from it. Feminist technoscience studies continue to develop new theories on how politics of gender and other identity markers are interconnected to resulting processes of technical change, and power relations of the globalized, material world.
