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Anthro of Sexuality

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ANTHROPOLOGY 327: The Anthropology of Gender
Sexualities

Human sexuality is a very complex topic with several distinct components, including desires, practices, beliefs and attitudes, and identity. Human sexuality is clearly a product of both genetic and environmental factors. Twin studies focusing on homosexuality suggest a 40-60% contribution from either set of factors (the results vary depending on the study). The actual mechanisms for determination, both environmental and genetic, remain unclear at present.
Human sexuality is bewildering in its variety and elaboration. Desire and practice vary along multiple dimensions which interact in complex ways. In consequence, we cannot adequately describe the full range of human sexuality with a single simple term.
Sources for Human Sexuality
Sexuality is one of the most closely regulated activities in every human society. It is therefore difficult to ascertain what is “natural” (biological) and what is cultural (learned). Anthropology has historically shared the general Western reticence regarding sex and has seldom made sexuality a central topic of research.
Margaret Mead and a few others did some research on the topic and it is sometimes included in general ethnographic studies. Proper scholarly study of human sexuality really begins with Alfred Kinsey and continues through Masters and Johnson and the Social Science Survey Project. While there has been a dramatic increase in research on the topic in the past 30 years, it is still relatively little studied, despite the modern
Western obsession with sex.
Because of the strong cultural interventions regarding sex and the lack of systematic research, we must piece together data from a variety of sources to ascertain the basic nature of human sexuality. We primarily rely on several sources to infer this natural state: primate studies, ethnographic data, and contemporary

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