ABSTRACT
This chapter speaks Karol Marshall's search for contemporary science and research on sexuality. This search led her to the latest scientific journals, Archives of Sexual Behavior, an online peer-reviewed journal, as well as contemporary textbooks such as Neuroscience and Human Sexuality. Studies of specific sex differences focusing on complex interactions discovered that males, for example, have faster fear conditioning than females. In 2012, Fausto-Sterling illustrated how the contemporary cultural preference for certain colored clothes for babies and children can be understood as a result of behavioral shaping of gender roles. Neuroscientist LeVay summarized studies of sexual object choice, suggesting that sexual orientation could be viewed as an aspect of gender. Relational psychoanalysis has a long history within the New York University Postdoctoral Program, including ongoing dialogue with other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, and feminist and queer studies. Sex, gender, and desire emerge over time through complex interactions of social, cultural, psychological, biological, psychodynamic, neurological, and genetic forces.
