ABSTRACT
Sexuality is generally taken to refer to the social experience and expression of physical bodily desires, real or imagined, by or for others or for oneself. It encompasses erotic desires, identities and practices. Seemingly one of the most private, intimate aspects of our lives, sociologists have argued that sexuality is fundamentally social and political. This is because sexuality is experienced and expressed within relations of power and exchange and what we think of as sexual varies historically and culturally as well as in different social contexts. Sociologists have therefore argued that no human sexual behaviour or practice can be divorced from the social and political circumstances in which it takes place, and the social relations within which it is embedded. This means that even individual sex acts (such as masturbation or other forms of auto-eroticism) are social acts because the way in which we think about and make sense of them is shaped by a range of social values, attitudes, norms and sanctions. Yet sexuality remains something of a neglected topic in sociology when compared to say social class or the mass media, brought onto the sociological agenda only relatively recently. Largely as a result of the contribution of feminist sociologists and political activists sexuality has now begun to emerge as a legitimate focus of sociological concern. Indeed, that New Right movements in many Western societies have mobilised considerable political energies through their emphasis on the sanctity of the family, hostility to gay and lesbian sexuality and to ‘sexual deviance’ of various kinds is, as Jeff Weeks (1991, p. 12) has noted, something of a ‘back-handed compliment to the success of feminism’.
