ABSTRACT
Sex is constructed by members of the society; we impute meaning to certain types of sexual contact. Even what constitutes sexuality is constructed. All of us designate what’s sexual and what isn’t. We are sexual because we are social; it is social life that creates, motivates, and shapes our sexuality. The construction process applies not only to infusing phenomena and behavior specifically with sexual meaning but also to filling the content of “sexual” definitions with a certain type of evaluation—positive, negative, or neutral, “normal” or “abnormal,” conventional or deviant. How deviance is socially constructed is central to any understanding of sexual behavior. Sociologically, what defines sexual deviance, as with all other varieties of deviance, is that it is a violation of societal norms and likely to result in the condemnation of the actor. No implication of dysfunction or disorder whatsoever is implied. A variety of dimensions determine judgments of deviance with respect to behavior in the sexual arena. Several include degree of consent, who (or what) the sexual object or partner is, specifically what behavior is engaged in, where it takes place, who engages in the sex act, how often, when, with how many partners, and so on. These dimensions proscribe or render deviant a substantial number of sexual acts.
