Abstract
From a radical-critical perspective, the gap between the everyday world as experienced and the sociological world as theorized is nowhere so apparent as in the area of human sexuality. Conventional research on human sexuality appears atheoretical, ahistorical, and reductionistic. The viability of a radical-critical alternative is demonstrated with examples of research and theory in three sub-areas: (1) sexuality as identity (socialization approach); (2) sexuality as ideology (comparative and historical approach); and (3) sexuality as power (political-economic approach). The paper discusses three distinguishing characteristics of the radical-critical perspective. The approach: (1) is holistic and historical; (2) urges theoretical explanation for each topic of sexuality under investigation; and (3) offers a critical evaluation of thestatus quo and calls for radical change.
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Reference Notes
Radical-critics question the terms “premarital” and “extramarital” as based on the assumption that everyone marries. Sprey (1969) theorizes, more realistically, that sexuality in American society is becoming an institution autonomous of marriage and family.
Laws (1979:184–186) offers a critical overview of Reiss' work on standards of premarital sex behavior. Recently, Reiss (1981) has also evaluated the field.
See Osmond (1981b, 1983) for an overview of critical theory and radical structuralism with specific applications to family sociology. My interpretation of “critical humanism” and “radical structuralism” owes much to Burrell and Morgan (1979), who offer an incisive analysis of the interrelationship of critical and radical theories with such tratitional theories as functionalism, symbolic interactionism, conflict theory, etc.
Pagels (1976), studying early Christian texts (gnostic works), sees that, before the Roman church codified its sense of the orthodox, a theology had been proposed that was clearly respectful of a female principle. However, orthodoxy later repudiated this approach.
Boskind-Lodahl (1976), studying anorexia nervosa in young women, supports the thesis that obsessive dieting constitutes not only an acceptance of the feminine ideal but an exaggerated striving to achieve it. Typical of women involved in the anorexia-bulimarexia cycle are: a disproportinate concern with pleasing others; a reliance on others to validate their sense of worth; an inability to see self as separate from others; dependency, vulnerability to rejection, and low self-esteem.
Currently, an estimated 30 million women in the world are suffering the results of clitoridectomy. It is practiced in more than 26 countries with such justifications as custom, cleanliness, insurance of virginity at marriage, and prevention of female promiscuity by physically reducing sexual desire, (see Hosken, 1979).
The recent trial of the “Yorkshire Ripper,” who killed 13 women and attempted to murder another seven, illustrates the legal exoneration of the sexual aspects of male aggression (Hollway, 1981).
Rape is only one aspect of sexual violence. For a broad, international analysis of gender stratification and “sexual slavery,” see Barry (1979). For a brilliant study of the economics of sexual harassment of working women, see MacKinnon (1979).
With cross-cultural, ethnographic data, Chappell (1976) finds that a number of tribal societies use group rape to punish women and to enforce male property rights.
It should be noted that a radical-critical approach would not favor family sociologists' efforts at formal theory construction, i.e., the goal of arranging existing generalizations (often derived form survey research) into axiomatic systems to derive a set of laws matching those of the natural sciences. See Osmond (1981b, 1983) for a discussion of the radical-critical position.
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Osmond, M.W. The politics of sexuality: Toward a radical-critical approach. J Fam Econ Iss 6, 48–70 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01083253
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01083253