Adakemisk avhandling--Gothenburg. / Extra t.p., with thesis statement, inserted. Bibliography: p. 89-99.

Adakemisk avhandling--Gothenburg. / Extra t.p., with thesis statement, inserted. Bibliography: p. 89-99.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Queen's University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 218-237) and index.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. xi-xix).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Freie Universität Berlin, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-208).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Open access. Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-214). Print copy also available.

Feederism is a fat fetish subculture that eroticizes eating, feeding, and gaining weight. This thesis attempts to explain the practice of Feederism using an evolutionary approach. Chapter one examines the historical and cross-cultural meaning of fat and its association with fertility, health, and beauty. Chapter one also reviews the current literature on fat admiration and Feederism, and introduces some possible explanations for what Feederism is, and how it can be conceptualized. Chapter two describes a case study that was conducted on a female member of the Feederism community. The results of this case study add support to the hypothesis that Feederism is paraphilic. Chapter three describes a psychophysiological study that tested how members of the general population respond to and rate feeding stimuli. This study was conducted to determine whether Feederism is an exaggeration of a more normative and functional mate selection strategy. The results of this study demonstrate that males and females both respond to and rate feeding stimuli similarly. No definitive conclusions were drawn with respect to the exaggeration hypothesis, because, although participants did subjectively rate the feeding stimuli as more sexually arousing than neutral stimuli, they did not genitally respond to the feeding stimuli significantly more than to the neutral stimuli. Chapter four summarizes the results of the two studies and discusses how these finding might inform future research on paraphilias, courtship, and intimacy. / viii, 128 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

This dissertation examines the behaviours and values that qualify as male sexual deviance in Victorian novels from the mid-century and 1890s. Male seducers from mid-nineteenth-century fiction have often been described as later versions of the eighteenth-century libertine or rake. This dissertation argues for a critical reorientation of these figures towards thefin-de-siecle. Specifically, I argue that mid-century depictions of vexed masculine behaviour anticipate important patterns in the representation of male sexuality and morality, and that they gesture to later-century portrayals of masculinity embodied in figures like the dandy or New Man. Examining fiction from these two periods, which are conventionally treated as ideologically discrete, reveals a dialogue about male sexuality between mid- and late-century novels. Indeed, although the 1890s was a decade of sexual change, a literary discourse questioning the boundaries of male sexuality was in formation throughout the Victorian period. [...] / Cette dissertation examine les attitudes et valeurs considérées comme participant de la deviance sexuelle masculine dans la littérature de l’époque victorienne, de 1850 à 1890. Les personnages de séducteurs présentés par la littérature romanesque du 1ge siècle sont souvent considérés comme ayant leur origine dans les personnages de libertin ou de débauché dépeints par la littérature du 18e siècle. Cette dissertation suggère, cependant, que ce type de personnage a fait l’objet d’une réorientation critique vers la fin de siècle. En particulier, il est suggéré que les représentations, au milieu du siècle, de ces comportements masculins, anticipent d’importants changements dans la représentation de la sexualité et de la moralité masculines, tels qu’incarnés par les personnages du dandy et de l’Homme Nouveau. L’examen des oeuvres littéraires datant des périodes de la mi-siècle et de la fin de siècle, deux périodes habituellement considérées comme étant distinctes, révèle un dialogue entre celles-ci sur le sujet de la sexualité masculine. Ainsi, alors que les années 1890 sont caractérisées par des changements quant à l’approche à la sexualité, un discours littéraire remettant en question les limites de la sexualité masculine existait dès la période victorienne. [...]

The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is focused on the main theories of human mating strategies, such as sociosexual orientation and sexual strategies theory, which emphasizes intersexual differences as a result from the asymmetry of parental investment, and strategic pluralism theory, which highlights intrasexual variation in mating behavior. The second part consists of one review article published in the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science and one original research article published in The Journal of Sex Research, a peer-reviewed journal. In this part we explored possible evolutionary origins and adaptive values of paraphilic interests and their prevalence in the Czech population. The third part consist of one article published in the peer-reviewed journal Personality and Individual Differences and two research studies which are currently under peer-review in two international journals. The main aim of this part was to test whether individual differences in femininity-masculinity, Big Five personality traits, and propensity to sexual excitation and inhibition are associated with individual sociosexual orientation. A further aim was to test whether attention towards sexual stimuli is affected by an individual's level of sociosexual orientation and by depressive...