Human sexual behaviour is highly variable and not tightly linked to biological reproduction. However, it has not been studied as social behaviour until the last 40 years and until recently it is largely deviant behaviour that has gained the attention of sociologists. Sociology has adopted an unnecessarily antibiologistic position and consequently neglected the body. In reviewing sociological approaches to sex I draw on social constructionism, particularly the work of Gagnon and Simon (1974) and their notion of scripts; these can be interpreted as discursive structures defining sexual acts and sexual actors at both the individual and societal level. I outline a range of social constructionist positions in relation to sexuality and adopt a moderately radical but realist one that concedes some place for the physiology of arousal linking the elements of the discursive realm of the sexual in social life. Finding the basic assumptions of symbolic interactionism a fruitful base from which to approach sexual conduct I reject the concept of 'desire' as too complex and obscure to serve as a starting point in understanding the social organisation of sex. A review of the ethnographic observational studies of settings in which men have casual sex shows that beats (public places such as parks and toilets) operate in a similar manner in many countries. Commercial sex venues are more varied. They are safer and more comfortable than beats and may offer private rooms and facilities for esoteric sex such as bondage. Sex in such settings is impersonal and anonymous, costs little effort, time or money, and offers a variety of partners. Interaction is largely nonverbal. Interview studies of men who have casual sex with other men tend to undersample men who are not gay-identified, but they offer insights into men's motivations and understandings. Both kinds of research are necessary. The empirical component of the thesis is a thematic analysis of transcripts from three interview studies of gay men in Sydney done between 1993 and 1997: Negotiating Sex (n = 9), the Sites study (n = 21) and the Seroconversion study (n = 70). All involved detailed narratives of sexual encounters. The analysis takes a situational interactionist approach with a specific focus on practice. Central questions asked are: how does the setting (beat, sex venue, home) affect what happens? What does sex mean to the men, and how does this affect what they do? How do men's sexual skills, tastes and experience relate to their practice? How do men's bodies and their understandings of the body affect their practice? What do different sexual practices mean and how are they organised and negotiated within the encounter? How (if at all) do men integrate considerations of safe sex into their practice? Physical surroundings were found to have a profound effect on practice. Sex venues as cultural institutions enable patterns of practice that do not occur elsewhere. Physical arrangements within beats and venues encourage or enable particular practices, such as oral sex or group sex. Motivations for and meanings of sex to the participants varied widely; these were related to practice within the men's own accounts but not in any clear predictive way. Men's sexual skills, tastes and preferences, which were also very varied, related to their practice. Men made trade-offs between risk and pleasure. Men looked for a range of features in casual partners. Suppression of social cues restricted the range of criteria on which partners were selected, enabling wider choice. Men's bodies affected their practice most strikingly in the issue of erection or the lack of it. Understandings of the body and physiological processes affected men's interpretations of information about HIV risk. These men have a vocabulary of sexual practices within which some common practices are less salient. These practices are socially patterned in ways that benefit men with certain tastes and abilities and frustrate those with others. Safe sex considerations are routinely integrated into sexual practice but in a way that leaves room for considerable risk of HIV transmission. In conclusion I argue that conceptualising sex between men exclusively in terms of gay identity and culture is inappropriate. The outcome of the empirical work confirms the theoretical analysis that found it necessary to incorporate some physiological notions, such as 'libido', into a social constructionist view of sex. The findings and their interpretations have important implications for framing effective HIV prevention programs. Some specific suggestions are made for how this might be done.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/215912 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Richters, Juliet |
| Publisher | University of Sydney. Public Health and Community Medicine |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English, en_AU |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Richters, Juliet;http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/copyright.html |
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