Sex, Economics, Politics: Sexuality as a Social Phenomenon

Economics can influence sexual experiences as it determines societies’ abilities to support expensive medical research (Viagra, AIDS treatments) and individuals’ abilities to establish environments conducive to sexual pleasure (a private bedroom, freedom from unwanted pregnancy). At the same time, sexuality helps to structure economic inequalities: women bear a disproportionate part of the economic burden posed by non-marital children; sexual minorities face discrimination at the workplace.

Politics calls attention both to informal power arrangements and to formal institutions. The first includes power differentials such as those between male and female, adult and juvenile, colonizing and colonized sexual partners. The latter draws attention to the ways states and other powerful institutions (churches, medical societies, media) structure and are structured by sexual practice and experience.

Participants

Florence E. Babb (Anthropology/Women’s Studies) "Changing Sexual Communities in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua"

Jane Desmond (American Studies) "Performing Sexuality in the Public Sphere:  Gay and Lesbian Marches on Washington"

Gary M. Segura (Political Science) "Social Choices, Sexual Orientation, and Military Service:  How Repression and Resistance Interact to Reshape the Place of Gays and Lesbians in America"

Amy C. Butler (Social Work) "The Effect of Social policy on Women’s Choices and Marriage, Childbearing, and Same-Sex Partnering"

Elizabeth Heineman, Convener (History) "Sexual Consumer Culture, Business, and the Law in Nazi and Postwar Germany"

Maria José Somerlate Barbosa (Spanish and Portuguese)  "From Mucamas to Mulatas: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Brazil"