Those who ascribe to the essentialist approach to sexuality conceptually believe in an ahistorical, acultural, and presocial understanding of sexuality; that sexuality has been a consistent, unchanging reality or essence shared among the members of human civilization (Seidman 26). Typically, sexuality essentialists’ base their belief in biomedical arguments -- citing studies that attest to how genes, hormones, and other biological developmental parts of the human body create a fixed desire for heterosexual sexual interactions which trumps any extraneous background variables. This implies that there is factual causation for homosexaulity primarily due to biological abnormalities within homosexuals. Essentialism isn’t limited to those who identify
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In general social constructionism is understood as the practice of knowledge that establishes realities as socially constructed by humans in our interactions with one another. Unlike sexuality essentialists, social constructionists do not believe anyone is born with any predisposition toward a particular sexual preferences. Instead, they believe that sociohistorical contexts -- or the environment, both material and socially constructed, one grows up in -- are instrumental in understanding how sexaulity is learned and then performed because society and politics are both responsible with shaping contemporary discourse around sexuality, regardless if this process happens over long stretches of time. Society is so much involved with shaping normative sexualities and enforcing stereotypes as social norms that it even has the power to pathologize other non-heteronormative sexaulties (Seidman 39). Social constructionists believe that predisposed love to only one sex is a false concept invented by modern Western society, and fails to accurately describe the development of human sexuality in non-Western cultures -- what, sociologist, Jeffrey Weeks explores in a chapter titled “The Invention of …show more content…
I could cite my curiosity of wanting a deeper understanding of the world around me, but I know that due to not having a stable sense of sexaulity or a preffered gender presentation when in primary school, arguments of biology, the bible, and other religious texts were not convincing. I recall a specific instance in middle school where I sat in the living room of my family’s apartment as President Obama delivered a speech in favor of marriage equality. Upon its ending, my mom, a devout Muslim and Afro-Palestinian immigrant, blurted, "Why do the gays need rights?" I remember telling her that she shouldn't be saying things like that, how it wasn't about personal opinions, and her responding, "Why does that matter? Are you one of the gays?” Her explicitly essentialist conflation of support of queer rights with identifying as queer only is the tip of the iceberg of instances that legitimize the spectrum and social influences of sexuality. For my parents, practices of Islam impacted their tolerance of homosexuality and narrow perception of sexuality. For my mother, specifically, living in a country where homosexuality was criminal, Western embracement of queer hood was equally perplexing as it was sinful to her. Therefore, upon entering university
In general social constructionism is understood as the practice of knowledge that establishes realities as socially constructed by humans in our interactions with one another. Unlike sexuality essentialists, social constructionists do not believe anyone is born with any predisposition toward a particular sexual preferences. Instead, they believe that sociohistorical contexts -- or the environment, both material and socially constructed, one grows up in -- are instrumental in understanding how sexaulity is learned and then performed because society and politics are both responsible with shaping contemporary discourse around sexuality, regardless if this process happens over long stretches of time. Society is so much involved with shaping normative sexualities and enforcing stereotypes as social norms that it even has the power to pathologize other non-heteronormative sexaulties (Seidman 39). Social constructionists believe that predisposed love to only one sex is a false concept invented by modern Western society, and fails to accurately describe the development of human sexuality in non-Western cultures -- what, sociologist, Jeffrey Weeks explores in a chapter titled “The Invention of …show more content…
I could cite my curiosity of wanting a deeper understanding of the world around me, but I know that due to not having a stable sense of sexaulity or a preffered gender presentation when in primary school, arguments of biology, the bible, and other religious texts were not convincing. I recall a specific instance in middle school where I sat in the living room of my family’s apartment as President Obama delivered a speech in favor of marriage equality. Upon its ending, my mom, a devout Muslim and Afro-Palestinian immigrant, blurted, "Why do the gays need rights?" I remember telling her that she shouldn't be saying things like that, how it wasn't about personal opinions, and her responding, "Why does that matter? Are you one of the gays?” Her explicitly essentialist conflation of support of queer rights with identifying as queer only is the tip of the iceberg of instances that legitimize the spectrum and social influences of sexuality. For my parents, practices of Islam impacted their tolerance of homosexuality and narrow perception of sexuality. For my mother, specifically, living in a country where homosexuality was criminal, Western embracement of queer hood was equally perplexing as it was sinful to her. Therefore, upon entering university