Historical and Sociocultural Perspectives in Human Sexuality

The terms “sex,” “sexual,” and “sexuality” are seldom defined with precision in the professional literature. Their meaning is generally left to a reader’s intuitive understanding. The term sex may be used to indicate male or female anatomy, the general distinction between male and female genders or between distinctive masculine and feminine behaviors attributed to the two genders, to activities leading to orgasm ( 8 , 9 ) or to penile/vaginal intercourse and reproduction. Sexual and sexuality are used with equal imprecision, referring to the sexual organs, to functions of sexual organs, to sexual drives, or to instincts. Gender, gender identity, and gender roles, on the other hand, have precise definitions derived from recent conceptualizations in psychosexual research. Gender usually indicates the equivalent of male or female anatomic sex. Gender identity refers to one’s personally experienced sexual identity, a persistent individual self-awareness of being either male or female without regard to how or with whom one expresses this identity. Gender role involves everything one says or does to indicate his/her gender identity to others ( 11 ). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.