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- Title
Understanding sexual behavior and its change.
- Authors
Pollak, Michael
- Abstract
Because it is the major channel of HIV transmission, knowledge of sexual behaviour and its change has become of crucial importance. Except for the classical writings and clinical approaches, few systematic social scientific efforts have been undertaken in this field in the past. Knowledge is scattered; systematic comparative efforts are rare. Jose A. Nieto has stressed the valuable contribution of an internationally supported research effort for strengthening the analysis of human sexuality in a long-term perspective. The expected preventative benefits of detailed knowledge about sexual behaviour legitimate this type of research. But this, clearly, does not mean that resistances automatically vanish. Large-scale national surveys on sexual behaviour have to overcome several difficulties. Sexuality is often implicitly understood as a private affair. Secrecy and opaqueness protect behaviours and desires outside the realm of "normality." By definition, research creates transparency. Transmission of AIDS forces one to look at behaviours and practices that are still legally repressed, in several countries, reprehended and discriminated against. Despite liberalizing tendencies in the last decades, inequalities under the law still exist in many countries between heterosexual and homosexual conducts, ranging from the age of sexual consent and indecency rules to censorship of pornography.
- Subjects
SEXUAL psychology; HUMAN sexuality; SOCIAL sciences; COMMUNICABLE diseases; AIDS; SOCIOLOGY
- Publication
Current Sociology, 1992, Vol 40, Issue 3, p85
- ISSN
0011-3921
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/001139292040003010