Culture is not static, it changes as people and practices do. To define culture the many ideas and conventions of that constitute culture must be considered. The ideas of place, ideas, and the subcultures that impact contemporary culture are important to consider. Cultural studies takes into account the many facets of culture and utilizes these to answer questions concerning it. Questions can inquire about many aspects of culture. In enquiring about the multitude of ideas that encompass culture, cultural studies questions what culture actually is. Studies of praxis, emotions, sex, and breast cancer are but a few of the themes that are examines in cultural studies. Cultural studies examines the many different aspects of culture that change and …show more content…
It is a subject that is often considered private, and an inappropriate subject to discuss publicly. Studying sexual habits and depictions of sex, provides insight into a significant characteristic of culture. In studying porn (a consequential aspect of cultural ideologies surrounding sex), as Alison Lee has in her article The New Face of Porn, we can observe how sex is packaged, perceived, and sold, in this culture. Lee describes her experience working in the porn industry and how it changed her, “seeing the world of Big Porn showed me that not only are women left out, but men are presented with an incredibly bland palate to work from and to mold their own sexuality.”(Lee). If the options that heterosexual women have for pornography are limited and the options for men are ‘bland’ then it suggests that sexuality is flat. It suggests that all men will generally enjoy the same thing while all women will not wish to consume porn. This informs the misleading ideologies that are often present in culture about sexuality. In studying the misleading conceptions of sex, often supported and established by the porn industry, a dimension of sexuality can be examined in defining culture. When we dig into what we consider erotic or sexual and our emotion’s impact on that, we are inevitably analyzing culture and what it …show more content…
In the study of breast cancer culture, we can observe the practices and emotions that occur around this specific illness. Breast cancer culture is composed of pink ribbons, overwhelming media support, and insistent positivity (Ehrenreich, Pezzullo). This culture Ehrenreich observes belittling and ‘infantilizing’ (46 Ehrenreich) aspects of this culture from a patient’s point of view. She attempts to ascertain the reasons behind this in her article, Welcome to
(Krakauer 66) The author explains that even though in today's world, especially in America, people are not comfortable with the idea of sexual things. However, he explains it that actually portrays how it is today. It is a topic that most people don't want to discuss or mention something into this only except for when there is some story or drama. It then entices us Americans and we want to look into it more and more.
Anne McClintock wrote her essay “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: Portraying the female and male orgasm” to examine pornography and how it has changed throughout history and its effects on how women perform as sexual beings. McClintock focuses on the various roles of pornography such as its emphasis on voyeurism, pleasure, and the male ego. She wants her readers to know that women are still not represented in pornography to satisfy their own desires, but they are there to cater to men and their subconscious. I will analyze how McClintock argues that due to the history of sexism towards women, the roles that men and women have in pornography are inherently different because of the societal belief that women are only seen as objects of sexual desire and are solely there to satisfy the male audience.
There has been an evaluation of sexual behavior over the past centuries, and it has demonstrated that there were acts that were considered taboo, homosexuality, bestiality and so on. Due to the emergence of most of the cultures, the history of sexual behavior shows an increase in the collective supervision of sexual abuse, moral codes were developed in the process. The sexual activity of some cultures have been “detailed in art, literature, poetry, mythology, and theater”(pg. 24). Even same-sex behavior was actually displayed in visual arts.
Anything in relation to sexuality will always be controversial. There will always be different opinions, outcomes and even consequences towards sex related topics. I want to first investigate the key concepts and beneficial outcomes of the website by analyzing a three-way article review by Zoe Grimm, Kit Bangles and Karly Kingsley. These three women of the Vodka Press are known for their personal-oriented blogs and podcast who decided to personally experiment and critique MakeLoveNotPorn. “I applaud MLNP’s ideology, to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people who believe that the sex we have in our everyday life is the hottest sex there is.”
It showed the relationship of these sexual identity changes with traditional society and modern culture. In today’s world, where technology grows with a fast pace, humans are ready to do everything what will satisfy their mental needs and physical ideals. This book talked about the role of religion in today’s world, conflicts in society, emotions and social movements and sociology and grace. This book is very useful in context of understanding and accepting changes in sexual identity, what is very often in Western Europe and North America. Also, Cooper explained how these changes are rarely accepted in Eastern Europe and Asia.
This affects what filmmakers compose which also effects what individuals watch, this all falls back onto the MPAA and the control they have on the film industry. Media has such an intense influence on society and the view of many realities, film is a main aspect of that. If the MPAA was using their power to produce acceptance and understanding of sexuality it would have a more positive effect on
In this way, discourses of sexuality catergorise females as whores or virgins, good or bad. Females are demonized for embracing their sexuality but also shamed for repressing it. Through this, women are shown that instead of embracing their sexuality, they are to ‘perform’ it for the pleasure of the man. As Garner (et al. 1998,
He talked about how the experts began examining sexuality in a scientific manner in order to learn the “truth” of sex. He dismissed the notion that sex was a repressed topic to talk about in the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. He said that in fact, it was during this time that people started talking more about sex. He argued that this hypothesis of not
Culture is a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society. It has patterned and predictable form and content to a degree—yet is variable from individual to individual within a given society. Culture is changeable over time. In fact, one of culture’s most predictable aspects is its constant state of change. It changes because people learn culture.
Inside and beyond the myth and the social impact of the subject as One or Substance. Alan H. Goldman’s essay ‘Plain Sex’ is a central contribution to the academic debate about sex within the analytic area, which has been developing since the second half of the ‘90s in Western countries. Goldman’s purpose is encouraging debate on the concept of sex without moral, social and cultural implications or superstitious superstructures. He attempts to define “sexual desire” and “sexual activity” in its simplest terms, by discovering the common factor of all sexual events, i.e. “the desire for physical contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces; sexual activity is activity which tends to fulfill such desire of the agent” (Goldman, A., 1977, p 40).
It’s a cultural production that represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse. Sex has no history but sexuality does. French Philosopher Michel Foucault thought that sexuality was, “a set of effects produced in bodies, behaviors, and social relations by a certain deployment.” Sexuality for a person can be narrowed down to what a person is attracted to, their desires, and pleasures. In the article, “Is There a History of Sexuality?”
Pornography is one of those terms that people know about and even engage in but are afraid to talk about. They way people have seen and engage in pornography have changed throughout the ages. People have developed a love and a hate towards pornography. For myself, I think that pornography is a good way to explore your sexuality. Pornography is “a graphic display of human sexuality”.
Culture is the way of life. Culture is generally the beliefs, behaviors, practices, and artifacts a social group shares with each other through commonality. This is rather interchanged with “society” which is difference because society talks about the people who share a common territory or definable region and culture. Culture will not exists without a society, and neither would society exists without culture. Culture consists of two types: material culture, the tangible objects that may be used as symbols to cultural ideas or belongings to society, and nonmaterial culture, the ideas and attitudes of a society, of which both types are linked to each other.
A late 1970s study concluded that our “male-dominated society” has shaped sexual activity around male-preferred norms (Clark III, Hatfield). Also, the fear of AIDS has shaped intercourse activity by making, both, males and females more cautious. While both perspectives have reasonable arguments, there is no doubt that males and females are “differentially interested in sexual activities” (Clark III, Hatfield). “Gender Differences” continues with three sections about experiments and studies done to provide insight on men and women’s true sexual desires. Studies performed in 1948, 1953, and 1974 conclude that men become more aroused from erotica literature and tapes compared to women.
“Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice.” (Kutchinsky B. 1991) The word ‘pornography’ acquires and bears a constant negative connotation, the word itself encapsulates the abhorring behaviour of exploiting women’s rights and rape fantasies. With a long history, from the beginning of Playboy in the 1950’s (Sanburn, 2011), pornography has progressed hugely and is becoming more normalised and accepted. The pornography industry is predominantly catered to the male perspective, hence the male viewpoint portrayed against the female viewpoint portrayed in pornography.