Human sexuality

Before the rise of agriculture, groups of hunter-gatherers and nomadic groups inhabited the world. These groups had less restrictive sexual standards that emphasized sexual pleasure and enjoyment, but with definite rules and constraints. Some underlying continuities or key regulatory standards contended with the tension between recognition of pleasure, interest, and the need to procreate for the sake of social order and economic survival. Hunter-gatherers also placed high value on certain types of sexual symbolism.

A common tension in hunter-gatherer societies is expressed in their art, which emphasized male sexuality and prowess, but also blurred gender lines in sexual matters. One example of these male-dominated portrayals is the Egyptian creation myth, in which the sun god Atum masturbates in the water, creating the Nile River. In Sumerian myth, the gods' semen filled the Tigris.

Once agricultural societies emerged, the sexual framework shifted in ways that persisted for many millennia in much of Asia, Africa, Europe, and parts of the Americas. One common characteristic new to these societies was the collective supervision of sexual behavior due to urbanization and the growth of population and population density. Children would commonly witness parents having sex because many families shared the same sleeping quarters. Due to land ownership, determination of children's paternity became important, and society and family life became patriarchal. These changes in sexual ideology were used to control female sexuality and to differentiate standards by gender. With these ideologies, sexual possessiveness and increases in jealousy emerged.

While retaining the precedents of earlier civilizations, each classical civilization established a somewhat distinctive approach to gender, artistic expression of sexual beauty, and to behaviors such as homosexuality. Some of these distinctions are portrayed in sex manuals, which were also common among civilizations in China, Greece, Rome, Persia, and India; each has its own sexual history.

Before the High Middle Ages, homosexual acts appear to have been ignored or tolerated by the Christian church. During the 12th century, hostility toward homosexuality began to spread throughout religious and secular institutions. By the end of the 19th century, it was viewed as a pathology.

During the beginning of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, many changes in sexual standards occurred. New artificial birth control devices such as the condom and diaphragm were introduced. Doctors started claiming a new role in sexual matters, urging that their advice was crucial to sexual morality and health. New pornographic industries grew, and Japan adopted its first laws against homosexuality. In Western societies, the definition of homosexuality was constantly changing; Western influence on other cultures became more prevalent. New contacts created serious issues around sexuality and sexual traditions. There were also major shifts in sexual behavior. During this period, puberty began occurring at younger ages, so a new focus on adolescence as a time of sexual confusion and danger emerged. There was a new focus on the purpose of marriage; it was increasing regarded as being for love rather than only for economics and reproduction.

Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud adopted more accepting stances toward homosexuality; Ellis said homosexuality was inborn and therefore not immoral, not a disease, and that many homosexuals made significant contributions to society. Freud wrote that all human beings as capable of becoming either heterosexual or homosexual; neither orientation was assumed to be innate.

Alfred Kinsey initiated the modern era of sex research. He collected data from questionnaires given to his students at Indiana University, but then switched to personal interviews about sexual behaviors. Kinsey and his colleagues sampled 5,300 men and 5,940 women. He found that most people masturbated, that many engaged in oral sex, that women are capable of having multiple orgasms, and that many men had had some type of homosexual experience in their lifetimes.

Before William Masters, a physician, and Virginia Johnson, a behavioral scientist, the study of anatomy and physiological studies of sex was still limited to experiments with laboratory animals. Masters and Johnson started to directly observe and record the physical responses in humans that are engaged in sexual activity under laboratory settings. They observed 10,000 episodes of sexual acts between 312 men and 382 women. This led to methods of treating clinical problems and abnormalities. Masters and Johnson opened the first sex therapy clinic in 1965. In 1970, they described their therapeutic techniques in their book, Human Sexual Inadequacy.

The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, classified homosexuality as a mental illness, and more specifically, a "sociopathic personality disturbance". This definition remained the professional understanding of homosexuality until 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from their list of diagnoses for mental disorders. Through her research of heterosexual and homosexual men, Evelyn Hooker revealed that there was no correlation between homosexuality and psychological maladjustment, and her findings played a pivotal role in shifting the scientific community away from the perspective that homosexuality was something that needed to be treated or cured.

In her book, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia, Laura Stoler investigates how the The Netherlands colonists used sexual control and gender-specific sexual sanctions to distinguish between the rulers from the ruled and enforce colonial domination onto the people of Indonesia.

In America, there are 155 native tribes that are recorded to have embraced two-spirit people within their tribes, but the total number of tribes could be greater than what is documented. Two-spirit people were and still are members of communities who do not fall under Western gender categories of male and female, but rather under a "third gender" category. This system of gender contradicts both the gender binary and the assertion that sex and gender are the same. Instead of conforming to traditional roles of men and women, two-spirit fill a special niche in their communities.

For example, two-spirited people are commonly revered for possessing special wisdom and spiritual powers. Two-spirited people also can take part in marriages, either monogamous and polygamous ones. Historically, European colonizers perceived relationships involving two-spirited people as homosexuality, and therefore believed in the moral inferiority of native people. In reaction, colonizers began to impose their own religious and social norms on indigenous communities, diminishing the role of two-spirit people in native cultures. Within reservations, the Religious Crime Code of the 1880s explicitly aimed to "aggressively attack Native sexual and marriage practices". The goal of colonizers was for native peoples to assimilate into Euro-American ideals of family, sexuality, gender expression, and more.

The link between constructed sexual meanings and racial ideologies has been studied. According to Joane Nagel, sexual meanings are constructed to maintain racial-ethnic-national boundaries by the denigration of "others" and regulation of sexual behavior within the group. She writes, "both adherence to and deviation from such approved behaviors, define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes". In the United States people of color face the effects of colonialism in different ways with stereotypes such as the Mammy and Jezebel for Black women; lotus blossom and dragon lady for Asian women; and the spicy Latina. These stereotypes contrast with standards of sexual conservatism, creating a dichotomy that dehumanizes and demonizes the stereotyped groups. An example of a stereotype that lies at the intersection of racism, classism, and misogyny is the archetype of the welfare queen. Cathy Cohen describes how the welfare queen stereotype demonizes poor black single mothers for deviating from conventions surrounding family structure.

According to the Swedish government, "sexual rights include the right of all people to decide over their own bodies and sexuality" and "reproductive rights comprise the right of individuals to decide on the number of children they have and the intervals at which they are born." Such rights are not accepted in all cultures, with practices such criminalization of consensual sexual activities (such as those related to homosexual acts and sexual acts outside marriage), acceptance of forced marriage and child marriage, failure to criminalize all non-consensual sexual encounters (such as marital rape), female genital mutilation, or restricted availability of contraception, being common around the world.

Birth control finally began to lose stigma in 1936 when the ruling of U.S. v. One Package declared that prescribing contraception to save a person's life or well-being was no longer illegal under the Comstock Law. Although opinions varied on when birth control should be available to women, by 1938, there were 347 birth control clinics in the United States but advertising their services remained illegal.

The stigma continued to lose credibility as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicly showed her support for birth control through the four terms her husband served (1933–1945). However, it was not until 1966 that the Federal Government began to fund family planning and subsidized birth control services for lower-class women and families at the order of President Lyndon B. Johnson. This funding continued after 1970 under the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act. Today, all Health Insurance Marketplace plans are required to cover all forms of contraception, including sterilization procedures, as a result of The Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.

Activism during the AIDS crisis focused on promoting safe sex practices to raise awareness that the disease could be prevented. The "Safe Sex is Hot Sex" campaign, for example, aimed to promote the use of condoms. Campaigns by the U.S. government, however, diverged from advocacy of safe sex. In 1987, Congress even denied federal funding from awareness campaigns that "promoted or encouraged, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities". Instead, campaigns by the government primarily relied on scare tactics in order to instill fear in men who had sex with other men.

In addition to prevention campaigns, activists also sought to counteract narratives that led to the "social death" for people living with AIDS. Gay men from San Francisco and New York City created the Denver Principles, a foundational document that demanded the rights, agency, and dignity of people living with AIDS.

In his article "Emergence of Gay Identity and Gay Social Movements in Developing Countries", Matthew Roberts discusses how international AIDS prevention campaigns created opportunities for gay men to interact with other openly gay men from other countries. These interactions allowed western gay "culture" to be introduced to gay men in countries where homosexuality was not an important identifier. Thus, group organizers self-identified as gay more and more, creating the basis for further development of gay consciousness in different countries.

A long-term study of 3,500 people between ages 30 and 101 by clinical neuropsychologist David Weeks, MD, head of old-age psychology at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland, said he found that "sex helps you look between four and seven years younger", according to impartial ratings of the subjects' photographs. Exclusive causation, however, is unclear, and the benefits may be indirectly related to sex and directly related to significant reductions in stress, greater contentment, and better sleep that sex promotes.

State intervention with regards to sexuality also occurs, and is considered acceptable by some, in certain instances (e.g. same-sex sexual activity or prostitution).

The legal systems surrounding prostitution are a topic of debate. Proponents for criminalization argue that sex work is an immoral practice that should not be tolerated, while proponents for decriminalization point out how criminalization does more harm than good. Within the feminist movement, there is also a debate over whether sex work is inherently objectifying and exploitative or whether sex workers have the agency to sell sex as a service.

When sex work is criminalized, sex workers do not have support from law enforcement when they fall victim to violence. In a 2003 survey of street-based sex workers in NYC, 80% said they had been threatened with or experienced violence, and many said the police were no help. 27% said they had experienced violence from police officers themselves. Different identities such as being black, transgender, or poor can result in a person being more likely to be criminally profiled by the police. For example, in New York, there is a law against "loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution", which has been nicknamed the "walking while trans" law because of how often transgender women are assumed to be sex workers and arrested for simply walking out in public.

Many religious conservatives, especially those of Abrahamic religions and Christianity in particular, tend to view sexuality in terms of behavior (i.e. homosexuality or heterosexuality is what someone does). These conservatives tend to promote celibacy for gay people, and may also tend to believe that sexuality can be changed through conversion therapy or prayer to become an ex-gay. They may also see homosexuality as a form of mental illness, something that ought to be criminalized, an immoral abomination, caused by ineffective parenting, and view same-sex marriage as a threat to society.

On the other hand, most religious liberals define sexuality-related labels in terms of sexual attraction and self-identification. They may also view same-sex activity as morally neutral and as legally acceptable as opposite-sex activity, unrelated to mental illness, genetically or environmentally caused (but not as the result of bad parenting), and fixed. They also tend to be more in favor of same-sex marriage.