Social, Cultural, Belief and

Sexual Value
5300543 : Sexual Behavior and
Socio-Cultural Issues in Human
Sexuality and Reproductive Health

Khemika Yamarat, Ph.D.

CPHS, CU.
21 January, 2021
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Sexuality, Faith and
Culturehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svC0IUBz-g

◼ 3.2 minutes

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All people are sexual from birth to death

“Everyone is sexual”

❑ Young or old
❑ Woman or man,
❑ Straight or gay
❑ Married or single
❑ Rich or poor,
❑ Able or disabled

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Why people lack accurate and understandable
information about their own sexuality

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Why people lack accurate and understandable
information about their own sexuality
Sex is often talked about Most people feel
as something
❑ Bad ❑ Embarrassed
❑ Disgusting ❑ Scared
❑ Shameful ❑ Guilty
❑ Sinful ❑ Confused
❑ Weird ❑ Etc.
❑ Silly

Sexuality is diverse and complex

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Human Sexuality :
◼ Biological & Physiological
❑ Sexual intercourse, sexual contact

❑ Hormones, sexual dysfunctions

◼ Sociological
❑ Cultural

❑ Political

❑ legal
◼ Philosophical
❑ Moral
❑ Ethical

❑ Theological
❑ Spiritual, religious

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 Sociological Cultural
Political
Perspective Legal

Biological Psychological
Sexuality Perspective
Perspective

Sexual
intercourse,
Sexual contact
Hormones, Moral
Sexual Ethical
dysfunctions Philosophical Theological
Spiritual, religious
Perspective
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Gender Relation
MALE FEMALE

DOMINANT SUBMISSIVE
ROLE ROLE

FEMININE
MASCULIN
IDENTITY
IDENTITY

SEXUALLLY PASSIVE
SEXULALY ACTIVE

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Gender role in family

♀
◼ “maternity” role
◼ “sex for reproduction”

♂ SEXUAL –
DOUBLE STANDARD
◼ “sex for fun”
◼ “sex as power expression”

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◼ “double standard” relating to ageing, Sontag
1972. Simone de Beauvoir in her book La
Vieillesse…. has analysed a lasting type of
inequality between the sexes. Men are
considered to be legitimate participants in
sexual activity, dating, erotic exchanges, or
marriage, for much longer than women

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Gender as identity

❑ How identity is formed?

❑ What are the implications of the formation of that
identity?
❑ Try to answer whether the identity is innate or
constructed
❑ If you come to believe that it is constructed then
you look at how it is constructed both as individual
and as collective (culture) and how it influences
your existence and how you view yourself

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 Sexual Value
What are sexual values?
◼ Sexual values are moral guidelines for making sexual choices in
nonmarital, marital, heterosexual, and homosexual relationships.

◼ A value is a deeply held sense of something that is important to us;

a personal guide to how we live our life. They are shown by what we
think, feel, do and say. Often we feel quite strongly about particular
values. At other times we may not even be aware of some of our
values.

◼ Sexual behavior is described as either normal or abnormal. As

describing a behavior as normal or abnormal is another way of
making a value judgment.

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Sexual value system (Rubin, 1993 )
◼ Good, normal, natural ◼ Bad, abnormal, Unnatural
❑ Heterosexual ❑ Homosexual
❑ Married ❑ Unmarried
❑ Monogamous ❑ Promiscuous
❑ Procreative ❑ Non-procreative
❑ Non-commercial ❑ Commercial
❑ In pairs ❑ Alone or in Groups
❑ In a relationship ❑ Casual
❑ Same Generation ❑ Cross -generation
❑ In private ❑ In public
❑ No pornography ❑ Pornography
❑ Bodies only ❑ With manufactured objects
❑ Vanilla ❑ Sadomasochistic

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What sexual values and beliefs are?
◼ An example of a value could be that sexual intercourse
should only happen within marriage.

◼ Attitudes are our thoughts and feelings about

what is good, bad, right or wrong.

◼ An example of an attitude could be that teenagers

should wait until they are the legal age before they have
sexual intercourse.

◼ Beliefs about sexual expression and behavior develop

from social context.
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What are sources of sexual values?

◼ Values and attitudes are not something

we are born with. They are unique to us and
we decide which values we wish to believe in.
We develop them as we grow. We learn
about them from our families, our culture and
our environment. Our values usually change
over our lives as we have experiences that
challenge our values.
◼ Everyone has a different set of values

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Why values are so important

◼ Values are what guides us throughout life.

◼ Values don’t just tell us what to do; they tell us why we

do it, which is much more important. Our values reflect
our core beliefs; they tell us what really matters to us.
Most people strive to do what they think is right or
correct in any moment or circumstance. Your values help
to guide each of these seemingly separate decisions,
helping you determine what’s right in an ethical, moral,
or spiritual sense.

(Al Verncacchio, For Goodness Sex 2014 page 22) 16

 Sexual value and adolescents
◼ Dating during high school.
◼ Abstaining from sexual intercourse (premarital sexual behaviour).
◼ Contraception.
◼ Termination of pregnancy.
◼ Condoms and safe sex.
◼ Masturbation.
◼ Love.
◼ Marriage / de facto relationships / living with a partner.
◼ Sexual consent.
◼ Keeping safe from sexual assault.
◼ Pornography (girls watch pornography too).
◼ Same-sex attraction.
◼ Alcohol and drugs and sex.
◼ Media portrayals of sexuality and women.
◼ Religious values about sexuality.

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 Norm

◼ Definitions The term ‘norm’ or ‘behavioural

norm’ can be used simply to mean a common
practice, what most people do in a particular
context.
.

https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-iles/9818.pdf
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Sexual Norms
◼ Each society has different norms about premarital sex,
the age of sexual consent, homosexuality, masturbation,
and other sexual behaviors. Individuals are socialized to
these norms from an early age by their family, education
system, peers, media, and religion.

◼ Our sexual norms appear natural because we have

internalized them since birth.

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Function of norm; One of several factors
underpinning (foundation /behind) practices

◼ are upheld by several different factors, such

as values or ideologies, economic, political
and legal-institutional factors. Several
different norms can also contribute to
upholding a practice.
◼ For example, norms concerning girls’ education,
freedom of movement and parents’ decision-
making authority, as well as norms specifically
related to marriage, contribute to the practice of
child marriage. I
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What are gender norms?

◼ Gender norms are social norms that relate specifically to

gender differences.

◼ Gender norms as informal rules and shared social

expectations that distinguish expected behaviour on the
basis of gender.

◼ For example, a common gender norm is that women and

girls will and should do the majority of domestic work.

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What makes an ideal boy, girl, man or woman.

Good boys Good men Good girls Good women

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 Cultural
◼ A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values,
and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and
that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation
to the next

◼ Culture is a complex of features held by a social group, which may be as

small as a family or a tribe, or as large as a racial or ethnic group, a nation,
or globalization. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire
society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion,
rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief.
The elements of culture are first adopted by members of the social group,
found to be useful, and then transmitted to others.
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/culture)

◼ Culture is both defined by the social activities of the group and also defines
the behavior of the members of the society. Culture is not fixed or static;
rather, it involves a dynamic process as people respond to changing
conditions and challenges.
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◼ The core of a culture is formed by values. They are
broad tendencies for preferences of certain state of
affairs to others (good-evil, right-wrong, natural-
unnatural).

◼ Many values remain unconscious to those who hold

them. Therefore they often cannot be discussed, nor
they can be directly observed by others. Values can only
be inferred from the way people act under different
circumstances.

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Cultural change

◼ When it comes to change, cultures both embrace and

resist change.
◼ For example, the role of women in Western cultures faced
serious challenges in the twentieth century, and changes
were at first met with great resistance. However, once
the changes had been implemented, many non-Western
cultures wanted to take the positive aspects of this
change into their own cultures. Thus, there are both
dynamic influences that encourage acceptance of new
things, and conservative forces that resist change.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/culture 25
Belief –Value- Attitude- Behavior

https://www.iaa.govt.nz/for-advisers/adviser-tools/ethics-toolkit/personal-beliefs-values- 26
attitudes-and-behaviour/
What is a belief?

◼ A belief is an idea that a person holds as

being true.
◼ A belief can come from different sources,
including:
❑ a person’s own experiences or experiments
❑ the acceptance of cultural and societal norms
(e.g. religion)
❑ what other people say (e.g.education or
mentoring).

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Attitude

◼ Our sexual attitudes are shaped by our

parents, peer groups, media and teachers.

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Methodolody

◼ “normal” identifies a range or spectrum of behaviors.

Rather than each act being simply classified as
"acceptable" or "not acceptable", many acts are viewed
as "more or less accepted" by different people, and the
opinion on how normal or acceptable they are greatly
depends on the individual making the opinion as well as
the culture itself.
◼ Based on information gained from sexological studies, a
great many ordinary people's sex lives are very often
quite different from popular beliefs about normal, in
private.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_norm 29
◼ Measures. The degree to which each
quotation was sexually conservative,
moderate or liberal
◼ Measureing using a 7-point Likert scale
ranging from -3 (“Very Conservative”) to 3
(“Very Liberal”) with the midpoint at 0
(“Moderate”).

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Measurement tools - Sexual Attitudes

◼ Sexual attitudes was measured using the

Permissiveness and Instrumentality subscale of the
Sexual Attitudes Scale (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1987)
◼ which consists of items that measures the degree of
liberal sexual beliefs. Responses were measured on a 5-
point Likert scale ranging from “Strongly Agree” to
“Strongly Disagree” with higher scores indicating a
greater degree of sexually permissive attitudes.
◼ Sample scale items include “It is okay for sex to be just
good physical release” and “Casual sex is acceptable.”

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https://www.physio-pedia.com/Personal_Values_and_Beliefs

2.01 minutes

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