Female sexuality has come a long way for American women. Our project examined the evolution of female sexuality from this country's inception by examining three eras in American history (early colonial with the Puritans, the Victorian era, and women's liberation in the 70s) in order to draw conclusions about the views that college students hold on this issue. Specifically, we surveyed two groups of undergraduate students at Miami University (Western and "non-Western" or Main campus) to determine which, if either, group held more liberal views on their own sexuality. We also looked at how gender influenced liberalism or conservatism in terms of sexuality. Upon completion of this project, although we acknowledge that the topic of sexuality is highly complex, we feel that Western students are more liberal in their views of sexuality than Main campus students.
Introduction:
The idea of female sexuality is an idea that has changed radically over the years. Until the 19th century this subject has had a distinctly male viewpoint. The 16th-19th centuries provide an appropriate starting point for this study. There were two major viewpoints on sexuality in this period. The religious and medical viewpoints guided society. "The church viewed sexuality as a moral issue. [They] assumed that all sexuality should be heterosexual, genital and confined to marriage."(Porter, 83) Sex was not seen as an evil practice but something God-given and needed for procreation. The woman was also seen as sexually inferior to the male as well.
The medical perspective was limited in that males dominated this profession. "Even diagrams of female anatomy in medical books are limited to male eyes only. Plans to instruct midwives in anatomy were thwarted. Physicians were reluctant to give their patients too much knowledge."(Porter, 86) Women during this period really had nowhere to turn to obtain helpful knowledge in a world dominated by men.
The next major time period for female sexuality was the Victorian era. Because of their "extraordinary emphasis on virginity and their profound disdain for illicit sex the nourishing and even inventing" of the Madonna-whore dichotomy was sustained throughout this period according to Wright. Men continued to dominate the ideas of female sexuality in this era. They made the rules and set the standards for sex.
Finally during the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies we see women having some control over their sexuality. Hippies opened the doors to more liberal ideas of sex. "Masters and Johnson (1966) broke many traditional taboos by studying female orgasm in the laboratory." (Laws, 16) These ideas permeate our society today as we continue to define female sexuality.
Relevance:
While researching this topic we find all types of literature discussing the ideas around female sexuality. What we mostly obtain from this research is a sense that there are not many tests done in this field. The works in question are mostly based on observations from social situations occurring in the last thirty years. What makes our research stand out from many of these works is that they looked at the issue of female sexuality from a highly feminist perspective. We plan to take a less bias approach to our study by including male viewpoints. The one document we found that was most similar to our research methods was The Hite Report published during the late seventies. Shere Hite surveyed the population and culminated her research with this book. It covered issues concerning female sexuality such as orgasm, masturbation, female attitudes towards sex and a comparison of male sexuality to female sexuality.
Purpose:
The purpose of our project is to analyze the evolution of female sexuality in America. Society's image of female sexuality in America has been modified several times, specifically during each major historical period from colonial times to the present. We would like to examine the ways in which the sexuality of women has changed over the years, and the kinds of ideologies that have influenced those changes. Based on past progressions of female sexuality, we hope to identify trends in societal beliefs that will enable us to see how college students feel about sex in the twenty-first century.
We hypothesized that Western students would prove to be more liberal in their views of sexuality than Main campus students. We believe this to be an accurate hypothesis based on our experiences living in and observing the Western environment. We also hypothesized that males would be more liberal when compared to females based on how history has taught men to view women and sexuality.
Materials and Method:
We surveyed undergraduate students from Miami University with two primary objectives, sex and major. More specifically, we surveyed males from Western campus, females from Western campus, "non-Western" (or Main campus, as it is referred to elsewhere in this report) males, and "non-Western" females. Initially we had planned on also surveying professors from both Western and Main campus to take age into account in addition to the other two variables, but we ran into confidentiality problems and issues concerning human subjects. Our survey consisted of 17 questions concerning various topics dealing with sexuality (we define "sexuality" as anything having to do with the person in question and sex, not merely sexual orientation). You can view the survey here. In effort to ensure unbiased results we worked tirelessly to phrase our questions in an objective way. We tried to make sure that our survey participants trusted the anonymity of our survey so that they would feel comfortable answering our questions with the utmost of honesty. Although we surveyed both males and females, we used the answers from these questions to draw conclusions about female sexuality in particular. After tabulating our data (main boys, main girls, western boys, western girls, mb2, mg2, wb2, wg2), we used Stat-view tests to draw conclusions about our findings and then used these tests to do further analyses. (results here 1,2,3a,3b,4,5,6a,6b,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14a,14b,15,16,17)
Because all of our Stat-view tests were successful, we are certain that our project design is statistically sound (we also consulted our classmates and instructor about the statistical soundness and overall design of our project prior to executing it). We are very appreciative of the willingness of our class to participate in our survey.
Week of March 26th- present survey in seminar to get feedback (made adjustments accordingly)
Week of April 9th- administered surveys on both Western and Main campus
Week of April 16th- attempted to survey Western professors (decided to remove age as a factor in our project)
Week of April 23rd- tabulated data and began Stat-view tests
Week of April 30th- finished Stat-view testing, Graphed findings, drew final conclusions and wrapped up report
Discussion and Conclusions:
When we began this project we hypothesized that there would be large differences between the responses of both sexes and from main campus and western. Our first and most interesting result was that of question number one. We found out that males rated themselves more liberal, in terms of sexuality, than did females. Statistically we found that the only difference in the responses was in terms of Western males and Western females. We discovered that on many tests Western females tended to respond according to what was hypothesized of main campus students. Western males tended to be the most liberal in their responses proving a part of our hypothesis. There seemed to be a significant difference in all responses given by Western males and Main campus females. This could possibly be due to the difference in their ratings towards their own sexuality. Main campus females were much more conservative than western males and all their responses tend to reflect their rating.
see graph How conservative or liberal is your sexuality?
Our question asking individuals to rank several factors in regards to their sexuality provided us with some though-provoking data as well. When averaged, upbringing was ranked as the lowest factor for all four groups implying that our surveyed group considers this the most important factor in their decisions concerning sexuality. The media and other ranked highest and thus carry the least weight in people's decisions concerning sexuality. Once again Western males and Main campus females were the only groups with any statistical differences however.
graph Rate these factors in regards to your sexuality
When asked who gave participants their sex talk an overwhelming majority replied that this was given by parents and that it was effective. We found that there were, once again, statistical differences between western males and main campus females for this test. We find this particularly interesting because in much of the research we did, we read that most people claim that their "sex talk" was pretty uncomfortable, informative, and ineffective.
see sex talk and Was the talk effective?
Our next question tested the importance of safe sex. Our results showed that only a tiny percentage of both Main campus and Western males feel that safe sex is not very important. We were surprised, however, that some women see safe sex as only somewhat important when they are the ones most at risk for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. The responses of "don't care" on survey were accompanied with interesting comments. The Main campus students that responded thus so on the survey stated that safe sex was not very important to them because they are waiting for marriage to have sex and at this time safe sex does not matter to them. When asked who should take responsibility for safe sex precautions we had rather unanimous results saying that both partners were responsible. The fact that some stated that only women were responsible was rather interesting as well. These results were all statistically significant except when comparing main campus women to western women.
see How important is safe sex and Safe sex..who's responsible?
Our question on the acceptance of masturbation provided interesting data concerning the liberal views of our survey group. Western males answered in one hundred percent acceptance for both sexes. On some surveys, mostly Main campus males, one would answer that yes it was acceptable for men but not acceptable for women. We found this of great importance because this shows the conservative views still prevalent in our sample group once again. The difference in responses could also be influenced by ideas of older generations. Another factor affecting our responses could have been the religious beliefs held by the person taking the survey. For example, according to Christian beliefs masturbation is not acceptable for any sex. We found that religious beliefs were more prevalent on Main campus and thus this could be a reason for our different answers between the four groups. There were significant differences between Western males and Main campus males, Western males and Main campus girls as well as Western males and Western females. The overall wide acceptance of masturbation is interesting in that throughout history society has in large part found this sexual act highly unacceptable, when doing it all the while. Apparently people are more open about this now and aren't hindered by a lot of the shame that accompanied masturbation in the past.
see Is masturbation acceptable for men? and Is masturbation acceptable for women?
The question regarding having sex on the first date was a question used to determine how conservative or liberal our participants were as well. Another reason we were compelled to inquire on this subject was due to our reading about the Madonna-whore dichotomy early on in this semester. Males were much more willing to have sex on a first date than were females. Once again this could be due to the risks of sex. This question also ties in well with whether it is necessary to love a person in order to have sex with them. We had rather high percentages of each group say that yes it was necessary to love your partner even though the previous question seemed to imply that one need not love the person to have sex with them. Main campus males and Western women were the only group that had no significant difference in response to question regarding having sex on the first date. For the question dealing with love and sex we found that there were only significant differences in the responses comparing males and females.
see Is sex an act of love?
When creating our survey we felt that including a question about premarital chastity would surely show how conservative or liberal our participants were in terms of these issues. There was a pretty equal split in these responses except for western males who seemed to overwhelmingly feel that this was completely outdated. Our findings on this topic only confirm what we discovered in researching how the general public feels about sex before marriage. Overall society is still pretty divided in how it feels about this topic, although premarital chastity seems to be on the decline. Statistically significant data was found when we compared Western women to Western males.
see Is the idea of premarital chastity outdated?
Our question regarding multiple sexual partner relationships was yet another way to determine the conservative or liberal feelings of our group. Once again there was a multitude of positive responses to this question. The negative answers could be contributed once again to religious views and/or generational views imposed on younger generations. Our statistically significant data was seen in tests between Main campus males and Western males, Main campus males and Western females and Western males and Western females.
see Does talking about menstruation in mixed company make you uncomfortable?
As the popular saying goes, sex sells, the question about the media cheapening sex was rather interesting. The majority said that yes the media does cheapen sex. The fact that so many people in our survey responded with this answer leads us to want to examine this question more in depth. Surveying a larger and diverse population makes us wonder if we would reach the same results. Main campus males and Main campus females, Main campus males and Western females, Main campus females and Western males and Western males and Western females all provided statistically significant responses.
see Does the idea od dominatrix excite you? and Would you participate in dominatrix acts?
The question about rape was a follow-up question to our dominatrix question. Once again there were many that did not respond to this question. We were also lavished with comments about how inappropriate these types of questions were for this survey. The majority of our group said that yes violence does encourage rape. We find this a little startling in that so many respondents would engage in these activities even though they would allow for violent behavior. In researching this area (along with pornography) we found that a lot of feminist groups are highly opposed to the idea of dominatrix due to their close contact with victims of rape, marital battery, or physical assault of any kind. They attribute these violent acts in large part to dominatrix and/or the influence of pornography on society. Our significant responses are from Main campus males and Western females, Main campus females and Western males, Main campus females and Western females and Western males and Western females.
see Do you think that allowing violenc in sexual activities encourages rape?
For the question regarding pornography and women we were intrigued by the data. There was a large amount, in our opinion, of females that said pornography liberates women. As well there were many unanswered questions. Many respondents said that pornography both hinders and liberates women, which we would like to know how this is possible. Only Western males and Main campus females and Western males and Western females provided our group with statistically significant data.
see Does pornography liberate or hinder women sexually?
Finally, for our last question we found that, in general, most feel that female sexuality has evolved into something positive. Not many comments were given in response to this question however. Once again many respondents also stated that female sexuality has evolved into both something positive and negative. We feel commercials and the media have a role in this view. Our significant data was Main campus males and Main campus females, Main campus females and Western males and Western males and Western females.
see Has female sexuality evolved into something negative or positive?
Overall we found that this campus holds rather conservative views on female sexuality. We feel that the ratings in question two cover most of the sources of these ideas but there are many more than contribute to our answers. We feel that given more time we could have come to even more conclusions about this data and explanations for certain responses.
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