You know how important the human sex drive is. You've been experiencing this aspect of yourself since at least puberty. When your hormones kicked in, suddenly the world looked different. And it hasn't looked the same since!

      You also know how powerful the human sex drive is. Of those many things that you would like to do--or the things you might like to experiment with, or have thought about doing--there are only some that you can do. Others are out of bounds. Even our sexual fantasies--our internal longings that sometimes take picture form--we certainly can't share them with everyone, much less do them. We have to keep many aspects of our sex drive under control, or else we would get in trouble.

WHAT DOES SOCIOLOGY HAVE TO DO WITH SEX?

One of the first questions you might be asking is: "What does sociology have to do with sex? I know that I have a sex drive--and I have sexual preferences and fantasies--but these are mine. These are personal matters."

      And certainly sex is personal! But sex is more than personal. It is also a social matter. Let's see what I mean by this.

Sex as Personal

First, let's consider the personal aspect of sex--our sexual desires, our sexual attitudes, and the sexual things we do. These feelings and behaviors are ours. They are highly personal and intimate. They are part of us.

      Sex is part of our very nature. Although we may think of puberty as the time when our sexual life began, some analysts, especially psychoanalysts, say our sexual life began at birth, or shortly afterward. Some even say it goes back to before birth, while we were in our mother's womb (Gagnon and Simon 1998). Some of us can remember sexual behaviors that go back to our infancy. Such memories of unfocused sexual activity are not far-fetched, for infants have been observed to sexually stimulate themselves.

      Each of us has images of ideal sexual partners, of people who "turn us on." Some of us are attracted to people with blonde hair, others to people with dark hair. Some of us find skinny people sexually attractive, while others are attracted to heavy people. Some of us prefer short people, others tall people. Some of us are attracted to members of the opposite sex, others to members of the same sex. The parts of the human body that turn some of us on don't have the same stimulating effects on others. Some of us are sexually stimulated by inanimate objects, or even animals, while some of us are not. The sexual acts that stimulate some of us, others don't like them at all.

      Our sexuality--our sexual attitudes, desires, preferences, and behaviors, in whatever forms they take--is a highly personal matter. Our sexuality is so intimate that it is an integral part of our own identity--our feelings of who we are. It is difficult for something to be more personal than this.

Sex as Social

Sex is much more than personal, however. It is also social. In fact, we can't understand sex apart from our membership in human groups. Although it is we who feel particular sexual desires, we who have certain sexual preferences and fantasies, and we who engage in particular sexual behaviors, these are not simply an expression of something that comes from within us. Throughout this text, you have seen how your membership in groups shapes your feelings, attitudes, and behavior. This highly personal and intimate realm of your life called sex is no exception. It, too, is shaped by your membership in groups. The Thinking Critically box on the social control of sex explores this further.

      Throughout this text, I stress how human behavior varies around the world. I've reviewed some strikingly different customs concerning marriage, suicide, race, gender, medicine, religion, infanticide, and other aspects of life. Just as cultures differ in these areas, so they differ with regard to human sexuality. As we look at some of this variation around the world, it should be apparent that had you been reared in a different culture, not only would your speech, your clothing, and your ideas about how to make a living be different, but so would your sexual attitudes, behaviors, and even fantasies.

      This, in short, is the social aspect of our sexuality: Although we have a built-in biological sex drive, our membership in groups shapes or gives direction to this drive. Because different groups have different expectations--and different values, beliefs, and patterns of behavior--sexual behaviors, and even desires, vary from one group to another. This principle applies not only to different groups around the world but also to different groups within the same society. Consequently, sexual desires and behaviors differ by gender, race-ethnicity, age, religious orientation, and social class. Sex research is still in its infancy, and most of these differences are yet to be discovered, but consider just two aspects of the effects of social class in the United States: Compared with middle-class boys and girls, lower-class boys and girls begin to have sexual intercourse at an earlier age; compared with lower-class women, professional women and those with graduate school education are more likely to reach orgasm (Simon and Gagnon 1998).

      It is probably not surprising to you that, true to their calling, sociologists place a greater emphasis on the social aspects of human sexuality than does anyone else. You may find it surprising, however, to learn that some sociologists, primarily symbolic interactionists, consider that our sex drive is so undirected at birth, so malleable or capable of being shaped, that any of us can learn to be heterosexual or homosexual. Let's consider this view.