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http://www.ejhs.org/volume2/history.htmThe History & Future of Sex
Marty Klein, Ph.D
www.SexEd.org
Adapted from the opening plenary at the SSSS Western Region conference, April 22, 1999.
Researching this paper, I realized how much I don't know about many things important to sexology. I realized how little I know about Prohibition, the Civil War, the Depression, segregation, and the history of technology, to name just a few. And I realized anew how important topics like those are for our field.
I also realized that the field of sexology knows a lot more about the phenomenology of sex than it does about social science. We know more about what individual people say they do and how they feel than about the role sexuality plays in the pageant of world events. While this is legitimate knowledge, it means that sexology has a limited perspective. History, economics, law, technology, religion, and other large-scale social forces dramatically shape people's sexual consciousness and behavior--which is what we sexologists purport to study. And so examining the past and looking toward the future are essential for sexological sophistication. Doing so demonstrates, as we are always saying, just how critical an interdisciplinary perspective is for our work. As we seek to understand sexuality, there is very little that is irrelevant.
Let's start with some examples of how technology in general drives history in unexpected ways...
...How are these things shaping our sexual future? And what else is currently shaping our sexual future in ways we don't realize?