Sexual assault is any unwanted sexual act that involves force, threat of force, or illegal seduction. It ranges from the more serious crime of rape to unwanted touching of the sex organs. Illegal seduction is nonviolent, coercive coaxing, often directed toward children. This includes obscene telephone calls, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. In the past, forced sex [...]
HIV infections weaken the body’s ability to fight disease and can cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)—the last stage of HIV infection. HIV is the most dangerous sexually transmitted infection, and it affects people of all ages. It is now the leading cause of death for American women and men between 25 and 44 years [...]
The influence of Freud’s and Ellis’s ideas interacted with other cultural phenomena, setting the stage for a new kind of research on sexuality which adopted the quantitative methods and techniques of the natural sciences. Before the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey and others), however, only a few such studies had appeared, [...]
To get some perspective on the degree of permissiveness or repressiveness of parents, Sears tabulated mothers’ reported evaluations of their reactions to sex play among children and the severity of the pressure put on children. Only two percent rated themselves as “entirely permissive” and an additional fourteen percent of the mothers reported that they had [...]
It is a social and cultural imperative to assign an infant as male or female, in accord with external genital status. The regularity with which infants are assigned as male or female masks the social importance of that event for the child, the parents, and the family. Only when an infant is born with a [...]