Soc 1 Chapter 11 The Body Health and Sexuality

Women with ink

"You're such a pretty girl; why would you do something like that to your body?" Her interviewees took from this that they were being told, first, that their tattoos made their bodies ugly, and second, that women's bodies should be pretty. So, these women's experiences are a profound statement about gender policing more generally, particularly how it applies to women's bodies. Most of the women agreed that although tattooing has become more popular, normative tattoos for women are small, cute, and easily concealed.

sexual script

A cognitive map about how to have sex and with whom. sets of ideas and practices that answer the basic questions about sex: With whom do you have sex? What do you do? What do you like? How often? Why? These scripts form the basic social blueprint for our sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. Its has its own sets of norms and values that you follow in order to be in line with what is natural and acceptable

mental illness

Among the least understood illnesses, any impairment of thought, mood, or behavior that can be attributed to a psychiatric disease, disorder, or condition.

transgender

An umbrella term that describes a variety of people, behaviors, and groups whose identities depart from normative gender ideals of masculinity or femininity. Transgender individuals develop a gender identity that is different from the biological sex they were assigned at birth; they exist along a continuum from those who act in public as members of the sex other than the sex they were born, to those who chemically (hormone therapy) or surgically (sex confirmation surgeries) transform their bodies. Transgender does not, however, imply a sexual orientation; thus, transgender individuals can identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual.

sexual behavior

Any behavior that brings sexual pleasure or release (typically, but not always, involving sex organs).

sexual desire

Any intense sexual feelings associated with specific environmental, cultural, or biological stimuli.

Disease incidence

How many new cases of a disease are reported in a given place during a specified time frame.

Understand that what qualifies as "sexual" varies wildly by society.

Kissing is, in many cultures around the world, considered an act of sexual intimacy. But, we also have sexual scripts that govern kissing, which is why kissing is not always sexual. Parents kiss their children, friends sometimes kiss one another, siblings might kiss. Kissing others on the cheek and even lips is, in some cultures, a simple gesture intended to indicate that you are meaningfully (though not necessarily sexually) connected with someone. It's an interactional ritual associated with all sorts of relationships (similar to handshakes, slapping high five, or hugs). In the United States, for instance, sadomasochism or S&M (deriving sexual pleasure from inflicting or receiving pain), is much more popular among whites and Asian Americans than among African Americans. Like sexual desire, sexual behavior is monitored and policed by social institutions, which are constantly giving us explicit messages about what is "desirable" and what is "bad," "wrong," and "deviant." In the contemporary United States, genital-genital contact is often presented as the most natural, normal, and fulfilling sexual behavior; other behaviors are often considered "not really sex" at all. Sexual behavior refers not only to what you do sexually but with whom you do it, how, how often, when, where, and so on. Sexual customs display a dizzying array that, taken together, imply that sexual behavior is anything but organized around reproduction alone. Ernestine Friedel observed dramatic differences in sexual customs between two neighboring tribes in New Guinea (1975). One, a highland tribe, believes that heterosexual intercourse makes men weaker and that women threaten men with their powerful sexuality. Many men who would otherwise be interested in women prefer to remain celibate rather than risk the contact. As a result, population remains relatively low, which this culture needs because they have no new land or resources to bring under cultivation. Not far away, however, is a very different culture. Here, people enjoy sex and sex play. Men who have sex with women worry about whether their partners are sexually satisfied, and they get along relatively well. They have higher birth rates, which is manageable because they live in a relatively abundant and uncultivated region, where they can use all the hands they can get to farm their fields and defend themselves. Most scientists now agree that sexual identity is the result of the interaction of biological, cultural, and social influences. But one thing is clear: In industrialized countries, there is increased acceptance of all sexual identities.

Understand how public reactions to transgender people are a powerful illustration of our collective investment in embodied understandings of gender.

Many people who modify their bodies—through surgery or ornamentation—do so to conform more readily to their culture's definitions of the healthy, young, or beautiful body. That means their efforts generally emphasize or exaggerate their biological sex characteristics (such as breast surgery for women or pectoral implants for men). But some people develop body modification techniques, ranging from ornamentation to surgery also, that are designed to minimize, or even eradicate, some bodily trait, because they feel that that bodily characteristic actually contradicts who they feel they really are and this is the case with Transgender people. Think of gender identity and behavior along a continuum from "our culture's definition of masculine" to "our culture's definition of feminine. Though there are significant penalties for boys who are effeminate ("sissies") and some, but fewer, penalties for girls who are "tomboys," many adult men and women continue to bend, if not break gender norms in their bodily presentation. Some may go as far as to use the props of the opposite sex to challenge gender stereotypes; some people find erotic enjoyment in this, others do it to "pass" into a forbidden world. Again, this runs along a continuum: at one end are women who wear man-tailored clothing and power suits to work; at the other end are those men and women who wear full cross-gender regalia as a means of mockery and the pleasure of transgression. Although psychology has long collected transgender persons under the diagnosis "gender identity disorder," the most recent publication of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) replaced this term with "gender dysphoria." (they feel trapped in a body that doesn't represent them).For a long time, transgender people have lobbied to have this changed as it presented all transgender people as mentally ill, as having a "disorder." Historically, transgender identities were quite rare; in 1980, only about 4,000 people in the world had undergone these surgical interventions (what were called "sex reassignment surgeries" and are now more respectfully referred to as "gender confirmation surgeries"), almost all of them biological males seeking to become women. New medical and surgical procedures facilitated both male-to-female and female-to-male transgender operations, and the inclusion of gender confirmation operations as procedures to be covered by Medicare (1978) and the listing of transsexualism in the DSM-III in 1980 allowed for insurance coverage for surgeries. The increased visibility of transgendered people within the gay and lesbian movement has also increased the viability of surgical interventions as viable options for transgender people. Although 18 states and about 200 municipalities protect transgender people from discrimination in employment or housing, there are no current federal laws that protect transgender people from such discrimination, let alone from harassment and assault. it also appears to be the case that black and non-white transgender women are among the most common victims of violence-->Currently, there are 19 states (and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) that ban discrimination based on gender identity expression (three other states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation but not against transgendered people.) In October 2009, President Barack Obama passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands the 1969 U.S. federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender-identity, or disability.

Sexual prejudice

Negative attitudes about an individual or group based on sexual identity.

Understand that the notion of "having" a sexual identity is a historically recent idea.

Norms about sexual behavior govern not only our sexual conduct but also how we develop a sexual identity. Our sexual identities cohere around a preference—for a type of person or a specific behavior. These preferences are more flexible than we typically think. Take S&M for example it is often understood as "deviant" sexual behavior, but most Americans have experienced erotic stimulation of some kind from either inflicting or receiving pain (biting, scratching, slapping). Typically, we understand sexual identity (or, sometimes, orientation) to refer to an identity that is organized by the gender of the person (or persons) to whom we are sexually attracted. If you are attracted to members of the opposite sex, you are presumed to be heterosexual; if you are attracted to members of your own sex, you are presumed to be gay or lesbian. If you are attracted to both, you are bisexual. For all these orientations, the organizing principle is how your gender contrasts with or complements the gender of your potential partners. Although our sexual behavior may have very little to do with the institution of marriage, we typically understand heterosexual behavior only in relation to marriage. As a result, surveys often list only three types of heterosexual sexual behavior: "premarital" (which takes place before marriage); "marital" (sex within the confines of a marriage); and "extramarital" (sex outside the confines of marriage). The wording is problematic as it assumes that all sexual activity takes place in relation to marriage. And although many people might think that all sexual activity should take place in relation to marriage, when sociologists are studying the world, we examine the world as it really is. Whether you are gay or lesbian, heterosexual, or bisexual, sounds straightforward: Gay men and lesbians are attracted to members of the same sex, heterosexuals to the opposite sex, and bisexuals to both. But again, sexual orientation turns out to be far more complex. As we learned, many people who identify as heterosexual engage in same-sex practices, and many who identify as gay engage in heterosexual practices. Their identity is derived from the people and institutions around them and assembled into a coherent narrative and experiences that don't fit are left out: The lesbian who has sex with men may explain it as "trying to fit in" rather than evidence she is "really" bisexual, and the heterosexual man who enjoys same-sex activity may explain it as "fooling around," irrelevant to his heterosexual identity. Most societies around the world and throughout time have gotten along fine without any sexual identities at all. There were desires and behaviors, but the very idea that one's desire or behavior was part of the foundation of one's sexual identity dates to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the terms heterosexual and homosexual were first used as nouns (describing identities) rather than as adjectives (describing behaviors). That distinction between behaviors and identities is crucial in some cultural prohibitions. In some cases, it is the identity that is understood as "problematic," not the behaviors—you can do pretty much what you want; just don't make it the basis of your identity. In other cases, it is the behaviors that are "troubling," not the identity. The Roman Catholic Church's official position on homosexuality—love the sinner, hate the sin—is an example of the latter. There are other sexual identities based more on sexual behaviors than the gender of your partner. For example, some people may experience erotic attraction to specific body parts (partialism) or to objects that represent sexual behaviors (fetishism). Or they may become sexually aroused by the presence of real or imagined violence and power dynamics (sadomasochism) or find that they can be aroused only when having sex in public (exhibitionism) or when they observe others having sex (voyeurism). Although many of these behaviors are present in routine sexual experiences—the fear of getting caught, wearing sexy clothing, biting and pinching—only a small percentage of the population make them the only activities in their sexual repertoire.

Understand how tattoos and cosmetic surgery are means by which people use their bodies to craft identities.

Plastic surgery, tattoos, and piercings have a history of being associated with "deviant" groups and subcultures until relatively recently, though they were far more common in other cultures. All of the processes denote a sight sexual undertone-if only because they indicate that the bearer is aware of his or her body as an instrument of pleasure and object of desire. Tattoos decline in Europe occurred with the spread of Christianity.Today, however, tattoos have become quite common. Millennials have the most tattoos, according to a 2010 Pew Research Report. About 3 in 10 have at least one. Tattoos are more common in the South than other regions of the country, twice as common among whites and Latinos as among African Americans, and more common among gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans than among many other groups. 23 percent of all Americans between 18 and 50 have at least one tattoo, more than double the prevalence in 1985—making tattoos slightly more common in the United States than DVD players. Tattoos are seen as a way people can design and project a desired self-image Tattoo design and placement are often sexually charged; more than a third of tattoo wearers say it makes them feel more rebellious, and almost a third say it makes them sexier. (On the other hand, almost 4 in 10 non-tattoo wearers think it makes other people less sexy.) tattooing and piercing are also associated with other deviant behaviors—marijuana or other drug use, arrest, or even cheating on a college exam or binge drinking—though, only when the wearer has a lot of body art: those with four or more tattoos and seven or more piercings According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the total number of cosmetic procedures increased more than 500 percent since 1997, to 13.6 million procedures and more than $15 billion spent on those procedures in 2016 alone Reality television shows like Extreme Makeover make cosmetic surgery increasingly normal; one survey found these shows influenced about 80 percent of cosmetic surgery patients Though women continue to be the primary consumers of such cosmetic surgery at 91 percent, men have gone from 54,845 in 1992 to roughly 2.8 million in 2016 and now comprise 9.3 percent of all surgical procedures. Teenagers are also having more plastic surgery, especially liposuctions, breast augmentations, tummy tucks, eyelid surgeries, and rhinoplasties ("nose jobs"). Things like Botox far outnumber these more invasive types of surgeries. Once the preserve of wealthy whites, cosmetic surgery has become increasingly common among non-whites and the middle class. The number of people of color seeking cosmetic surgery tops three million a year, four times what it was 10 years ago. Today, White people account for just about three-quarters of all cosmetic surgeries in the United States. The remainder are made up of Hispanic (9.7%), African American (7.3%), Asian (5.5%) and other races (2.1%) Historically, cosmetic surgery was performed to "minimize" those ethnic characteristics that stood out—"Jewish noses" or "Irish ears," for example—to better assimilate into American society. Today, such assimilationist impulses ("Asian eyelids" or "Iranian noses," for example) are accompanied by procedures that exaggerate ethnic differences, such as buttock lifts among Dominican women who want to accentuate "Latin curves" South Korea has the most cosmetic surgery procedures per capita in the world In Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Colombia, Russia, and Romania, eyelid surgery is the most common operation. In Brazil, Argentina, and Germany, liposuction is the most popular. In Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, and Slovenia, breast augmentation is the top procedure performed. In Jordon, Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, Taiwan, and France, nose reshaping tops the list. Why eyelid surgery across Asia? Why nose work in the Middle East? Perhaps we are seeing an emerging global standard of beauty as a result of globalization.

Heteronormativity

Sociological term to refer to the ideology by which heterosexuality is simultaneously understood as both normal and normative.

mortality rate

The death rate as a percentage of the population.

Disease prevalence

The distribution of the disease over different groups of the same population.

Summarize some of the reasons for and consequences of the LGBT movement becoming much more mainstream today than it once was.

The gay movement happened. As early as the nineteenth century, there were gay neighborhoods in some large cities, such as Paris, Berlin, and New York, but most people with same-sex interests believed that they were alone (Chauncey 1993). Medical science believed there were probably only a few thousand homosexuals, mostly in psychiatric hospitals. That changed during World War II, where gay and lesbian soldiers found each other, and realized that there were many more than anyone thought (the Kinsey Report of 1948 helped also). However, they still faced oppression. If a man sat next to you in a bar and offered to shake hands, he could be an undercover police officer, who would count the handshake as a "homosexual overture" and arrest you. An arrest for "homosexuality" could get you fired, kicked out of your apartment, sent to prison, or sent to a psychiatric hospital (where you could be subject to electroshock therapy and forced castration). In the 1950s, gay men and lesbians began forming organizations such as the Mattachine Society, One, Incorporated, and the Daughters of Bilitis, to petition for the end of police harassment. The 1969 Stonewall Riots, three days of resistance to police harassment in New York City, led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front. More gay rights groups followed, until by 1975, there were hundreds: student groups, religious groups, political groups, social groups, groups for practically any interest you could imagine, in practically every city and town in the United States, until a whole new social movement emerged, the Gay Rights Movement. They were not apologetic. They were loud, in-your-face, "out and proud," staging sit-ins, marches, and media "zaps," shouting rather than whispering, demanding rather than asking: We are not crazy! We are not criminals! We are an oppressed minority! the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders, a dozen Christian denominations voted to allow gay people full membership, and a new term, homophobia, was coined to describe antigay prejudice The movement arose simultaneously with the youth counterculture of the late 1960s, when millions of college-aged people were protesting all sorts of injustices, from the Vietnam War to gender and racial inequality. Gay rights activists at the time were mostly college aged and members of that same counterculture. One of their early slogans was "We are your children." Political and social leaders were faced, for the first time, with gay men and lesbians who looked and acted like other young people, who could indeed be their children. In fact, the gay rights movement may have been too successful to remain a counterculture or a subculture; it is now part of the mainstream culture. Many strictly gay social institutions are struggling to survive.

Medicalization

The process by which human conditions come to be defined and treated as medical conditions such that they also become subject to medical study, diagnosis, and treatment. For example, childbirth, a perfectly natural, healthy process, has become "medicalized"; once managed by midwives or other lay personnel, pregnancy and childbirth are now managed by doctors, mainly in hospitals, and often involves equipment and drugs (and often maternity leave is characterized as a "disability"). Similarly, death is now seen as a medical moment, rather than the natural destiny of all living things.

sexual socialization

The process by which your sexual scripts begin to cohere into a preference and sexual identity. Over the course of childhood and adolescence, even through adulthood, your understanding of your culture's sexual scripts begins to cohere into a preference.

moral panic

The process of arousing social concern that the well-being of society is threatened by a particular issue. Obesity today is invoked as a moral panic that provokes media coverage and policy because it is assumed that social control is slipping away

negative discrimination

The provision of less-favorable treatment to those with certain characteristics, typically to a disadvantaged group, than to those without them. Being beautiful can also lead to negative discrimination. The highly attractive recruiters showed no biases either way, but the average-looking women recruiters were significantly more negative toward the attractive women candidates (though more positive toward attractive men candidates). The average looking men recruiters were slightly more negative toward attractive job candidates who were men

Describe the ways bodily ability relates to social inequality and how disabilities intersect with other social identities (like race, class, and age).

The number of Americans with a physical or mental disability has increased in recent years. This is because of several factors. First, advances in medical technologies means that many people who might not have survived with their disabilities are now living longer lives. In addition, those medical breakthroughs are enabling the survival of people born with disabilities that would earlier have been fatal. Third, life-expectancy continues to rise for everyone, and some disabilities, such as arthritis, are age related. Disabilities are not always visible, nor are they necessarily "disabilities" in that many disabled people could live full and "normal" lives if only the larger society would cooperate. Disabilities do not reside solely in the bodies of the disabled person, but rather emerge through a relationship with the society. For example, the standard design of streets and sidewalks makes it extremely difficult for people in wheelchairs or walkers to use the same sidewalks as other people. The standard design of buses means that people in wheelchairs cannot use them. Is that their fault? Disabilities are the result of an interaction between the person and the society. In other words, society could be organized in ways that better accommodate the diversity of abilities bodies have. And disabilities do not affect all groups equally. Consider the fact that disability rates vary dramatically by age. The older people get, the more likely they are to suffer from a disability. Although around 5 in 100 children in the United States younger than the age of 17 have severe disabilities, more than 1 in 3 people older than 65 are living with severe disabilities. Most disabilities are not present at birth; they are the result of accidents, disease, and war. One powerful illustration of this is that, as of 2015, roughly 4.26 million veterans receive compensation for service-related disabilities. Some disabilities are the result of industry and pollution. The highest rates of disability by county in the United States are in coal mining regions; the highest rates in cities are in those cities near oil refineries. Globally, poorer countries have higher rates of disability, caused by malnutrition as well as accidents and disease. In Brazil, 18.9 percent of the population is disabled; in Ecuador, about 13.6 percent; in the Philippines, more than 28 percent.Across the developing world, approximately 1 of every 10 people are disabled, according to the World Health Organization and some of the most recent data we have available. Disabilities are unevenly distributed by race and class within the United States as well. African Americans have significantly higher levels of disability than whites, but Asians and Latinos have lower rates than whites. The poor have more disabilities than the rich. Disabilities not only reflect existing social inequalities by race and class, but disabilities are, themselves, the basis for further discrimination. Employment for people with disabilities is really low the employment rate for men with disabilities is 52.8 percent and 19.6 percent for women with disabilities (compared to 64.9 percent and 29.9 percent, respectively, for men and women without disabilities). Similar findings were discovered in a survey for OECD nations who found that the employment rate for persons with disabilities across 27 countries was approximately 44 percent, compared to 75 percent among persons without disabilities (World Health Organization 2011). The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) made it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities in public accommodations. As a result, buses were adapted to accommodate people in wheelchairs, ramps replaced high curbs at street corners, and landlords built ramps to accommodate disabled tenants. "Black people fought for the right to ride in the front of the bus," said one disability activist. "We're fighting for the right to get on the bus"

morbidity rate

The rates of new infections from disease.

social epidemiology

The study of both biomedical elements of disease and the social and behavioral factors that influence its spread.

Explain what it means to say that health inequalities are also institutionalized, providing an example to illustrate your understanding.

health care is big business; second largest industry after the military As we've seen, the United States has both the most advanced healthcare delivery system in the world and one of the most inequitable and expensive among industrial nations. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee coverage for essential medical services, rations care by income, race, and health, and allows for-profit insurance companies to exclude people who need care. In the United States in 2014, the number of Americans without health coverage accounts for approximately 10.4 percent of the U.S. population (or 33 million people). But, within this group, non-Hispanic whites have the lowest uninsured rate In 2016, whites had the lowest uninsured rate at 6.9 percent. Blacks (12.5%) had higher uninsured rates, and Hispanics had the highest of all in 2016 at 27.4 percent. Americans hold two different types of values, and these often collide. On the one hand, we believe that "all men are created equal" and that "human life is sacred." These values would push us towards supporting policies that would make basic health care a basic human right, not a privilege of the rich or the employed. On the other hand, we believe hard work should be rewarded, individual initiative and entrepreneurship should be unimpeded, and government should neither control profits nor tax Americans to pay for the welfare of those most in need. These values would lead us to "rationing" health care to those who can best afford it. We hold both sets of values, but tend to weigh them differently. In the abstract, we probably prefer to keep spending and taxation low, but our values change if we or a loved one is suddenly in urgent need of medical care. Then, we want "the best" treatment options available, regardless of the cost. Women and minorities are clustered in the more "service-oriented" areas, while white men are concentrated in the more technically demanding and prestigious occupations. The gender and racial distribution of healthcare professionals thus resembles all other professions, in which the closer you are to actually interacting with and touching the body of another person, the lower your status tends to be. On the other hand, the more technically proficient you are, and the more distant you are from actually being forced to interact with people the higher your status Part of racial or gender inequality in the health professions may seem like personal preferences because different groups of people might make different career choices. But it turns out that personal preferences are themselves shaped by institutional processes. For example, surgery is one of the most gender-skewed subfields of medicine, with far higher percentages of men than women. Personal choice about working hours, stressful conditions, and dedication to career? When sociologists asked medical students about possible careers in surgery, they found that the women and men were very similar. Before they undertook their surgical rotation, neither expressed much concern about the long workloads, or about the possible conflicts with family time; indeed, the women med students were less likely to cite those problems than were men. But after their rotation, the women were turned off by the "old boys' club" mentality, the sex discrimination by male surgeons, and the idea that a "surgical personality" had to be "masculine" Such inequalities may actually be bad for your health. Patients are more likely to trust doctors who share their race or ethnicity—and trusting patients are more likely to follow medical advice and seek regular care. This may be especially true for minorities, who may distrust other doctors because of past discrimination and substandard care. Yet 86 percent of whites have white doctors, and only 60 percent of blacks and Hispanics do (LaVeist and Nuru-Jeter 2002). There aren't enough minority doctors to go around.

"Ebola racism"

started coming out of the US cases of Ebola. As one Liberian man from Monrovia put it, "People, once they know you are Liberian—people assume you have the virus in your body". Many suggested that the panic associated with the disease exacerbated existing forms of social inequality based on race, nationality, immigrant status, and more. Indeed, social scientists conducting an extensive review of the research on stigma and discrimination related to Ebola discovered that attitudes toward Ebola in recent history were strikingly similar to initial perceptions of persons with HIV/AIDS; there was a great deal of misinformation, misperceptions about causes, indicators of who might be ill, and more It was a powerful illustration of the ways in which diagnoses associated with health and illness are not only made by medical practitioners. Social diagnoses can be equally powerful in terms of shaping identities and interactions.

Provide an example of what it means to say that inequality is embodied illustrating your understanding.

the body is not simply a canvas on which we write (or revise) our identities. It is also the basis for social inequality. In some cultures, bodies are marked—with tattoos or piercings—as symbols of inequality. Jews in Nazi concentration camps had numbers tattooed on their forearms—at least those who weren't murdered immediately upon arrival. Slaves have also historically been branded or tattooed. And across North Africa, young girls are subject to genital cutting which both marks their entry into their culture as women, and also makes them marriageable in a male-dominated culture. (In some cases, female genital mutilation, or FGM, removes the clitoris, rendering the woman more marriageable because she would, so the theory goes, be unable to pursue sexual pleasure on her own if she couldn't actually "enjoy" it.) In most cases, it is the nonconforming, "deviant" body that is the object of discrimination. As we have already learned, fat people are frequently victims of discrimination, and targets of remarkable hostility and stigma. Obese children are 60 percent more likely to be bullied in primary school; simply "overweight" children are 13 percent more likely (Lumeng, et al. 2010). One study even discovered that 11 percent of couples in a survey said they would abort a fetus if it were predisposed toward obesity (Rhode 2010). They are the victims of special hostility, as if their weight were a moral failing, evidence of a lack of self-control. (Obesity is the result of the interplay of lifestyle and genetics, rarely entirely one or the other.) Consider the strong correlation between obesity and social class. This relationship is an important illustration of what social scientists refer to as reciprocal effects. More generally, our embodied identities are also the basis for inequality and discrimination. Having lots of visible tattoos or piercings may be grounds for employment discrimination.Several major companies, such as Walmart, Bank of America, and Disney permit visible tattoos, as long as they are not deemed offensive on a case by case basis. Historically, the disabled have faced diverse sources of discrimination—without protections from workplace or housing discrimination and constant threats of harassment, bullying, and assault. Since 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act has protected people with disabilities from discrimination. This has led to dramatic changes in access, such as ramps on sidewalks and, if necessary, houses, and apartments, hotel accommodations, as well as prohibitions against discrimination in employment and public accommodation. Bodies and embodiment are difficult to understand apart from considering the types of inequality different kinds of bodies confront.

sex

A biological distinction; the chromosomal, chemical, and anatomical organization of males and females. we are not referring to one's biological sex but rather sexual behavior, or "sexual conduct" Think of sex as whatever people do to experience sexual pleasure.

Homophobia

A concept used to measure a range of sexual prejudices toward people identifying with sexual identities other than heterosexual, anything from distrust to disgust to hatred to violence. homophobia is a concept used to measure a wide variety of sexual prejudice toward people identifying with sexual identities other than heterosexual

hooking up

A deliberately vague term for a sexual encounter that can refer to a great variety of different relationships and interactions, may nor may not include sexual intercourse, and usually occurs on only one occasion between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. Although that seems to cover most cases, it fails to include those heterosexuals who hook up more than once or twice, or "sex buddies" (acquaintances who meet regularly for sex but rarely if ever associate otherwise), or "friends with benefits" (friends who do not care to become romantic partners but may include sex among the activities they enjoy together). "Hooking up" is interesting language because it's a term that deliberately defies specific definition—it's not just vague; it's intentionally vague. It can refer to a great variety of different relationships and interactions. Indeed, this is part of the power of the term. Although abstinence-only sex education has little or no effect on reducing rates of abortion, unwanted pregnancy, or sexually transmitted infections, comprehensive sex education lowers rates on all three measures.In the United States, however, it is also true that students are increasingly receiving no sex education on a variety of topics that research has shown actually impacts sexual behavior. Students receive less sex education on a variety of topics today than they did in 2000. Sex education is, to be sure, a controversial issue in the United States. But, many young people today are more likely to need to rely on the Internet or their peers when learning about sex.

Reciprocal effects

A dynamic cause-and-effect relationship in which two or more social phenomena can be shown to be both cause and effect, for example, fatness and social class. For instance, it is both true that poor people are disproportionately likely to be fat and that fat people are disproportionately likely to be poor in the United States. That is, fatness can cause poverty (as fat people are discriminated against, which makes obtaining a job more challenging) and poverty can cause fatness (as poor people are much more likely to have to rely on less healthy food options to sustain themselves). Research shows that both of these relationships are true. It is an important illustration of why understanding intersections among different forms of inequality matters.

bisexuality

A sexual identity organized around attraction to both women and men.

asexuality

A sexual identity organized around having no sexual desire for anyone. People who are asexual are not the same as people who are celibate. Asexuals experience little or no sexual desire, but they still might have sex to please their partner or spouse, or to go along with convention. Celibate people may feel a significant amount of sexual desire; they just choose not to act on it. Friends, family, and the medical establishment are quick to diagnose asexuals as confused, conflicted, suffering from a hormone deficiency, or traumatized by child abuse. But asexuals counter that their sexuality is not a problem that needs to be cured: rather, it is a perfectly valid sexual orientation.

disability

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, disability is "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities." By these definitions, nearly 20 percent of the all Americans have one or more disabilities

Another sociologist, Sarah Diefendorf, wanted to know what actually happens in the sex lives of men who wait.

And this constant discussion about temptation is one way that these men were able to uphold the cultural notion that men are "sex-crazed" even in the absence of actually having or pursuing sex. When they were young they had support groups they had honest conversations about avoiding pornography, masturbation, and all sorts of things many young men do not openly discuss in this way with each other. They supported each other, had "accountability partners" and checked in with one another when someone was finding it challenging to keep the pledge. After marriage, however, Diefendorf discovered that most of these men still really struggled with issues related to talking about sexuality. Because they understood sex as "sacred" men felt it was inappropriate to discuss with friends or peers; but because sex is sacred to these men, they were also not able to have open, frank conversations about their sex lives with their spouses.

social stigma

Disapproval or discontent with a person or group that differs from cultural norms, which often serves to distinguish that person or group from other members of a society.

sexual discrimination

Discrimination against a person on the grounds of sex or sexual identity.

Sexual Identities Outside the Binary: Bisexuality and Asexuality

First, bisexuality in not indiscriminate. Imagine a man who is attracted to men in some circumstances and women in others. Or maybe he falls in love with men, but feels a sexual attraction only toward women, or vice versa. Or maybe he has had sex only with women, but he wouldn't say no if Taylor Lautner or Michael B. Jordan called. The variety of experiences differs considerably. Second, few understand you. Tell a date that you are bisexual, and you may get weird looks, a lecherous request to "watch" sometime, or outright rejection. Your straight friends might believe that you are really straight but "confused," "just experimenting," or "going through a phase." Your gay friends believe that you're really gay but too frightened to admit it. Third, despite the jokes and the invisibility, you may also have a great deal of pride. Bisexuals often argue that they are more spiritual, or more psychologically developed, than gay or straight people because they look at a person's character and personality rather than at trivial details like gender. They may be exaggerating a bit: Most bisexuals are just as attracted to certain physical types, and not as attracted to others, just as gay and straight people are. They just include some men and women in the category of "people to whom I'm attracted" Some data suggest that bisexuals are less attached to their sexual identities than are gay men and lesbian women. And data also show that people identifying as bisexual are most commonly in committed relationships with partners of the opposite sex.

Sociologists Long Doan, Annalise Loehr, and Lisa Miller (2014) conducted a survey experiment among a nationally representative sample of Americans concerning sexual inequality.

For instance, most of the measures that we use to detect sexual prejudice are associated with what Doan, Loehr, and Miller (2014) refer to as formal rights—legal protections that the government grants to privileged groups (like rights to marriage, property, etc.). But, less research considers people's opinions about what Doan and colleagues (2014) refer to as informal privileges—those interactional advantages that dominant groups receive when compared with minority groups. One informal privilege heterosexual couples are often granted is that their public displays of affection are widely accepted. In their survey, they discovered that heterosexual, gay, and lesbian Americans are all supportive of marriage equality (a formal right)—though lesbian women and gay men were more supportive than heterosexuals. Regarding informal privileges for same-sex couples, heterosexuals showed much less support than did gay men and lesbian women. Heterosexuals were less supportive of same-sex couples holding hands in public or kissing in public.

Explain the sexual double standard and the "masculinization" of sex.

For many years, it was assumed that only men experienced sexual desire at all; women were interested in romance and companionship, but not sex (so the theory held). Women who flirted with men were not expressing sexual desire but trying to "ensnare" men into marrying them or buying them something.Although today many people agree that women have some degree of sexual desire, they consider it inappropriate to express openly. Men are expected to express how "horny" they are; women are not. Men who have a lot of sex are seen as "studs," and their status rises among their peers. Women who have a lot of sex are seen as "sluts," and their status falls. "stud versus slut" effect: men might overestimate their numbers to appear more like a "stud" while women might underestimate their numbers to appear less like a "slut." Men are also more likely to admit that they have been unfaithful. Whether gay or heterosexual, sexual behaviors, desires, and identities are organized more by the gender of the actor than by the genders of those toward whom he or she might be erotically inclined. That is to say, on all available measures, gay and straight men are far more similar to each other than either is to gay or straight women. Men are socialized to express a "masculine" sexuality, and women are socialized to express a "feminine" sexuality, regardless of their sexual orientation. As a result, the highest rates of sexual activity occur among gay men (masculine sexuality times two), and the lowest rates among lesbians (feminine sexuality times two). Gay men have the lowest rates of long-term committed relationships, straight men next, then straight women, and finally, lesbians have the highest rates. Thus, it appears that men—gay or straight—place sexuality at the center of their lives, and that women—gay or straight—are more interested in affection and caring in the context of a long-term love relationship. Today, the proportion of boys and girls and young men and women who have had sex are much more similar than they were at throughout the twentieth century. In 1925, among high school age youth in the United States, less than 10 percent of women admitted to having sex and about half of men did. The rates have increased among both boys and girls, men and women, but the rate of increase has been much steeper for girls and women

Distinguish between the three dimensions of sexuality, and explain why drawing this distinction helps sociologists explain how sexualities are socially constructed.

For sociologists, sexuality refers to three separate (but related) things: sexual desire, sexual behavior, and sexual identity. We experience sexual desires, we engage in sexual behaviors, and we identify ourselves with sexual identities. It is easy to assume that all of these elements of sexuality match up in the ways we might logically expect them to. But the sociologically interesting fact is that, for many people, they don't. This means that, for instance, measuring the size of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual population in the United States is more challenging than you might think; which measure should we use to count them desire, behavior, or identity? Contradictions so its hard to obtain good survey. For instance, if someone identifies as heterosexual, but also has sex with someone who shares his or her gender identity or sex they might qualify as "same-sex oriented" in some degree as a result of their sexual behavior or desires, but not their sexual identity. Or, if someone identifies as lesbian, but has also been sexually intimate with men, then they have also participated in sexual behavior that we might consider to be inconsistent with their sexual identity. Sociologist Jane Ward provides an interesting example with her research on populations of men who advertise in the "casual encounters" section of Craigslist. Her sample of advertisements was collected in California, and most of the advertisements were posted by white straight men seeking to be sexually intimate with other white straight men. Although some might question their sexual identities, Ward is interested in how these men make sense of their same-sex desires and their interest in participating in same-sex sexual behavior as consistent with a heterosexual identity. Ward discovered that by relying on specific cultural references and resources these men framed themselves as authentically heterosexual despite their interest in same-sex sex. This provides just one example of the multiple ways that sexual desires, behavior, and identities are often much more fluid than we might assume they would be. Regardless of how we measure sexuality, both gender and sexual minorities are a population that is quite literally on the move. Between 2012 and 2016, the proportion of Americans who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) jumped from 3.5 percent to 4.1 percent of the U.S. population. That might not sound like a lot when listed in this way. But consider it in terms of actual numbers. That means that in those 5 years, the LGBT-identifying population in the United States went from around 8.3 million people to more than 10 million people which is a huge shift in population in such a short amount of time. And when a shift like this happens, sociologists want to know how and where it occurred. In this case, that means that we're interested in knowing which groups in society account for this shift. Was everyone more likely to identify as LGBT over this period of time, or was the shift exaggerated among some groups and absent among others. In this case, the changes really boil down to three: The increase can be accounted for by women, people of color, and those with a college education. As you can see, the proportion of women identifying as LGBT increased at a much steeper rate than it did for men. The same is true of Asian and Hispanic people in the United States who identify as LGBT. And although we see an increase among all education groups, those with a college degree saw the largest increase.

Explain some of the different ways that sexual inequality is perpetuated around the world.

Here you can see the proportions of Americans who felt that the following were either "almost always wrong" or "always wrong": sex before marriage, extramarital sex, and same-sex sexual relations. As a group, Americans remain most opposed to extramarital sex, and they have greater opposition to same-sex sex than to premarital sex. And although Americans have become slightly more opposed to extramarital sex over this time and slightly more accepting of premarital sex, the real change is toward much greater levels of acceptance of same-sex sex, particularly after 1990.

Recognize how each of the five elements of the iSoc model can be used to examine bodies and embodiment sociologically.

Identity: Bodies are often seen as a living canvas, and we can shape and sculpt them to express our selves. Inequality: Not all bodies are equally valued in society such that different bodies are associated with different rewards and consequences. Interaction: We don't just "have" bodies, health, or sexuality, we also "use" them in social interactions and make meaning out of bodies in part as a result of the ways in which they are put on display, adorned, and used to interact and perform. Institution:Schools, workplaces, homes: Wherever we find ourselves, our experiences of our bodies, our health, and our sexualities are organized, expressed, and subject to rules and regulations. Intersection: Our standards of beauty and appropriate bodily activity are structured by our race, sexuality, and disability status.

For example, in modern society, people are living longer, and they are also living with chronic illnesses that would have killed people just a few years ago. How do people negotiate their social lives—work, family life, friendships, sexuality—in the face of such chronic illness? What effect does illness have on people's identity?Sociologists Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss (1985) identified three types of "work" that individuals do to manage their illnesses within an overall context of identity management.

Illness work consists of the things we do to manage the actual illness—the timing of medicine, treating pain, cycles of doctors and hospital appointments, and the like. Everyday work consists of what we do in the rest of our life—family life, friendship networks, routine household responsibilities, as well as our actual jobs. Biographical work to interpret for themselves and others the impact the illness has had on their life. This latter form of work involves crafting an identity around our health and well-being. We revise and rewrite our identities constantly, especially in the light of new information such as a chronic illness.

Explain the ways that gender inequality is expressed through gendered forms of body dissatisfaction.

In 1954, Miss America was 5'8" and weighed 132 pounds. Today, the average Miss America contestant still stands 5'8", but now she weighs just 117 pounds. In 1975, the average female fashion model weighed about 8 percent less than the average American woman; by 1990 that disparity had grown to 23 percent. And though the average American woman today is 5'4" tall and weighs 167 pounds, with a waist circumference of 37 inches, the average model is 5'11" and weighs 117 pounds. (Men's average height is 5 feet 9 ½ inches, with a 39.7-inch waist and weighs 195 pounds.) No wonder 42 percent of girls in first through third grades say they want to be thinner, and 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat. Almost half of 9- to 11-year-olds are on diets; by college the percentage has nearly doubled Although rates of anorexia and bulimia are higher in the United States than in any other country—close to 4 percent of girls in the United States experience one or the other, more than 10 times the rate for European countries—rates among American girls vary by race or class. Girls are more likely to struggle with their body image than boys. Many men experience what some researchers have labeled "muscle dysmorphia," a belief that one is too small, or insufficiently muscular. Harvard psychiatrist Harrison Pope and his colleagues call it the Adonis complex

de-institutionalized movement

In the 1970s, advocates sought to relocate patients to "half-way" houses and community-based organizations to help reintegrate them into society, yet care alternatives were plagued by disorganization and under-financing, and many severely and persistently mentally ill people were left without essential services resulting in increasing numbers of mentally ill people on the streets or in prisons because there is no place else for them to go. Yet care alternatives were plagued by disorganization and under-financing, and many severely and persistently mentally ill people were left without essential services (Mechanic and Rochefort 1990). One effect has been increasing numbers of mentally ill people on the streets or in prisons, because lack of treatment and supervision has abetted their committing a crime or because there is no place else for them to go

Understand the origins of research on sexuality in the social sciences.

In the Middle Ages, adventurous aristocrats collected anecdotes about sexual activity for their personal gratification, and religious leaders collected them for a (presumably) more spiritual reason, using confessions about sexual activity as a window into immorality of all sorts (Foucault 1979). By the eighteenth century, sex was seen as draining the body of its energy, and any sexual behavior that was not procreative (especially masturbation) should be avoided entirely. In the late nineteenth century, sex research was gradually taken over by scientists, who sought to observe sex without moral condemnation. After World War II, the center of sex research moved from Europe to the United States. Americans had been shocked by the high rates of variant sexual behaviors reported by Kinsey; in the 1990s, they were equally shocked at the relatively low rates of variant sexual behaviors found by the NORC study. Critics of both studies believed that people would not tell the whole truth: Kinsey's critics believe they would omit instances of unconventional sexual behavior to make their life history sound more "normal," and the NORC study's critics suggest that they would invent instances of unconventional sexual behavior because they were afraid of being labeled "prudes" in an era of sexual liberation. It appears, after all, that Americans were much more sexually conservative than Kinsey discovered—the majority having their sexual experiences with committed partners "appropriate" to their age and sexual orientation.

Understand how global inequality affects health and well-being around the world.

In the United States, for instance, roughly 6.5 children out of every 1,000 will not survive to age 5. In Finland the rate is almost one-third what it is in the United States at 2.3. In Haiti, roughly 69 out of every 1,000 children will die before their fifth birthday. And in Somalia, 136.8 children will die before they reach the age of 5. And when we look at the actual numbers of children who will not live to the age of 5, more than one-half of those children can be accounted for by just five countries—India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and China. The cause of death for most people in the developed world is chronic diseases—such as heart attacks, cancers, and others—more than one-half of all deaths in the developing world are the result of infectious diseases or complications during pregnancy and childbirth to either the mother or the baby. But even some wealthy countries do not manage to safeguard health for their citizens or take care of the ill or fragile in their populations. Despite the fact that the U.S. healthcare system is among the world's most advanced, the United States does not rank particularly high on many of the most basic health indicators. We rank 42nd in life expectancy, and 56th in infant mortality In fact, when comparing wealthy countries, there is considerable variation in the levels of health achieved. To look at the amount of money spent on health care, one would think the United States is the healthiest country in the industrialized world. Today, U.S. health expenditures equal $9024 per person per year while Japan spends just $4152 (in U.S. dollars). Australia spends $4177 (Peter G. Peterson Foundation 2016). Yet life expectancy in Japan is the highest in the most industrialized countries of the world and life expectancy in the United States is among the lowest of all these countries. Canada spends $4506 per capita, yet the average Canadian's life expectancy is also more than 2 years longer than the average American's. Moreover, on many measures of healthcare quality, the United States ranks at the bottom when compared with other developed countries, including Canada, Britain, and Australia.

Explain why concerns about obesity are framed as about "health," but often have more to do with socially constructed body ideals and embodied forms of inequality.

In the United States, we're getting fatter. In 1990, 11.3 percent of Americans were obese; by 2008, it was 34 percent (obesity is measured as having a body mass index [BMI] of over 30 [Flegal, et al. 2010]). About one out of three Americans younger than age 19, and about two-thirds of all adults, qualify as overweight or obese. If current trends continue, by 2030, most American adults—a projected 86 percent—will be overweight or obese.The U.S. military reports that more than a quarter of recruitment-age Americans are "too fat to fight" Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi), more than half the 18- to 24-year-old population is obese. As of 2015, Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity among young people. Beyond this, there are already as many over-nourished people as undernourished around the world.We have pity for the hungry and donate significantly to charities that minister to hunger. We have contempt for the obese and believe it is their fault, a moral failure of sorts, that they are fat. Obesity is an important issue to examine sociologically. Like many social problems, obesity and fatness is often examined by looking at individuals rather than the social forces that impact individuals' lives, decisions, and well-being. Sociologists Abigail Saguy and Kjerstin Gruys (2010) conducted a content analysis of a decade of news reporting on eating disorders and obesity (between 1995 and 2005). One thing than they discovered is that there were a lot more articles on fatness than on issues of eating disorders. Reporting on fatness has increased dramatically when compared with journalism on eating disorders. Saguy and Gruys (2010) discovered that fatness was most often presented as an individual problem, a moral failing on the part of fat individuals. As one article in their sample read: "You can't pick your parents, but you can pick what you eat and how often you exercise." Obesity is most commonly framed in the media as a problem of lifestyle choice and a lack of individual. Whereas eating disorders, by contrast, were much more commonly framed as issues beyond an individuals' control—either resulting from psychological issues, a disease or disorder, or cultural forces and pressures to obtain certain bodily ideals Yet within the developed countries, the rich are significantly thinner than the poor. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to eat well and exercise regularly; poorer people eat more convenience foods with high fats and suffer more weight-related illnesses, like diabetes. Although all the students rated weight as the least important factor, their actual choices revealed that no other attribute counted more. In fact, they were willing to trade 11 IQ points—50 percent of the range of IQs available—just to have a slim teammate And although we are often led to believe that fat bodies pose more health risks than thin bodies, research on the matter suggests that it depends what kinds of risks we are talking about. In fact, a meta-analysis(A quantitative analysis of several separate but similar experiments or studies conducted to test the pooled data for statistical significance.) of research studying the relationship between body mass index and the risk of premature death discovered that people categorized as "obese" or "overweight" are the least likely to die prematurely

Hoppe conducted a content analysis of the court proceedings of 58 cases in Michigan between 1992 and 2010 involving a defendant who was being tried in violation of public disclosure laws surrounding HIV.

Increasingly, sociologists are focusing on how sicknesses are controlled not only by medical authorities and institutions, but by legal authorities as well. This shows how stigma can become "institutionalized." Through this process, some sicknesses come to be "criminalized" such that people who suffer from them can be punished by law for being sick. Sociologist Trevor Hoppe (2013) studies this process in relation to the criminalization of HIV. Although a great deal of political activism and education has endeavored to reduce the stigma associated with HIV diagnoses, Hoppe is interested in examining the ways in which stigma associated with HIV has become institutionalized in the form of HIV disclosure laws. Although these laws are advertised as being in the interest of public health, Hoppe shows how they are used to unfairly punish groups of people who are effectively criminalized for being sick. Although controlling the spread of disease is important, Hoppe discovered that these laws serve a much more moral purpose of not simply socially stigmatizing individuals with HIV, but legally stigmatizing them as well. The legislation relied on stereotypes of HIV-carriers as dangerous, morally repugnant people whose disease meant that they were a risk to public health. Few diseases have been criminalized in the way that HIV/AIDS has. It is one of the most stigmatizing illnesses someone can have. And legislation exists that both prevents discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS (like workplace and housing discrimination, for instance) as well as other types of legislation that criminalize those with HIV/AIDS. Indeed, in 1989, at the tail end of the AIDS epidemic, the Michigan House Legislative Analysis wrote, "Criminalization could actually foster the spread of HIV infection by driving it underground, impeding cooperation from infected individuals both in counseling and testing and in partner notification" (quoted from Hoppe, 2013; see also Hoppe 2017). Yet, Michigan (and many other states) continues to try people for being sick.

against Kinsey's results

It wasn't until the 1990s, however, that America got a definitive, scientific survey of sexual behavior. A team of researchers at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago undertook the most comprehensive study of sexual behavior in American history (Laumann et al. 1994). Their findings were as controversial as Kinsey's, but in the opposite direction: instead of huge amounts of nonprocreative sexual activity, they found much smaller amounts than Kinsey did. Why such a difference? because Kinsey didn't take representative samples he took "convenience samples" His respondents included a large number of college students, prisoners, psychiatric patients, and even his own personal friends. It is possible that they had more variety in their sexual experiences to begin with—something that may have made them more likely to agree to participate in his study in the first place. Also historical context could have had a lot to do with the results as well many of the men in his sample had been in the military during World War I and World War II, when visiting a prostitute was a common form of recreation for soldiers and sailors on leave. In the 1990s, a relatively small proportion of the men were veterans of any war. The same-sex behavior may have declined because with the rise of gay liberation, straight men in the 1990s might have been more sensitive to being labeled "gay" than their 1940s counterparts and if so, may have been less likely to engage in recreational sex with each other. In the same way, gay men were likely to "come out" at an early age, and not experience so much social pressure to sleep with women. So, paradoxically, sexual orientation and behavior were more closely aligned in the 1990s than they had been in the 1940s.

Measures of healthcare include

Life Expectancy: an estimate of the average life span of people born in a specific year. Infant Mortality Rate: the number of deaths of infants younger than 1 year of age per 1,000 live births in a given year. Maternal Mortality Rate: the number of deaths of pregnant or new mothers either before, during, or immediately following childbirth, per 1,000 births in a given year. Chronic Diseases: long-term or lifelong diseases that develop gradually or are present at birth (rates are calculated as proportion to the population * per 1,000, 100,000, or 1 million). Acute Diseases: diseases that strike suddenly and may cause severe illness, incapacitation, or even death. Infectious Diseases:diseases that are caused by infectious agents such as viruses or bacteria. But health is not only a biological issue; it is also a sociological issue. Consider that your age, race, gender, class, and sexuality all affect not only the likelihood that you are in good health, but also the kinds of health concerns with which you are likely to struggle during your lives. Simply put, health and illness vary; they vary by nationality, age, gender, race, and more.

Describe the ways that health and well-being as well as health inequality are also perpetuated interactionally.

Our experience of illness may be individual, but the way we understand our illness and the way we act is deeply socially patterned. In a still relevant formulation, sociologist Talcott Parsons described what he called "the sick role Some illnesses leave a person doubly affected. Not only do people who have these illnesses suffer from the illness itself, but they also suffer from discrimination because they have it. Those who suffer from mental illness, alcohol or drug addiction, physical or mental disabilities, or HIV also suffer from social stigma. People who have these types of illnesses struggle against social expectations and prejudices. Ironically, people who suffer from these illnesses constitute the majority of Americans.

Explain what it means to study health inequality intersectionally.

Our health changes as we age. Not only does our general health decline, but also our susceptibility to various illnesses shifts. For example, men ages 25 to 44 are twice as likely to die of HIV or unintentional injury as they are to die of heart disease or cancer. But, by ages 45 to 64, heart disease and cancer are about 20 times more likely to be the cause of death than either HIV or unintended injury. In the United States and throughout the world, the wealthier you are, the healthier you are. People in more developed countries live longer and healthier lives, and in every country, the wealthy live longer and healthier lives. so too is being poor a good predictor of being ill. Lower class people work in more dangerous and hazardous jobs, with fewer health insurance benefits, and often live in neighborhoods or in housing that endangers health. Stated most simply, inequality kills. And sometimes, this is simply the result of nutritious food being in short supply Poor urban blacks have the worst health of any ethnic group in the United States, with the possible exception of American Indians. One third of all poor black 16-year old girls in urban areas will not reach their 65th birthdays. High rates of heart disease, cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver make African American men in Harlem less likely to reach age 65 than men in Bangladesh. Latinos die of several leading causes of death at far higher rates than do whites, including liver disease, diabetes, and HIV. Racism itself is harmful to health: the stress brought about by discrimination and inequality may contribute to the higher rates of stress-related diseases and hypertension, and mental illness Not only do class, race, and age affect health and illness, but so, too does gender. Before the twentieth century, women's life expectancy was slightly lower than men's, largely as a result of higher mortality rates during pregnancy and childbirth. Through the twentieth century, though, women have been increasingly outliving men, so that today American women's life expectancy is 80 years, and men's is 78 years. In the highly developed countries, women outlive men by about 5 to 8 years, but they outlive men by less than 3 years in the developing world. In general life expectancy for both women and men has been increasing at a rate of 2.5 years per decade But why do women in the advanced countries outlive men now? For one thing, improvements in prenatal and maternal health care during pregnancy and childbirth save many lives. But another reason may be the gender of health. Norms of masculinity often encourage men to take more health risks and then to discourage them from seeking healthcare services until after an illness has progressed. (real men dont get sick) Note that most of the causes of death with the highest differential by sex are those most closely associated with gendered behavior, not biological sex: accidents, suicide, chronic liver disease (drinking). Similarly, women are more likely to die of diseases that strike in old age (like Alzheimer's disease) because they are more likely to live long enough to acquire it. Similarly, the largest racial disparities here are associated with inequality rather than biological difference. Homicide ranks among the top-10 leading causes of death for black men, Hispanic men, and American Indian and Alaskan Native men, but not white or Asian men in the United States. These differences in leading causes of death by gender and race illustrate very the different realities each of these groups experiences. They may live in the same society, but their experiences of and in that society are shaped by inequality in different ways. Another reason for the disparities between women's and men's health has been the success of the women's health movement. Beginning in the 1970s with a critique of a male-dominated healthcare industry that seemed relatively uninterested in women's health issues, the women's health movement has brought increasing awareness to certain illnesses such as breast cancer that overwhelmingly affect women (a tiny number of men get breast cancer per year). In addition, the movement has also spurred new interest in women wresting control over pregnancy, labor, and childbirth from the medical establishment, sparking increased interest in natural childbirth, a wider variety of reproductive and neonatal healthcare options, and the breastfeeding of newborn babies.

Define sexual scripts, and explain why understanding sexual scripts is among the most important components of sexual socialization.

Our identities may derive from the biological sex of the person whom we desire or with whom we have sex; that is, we may consider ourselves heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual. Sexual scripts are those cultural guidelines that help us understand what sexual interactions are and are not.

Appearance based discrimination

Prejudice or discrimination based on physical appearance and particularly physical appearance believed to fall short of societal notions of beauty. Legislating this type of discrimination is challenging because we also know that beauty is socially constructed. So, proving someone hired or fired you because of your appearance is more difficult than you might assume

de-institutionalization

The re-integration of the sick back into society, instead of isolating them in separate places like mental institutions. The dominant trends in dealing with these stigmatized illnesses are de-institutionalization and medicalization. Isolation was understood as further contributing to the illness; integration, it is believed, will facilitate recovery. Thus, for example, the number of children with learning disabilities who are "mainstreamed" in regular classes has expanded rapidly, and "Special Education" classes are now reserved for those with severe handicaps.

There are 4 ways in which sexuality can be understood as socially constructed

Sexuality varies enormously from one culture to the next. Sexuality varies within any one culture over time. Sexuality varies among different groups in society. Race, ethnicity, age, and religion—as well as gender—all construct your sexualities. Sexual behavior changes over the course of your life. What you might find erotic as a teenager may not be a preview of your eventual sexual tendencies; sexual tastes develop, mature, and change over time.

Summarize what sociologists have learned about contemporary gender and sexual inequality by examining the social phenomenon of "hooking up."

Similar to the moral panic induced by "dating" at the outset of the twentieth century, a moral panic emerged surrounding "hooking up" in the twenty-first century. The same concerns are largely recycled—the notion that with less rules, young people will run wild and fewer will eventually marry. Abstinence If hooking-up culture is the dominant campus sexual culture, then "abstinence pledgers" may represent a counterculture. Abstinence campaigns encourage young people to take a "virginity pledge" and refrain from heterosexual intercourse until marriage. Abstinence campaigns do appear to have some effect, but they do not offset the other messages teenagers hear. Sociologist Peter Bearman and Hannah Brückner (2001; Brückner and Bearman 2005) analyzed data from more than 90,000 students and found that taking a virginity pledge does lead an average heterosexual teenager to delay his or her first sexual experience—by about 18 months. But, such pledges have also been found to have some adverse effects on sexual health as well, as those who do have sex among this group are less likely to use contraceptives, have similar rates of sexually transmitted infections as their nonpledging peers, and are more likely to engage in oral and anal sex as well. And the pledges were effective only for students up to age 17. By the time they are 20 years old, more than 90 percent of both boys and girls are sexually active. Because abstinence-based programs are often used instead of actual sex education, there is not wide agreement in exactly what "counts" as keeping your pledge. In one recent survey of 1,100 college freshmen, 61 percent believed they were still abstinent if they had participated in mutual masturbation; 37 percent if they had had oral sex; and 24 percent if they had had anal sex. On the other hand, 24 percent believed that kissing broke their abstinence pledge A secondary analysis of data gathered from more than 1,700 heterosexual teenagers nationwide found that those who received abstinence-only education (24 percent of the students) were 50 percent more likely to report a pregnancy than those who received comprehensive sex education, which includes information about birth control

tolerance trap

Suzanna Walters' concept to capture the co-existence of enormous gains in popular, political, and cultural "inclusion" of gay people with the persistence of anti-gay laws and legislation, the spate of suicides by queer youth, homophobic bullying and violence, and more. And when we turn to the world of popular culture, "gay friendly" is a media buzzword. From Chris Colfer's depiction of a gay teen struggling with bullying and finding his place in a high school in Glee to co-stars Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson's portrayals of a married gay couple with an adopted daughter in Modern Family to out and proud Ellen DeGeneres receiving a major day-time talk show (The Ellen Show).Walters (2014), however, argues that these examples are better seen as sexual tolerance than sexual equality.

sick role

Talcott Parsons' coinage to describe how we learn to "be" sick; it is a social role we learn to occupy and with which we learn to interact. Sickness, in other words, is not simply a disease or condition; it is a mode of interaction, a social role we learn to occupy and with which we learn to interact. According to Parsons, the individual is not responsible for being sick. Getting sick is not a moral failure; the origins of illness are seen as coming from outside the individual's control. As a result, the sick individual is entitled to certain privileges, including a withdrawal from normal responsibilities, and the expectation that others will exhibit compassion and sympathy, often in the form of care-taking behaviors. However, such rights and privileges of the ill are not indefinite; they are, according to Parsons, temporary. The sick person must actively make an effort to get better, by seeing a doctor, taking medication, and doing whatever therapies a medical expert prescribes

orgasm gap

Term for the pattern of pleasure discrepancy between women and men that often occurs between hook-up sex and relationship sex. Research on college hookups also shows a significant orgasm gap between heterosexual encounters in relationships versus hookups, suggesting they may be less sexually liberating than some suggest. heterosexual women achieve orgasm more often in relationships than hookups. This pattern is the "orgasm gap." They discovered that the reason for this pleasure discrepancy for women between relationship sex and hookup sex was related to two separate issues: sexual practices and gendered beliefs about who is entitled to receive sexual pleasure. In terms of practices, their data showed that specific sexual practices, prior experience with a sexual partner, and level of perceived commitment were associated with a higher likelihood of orgasm for women—and also much more likely to occur inside relationships than in hookups. But interview data also showed that the orgasm gap is related to beliefs as well: both men and women questioned women's entitlement to achieving orgasm in hookups (but not men's), but also strongly believed in women's entitlement to sexual pleasure in relationships (as well as men's).

Adonis complex

The belief that men must look like Greek gods, with perfect chins, thick hair, rippling muscles, and washboard abdominal muscles. The standards for men, like those for women, are becoming increasingly impossible to achieve. With GI Joes as a role model;Such proportions are nearly impossible to obtain and illustrate shifts in body expectations for boys and men, too.

identity work

The concern with and performance of physical, symbolic, verbal, and behavioral self-representations designed to be taken as part of one's identity.

Other sociologists refined the idea of the sick role. Eliot Friedson (1970), specified three different types of sick roles:

The conditional sick role. This concerns individuals who suffer from an illness from which they will recover. This is the most typical sick role. As long as the sick person plays his or her part (tries to get better), then other aspects of the role (relief from work or family obligations, expectation of compassion) will follow. The unconditionally legitimate sick role. This concerns those people who have either long-term or incurable illnesses, such as certain forms of cancer, and who are unable to get better by their own behavior. They are therefore entitled to occupy the sick role for as long as they are ill with no moral disapproval. The illegitimate sick role. This may concern those people who do nothing to improve their situation, or people who are believed to be ill because of something they, themselves did. Those who suffer from sexually transmitted infections (STIs) may be seen by some as bringing the disease on themselves, and therefore are not entitled to play the sick role. Initially, those suffering from HIV/AIDS were seen by many as occupying an illegitimate sick role. But after three decades and serious political campaigning, most people now see those with HIV as occupying an unconditionally legitimate sick role.

Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality

The most common sexual orientation worldwide, it is sexual attraction between people of different sexes. A sexual identity organized around sexual desire for members of one's own sex. In colloquial terms, homosexuals are often called gay.

Positive discrimination

The provision of special opportunities to those with certain characteristics than to those without them, typically to a disadvantaged group. Even whether we are attractive or not can be the basis for discrimination and inequality—both positive and negative. Research has shown that beauty pays ... well, most of the time. In general, attractive people experience positive discrimination. Research reveals that people who are judged physically attractive by others are happier, healthier, and make more money. Conversely, the less attractive are, for instance, likely to receive longer prison sentences than physically attractive people put on trial. One recent longitudinal study found that looks and brains and personality are the best predictors of long-term financial gain

Masculinization of sex

The shift in gendered sexual scripts toward a masculine model of sexuality that emphasizes the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, increased attention to orgasm, increased numbers of sexual partners, interest in sexual experimentation, and the separation of sexual behavior from love. Women's sexuality is becoming increasingly similar to men's; in fact, we might even speak of a "masculinization" of sex. These are partly the result of the technological transformation of sexuality (from birth control to the Internet) and partly the result of the sexual revolution's promise of greater sexual freedom with fewer emotional and physical consequences

sexual double standard

The social standard that encourages men to pursue sex as an end in itself, to seek a lot of sex with many different partners, outside of romantic or emotional commitment, and teaches women to consider sex with one partner and only in the context of an emotional relationship. "his" and "her" sexuality are not considered equal.

epidemiology

The study of the causes and distribution of disease and disability.

body image

The subjective picture or mental image of one's own body. increasing numbers of young women are diagnosed with either anorexia nervosa or bulimia every year. Anorexia nervosa involves chronic and dangerous starvation dieting and obsessive exercise; bulimia typically involves "binging and purging" Susan Bordo (1993 [1985]), suggested thinking about anorexia as "the crystallization of culture"—rather than considering it abnormal and evidence of psychopathology. Bordo sought to highlight some of the social and cultural forces that shape all girls' and women's understandings of their bodies.

Gayborhoods

They were spaces to which people with same-sex desires could go to locate one another. many U.S. gayborhoods are in decline. And part of the reason for this is that they have achieved some of their political goals—so much so that gayborhoods have become vibrant sources of urban culture. Yet, Ghaziani also argues that this process is "uneven and incomplete." Certain populations within the LGBT community might benefit from the assimilation of gay spaces in ways others will not be able to. Similarly, in Jane Ward's (2003) analysis of West Hollywood's pride celebration, she discovered that as the events became increasingly mainstream, they have lost much of their political character in favor of celebrations of definitions of gay culture that inevitably marginalize portions of the gay community.

one landmark study, Rosenhan (1973) found if we are told a person is "a mental patient" or "mentally ill," we may perceive their behavior as strange, no matter what they do.

Those defined as mentally ill or even merely strange or neurotic are strongly stigmatized in our society. Studies of public attitudes consistently find that the public fears people with mental health problems (Martin, Pescosolido and Tuch 2000) and desires to be socially distant from them

sexual identity

Typically, it is understood to refer to an identity that is organized by the gender of the person (or persons) to whom we are sexually attracted. Also called sexual orientation.

Summarize some of the forms of inequality from which the mentally ill suffer.

We once thought people who acted strange were deviant or weird, or perhaps evil and "possessed" by demons. Now we're more likely to think they have a treatable medical condition—a "mental illness." Mental illnesses are among the least understood illnesses, precisely because the body seems to be "normal" and yet behavior and expression are often not at all normal. The causes of mental illness are as varied as the causes of bodily illnesses. In some cases, genetic factors before birth affect brain chemistry or neurological development; in other cases, mental illness can be caused by trauma (either physical or psychological), side effects of other diseases (AIDS-related dementia), chemical imbalances in the brain (schizophrenia), or even aging. Indeed, there is a persistent fear among Americans that the mentally ill are violent, criminal, and dangerous. Yet, research has consistently shown that the mentally ill are much more likely to be the victims of violence and crime than the perpetrators Since the 1960s, sociologists have encouraged mental health practitioners to reconsider the nature of mental illness. Many argued that the label "mental patient" or "mentally ill" had become too powerful, and that people were being kept in asylums who might be able to live in society if properly supervised. At the same time, new drugs were developed that were proving effective against a number of disorders. At the same time as deinstitutionalization re-integrated the mentally ill into "normal" life, mental illness began to be redefined more biologically, and treated more medically, especially with drugs. Mental illness was "medicalized." Instead of people who have "problems," they are increasingly seen as patients with symptoms. Insurance companies and managed care require that most psychological problems be treated not with therapy or counseling but with prescription medication, which is significantly cheaper. Fewer people are being institutionalized, but there have been dramatic increases in the writing of prescriptions. Despite all of this, the mentally ill continue to suffer prejudice. Large numbers of Americans say they would ostracize people with mental health problems. A majority of Americans express an unwillingness to have people suffering from these problems as coworkers, largely because they fear the "disturbing behavior" more often directly observed by the public. Wealthier people have long been more likely to say they would avoid the mentally ill (and those with the least income are also among the most likely to suffer from mental health issues). But urban residents recently emerged as significantly more likely to do so than in the past. What's more, the label of "mental illness" only increases desires for social distance. more than half of Americans will develop a mental illness at some point in their lives, according to a recent survey

At Indiana University, a zoologist named Alfred Kinsey (1884-1956) had been asked to teach a new course on Sexuality and Marriage. Kinsey was determined to study sexual behavior, unclouded by morality. Eventually, he and his colleagues at the Institute for Sex Research collected sexual histories from 18,000 Americans. His books were for many years the definitive works on American sexual behavior... Kinsey's Findings:

What he exposed was a wide gulf between Americans' professed morality surrounding sexual behavior and their actual behaviors. Among his most shocking findings were: The higher your socioeconomic class, the more sex you have. People at the time believed that the working-class was more sexually active and aware ("earthy"); but Kinsey found that the middle class had sex more often, and with a greater variety of techniques. Women enjoy sex. The "common knowledge" of the era taught that women did not enjoy sex, and engaged in it only to please their husbands. However, women were as interested in sex as men, and most had orgasms (although primarily achieved through masturbation). Extramarital affairs are not extremely rare. Kinsey discovered that 50 percent of married men and 26 percent of married women had at least one extramarital partner. But by far the most controversial finding concerned same-sex behavior. In the 1950s, it had been assumed that homosexuality was a severe, and extremely rare, psychiatric disorder. He classified his respondents along a 7-point continuum, from 0 (exclusively heterosexual outlets) through 6 (exclusively same-sex outlets). Although only about 5 percent of the men in his sample were ranked at 6 (only same-sex experiences), less than half of the adult men in the sample (45 percent) ranked at 0 (exclusively heterosexual behavior). Among women, less than 3 percent were ranked at 6, and roughly two-thirds of the women in the sample (66 percent) ranked at 0.

Summarize the ways that beauty is socially constructed in ways that support existing systems of inequality in societies.

before being heavy means you were upper class because could afford food; now being heavy is a signifier of being poor because cant afford healthy food. Slender bodies are challenging to achieve in the most affluent societies in the world and fat bodies are challenging to achieve in the most impoverished societies in the world. 19th and 20th centuries in Europe tan skin and muscular body was an indicator of low status because this shows that you were doing a lot of menial work; the elite did not work much and could afford to stay out of the sun. Pale and plump bodies were in vogue