THE MEANING AND EXPERIENCE OF FEMALE SEXUALITY A Phenomenological Analysis

The influence of medicine, religion, media, and sexual violence in constructing and confining the experience and expression of female sexuality was underscored in this qualitative analysis of the sexual themes experienced in the lives of 10 adult women. Structural and institutional barriers to the development of female sexual health were identified. Areas of central importance to women for experiencing their sexuality included sexual expression, reproduction, body image, and intimate relationships. Both positive and negative themes were identified, emphasizing the importance for women of assuming an active role in the construction of our own sexual paradigms.     

SEXUALITY, RATIONALITY, AND SPIRITUALITY

Abstract. Historical progress has largely been described in terms of the power to order social and ecological realities according to the interests of a few. Their concepts, images, and metaphors have transmitted knowledge (both explicit and tacit) that has come to be regarded as received wisdom. This kind of power, which has shaped (as well as described) history, has belonged primarily to men; whereas women's nature and, accordingly, their power have been defined primarily in terms of sexuality. Men's control of women's sexuality is therefore the source of the disqualification of women as free agents-that is, as significant participants in, say, scientific and religious meaning-giving processes. Thus morality requires reevaluation of our assumptions about human nature. Most importantly, it demands that female sexuality be considered within the context of rationality and spirituality.     

SEX-ROLE IDENTITY, GENDER IDENTITY, AND SELF-SCHEMATA

Forty females and 40 males were shown slides of masculine and feminine phrases controlled for social desirability, sex-linked content, syllable length, and negative semantic construction to evaluate schematic processing on the dimensions of masculinity and femininity. Their responses to the phrases were timed. The BSRI, PAQ, and SSR1Q administered subsequent to the slide presentation were used to categorize subjects into groups of masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated. Comparisons between the groups evaluated by the different scales indicated that the PAQ was the best predictor of schematic processing and that the SSRIQ and gender were not predictors of schematic processing. Correlations between the SSRIQ and the masculine and feminine scales of the BSRI and PAQ provided evidence partially supportive of Storms's (1979) theory that sex-role identity influences the development of same-sex-typed attributes but does not influence opposite-sex-typed attributes.     

IMMIGRATION, NATIONALISM, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract: Michael Walzer and David Miller defend the authority of democratic states to determine who will be allowed entry and membership. In support of this view they have claimed that the domestic solidarity necessary for social justice is threatened by the unregulated influx of outsiders. This empirical thesis proves to be false when applied to the United States, where heavy Latino and Latina immigration is more likely to increase civic solidarity than to diminish it. Seen in this light, the positions of Jürgen Habermas and Carol Gould, giving human rights priority over democratic sovereignty in decisions about membership, cannot be criticized as utopian. Liberal philosophers can also defend open borders as a way to give oppressed peoples representation inside powerful countries where state decisions often threaten access to essential resources and basic freedoms in their home countries.     

IDENTITY SUPPORT, IDENTITY DEVALUATION, AND WELL-BEING AMONG LESBIANS

This research tested predictions about the association of identity support and identity devaluation with psychological well-being (self-esteem, life satisfaction, and depression). Lesbian women completed baseline surveys ( N = 42), then provided daily experience reports during a 2-week period ( n = 38), and completed a 2-month follow-up survey ( n = 34). Several types of evidence consistently demonstrated the importance of identity support for well-being. Lesbians who reported more identity support scored higher on measures of well-being at initial assessment, during the daily phase of the study, and at the follow-up. Comparable results were found for the negative association between identity devaluation and well-being. Identity measures proved to be significant predictors of lesbians' well-being even after controlling for other types of support and social stress. Both identity support and identity devaluation contributed independently to the prediction of daily self-esteem and life satisfaction. Strengths and limitations of this study are discussed.     

NAVIGATING SEX, SEXUALITY, AND CHRISTIAN VALUES

This is an autobiographical essay that attempts to illuminate the cultural factors (e.g., race, religion, social class, gender, and sexuality) that shaped the author's efforts to embrace herself, including her non-conforming sexuality in a context that was quite rigid about most things. The reader is invited to experience some of the author’s grapplings about Christianity, growing up black and female in a changing America, and the constant longing to please others that many people from non-dominant positions express. This essay also hopes to provide at least one point of entry into an academic and/or personal exploration of culture and sexuality in America, including discussions about how morality, social class, race, and gender socialization may interact to shape choices and personal expressions of who one is.     

PHILOSOPHY, SEXUALITY AND GENDER: MUTUAL INTERROGATIONS

These three papers present a quite diverse and complementary set of answers to the question, "Why Sexuality Matters to Philosophy." They show the ways in which sexuality as an issue may be of interest to philosophers working on a wide range of questions. The theme of sexuality appears as both subject matter and context for the development of scientific theories of human behavior, as a pervasive dimension of the representation of everyday life, and as a social phenomenon raising important questions bearing on the implications of equal citizenship for persons of different genders and sexualities. Sexuality reveals itself as implicated in epistemology and philosophy of science, aesthetics and ethics, political philosophy and jurisprudence. Sexuality as a subject matter provides rich examples for extending the treatment of quite traditional problems. At the same time, by identifying sexuality as a fundamental human phenomenon, fraught with normative implications and closely linked to emotional and bodily life, these papers show how thinking about sexuality may also act to unsettle and redefine certain important areas of philosophical inquiry.     

BRUTE FACTS,THE NECESSITY OF IDENTITY,AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

In ‘Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles,’ Della Rocca argues that any counterexample to the PII would involve ‘a brute fact of non‐identity [. . .] not grounded in any qualitative difference.’ I respond that Adams's so‐called Continuity Argument against the PII does not postulate qualitatively inexplicable brute facts of identity or non‐identity if understood in the context of Kripkean modality. One upshot is that if the PII is understood to quantify over modal as well as non‐modal properties, the qualitative explicability of numerical distinctness requires not the PII but a principle of the identity of necessary indiscernibles.     

JEWISH NATIONALISM AND THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC IMAGINATION

This article examines Ahad Ha'am's attempt to create a Hebrew compendium of Jewish knowledge, Otsar hayahadut belashon'ivrit (A Treasury of Judaism in the Hebrew Language), at the end of the nineteenth century. Although his proposal was never realized, it represents an important moment in the history of Jewish nationalism, both because of the influence it exerted on Hebrew writers and scholars active in the Zionist movement and, eventually, on the political culture of the yishuv. Ahad Ha'am's effort to publish a Hebrew encyclopedia reveals his faith in the power of books to spark a national revival; he believed that the entire Jewish heritage could be contained within one authoritative book or set of books, and that such a project had the power to rehabilitate and preserve a weak, divided and scattered people, and to provide it with a unified, homogenous national identity. His vision was later modified and transformed by the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and survived in altered form as the primary impulse behind Bialik's ambitious attempt to gather, translate and edit the classical works of Judaism into modern anthologies, and after Bialik's death in 1934 as one of the organizing principals of the Zionist movement during the period of the British Mandate.     

KILLING FOR THE HOMELAND: PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM AND VIOLENCE

Political choices favoring one's country or one's nationality are wrong if they conflict with a principle of universal free acceptability, prohibiting choices that violate every set of rules to which any willing cooperator would want all to conform. Despite its universalism, this principle requires patriotic favoritism in political choices and permits individuals to assert nationalist interests in claims for state aid. But it deprives patriotism and nationalism of any distinctive role in establishing the legitimacy of wars and uprisings. These restrictions are appropriate even if stronger forms of patriotism and nationalism are psychologically indispensable for achieving social goals required for universal free acceptability.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

IDENTITY,RELATION R,AND WHAT MATTERS

This paper offers a challenge to Derek Parfit's thesis that one ought to have no preference between these two otherwise identical situations: 1. I continue to go on living as before, and 2. I do not survive, but am replaced by a duplicate, psychologically continuous to my present self (i.e. an R-related duplicate). I point out that virtually all psychologically normal persons regard some inanimate objects as being ‘irreplaceable’ (such that no copy could adequately substitute). I then propose that in every such case, this judgment is based on the subject's regarding some person as likewise irreplaceable. It would follow that any such subject would have to reject Parfit's thesis.     

SEXUALITY IN PERIMENOPAUSAL AND POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN

This article reviews psychosocial and biological aspects of the effects of menopause on sexuality. Sexuality is conceptualized as having multiple dimensions including desire, arousal, and orgasm. Population studies have revealed that postmenopausal status is associated with decline in these components of sexual functioning. While it is probable that psychological response to menopause affects sexual functioning, little research has addressed this issue. Considerable research has addressed the possible relationship between sexuality and menopausal hormone changes. Some research shows that low estrogen levels are associated with diminished sexual response and that estrogen replacement produces enhanced sexual response. Other studies, however, do not show this. Testosterone level is more clearly related to at least some measures of sexuality. Issues for future research are discussed.