Influences on Sexual Behavior and their Impact on Sexuality in Historical Context

Historical Trends of Sexual Attitudes

Sexuality refers to the state or quality of being sexual. Sexuality can be demonstrated in other manners other than sexual intercourse. It might quite frequently be demonstrated via caressing and close physical contact among other forms of touching. Sexuality contains various components including moral, biological, cultural, physical, social, and psychological. Similarly, sex mechanics entail biological processes that are greatly influenced by cultural, psychological, social, and emotional variables. This paper evaluates factors that influence sexual behaviors and sexual behavior trends. The paper proposes that individual sexual behaviors are highly influenced by individual age, culture, and gender. It also proposes that males are more engaged in dangerous sexual behavior than women and individual engagement in various sexual behaviors advances with age.

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Cultural Influence on Sexuality Behavior

Human sexuality is highly influenced in one way or another by cultures. There are cultural anticipations for what one should or should not do with their genitals. Every society contains controls and restrictions that define the sexual lives of its members. In the United States, children are bombarded with explicit or implicit messages and images regarding what is deviant or normal sexual behavior and desire. They get to learn that naughty girls do not maintain their virginity for long compared to nice girls who maintain their virginity. There are common terms such as perverted or oversexed and the majority learn that sex is a privilege set aside for married individuals and considered wrong if it takes place among unmarried people. The religious culture makes it hard for people to experience true free sexuality. For instance, Ireland’s Catholic Church remains extensively influential as it planted in people’s minds that sex is taboo and shameful for anyone there than married heterosexual couples. Also, some culture permits people extra freedom to pursue their sexual desires compared to others. Nevertheless, most cultures have changed such that people in the modern world are freer to satisfy their sexual desires without being bounded by past cultural rules such as the need to be a married heterosexual couple (Howe, 2011). 

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Age Influence on Sexuality Behavior

Sexual behaviors are also found to be influenced by age. The sexual drive has been found to decline with age for the majority. The trend is true for most religions, social classes, and ethnic groups. However, women seem to lose sexual interest with age compared to men. Research conducted by Gray et al. (2018) demonstrated a decline in sexual behavior with age, perceived sexual desire changes, and ideal sexual behavior frequency and openness to sexual behaviors array with age including having multiple partners. The research also established that sexual satisfaction increases with women’s age though not with men. Older women were found to experience higher sexual satisfaction compared to older men. Also as anticipated, men reported extra frequent sexual behavior, higher perceived sexual motivation change, and extra openness to different sexual behaviors including one-night stands, than women. On the contrary, women documented higher sexual satisfaction and were extra open to opting for getting married compared to men (Gray et al., 2018).

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Gender Influence on Sexuality Behaviors

Gender is found to play an important role in both behaviors and attitudes about sexuality in obvious materials. These attitudes can influence the actual sexual practices of people. Men are likely to be involved in risky sexual behaviors to show their sexual and virility expertise as their gender is attached to masculinity, bravery, and strength. This hinders them from considering using a condom as it is a sense of weakness. On the contrary, women are related to femininity, which is associated with nurturing, agreeable, submissive, and cooperative and are thus anticipated to assume a passive sexual role. Women are unlikely to engage in risky sexual behavior on their own, but their passive role forces them to submit to men’s demands at some point (Adebayo & Olonisakin, 2014).

Pornographic Trends

About 86% of questioned males confessed to using pornography materials regularly, compared to 31% of questioned women. Also, 66% of the questioned men were found in favor of pornography compared to 50% of women. Pornography use was also found to correlate with a higher degree of substance use, permissive sexual attitudes, and a larger number of sexual partners. Men are also found to practice an extensive range of social behaviors compared to women. An extensive variation happens in sexual quality and behavior based on demographic variables and relationship processes (Howe, 2011). The use of pornography has generally increased with an increase in internet use between both genders. Also today more people including adolescence can easily access pornography.

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Sexual Behaviors Trend

The research was conducted to help understand the engagement of oral, anal, or vaginal sex for participants aged from 14 to 24 years, and year birth cohorts among adults aged 25 to 59 based on year birth cohorts. The research established that among individuals aged 25 to 59 years, sexual initiation at the median age reduced between 1940 and 1949 and between 1980 and 1989 cohorts from 17.1 to 16.1 among males and from 17.9 to 16.2 among females. Partners’ median lifetime increased between the 1940 and 1949 and between 1970 and 1979 cohorts among individuals aged between 14 and 24 years, the level having had increased sex practices with age, from 13.1% among males and 12.5% among females at 14 years to over 75% at 19 years for both males and females. Among individuals that were sexually experienced aged between 14 and 19, 55% of males and 45.2% of females had not less than two partners in the last year. About 14.9% of females aged from 20 to 24 were reported to have same-sex partners. Among participants aged from 20 to 24 years or 14 to 19 years who reported having sex did not vary from 1999 to 2012 based on the survey for either gender (Liu et al., 2015).

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Conclusion

Individual sexual attitude is highly influenced by the individual culture that determines how a person perceives sex based on their community beliefs and teachings. In most cases, sexuality is influenced by cultural gender roles, with men getting an upper hand in controlling women’s sexual behaviors. Also, culture plays a great role in determining the best age to start engaging in sexual behaviors and what conditions, with most traditional cultures teaching the need to preserve one’s self for marriage. Nevertheless, people have changed with the majority getting to engage in sexual behavior at a much younger age than in their early years. Also, people are now comfortable engaging in sex long before marriage and with multiple partners. Others are also getting engaged in a same-sex partnership or advancing sexual practices including oral and anal sex. Women were also found to take more precautions while engaging in sexual behaviors compared to men.

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