Examining how and why society tried to regulate marriage and sexual behavior.

1. Why Does Society Care
About Regulating Marriage
and Sexual Behavior?
By Milena Nichols
WRTG 3020 Spring 2011

2. Introduction
• I wrote this presentation to examine
why society cares so much about
regulating marriage and sexual
behavior.
• The larger goal of this presentation is to
expand upon what we know about
gender and sexual orientation and how
we know this.

3. Outline
Why regulate sexual behavior and marriage?
• How society regulates sexual behavior and marriage:
• Look at boundaries of sex and marriage.
• What are the social mechanisms of control.
• Why society regulates:
• Examine social and cultural constructs of “normalcy”.
• Find the hierarchy & categorization of sexual behavior.
• Will society ever stop caring about regulating sexual behavior?
• How does this tie into what we know about gender and sexual
orientation?

4. Academic Sources Used:
• Jane Ussher’s Sexual Science and the Law:
Regulating Sex--Reifying the Power of the
Heterosexual Man from the 1997 book
Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the
Boundaries of Sex.
• Michael Warner’s 1999 book The
Trouble with Normal: Sex Politics and
the Ethics of Queer Life.

5. Before we can look at why
society regulates marriage
and sexual behavior, we
must first understand how
society regulates sexual
behavior and marriage.

6. What is Sex?
How do you define sex?

7. Definitions of Sex:
• Penetration in vaginal intercourse.
• Engaging in sexual relations or sexual
coupling.
• Coitus (another word for sex).
• What about masturbation, rubbing together,
oral stimulation, and anal stimulation?

8. What is legal, in terms of
sex, within the United
States?

9. • The only form of sex that is legal
within all 50 states in the United
States is:
• “The placement of the penis in the
vagina in wedlock.”

10. How is marriage defined?

11. Marriage
• Within the US:
• The legal and/or religious
ceremony between a man and a
woman that formalizes their
relationship in the eyes of the law.
• Common Law:
• A marriage or legal ceremony for
any “others” than man and woman.

12. “The law frames heterosexual
intercourse as normal and legal...
[therefore] marriage, the
bedrock of social order, is a
relationship that can take place
only between a man and a
woman.” -Ussher

13. • Both sexual laws and marriage are
gendered around the idea of the
powerful male phallus and the passive
sexuality of the woman.
• If marriage between a man and a woman
is “normal” then anything else is
“abnormal” or “other”.
• Turns “other” behavior into social or
sexual deviancy.

14. Why is this important?
• If people are involved in a
relationship in a place where it is a
crime to live together and have a
sexual relationship outside of
marriage: child custody laws, tax
laws, healthcare, benefits, jobs and
property laws can exclude you for
doing something illegal.

15. Here’s an example:

16. Using definitions of sex
and marriage as
mechanisms of control:

17. Social Control
•Classifying some sexual
behavior as criminal.
•Shame and stigmatization.
•Trying to regulate others.
•Trying to prove that
homosexuality is genetic.
•Not giving all people the
same laws.
•Denying sexual freedom.

18. “Normal” vs. “Other”

19. If only sex between men and women is legal
--anything else is abnormal if it does not fit
within approved standards.
• Normal sex is also know as “Vanilla Sex”:
between a male and a female, only vaginal
penetration and in the missionary position.

20. Who gave the power to those
who are “normal”?

21. Who gave the power to those
who are “normal”?
We Did.

22. Through our...

23. Through our...
• Religious background:
• Biblical authority prohibits: autoeroticism,
sodomy, extramarital sex and birth control.
• “Moralism”:
• When sexual practices are mandated for
everyone. Classifies people who disobey as
sexual dissidents who are immoral, criminal or
pathological.
• Genetics:
• When searching for gay gene, means only
genetic sexuality is legitimate.

24. • What happens to people who are
told that they are doing something
“abnormal”?
• Shame
• Stigmas
• Hierarchies

25. • What happens to people who are
told that they are doing something
“abnormal”?
• Shame
• Stigmas Are Created
• Hierarchies

26. • What happens to people who are
told that they are doing something
“abnormal”?
• Shame
• Stigmas Are Created
• Hierarchies

27. • What happens to people who are
told that they are doing something
“abnormal”?
• Shame
• Stigmas Are Created
• Hierarchies

28. • What happens to people who are
told that they are doing something
“abnormal”?
• Shame
• Stigmas Are Created
• Hierarchies

29. Power of Shame
• Leads to isolation.
• Concept of being “closeted” as a homosexual.
• Stigmatization and separation within society.
• Fear.

30. It’s not just the US...

31. It’s not just the US...
• Athenian philosopher Diogenes found
that the sexual shame around
masturbation was hypocritical and a
denial of human nature...

32. It’s not just the US...
• Athenian philosopher Diogenes found
that the sexual shame around
masturbation was hypocritical and a
denial of human nature...
• Therefore “to dramatize the problem: he
masturbated in the marketplace.” -Warner

33. It’s not just the US...
• Athenian philosopher Diogenes found
that the sexual shame around
masturbation was hypocritical and a
denial of human nature...
• Therefore “to dramatize the problem: he
masturbated in the marketplace.” -Warner
• While this is funny, it illustrates an
ongoing problem surrounding shame in
our world.

34. Shame takes the power
away from the
disadvantaged group and
gives it to the “normal”...

35. Shame takes the power
away from the
disadvantaged group and
gives it to the “normal”...
Power to impose more standards
on others: Hetero-Domination

36. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:

37. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:

38. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
POWER:

39. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
POWER:

40. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
Heterosexual
POWER:

41. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
Heterosexual
POWER:
Homosexual

42. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
Heterosexual
POWER:
Homosexual
Bi-sexual

43. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
Heterosexual
POWER:
Homosexual
Bi-sexual
Trans-sexual

44. Hetero-Domination and Power
Create Social Hierarchies:
Heterosexual
POWER:
Homosexual
Bi-sexual
Trans-sexual
Other...

45. Hierarchy:

47. Good, Normal, Natural:

48. Good, Normal, Natural: Bad, Abnormal, Unnatural:

49. Good, Normal, Natural: Bad, Abnormal, Unnatural:
Heterosexual
Married
Monogamous
Procreative
Noncommerical
In Pairs
In a Relationship
Same Generation
In Private
No Pornography
Bodies Only
Vanilla Sex

50. Good, Normal, Natural: Bad, Abnormal, Unnatural:
Heterosexual Homosexual
Married Unmarried
Monogamous Promiscuous
Procreative Nonprocreative
Noncommerical Commerical
In Pairs Alone/In Groups
In a Relationship Casual
Same Generation Cross-Generational
In Private In Public
No Pornography Pornography
Bodies Only With Manufactured Objects
Vanilla Sex Sadomasochistic

51. So we have these
hierarchies, but why
regulate others?

52. • Some want identity norms.
• The idea of other sexual
interactions make some people
uncomfortable.
• “[Same-sex marriage] demeans the
institution...” -Hyde, Republican
Congressman

53. Why Regulate?
• Personal comfort.
• Religious background.
• Believe that marriage is “sacred” as is.
• Place stigmas on “others”.
• Would like to repress sexual deviancy.

55. vs.

56. and
vs.

57. Will society ever stop
trying to regulate sexuality
and marriage?

58. What do you think?

59. What do you think?
Who will decide?

60. us?

61. us?
them?

62. us?
them?

63. What does social
regulation tell us about
what we know about
gender and sexual
behavior?

64. What we know about gender
and sexual orientation...
• Comes from religious background.
• Is hierarchical based upon categorization
of “normal” and “other”.
• Is defended by out-dated laws.
• Lives on through fear.

65. The question is...
What do you think is
normal, acceptable,
moral?

67. Am I?

68. Am I? Are you?

69. Am I? Are you?
Are they?

70. Am I? Are you?
Are they?

71. Am I? Are you?
Are they?

72. Am I? Are you?
Are they?

73. Thank You.
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