Are you sexually naïve? Sexually competent? Or would you say you are more sexually adventurous? Have you ever thought about sex? No—really thought about it. Most people would answer yes to the question—“Of course I’ve thought about sex.” But few people have really considered how their sexuality and sexual identity are constructed, and how this sexual identity can influence everything from the obvious (how many partners they have) to the subtle (their self-esteem).
Developmental psychologists theorize that people have multiple identities that are central to their being, A sexual identity is one of the most important—and nerve-wracking—identities, usually solidified in the adolescent and young-adult years. A psychological study of high-school-aged adolescents identified five distinct sexual identities or “styles,” ranging from the sexually naïve to the sexually driven (those who exhibited high levels of confidence in their own abilities, but who also expressed high levels of risk-taking behaviors). Each style had its own protective factors.
I like to take this theory of sexual identity being more fluid than we’d originally thought a step further. Alfred Kinsey, a noted sexologist who began his work in the early 1930s (when studying human sexuality was still a shocking thing to do), was one of the first to theorize that sexuality is fluid, changes over time, and can be defined by not just physical actions but by psychological phenomena such as desire. What can this mean for people today? First, there’s the thought that the vast majority people are neither “straight” nor “gay” but fall somewhere in the middle of the two.
Kinsey also conjectured that ‘delayed sexual experience’ could be potentially harmful. It follows that in my work as a young adult sexual health researcher, my goal is not to prevent sexual experiences among adolescents and young adults but to make them less risky—and someday, when our culture is open for it, to make seeking and building a sexual identity easier and more enjoyable for young adults.
How are sexual identities formed, especially in the early years before having sexual experiences? As a social psychologist studying media influences, this is the way I theorize it: media becomes a “superpeer” that has more influence on us than our parents, teachers, and even our friends. People watch television shows, movies, and music videos and decide which social models are appropriate to draw their information from, then they store this information and use it later when making decisions in new situations they haven’t encountered before. The unfortunate part about this is that most forms of media glamorize sex, rarely showing social models that actually perform sexually-related tasks, such as putting on a condom or telling a partner one does not wish to have sex. Often, people—teens and adults alike—thus process incorrect or incomplete information about sexual relationships.
Before you say “That’s crazy—I don’t do stuff just because it’s on TV!” you should know that most of these processes are very subtle—they often happen without our even knowing it. Think about how many times you’ve gone through the supermarket, seen a brand, and started whistling the jingle from the commercial before you realized what you were whistling (or without even being aware that you knew the jingle). It’s nearly automatic—and many of our thoughts and decision-making about sexual situations are as well. Our brains create networks of information called schemas that we can quickly apply to similar situations so that we don’t have to use up unnecessary energy.
For example, ever wonder why “good guys finish last” when it doesn’t make much social sense to you? My opinion (based on monitoring media) is that we’ve—both men and women—formed a schema of the “good guy” as effeminate and unable to deliver, both sexually and in a “security” sense. The “bad boy” is typically portrayed as someone who could satisfy a woman’s primal need for security and an equally primal need for good sex. Both men and women can fall prey to these stereotypes, with even the proverbial “good guy” fulfilling this prophecy!
This could be well borne in mind the next time you’re trying to score a date—or just score, period.
The Author is a student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
