Sexualities in Research (1/2) - discussion following reading Plantes Sexualities in Context

Right now, I am in one of those wonderful stages of a project: the early phase in which everything (almost) seems possible. The project is a newspaper study on sexuality, and apart from some material and previous research, I can still choose quite freely among different methods and theories thanks to the way the funding is structured. As part of this stage, I am currently reading quite a lot — from older research on sexual politics in early 20th-century Sweden to Rebecca F. Plante’s semi-classical Sexualities in Context: A Social Perspective from 2015.

all projects start with a blanc page

This book might be a bit too simplistic to read as a researcher, as it feels mainly aimed at undergraduate students in sociology or gender studies. However, this kind of work is often quite good for gaining insight into perspectives you’re not primarily working with. Plante’s book is actually a very good introduction to the field of sexuality studies, as it offers different ways of thinking about sexuality, relationships, and gender. It also includes a wide range of perspectives — from biological understandings of gender and how these link to social interpretations, to discussions on masturbation, menstruation, etc.

What might be useful to know when reading this book is that it’s nearly a decade old and therefore uses some wording that we might not use today. For instance, Plante uses the word "virginity" quite frequently — a word I personally avoid, as it often carries connotations of being in a state of purity as opposed to impurity. In Plante’s defence, though, she does discuss the term and what defines “a loss of virginity” (e.g., does the sex have to be penis-in-vagina? what counts for lesbians? etc.), so at the time of publication, it may actually have been fairly progressive.

One thing I perhaps liked most about the book was how it questioned what can almost be seen as mandatory heterosexuality — and whose sexuality gets precedence. In this regard, Plante points out that most studies on sexuality have primarily recruited college students. Non-heterosexual respondents often get filtered out, as they don’t fit “the norm” — unless the study specifically concerns LGBTQ+ individuals. As a result, we know quite a lot about the sexualities of 18–22-year-old, middle-class, heterosexual people, but far less about everyone else. While this may apply more to the American context (and many other countries use different recruitment strategies for informants), it still raises important questions about whose sexuality is seen, heard, and validated.

All in all, the book presented some rather thought-provoking ideas and is well worth a read. In the next entry, I’ll try to follow up with a discussion of how heterosexual identity makes itself invisible — and is unconsciously reinforced — in my own research.

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