Like eating, sexual behavior will be featured through this book as an important category of behavior that is shaped by both nature and culture. Whereas food is needed for survival, sex is needed for reproduction.
Sex has been a bitter battleground between those who explain it on the basis of nature and evolution and those who emphasize cultural construction. Is sex a matter of genes and hormones causing people to feel desires the way nature has prescribed them? Or is culture the principal cause of who wants to do what to whom in bed?
Some features of sexuality are found everywhere and may well be rooted in nature. In all cultures, for example, men seem to desire a greater number of sexual partners than women (Pedersen, Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatula, & Yang, 2002). Sex is everywhere the main way (and usually the only way) to make babies. The same basic sex practices are known to most cultures. Sex historian Reay Tannahill (1980) observed that the sex manuals written thousands of years ago in ancient China covered almost all the same techniques one would find in a sex manual today, with only one exception (sadomasochism).
Some other universal aspects of sex reflect the influence of culture. All known cultures have rules about sex (Frayser, 1985). Cultures know that sex leads to making babies, and efforts to prevent pregnancy have been found all over the world, though the ancient means of preventing conception (except for abstaining from sex) are generally less effective than modern technologies such as the birth control pill and the IUD. Some form of prostitution, in which people pay money for sex, is found in most large cultures, although many aspects of it (such as whether it is legally tolerated and what it costs) diff er substantially.
Cultural differences in sex are also evident. In Guam, a law prohibits a woman from marrying while a virgin, so women who want to get married sometimes hire a man to deflower them. In Turkey, women are expected to be virgins until they marry, and until quite recently it was standard practice for many brides-to-be to have a medical examination to certify their virginity. Indonesian law prohibits masturbation and stipulates that anyone caught committing this “crime” should be beheaded. Lebanese men who have sex with male animals are likewise subject to the death penalty, but it is perfectly legal for them to have sex with female animals.
In New Guinea, some tribes regard male–male sex as normal while people are growing up, and boys are expected to perform oral sex on young men as a way of acquiring fluids that produce masculine strength, but after marriage men are supposed to stop their homosexual activities and restrict themselves to their wives (Herdt, 1984). Liberty Corner, New Jersey, has a law prohibiting people from beeping the horn of a parked car during sexual intercourse; one can scarcely imagine what life must have been like in that town before that law restored peace and quiet. Another curious law comes from Liverpool, England: Topless salesgirls are forbidden to work in tropical fish stores, though not in other stores.
Last, there are plenty of differences within a culture too. In the United States today, there are people who reach their 30th birthday while still virgins, whereas others have had sex with more than a dozen people by the age of 15. Millions of people go through their entire lives having sex with only one person (their spouse) and only in the missionary position (man on top, woman on bottom), whereas some people have more than a thousand sex partners without ever using the missionary position. Genghis Kahn, perhaps the world’s most successful lover, has more than 16 million direct male descendants alive today! Many people yearn for practices that others regard as dangerous perversions. Some people love to read about sex or watch films of people having sex, whereas others fi nd those materials disgusting and want them to be outlawed.
Nature or culture? There is ample evidence of both in human sexuality.
