Introduction - What is sexual behavior?

Current Meanings of the Term 1: Gender Role Behavior

Femininity and Masculinity Females and males are expected to dress and act differently and thus play different gender roles. Indeed, playing the psychosocial role as a female or male is the basic or primary sexual behavior. It is learned before all other sexual behaviors and thus largely determines their specific forms.

The term "sexual behavior" can refer to all actions and responses that express a person’s gender role.
This is a general, not very specific, but widely and spontaneously applied definition. It simply registers the first impression a person makes as a “sexual” being, i.e. as a female or male. Observers immediately notice, often unconsciously, the degree of femininity or masculinty in an individual’s behavior and then define it as appropriate or less appropriate to the female or male sex. The individual, in turn, derives the deepest sense of self from the ability or inability to play and identify with the assigned gender role. In short, a person’s gender role behavior shapes her or his every social interaction, including any erotic interaction with others.
Sexual behavior in this most basic sense, i.e. playing the gender role as female or male, is learned before any other form of sexual behavior. The learning process begins immediately at birth when the newborn is given a female or male first name, is dressed in pink or blue baby clothes, and is handled and talked to in gender-specific ways. The growing child and adolescent is then expected to display the “right” signs of femininity or masculinity, and this, in turn, influences the other forms of sexual behavior acquired later and discussed below.