UNCHARTED WATERS

A NEW PERSPECTIVE
WHY A SEARCH FOR UNIVERSALS?
PROBLEMS IN THE DATA
WHOSE VALUES?
SELECTED REFERENCES AND COMMENTS

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

We have lived long enough with only Freudian, Marxist, and sociobiological explanations of human sexuality. Many of us have found these explanations to be limiting, somewhat dogmatic, and uninteresting, but we have done little to offer alternative explanations of human sexuality. This book is an attempt to offer a societal-level interpretation of human sexuality that presents a new vision of human sexuality - one that strives to avoid some of the limitations of older explanations and one that selects and organizes the world of sexuality in a different fashion.
I have written this book with a particular audience in mind. I wish to reach all those who are searching for a scientific explanation of human sexuality that stresses the contribution that the type of society in which we live makes toward the way we think, feel, and behave sexually. The reader does not have to possess a Ph.D. in order to comprehend such ideas. What is needed is simply a strong curiosity about human sexuality and an interest in a societal-level explanation. Unlike some popular books on sexuality, this book is aimed predominantly at the intellectual stimulation of the reader. If you are intellectually curious, I believe, you will find this book fulfilling.
I particularly want to reach those people who have but little background in my discipline of sociology. I surely am not excluding sociologists. I feel assured that they will read this book. I also am certain that those interested in anthropology will be attracted to this book. But I am making a special effort to write in a manner intelligible to others as well. I avoid complex tables and I minimize jargon and thereby seek to make the book readable to a broader audience. I do this because I feel that those with interests in other fields like psychology or biology and those with applied or simply personal interests may thereby become aware of the value of a societal-level approach for increasing our understanding of human sexuality.
Such people may be therapists or educators who regularly deal with sexuality, or they may be people in fields not directly related to sexuality but who desire to know more about how sexuality operates in their society. Many of these people have had their curiosity abused rather than satisfied by journalistic accounts that clarify little and mislead a great deal. Furthermore, even if they were to search for a scholarly, integrated, societal-level explanation of human sexuality, they would find that there is none available at this time. I am striving to fill that gap.1 This is a book, then, that I believe will throw new light on the social nature of human sexuality.
Over the years I had been critical of most of the common explanations of sexuality. I rejected the emphasis of orthodox Freudianism on fixed stages of psychosexual development aimed at a very narrow turn-of-the -century Viennese conception of normality, defined as the preference for heterosexual coitus above all other sexual acts.2 Accordingly, I found this Freudian formulation to be more a moral position than a scientific explanation of sexual normality.
In terms of Marxism, I had also been critical of what I perceived to be a too heavy emphasis on a one-factor theory where sexuality is viewed as a form of male oppression and exploitation based on male economic power and a property view of women. A very similar version of this theory has been put forth more recently by some feminists. 3 I found this approach too intellectually restrictive. Among other problems, it was unable to explain differences in sexual customs in societies with similar levels of male control over property. Nor did it explain how subordinate females and societal customs could each restrict the sexuality of the economically powerful males. Another bone of contention for me was that to many Marxists, ideologies were simply rationalizations to support those in power. I objected to this limited view of ideologies, for I conceive of ideologies as also playing an innovative role in changing our sexual customs.
In the 1970s the sociobiologists strove to explain current sexual behaviors of males and females as resulting from the seeking of reproductive advantages by males and females many thousands of years ago. Supposedly, it was to the male's reproductive advantage to have many sexual partners and thereby maximize the passing on of his genes to the next generation. On the other hand, it was supposedly to the female's reproductive advantage to behave more restrictively sexually and pick the best genetic inheritance for her offspring. This explanation seemed to me unconvincing and indeed was a point of debate among sociobiological writers like Symons and Hrdy. 4
I believe the sociobiological explanation projects a conservative Western view of male and female sexuality on evolving humans hundreds of thousands of years ago. How could we ever really know what humans were like hundreds of thousands of years ago? Why should we assume that the male-female differences we find in traditional Western sexual codes are eternal when we know they do not even fit many of our present-day societies?
Of even greater importance is the fact that such a long-term evolutionary perspective is of little help in understanding changes in sexual customs that occurred in the last 20 years in the Western world. Nor does it explain the sharp differences in sexual lifestyles that exist among societies all composed of the same Homo sapien species. We cannot assume that significant changes in our genetic makeup have occurred in that short time, nor can we assume that genetic differences explain why the Russian sexual lifestyle is different from the American sexual lifestyle, or why the rape rate is several times as high in California and Alaska compared to North and South Dakota.5 In fairness to the sociobiological approach, I should note that the Freudian and Marxist explanatory schemas would also have great difficulty in showing how their theories would account for the recent societal changes in sexual customs in the West.
I will not attempt to analyze in greater detail these older explanations of sexuality. I have briefly set forth my reservations about their utility for explaining many important questions about human sexuality. My major point is that none of the existing schemas allow for adequate explanation of why people in various societies are so different in their sexual lifestyles. These approaches do not permit one to scientifically handle questions concerning the full range of societal structures that might account for the differences or similarities that are present in sexual lifestyles. Since these are some of the central questions inherent in a societal-level explanation of sexuality, a new approach is needed if they are to be answered.
Please note that I do not reject all elements of these explanatory schemas. In point of fact, I do end up with some interpretations that would be particularly compatible with parts of the Marxist and feminist approaches. But many other aspects of my final theoretical position are incompatible with all three approaches. My major objection to these older approaches is that they have become stylized and rigidified in order to conform with the views put forth by their founders and their disciples. I prefer a new approach that is restricted only by the scientific principles of sociology. It, too, in time may become less flexible, but at present it is fresh and new.
The task of devising a societal-level approach to sexuality was an enormous one! If I was to explain variation in human societies, then I could not deal with just the United States of America, or even the Western world. Rather, I would have to devise explanations that would be applicable to all types of societies. Also, I did not want just to compile a list of hundreds of different premarital, marital, or extramarital customs. I desired to create an integrated, overarching set of explanations, not an inventory of sexual customs.
I spent the better part of four years researching for this book. Among other things, this involved reading scores of books and hundreds of articles. My aim was to broaden my cross-cultural understanding of human sexuality. I had spent most of my career up to that time doing empirical research, writing explanatory books and articles, and reading extensively in the field of sexuality. I had developed explanations of selected aspects of sexuality such as American premarital and extramarital customs. 6 But what I needed now was a broader cross-cultural orientation and one that would apply to all the many varieties of human sexuality. I had some training in anthropology and had taught the subject for four years, but that was not enough.
In addition to the extensive reading, I called and spoke to people in anthropology to find out what they considered to be the key studies of human sexuality. I also purchased the existing computer data files covering almost 1200 cultures. These files consisted of the Ethnographic Atlas and a subset of that file composed of some 186 cultures known as the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (hereafter referred to as the Standard Sample). These 186 cultures are a representative sample of the world's best-described nonindustrialized cultures, and it was this sample that I used in many places in this book. I also examined a considerable amount of new information relevant to sexuality that individual researchers had recently added to the files on these 186 cultures. Of course, I also examined the literature available on industrialized societies.
On a smaller scale I did a search of the literature in psychology, primatology, endocrinology, and history. Here, too, I spoke to professionals at the top of these fields to gain further understanding of their specialties. However, I must emphasize that the work I did in these other fields was predominantly for supplementary reasons. The anthropological resources were much more central to my goals.
I hoped in these other fields to find information that would better define what that discipline could or could not explain about human sexuality. This might be useful in setting the parameters for what needed to be explained by my approach. For example, it is helpful to learn from primatology that most primate females have a period known as estrus (or "heat") during which they are ovulating and are sexually interested.7 The evidence on human females indicates no clear increase in sexual interest during ovulation. Thus, one cannot logically deduce from how primate females act during ovulation, how human females will act during ovulation. This knowledge is important if one wants to examine the degree to which human sexuality is free from reproductive consequences. Without such knowledge of human and nonhuman primates one might assume similarities or differences that do not exist and thereby distort one's explanation of human sexuality.
We also know from endocrinologists' research on levels of androgen in human males that it is difficult to predict male sexual activity levels from knowledge of hormonal levels except in quite extreme cases. Knowing this, we will be aware that our theory will have to explain differences in sexual activity levels, for we cannot assume that hormonal factors are a sufficient explanation for a group's behavior.
In other instances biologists might offer competitive theories claiming to explain group variations in sexual lifestyles by reference to their major causal variables. For example, some biologically oriented scientists would argue for the power of hormones in explaining sexual behavior differences between men and women. Any societal-level explanation would have to take account of such a claim. But a societal explanation would still have to account for the fact that male-female differences in sexual behaviors are not identical in all societies. Even if hormones explain why the range in sexual behavior for each genetic sex is different, societal conditions can still explain how much of that potential is actualized in any one society.
In all these cases it is important to know the thinking in other fields, at least rudimentally, so as to better define precisely what areas of human sexual life are not predominantly explained by these other fields. In that way one can delimit more clearly that which may be explained by sociology. Most everyone today accepts the notion that our sexual relationships are caused by forces studied by a variety of scientific fields. Nevertheless, as a sociologist my goal is to cover all that sociology can explain while still striving to be aware of the obvious causal overlap within those areas that are also covered by other fields.
I hope it is clear that I am not seeking to create a total explanation that will cover evolutionary, psychological, and physiological factors of sexuality as well as sociological aspects. In fact, I firmly believe that it is the nature of science to abstract and select a particular perspective. We must, in our role as scientists, leave the search for ultimate reality to religion and to those philosophies of life that strive to present the total "truth" about any subject. What I am seeking in this book is a much more modest goal, and that is to explain the ways in which our membership in society shapes our sexuality. Other scientific disciplines will inform and aid in this specialized goal, but I will not venture to develop a theory that explains sexuality from the perspective of all these other disciplines. Instead, my quest is to develop a sociological explanation.

WHY A SEARCH FOR UNIVERSALS?

As my work progressed over that four-year period, I had to decide about the societal scope of the explanation that I would seek to develop. Would I seek to develop a special explanatory theory for industrial societies and a different one for agricultural societies and another one for hunting societies, and so forth? Or would I seek to find what commonalities existed and what sort of general set of explanations would apply to all societies, regardless of their specific type? My final choice combined these two strategies. Although I place major emphasis on the search for common explanations, I also spend considerable time explaining the variation that occurs among societies.

Let me specify my approach a bit more. When I speak of searching for commonalities I am talking about finding those basic features of human society that everywhere have a significant impact on human sexuality. One can be glib and say everything relates to sexuality, but such vagueness is hardly helpful. Therefore, my first task is to find those fundamental features of all societies that relate to the sexual lifestyle in any society. So, it is not enough that in some societies religion is related to attitudes toward sexuality. I want to know whether religion in all societies has some type of predictable relationship to sexuality. If in many nonliterate societies religious orientation does not distinguish people's sexual attitudes, then religion would not be a societal feature that is universally related to sexuality.
Now some readers may wonder if this search for universal "societal linkages" to sexuality will stop us from understanding differences among societies. After all, if the basic societal linkages are common to all cultures, then how do we explain differences in sexuality? This is a legitimate question. Let me respond by noting that the stress on the importance of universals increases our motivation to explain why we have differences within those crucial universal linkages in various societies. The very search for these common, universal causes of sexual lifestyles necessitates a search of the full range of variations that exists. Only in that way can one be confident that one has found a universal linkage.
Let me illustrate this briefly. One of the universal societal linkages that I shall point out in this book is the power structure in a society. Clearly, power structures can be highly rigid or flexible and may contain many levels or a few. Power structures may also differ from each other in many other specific ways. It follows, then, that although all shared sexual lifestyles will be influenced by the particular power structure in that society, it still is true that the specific way a power structure relates to a sexual lifestyle may vary considerably by society.
One example of such differences in the way power structures relate to sexual customs will be discussed in Chapter 4, where I point out that the more stratified the social class system in a society, the more likely the sexual customs of that society will reflect male dominance. Relatedly, I note that agricultural societies compared to other nonindustrial societies generally have greater class stratification. In this way I assert that power links to sexuality in all societies but in agricultural societies, that linkage will express more male dominance due to the type of class stratification agriculture promotes. So the search for universal areas of linkage with sexuality will afford us the knowledge needed to explain such variations that occur. My conclusion is that the very search for universal societal linkages forces us to face a broader range of differences than would be the case if we were trying to generalize about only one type of society.
The reason I do not seek only to explain variation or differences in the way sexuality is integrated into societies is that I feel we first need to know what differences are most worth explaining. If a particular custom in one society affects sexuality in that society but that sort of custom does not have this impact in any other society, why should we spend our time explaining it when that will not help us understand sexuality in any other society? If we are dealing with universal relationships between the major features of human society and our sexual customs, then our explanations will be relevant to understanding sexuality in all societies.
Thus, the universal search will perhaps lead us to the primary storehouses of societal influence on sexuality. We will be dealing with societal features like jealousy, gender role, and concepts of normality. My strategy is first to discover and analyze universal influences on sexuality and then to strive to explain differences related to these few universal societal linkages. To be sure, explaining unique ways in which some societal feature influences sexual customs is of value for those with explanatory goals different than mine. But my objective is to develop a societal-level explanation of sexuality that will be applicable to the full range of human societies, and so I choose to emphasize those universal societal features that are linked to sexual customs.
The reader should know that some people feel that cross-cultural comparisons are not possible. Such people - and some anthropologists are among them - feel that each culture is unique and cannot be compared to another. These people contend that although two cultures may both have a norm instructing mothers to take care of newborn children, the meaning of this custom may well be quite different in each culture, and so one cannot generalize and say that "maternal care" is present in both cases.
Surely we would all agree that no two cultures are identical. The disagreement centers on whether differences that exist make intercultural comparability impossible or meaningless. Frankly, I believe a good part of the reason for the relativistic viewpoint derives from the large amount of time and energy that anthropologists spend in the field studying a society. That investment means that they will likely identify personally with that culture and will have learned a great deal about that culture that distinguishes it from their own native culture. Accordingly, I believe that some anthropologists choose to focus on the distinctiveness of the culture they have studied rather than make comparisons with other cultures.
This same position is held by some people who study individuals closely. They, too, may well stress the difficulties in comparing two human beings and point out how similar things have different meanings to each person. There are also historians who hesitate to compare historical events, for they prefer to see each historical event as unique and as never occurring in exactly the same way ever again. This position, of course, increases the importance of studying such a unique event.
The position I adopt in this book acknowledges that there surely are differences in every culture and that we must understand such differences. But I do not start with the assumption that meaningful comparison is not possible. Instead I start with the opposite assumption to that of the relativists, and I assume that, with careful attention to the social context, intercultural comparisons can be made. I hold to this position unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.
Still the relativists would assert that comparing societies is like comparing apples and oranges. In response I would note that apples and oranges are both fruits, and so we can locate a common trait that does allow comparison and yet does not deny that there are differences in these two types of fruits. Science abstracts from total reality and need not deal with all differences that exist in a comparison. To accept a "subjectivistic" view of the world is to deny the possibility of comparing or analyzing conflicting perceptions. In addition, if we cannot compare, then we cannot generalize. Once we accept such a position, we deny the possibility of science because science aims at developing generalizations that explain the phenomena under scrutiny, and this cannot be done if everything is unique.
Some of this disagreement may dissolve if we agree, as I have emphasized earlier, that science does not take into account the total reality of anything it studies. Science is an abstraction from reality.8 Science affords only a specialized level of understanding. It is not the role of science to explain "ultimate reality" - that is more the role of religious or individual philosophies. The common role of science is to generalize, but from a singular perspective. In the examples above, to generalize and call both apples and oranges fruits does lose some of the distinctive nature of apples and oranges per se, but it allows us to develop explanations that will apply to all such fruits. Przeworski and Teune have said it plainly in their classic book on comparative cultural research: 9

General theoretical statements, valid regardless of the social systems involved, should be sought.... It would be nonsensical to believe that no other person behaved like Catherine II or Napoleon, or that there was only one cosmopolitan elite. Unique events manifest properties of general classes and can be explained by general statements, even if incompletely. (Przeworski and Teune, 1970: pp. 74, 87)

Therefore, I will start with the assumption that societies can be compared despite the great variation that exists among them. We will surely deal in depth with differences among cultures, but I believe that those differences largely occur within a framework of a few common societal structures that shape the sexual lifestyle of all societies. I will analyze those common societal elements in detail in the chapters that follow.

PROBLEMS IN THE DATA

Having set forth this very ambitious task of seeking to explain universal societal linkages to sexuality and the variation that occurs in such linkages in different societies, it is necessary to say a few words about the quality of the data available for this project. Only a few anthropologists have set out with the primary goal of studying the sexual customs of a particular culture. This means that much of the information we have on sexual customs comes from passing comments made as part of the study of other societal aspects. In connection with describing a marital system, for example, the anthropologist may comment on the fact that sexual jealousy was rather common. But there was no planned, careful study of sexual jealousy. Thus, much of the information on sexuality is not as carefully and deliberately gathered as we would like. Nevertheless, let me add that there have been several fine studies of societies where one of the primary goals was the description of sexual customs. I shall refer to these accounts often in this book. Unfortunately for my project, such studies are not too common, and so it is important to have broader sources of information such as that contained in the Standard Sample.
Despite the lack of complete data on sexuality some professionals have ventured to analyze what is available and thereby to develop additional codes for classify many of the 186 nonindustrialized societies in the Standard Sample in terms of various sexual lifestyle characteristics. One such code system of 20 sexual variables was developed by Broude as part of her dissertation work at Harvard.10 I soon discovered, partly from the warnings that Broude herself put forth, that there were problems concerning just how reliable and valid these data are, that is, just how much confidence one could have in this information.11 Although Broude and the other coders are quite aware of such problems, the researcher who would use these data must still somehow cope with this problem.
As an indication of some of the problems in coding, let us examine the two different codes for rape incidence devised by Gwen Broude and Peggy Sanday. 12 Peggy Sanday and Gwen Broude both sought to code rape for any of the 186 societies in the Standard Sample, which had what they felt to be sufficient information to permit such coding. Broude coded 31 of the 186 societies as having sufficient information and Sanday coded 95 of the 186 societies as having sufficient information to permit giving a rape incidence code. When you examine the 25 societies they both coded, although they agree on most cases, there are a number of instances of disagreement. Furthermore, Broude compared to Sanday coded a higher proportion of her societies as "rape prone" (41% versus 18%) and a lower proportion as "rape free" (24% to 47%).
Rather than throw up my hands in despair when confronted with such reliability and validity problems, I devised several ways of choosing among the codes available. One way was to take what I thought were known relationships and check which codes would produce that known relationship. If one takes as given that the acceptance of machismo correlates with the acceptance of rape in a society, for example, then one can select whichever measure of rape best displays such a relationship with machismo attitudes. Alternatively, if the variable in question is not crucial to one's research, and the differences cannot be resolved in this fashion, then one can simply drop the variable. 13
Other bases for choosing between conflicting codes exist. One can utilize the codes of the anthropologist with the best scientific reputation; or lacking this knowledge, with the largest number of societies coded. Another procedure is to judge the reliability and validity of several codes by whether the analysis of the data using these codes reveals a clear pattern of relationship among the variables examined. If variables are coded in a meaningless fashion, there is no reason to expect any clear pattern of relationship among them. The reader shall see in Chapters 3 to 6 that I did indeed find a clear set of relationships among many of the variables I chose to utilize.14
Much of the coded data on the 186 societies in the Standard Sample avoid these problems of reliability and validity. There are, for example, codes concerning a society's emphasis on male descent, common residence, the extent of class stratification, and the role of agriculture. The dependability of this information is much more established, and these codes do measure societal aspects that are important to the understanding of sexual customs. I do not want to overstress the problems in coding that occur for some variables and thereby deemphasize the dependability of many other coded variables. The reader needs to be aware of such limitations, but he or she should also know that even these problems have been resolved in as careful a manner as possible.15
In addition to some elaborate analysis of the Standard Sample, this book relies heavily on my reading of those cultures whose sexuality has been studied in depth. These additional sources are essential, for many aspects of sexuality have not been coded by anyone for the Standard Sample. Thus, to obtain information on these areas I had to do my own investigation into the available ethnographic literature.
Finally, I am familiar with the information on industrial societies like our own, and throughout the book I will comment on our society and other Western societies, even though they are not included in the Standard Sample. We do need to step back and gain perspective on America by looking not only at other industrial societies but at those societies that are quite distinct.
Given my discussion of some of the limitations of the information that is available on sexuality, the reader should bear in mind that much of what I conclude will have some speculative element in it and will require additional research and corroboration by others. But the choice is to proceed this way or not to proceed at all. I feel it is far better to put forth a logically coherent and as carefully empirically based explanation as possible, rather than to do nothing or to focus on a much narrower explanation applying to only a very few societies.

WHOSE VALUES?

To orient the reader to this book, one final question remains. How shall I deal with the controversial moral issues that inevitably come up in discussions of sexual customs?16 No researchers can claim that they will achieve perfect value objectivity in their scientific work. But we have in social science the practice of reviewing each others' published work, and since we do not all have identical values, there is therein the potential of a colleague challenging one's fairness. This potential challenge is one major factor that pressures toward impartiality and fairness in social scientific research and theory.
There are a minority of social scientists who would assert that we all have a bias and that we should not try to hide it beneath the guise of striving for objectivity. Such people would say that if you take research money from the government for your study, then you will be pressured to support the established government power groups. Others may operate from a Marxist or a religious philosophy, and that can bias their presentations. So, the "subjectivists" say you might as well choose your value system and accept your biases.
Most social scientists reject such an approach for several reasons. First, if there is not even a way of approximating objectivity or fairness in the examination of a controversial area, then we are in effect eliminating the possibility of science from such areas. We would then be saying that these are fully polemical arenas and the more powerful group will have its way, and so there is no such thing as an unbiased perspective. Now, it is surely true that value conflict abounds on many issues and the more powerful group often does decide how the controversy shall be resolved. Scientific understanding does not guarantee a different resolution of the conflict. But the fact that powerful groups win in conflicts does not deny the possibility of a fair and objective analysis of the conflict situation.
I remember a few decades ago when Medicare was being debated. A study, financed by those who opposed Medicare, was undertaken about the living standards of elderly people. The study reported that most elderly people were well off financially and that Medicare was not needed. However, an examination of the study indicated that predominantly those elderly who lived in the wealthy suburbs had been interviewed.
If one accepts the inevitability of bias and the unachievability of objectivity, then that study is just one more bit of support for that perspective. According to that perspective, those favoring Medicare may best be advised just to interview the elderly in low-income areas so as to present as strong a biased case as they can. Yet if we all really believed that research was incapable of giving unbiased information, why would we undertake any studies of this sort? So, the fact that we do research indicates our belief in the possibility of a fair outcome. When we all stop believing this, the research process will also cease.
Further, the fact that the Medicare study was severely criticized by social scientists shows that those adherents to the fairness or objectivity doctrine are very much present in the social sciences. Eventually, we did get studies that were less biased in their sample selection. That would not have occurred had we abandoned our belief in the possibility of approximating objectivity and fairness in our research on humans.
Let us be explicit, though that science itself has its own value system to which scientists are committed for the time they are in the role of scientist. The approach I am following in this book is based upon acceptance of the values of science. However, no one is a scientist all the moments of his or her life - people have values other than those that are part of the scientific enterprise. But one of the key values of science directs the scientist to avoid personal values in research work and to seek to describe and explain rather than to judge morally. This is the value we have called fairness or objectivity. The acceptance of the value of publication and the acceptance of criticism from one's peers are other values of science. In addition, scientific values direct one to use measurements that can be repeated by others with the same results (reliability) and that actually measure what one wishes to measure (validity).
So, during those times when we are in our scientific roles, we are not free of all values. Rather, we are temporarily setting aside the personal moral values we hold and striving to abide by the scientific values. There is nothing in science that favors or opposes any form of sexuality. Science can afford us explanations and understanding of the outcomes of various types of sexual behaviors. The final judgment of the worth of the various sexual customs we are studying is based on a personal set of values that is outside the realm of science.
In conclusion, I feel that the scientific enterprise offers us a way of understanding the world that is different from the perspective promoted by political, religious, and private values. I will not argue here the vast payoffs that have come from accepting the scientific approach as one of our ways of viewing the world. Rather, I will simply assert that this is the perspective I take in this book. I strive, and the reader can judge with how much success, to present a view of human sexuality that does not seek to support any personal value system - mine or others. My purpose in this book is, not to moralize, but to gain understanding of the social nature of human sexuality.17 I leave it to each individual to seek, for his or her own personal values, the possible usefulness of what is being explained and described here.

SELECTED REFERENCES AND COMMENTS

1. In this book I emphasize a "macro"-level sociological approach. This is a level of analysis that stresses the broad, overall societal characteristics such as institutions and shared customs. Some sociologists focus more on a "micro" level of analysis and therefore focus more on specific groups and interaction patterns between individuals. Both approaches are surely legitimate parts of sociology. I use both in this book but emphasize much more the macro level of analysis. Since I compare various societies my approach would also be called "comparative sociology." For a discussion of macro/micro approaches see Bruce H. Mayhew, "Structuralism Versus Individualism. Part One: Shadow Boxing in the Dark," Social Forces, vol. 59, no. 2 (December 1980), pp. 335-375.
2. For the uninitiated I would suggest a very simple book on Freudian ideas by Appignanesi, which I feel is a good place to begin to understand Freud. I also list three other important sources.
Appignanesi, Richard, Freud for Beginners. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.
Halberstadt-Freud, Hendrika C., "Freud's Libido Theory," Chapter 5 in John Money and Herman Musaph (eds.), Handbook of Sexology. New York: Elsevier North-Holland, 1977.
Freud, Sigmund, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. New York: Dutton, 1962. (Originally published in 1905.)
Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Hogarth Press, 1930.
3. There is an immense literature on Marxism. As a start, I suggest the following.:
Bottomore, Tom, Marxist Sociology. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975.
Burawoy, Michael, "The Resurgence of Marxism in American Sociology," Introduction in Marxist Inquires: Studies of Labor, Class and States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1902. (Originally published in 1884.)
Engels, Friedrich, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. New York: International, 1935.
On the question of overlap between Marxism and present-day feminism, I suggest reading some of the far-ranging selections from the following two anthologies:
Eisenstein, Zillah R. (ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
Sargent, Lydia (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 198 1.
4. For a presentation of the sociobiological view I suggest examining first the original statement by Edward Wilson. The authors of the other two books listed here present different sociobiological views on human sexuality.
Wilson, Edward 0., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975,
Symons, Donald. The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer, The Woman That Never Evolved. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.
5. For general statistical information on the United States, I list here some publications with which to start. Note that sophisticated understanding of statistics requires more than just these sources. A myriad of other government publications as well as private sources can be consulted. See
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, D.C. (Published annually.)
For statistics specifically on crime in the United States, some of which is clearly related to sexuality, see
U.S. Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports for the United States. Washington, D.C. (Published annually.)
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Criminal Victimization in the U.S., 1981: A National Crime Survey Report, NCJ-90208. Washington, D.C., November 1983.
6. For a brief statement of these explanations of premarital and extramarital sexuality, see
Reiss, Ira L., and Brent Miller, "Heterosexual Permissiveness: A Theoretical Analysis," Chapter 4 in W. Burr, R. Hill, 1. Nye, and I. Reiss (eds.), Contemporary Theories about the Family. (vol, 1): Free Press, 1979.
Reiss, Ira L., Ronald E. Anderson, and G.C. Sponaugle, "A Multivariate Model of the Determinants of Extramarital Sexual Permissiveness," Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 42 (May 1981), pp. 271-283.
I have not attempted to systematically interrelate my specific propositions from these works with those in this book, However, I do make specific observations on this in footnote 48 of Chapter Four and footnote 13 in Chapter Eight.
7. For an introduction to information on primates relevant to genetic sex and sexuality differences between human males and females and among primates see
Mitchell, Gary, Behavioral Sex Differences in Non Human Primates. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979.
For further biological information with some comparisons with environmental theories see
Beach, Frank A. (ed.), Human Sexuality in Four Perspectives. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1977.
8. For a discussion of the nature of science, I suggest reading the several articles on science in the encyclopedia noted here and also recommend reading the short and nontechnical book by Conant. In addition, I suggest the more technical account given in the Przeworski and Teune book listed under note 9.
Edwards, P. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vol.). New York: Macmillan, 1967. (See especially articles in Volum 7.)
Conant, James B., On Understanding Science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 195 1.
9. Przeworski, Adam, and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley Interscience Books, 1970.
10. Broude, Gwen J., and Sarah J. Greene, "Cross-cultural Codes on Twenty Sexual Attitudes and Practices," Ethnology, vol. 15, (October 1976), pp. 409-429.
11. Reliability refers to the ability to repeat the measurement and obtain the same results. Validity refers to whether you are really measuring what you want to measure. Both are key scientific concepts, for surely you want stable measures and you want measures that get at what you intend them to measure. In this sense these concepts are indexes of the quality of the measure you are using. See the Glossary for definitions of these and many other key concepts used in this book.
12. Sanday, Peggy Reeves, "The Socio-cultural Context of Rape: A Crosscultural Study," Journal of Social Issues, vol. 37, no. 4 (1981), pp. 5-27.
I should note here that the correlation of the Broude and Sanday rape incidence measures is .43. This is significant but clearly indicates that there is disagreement on how to code the 25 societies they both coded.
13. One code that I did drop dealt with whether the society in question considered sexuality to be dangerous. On this code, Broude and Green said 62% of the 37 societies in the Standard Sample they were able to code viewed sexuality as dangerous at least under some specific circumstances (pp. 413-414). But Martin Whyte said that he found only 22% of the 68 societies he was able to code that viewed sexuality as dangerous (pp. 73-74). Part of the difficulty is that Whyte used only a yes or no code and coded more societies than Broude and Green. Even examining only those societies they both coded shows there are significant differences. Since I did not find this variable essential to my analysis, I simply discarded it.
Broude, Gwen J., and Sarah J. Greene, "Cross-cultural Codes on Twenty Sexual Attitudes and Practices," Ethnology, vol. 15 (October 1976), pp. 409-429.
Whyte, Martin King, The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
14. In addition to sexual codes devised by Broude and Sanday (cited in notes 10 and 12), I also used new codes on sexuality from the following:
Hupka, Ralph B., "Cultural Determinants of Jealousy," Alternative Lifestyles, vol. 4, no. 3 (August 198 1), pp. 310-3 56.
Ross, Marc Howard, "Political Decision Making and Conflict: Additional Cross-cultural Codes and Scales," Ethnology, vol. 22 (April 1983), pp. 169-192.
Singer, Barry, "A Comparison of Evolutionary and Environmental Theories of Erotic Response," Journal of Sex Research, vol. 21, no. 3 (August 1985), pp.229 - 257.
Whyte, Martin King, The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
15. The reader interested in a more technical description of the Standard Sample and my analysis of it should refer to Appendix A in this book.
16. For a brief summary of the relation of value judgments and science see
Reiss, Ira L., "Value Judgments and Science," Appendix I in Ira L. Reiss, Family Systems in America (3rd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980.
17. To aid in understanding I have striven to avoid jargon and I have included a glossary of key terms used at the end of the text.