Sex, sexuality and science – a novice’s guide

A year or so ago, there was a challenge circling round the blogging community to write on a subject you know nothing about.  It’s a little late, but I think this blog quite possibly qualifies as my contribution.

Earlier this year I rather foolishly agreed to rise to a challenge set me on the 2020 Science Facebook page by Jasmine Andrews: Write a blog about science and sexuality.

Now I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that I know nothing about sex.  But lets be honest here: When it comes to the finer points of sex and sexuality, I’m male, I’ve lived a sheltered life, and I’m a scientist! Actually, I don’t think the first and last points count, but you get the idea.

Nevertheless, a promise is a promise, so without further ado, here is the first (and quite possibly the last) 2020 Science blog on sex, sexuality and science.

Approaching this blog, I was immediately faced with a dilemma – not only is this an area well outside my expertise (not to mention, comfort zone), but the links between science and sexuality are convoluted and complex to say the least.  It’s not that there is a lack of material – a quick Google search on “Science” and “Sexuality” throws up literally millions of links, including one to The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.  But a cursory glance suggests this “literature” is dominated by the science of sexuality rather than how science impacts on sexuality.

It’s this second question that intrigues me.  There’s been a lot of research carried out into the biology, physiology and psychology of sex and sexuality, and this has led to a greater understanding of us as individuals as well as us as a society. It has also led to some rather ill-informed – barbaric even – actions in the past, as people have tried to use science to justify suppressing or otherwise controlling sexuality. But how about the secondary impacts of science and technology on sexuality?  Have advances in scientific knowledge and technology innovation changed more generally our perceptions and realizations of ourselves as sexual beings?

I’m sure this has been written about extensively somewhere.  But in the spirit of the challenge set me, I thought I would try and think through this question for myself.

Being quite literally a novice here, I thought I would start by trying to conceptualize – from my limited understanding – how sexuality, sex, society and science might relate to each other.  This is what I ended up with:

A rather simple representation of how sex, sexuality and science might be related

What intrigued me in sketching out this “model” was what affects the dynamic between sex and sexuality – both for individuals and within social groups.  The result is more a model of my own thought processes – so no guarantees that it is either accurate or meaningful.  But it did help me begin to tease out how advances in science and technology might impact on sex and sexuality.

The model is built around four core subjects: Sex – the physical interaction between two people (and no, I’m not going to define what does or doesn’t constitute “sex”); sexuality – how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings; the individual person; and the social group they are a part of.

The dynamic between these four subjects is complex, and is influenced by a number of inter-related drivers.  In this model I included four drivers that seemed to make sense in terms of the four subjects, but I’m sure there are others:

• Procreation is fairly self-explanatory: passing on genetic material to the next generation (or, in the vernacular, “making babies”).
• Bonding refers to the emotional as well as physical bonds that are created and reinforced through sex.
• Control reflects how sex is used to establish, define and enforce relationships between people and within social groups – either subtly or overtly.  And
• Fulfillment is a bit of a ragbag of emotional, psychological and physiological drivers associated with, amongst other things, pleasure, contentment, comfort, security and release.

Surrounding the subjects and drivers are three influencing factors: society, religion and science.  Society and religion are two obvious factors – each having a well-established if not necessarily well-understood influence on sex and sexuality.  The third – science, – represents how advances in science understanding and  technology innovation potentially influence sex and sexuality.

The model laid out above sets the scene for exploring how science might impact on sexuality.  But to be useful, it needs to be flexed a little.

By weighting the influencing factors and drivers by their relative significance within society, the resulting impact on the four subjects might be explored.  Looking back to a hypothetical science-poor society for instance, the model might look something like this:

Exploring social-sexual dynamics in a science-poor society

Here we have a scenario where the influence of society and religion – through social and religious norms and expectations – exert far greater influence than science on the subjects and drivers within the model.  Assuming that society and religion emphasize social stability and sustainability, their influence over the drivers can be represented by larger or smaller circles of effect.  In this case the procreation driver is heavily emphasized (sustainability), while the fulfillment driver is de-emphasized (of secondary importance to procreation and social stability).  Bonding is emphasized where it strengthens social cohesion, and control is kept in check, ensuring that a social hierarchy is maintained, but not over-strained.

The result is a depiction of a society that is focused on the good of the group and sex as an act, rather than the individual and sexuality.

OK so it’s just a naive and crude model.  But nevertheless this particular assessment does lead to a picture that resonates with how sex and sexuality have been positioned within some societies in the past.

So having checked that the model makes some sort of sense, what happens if we ramp up the influence of science?  We might get something like this:

Exploring social-sexual dynamics in a science-rich society

Here, the influence of society and religion have been decreased and science’s influence increased, reflecting a situation similar to the modern day – at least in some parts of the world.

The impact on this shift of influence on the four drivers is somewhat speculative, but interesting nevertheless.  First, the significance of procreation is decreased – we’ve seen clearly over the past few decades how increasingly effective contraceptives have decoupled sex from procreation.  Correspondingly, fulfillment is increased.  This is a response in part to the decoupling of sex and procreation enabled by advances in science and technology.  But it is also driven by a greater understanding of the biology, physiology and psychology of sex that science has enabled, which opens the door wider to understanding the roles of sex and sexuality in living a fulfilled life.  The bonding driver is also increased slightly, as science and technology both inform and better-enable the use of sex as a means of strengthening interpersonal relationships.

Then there is control.  I have no evidence for this, but I suspect that advances in science and technology are somewhat ambivalent  factors when it comes to how sex is used to establish, define and enforce relationships and hierarchies.  Given the biological and psychological drive to procreate and social complexities surrounding sex, I suspect that sex and sexuality will always have potential to be used to control, manipulate and intimidate others – it’s hard to imagine science changing this (I’m not an optimist when it comes to scientific enlightenment leading to better people!).  Where science could have an indirect impact though is in decreasing the influence of social and religious norms on the control driver.  By lowering the influence of these constraints, advances in science and technology could potentially lead to an increase in how sex is used to exert control over people.

This is all highly speculative.  But following the assessment through shows a relative increase in the influence of science over social and religious norms as emphasizing the individual over the group, and sexuality over sex.

Of course, this could all be groundless bar-psychology.  But a shift in emphasis to sexuality rather than just sex, and the individual rather than the the social group, does align crudely with trends in western society.

Whether this is because of an increasing influence of science is rather conjectural.  In reality, there will be a number of intertwined influencing factors – including changing social and religious norms.

The bottom line is that it’s possible to make a plausible association between general advances in science and technology and changes in personal and social perceptions of sex and sexuality.  But to take these associations and the model they are built on too seriously would be foolish, to say the least.

After all, what do I know?  I’m just a novice!

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Note: Despite the somewhat frivolous tone of this piece, there is some serious thought behind it.  Nevertheless, the model above is a long way from being  a strong one.  In finishing the piece off, the positioning of the control driver has been bugging me for instance – I’m not convinced of its placement in the “individual” and “sex” quadrant.  Clearly, there is room for “Science and sexuality 2.0!”

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Tagged as: Emerging Technology, Science, sex, sexuality