Skip to Main Content

HUMAN SEXUALITY: Home

Sexuality refers to sexual behavior, and the thoughts and feelings the person has in relation to that behavior. Every society controls the sexuality of its members, by embedding it in the institutions of family, religion, and law. The core social arrangem

Human Sexuality

Human sexuality is an inter-disciplinary topic that applies to many different fields.  It can be studied from differing perspectives and differing academic disciplines, and each will have a different take on the subject:

  • Psychology will normally focus on personal issues such as emotions, attitudes, motivations, and the effects of social conditioning on the individual.
  • Sociology will normally focus on social or group issues, such as expectations, norms, group attitudes, values, and behaviors, and the sexual issues of humans as a society or group.
  • Biology, health, and medical sciences will normally focus on physical or biological factors such as hormones, physical sexual features and characteristics, mechanics of sexual functioning, the role of evolution or genetic selection.
  • Political science and public policy is informed by psychology, sociology, and biology, but the study of human sexuality in each of these three disciplines is also affected by public policies, whether restricted or expanded, or provided with a direction or focus.

This research guide provides recommended resources in these four categories merely for convenience in organizing the vast amount of information available.

Searching for Information

When you're working on a research project, you need to use terms that relate to your topic to find information sources - but you also need to be flexible.  Combining multiple terms will help you find sources that are more closely focused on your specific topic.

These are some useful terms to use for a research project in Administration of Justice. Other terms may be useful as well. Use specific words, but only use one or two word phrases - not whole sentences! Try both plural and singular forms, and try varying combinations.

  • “no means no”
  • abortion
  • adolescent sexuality
  • adult sexuality
  • asexuality
  • atypical sexual behavior
  • birth control
  • bisexuality
  • consent
  • dating
  • eroticism
  • feminine, femininity
  • feminism
  • fertility
  • fetishes
  • gender, gender identity, gender roles
  • homophobia
  • homosexuality
  • infertility
  • intersex
  • intimacy
  • jealousy
  • love
  • masculine, masculinity
  • masturbation
  • nonbinary
  • pornography
  • prostitution
  • psychosexual development
  • rape
  • relationships
  • sex trafficking
  • sex workers
  • sexuality
  • transgender

In addition, you can search for sex or sexual in combination with other terms: "sex workers", "sex anatomy", "sexual attraction", "sexual development", "sex laws", etc.

The search terms listed above can be used in Google, but you'll find more reliable and authoritative sources searching either in the library's OneSearch Catalog or in Credo Reference, one of the Library's an online collection of reference and research sources. 

LaRoi Lawton

 

 

   EMAIL ME