Sexuality and American Culture

In this week's readings, both Jeffrey Weeks and Rictor Norton make compelling arguments about the nature of human sexuality, with Weeks claiming that it is entirely a social construction and Norton rejecting this idea by adopting an "essentialist" approach. The question of who is right is certainly not one that I am qualified, at this time, to answer, although my guess would be that, to some extent, they both are.

IFC showed a documentary called Indie Sex: Teens tonight on television all about how teen sexuality has been depicted in film for the past 60 years or so. Apparently they came out with a series of a few 1-hour documentaries a couple of years ago on how different aspects of sexuality have been depicted in film. The DVDs are available on Netflix and I'm sure that IFC shows them every once in a while. Here is the website for anybody looking for more info: http://www.ifc.com/static/sections/indiesex/series.html

Here is an article entitled "Anti-Love Drug May be the Ticket to Bliss" from last month's New York Times that I thought might be of interest on this strange day of celebrating all things romantic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13tier.html?n=Top%2fNews%2fScience%2fColumns%2fFindings

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you! Lee