Social Psychology of Gender-Based Sex Term Paper

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Western Sexual Mores and Fundamental Beliefs about Romantic Love:

Beyond the unfair effect of gender-based differential sexual socialization on sexually liberated women in dating relationships, another component of American social psychology often undermines romantic happiness. Specifically, the many messages about romance and marriage that help shape the American view of love suggest that: (1) sexual desire between couples who love each other is exclusive; (2) sexual desire for others indicates a failure of a relationship (or lack of character or sincerity of one's partner); and (3) sexual jealousy is an indication of romantic love (Branden 2002).

Sexual jealousy is practically universal in romantic love within Western society (Buss 2000), but the fact of the matter is, at least in human beings, it is a learned reaction that is virtually unknown in several known aboriginal societies (Barash & Lipton 2001).

Despite the fact that psychologists consider sexual fidelity a matter of conscious choice (Branden, 2002) rather than a natural outcome of love, anecdotal evidence suggests that most Americans have been socialized to believe that "true love" automatically extinguishes sexual desire for others. As a result, American couples often react with hurt and anger at any honest acknowledgment of that reality by their partner instead of crediting each other with resisting perfectly natural sexual temptation.

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Even worse, popular culture (i.e. romance movies and television) regularly reinforce the erroneous notion (Branden, 2002) that experiencing sexual jealousy necessarily indicates genuine love. In reality, sexual jealousy does occur within meaningful relationships, but it also exists between individuals whose only relationship is purely superficial. Time and again, estranged former lovers who were both miserable throughout their relationship reconcile after experiencing sexual jealousy over each other's subsequent social relationships because of their mistaken belief that experiencing such strong jealousy is necessarily an indication that they must truly love each other.

Conclusion:

In these respect, elements of American social psychology promote destructive cultural beliefs about the nature of sex and romantic love that actually undermine human happiness. Gender-based differential sexual socialization virtually guarantees a predatory approach to dating on the part of males, at the expense of fundamental fairness as well as female well-being.

Similarly, by perpetuating the belief that sexual desire for others is inconsistent with healthy love and that sexual jealousy is an indication of genuine love, these examples of social psychology represent culturally-learned assumptions that are contrary to biological reality (Barash & Lipton 2001) that result in a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering within marriage and in other sexually intimate relationships......

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