SOCI201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Herbert Marcuse, Incest Taboo, Estrous Cycle
3 May 2018
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●Sex Drive
○Human sex drive is not confined by estrous cycles
■Not prompted by the weather; all year round
■Other mammals not confined by estrous cycles:
●Bottlenose dolphins
●Bonobos
○The social function of sex drive
■Bonding
■Establishing dominance and social hierarchy
○Sigmund Freud
■‘Civilization and Its Discontents”
●If we were left to ourselves, we always will want to have sex
●Oedipal complex, incest taboo, and the development of the
superego
●Aim-inhibited love: social institutions were established to restrict
sexuality, but ensure social stability
■Herbert Marcuse: “Eros and Civilization”
●Surplus repression
●“There is too much sex”
●Sexual Attraction
○Physical attributes
■healthy, facial symmetry, and youth
○Social attributes
■Sociable, socioeconomic status
●Sexual practices/behaviors
○Range from “good sex” to “bad sex”
■good→ holy, normal, natural
●Hetersexual, married, monogamous, reproductive, at home
■bad→ sinful, abnormal, unnatural
●Transexuals, for money, fetishes, cross-generational
■In the middle
●Unmarried heterosexual couples, promiscuous heterosexuals,
masturbation, long-term stable gay/lesbian couples,
●The social construction of sexuality
○Contemporary institutions
■The institution of medicine
■Institution of marriage, family, and romantic love
■The institution of gender
■Anthony Giddens
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