Key Events in Human Sexuality

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Dear Student,
Hi and thank you for using Brainmass. The solution below should get you started. In this particular task, you are being asked to present a timeline of what you think were important events in the development of human sexuality. I suggest choosing impactful events. Below I have catalogued 7 events for you with a list of resources that can be useful. In a presentation, you can include videos and images as well as cite works that are relevant. I normally provide an outline and in this case, my suggested design is simple (after viewing similar presentations in prezi):

1. The event - a brief description
2. Reason for importance - 100 words
3. images/videos/cited or included work to further illustrate the event (including citing key individuals)

This should be the case for all events, and ensure that you do not allot more than a minute per event. Do not forget to all a page to list your references or resources. I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
AE 105878/Xenia Jones

History of Human Sexuality: Key Events of Impact

Overview - Human history includes elements of attitudes and practices that relate to human sexuality for as human beings, we come to life through procreation. Attitudes on what human sexuality should be about and how it should be practiced and viewed change according to social situatedness (that is, how people view human sexuality at a particular period in history). Talking about sexual topics can be a taboo act for some cultures while in others, human sexuality is intrinsic to their identities as a group and as an individual (i.e. the 'mother' and the 'female' genital is worshipped as the source of all life so that sexual acts repeal evil and bring good as in the practice among certain hill tribes in Northern Thailand). Below, I have listed 7 events. By no means are they inclusive of all key events but I believe they are representative of impactful events in human sexuality discourse.

1. On Thomas Aquinas' Beliefs in Marriage and Sexuality

St. Thomas Aquinas is seen as a fundamental thinker not just among Christians and Catholics but in the realm of human philosophy. His book 'Summa Theologica', published in 1471 is one of the most influential works in virtue ethics and remains so to this day. Though unfinished (due to his untimely demise), the tenets in it influenced the larger pan-European and Christian practices on living a virtuous life, including how to view marriage and sexual acts. Today, it is fundamental to how Catholics see human sexuality - that sex is an act that only married people must engage in, that mess before marriage is a 'sin'.

One key aspect of his teachings in this work is the notion of 'temperance' - not to abstain but to temper one's needs, including lust so as to 'remain good and pure' in the eyes of God. Chastity and the habit of virginity among Catholics have therefore been uplifted to an ideal so that those who engage in premarital sex and those who 'cannot control their needs' are seen as deviant and corruptible. The following is a key Aquinas passage (1417, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province):

"If we suppose the corporeal nature to be created by the good God we cannot hold that those things which pertain to the preservation of the corporeal nature and to which nature inclines, are altogether evil; wherefore, since the inclination to beget an offspring whereby the specific nature is preserved is from nature, it is impossible to maintain that the act of begetting children is altogether unlawful, so that it be impossible to find the mean of virtue therein; unless we suppose, as some are mad enough to assert, that corruptible things ...