Presented By: Department of Psychology
PSC/GFP Brown Bag: Idalia Maciel
Two Handfuls of Orgasms: Women's Quantification of Sexual Satisfaction Across Race-Ethnicity Groups
Sexual satisfaction is a multifaceted construct that consists of physiological responses, interpersonal dynamics, positive affect, and gender-specific socialization. Yet, what sexual satisfaction means to individuals is unclear. Quantification of sex has been an important method for measuring sexual satisfaction in research due to its assumed objectivity. However, it has been argued that an “objective” measure of sexual satisfaction via quantification takes away the ability to critically reflect on what a personal definition of sexual satisfaction is through this reliance on quantification as a default. Importantly, sex and sexual socialization are racialized experiences. Researchers often place white women as the prototype for women’s sexuality while emphasizing the risk paradigm for Black and Brown bodies. Similarly, societal messaging surrounding racial sexual stereotypes hypersexualizes and vilifies some bodies while idolizing others. In this talk, I will discuss how Black, Latina, Afro-Latina and white women described the factors that are important to their sexual satisfaction. My analysis looked at whether there were differences by race-ethnicity group in how women described these factors, and how women relied on quantification (of sex and/or orgasm) when defining sexual satisfaction. Utilizing the framework of intimate justice, I argue that the orgasm imperative and the legitimization of sexuality through quantification impacts women of all racial-ethnic groups, however white women have a buffer of whiteness.
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