Portal:Sexuality

Human sexuality portal

Human sexuality covers topics such as the biological basis of and the social factors affecting, sexual behavior, gender and sexual orientation.

Over time and across cultures, there have been different views on sexual ethics and different laws on what sexual behavior is permitted. Sex education programs promote reproductive health and family planning and try to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Many societies have forms of erotica or pornography and a sex industry with sex workers such as prostitutes.

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Elizabeth Needham (right foreground) as portrayed in William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress

Elizabeth Needham (died 3 May 1731), also known as Mother Needham, was an English procuress and brothel-keeper of 18th-century London, who has been identified as the bawd greeting Moll Hackabout in the first plate of William Hogarth's series of satirical etchings, A Harlot's Progress. Her house was the most exclusive in London and her customers included such people as Colonel Francis Charteris and his cousin the Duke of Wharton. She employed the famous prostitute Sally Salisbury. However, Needham eventually ran afoul of the moral reformers of the day and died as a result of the severe treatment she received at the pillory. No-one could match her reputation until Mother Douglas took over the King's Head in Covent Garden in 1741.

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Merkins were originally worn by prostitutes to hide the signs of syphilis or having shaved their genitals to avoid pubic lice. Now, along with pasties they are often used in the ironic striptease of neo-burlesque.

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Paraphilias

Clinical literature discusses eight major paraphilias individually; according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the activity must be the sole means of sexual gratification for a period of six (6) months, and either cause "clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" or involve a violation of consent to be diagnosed as a paraphilia.

• Exhibitionism: the recurrent urge or behavior to expose one's genitals to an unsuspecting person.
• Fetishism: the use of non-sexual or nonliving objects or part of a person's body to gain sexual excitement. Partialism refers to fetishes specifically involving nonsexual parts of the body.
• Frotteurism: the recurrent urges or behavior of touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting person.
• Pedophilia: the sexual attraction to prepubescent or peripubescent children.
• Sexual Masochism: the recurrent urge or behavior of wanting to be humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer.
• Sexual Sadism: the recurrent urge or behavior involving acts in which the pain or humiliation of the victim is sexually exciting.
• Transvestic fetishism: a sexual attraction towards the clothing of the opposite gender.
• Voyeurism: the recurrent urge or behavior to observe an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing or engaging in sexual activities, or may not be sexual in nature at all.
• Other rarer paraphilias are grouped together under Other paraphilias not otherwise specified (ICD-9-CM equivalent of "Sexual Disorder NOS") and include telephone scatalogia (obscene phone calls), necrophilia (corpses), partialism (exclusive focus on one part of the body), zoophilia (animals), coprophilia (feces), klismaphilia (enemas), urophilia (urine). More than 50 other paraphilias have been identified and named by sexologists (see list of paraphilias).

(See also paraphilias).

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