Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues.
Part One: Sexual Orientation
operationalize and for this reason admit of various usages.* Nevertheless, the ambiguity presents a significant challenge for both research design and interpretation, requiring that we take care in attending to the meanings, contexts, and findings specific to each study. It is also important to bracket any subjective associations with or uses of these terms that do not conform to well-defined scientific classifications and techniques.
It would be a mistake, at any rate, to ignore the varied uses of this and related terms or to try to reduce the many and distinct experiences to which they might refer to a single concept or experience. As we shall see, doing so could in some cases adversely affect the evaluation and treatment of patients.
The Context of Sexual Desire
We can further clarify the complex phenomenon of sexual desire if we examine what relationship it has to other aspects of our lives. To do so, we borrow some conceptual tools from a philosophical tradition known as phenomenology, which conceives of human experience as deriving its meaning from the whole context in which it appears.
The testimony of experience suggests that one’s experience of sexual desire and sexual attraction is not voluntary, at least not in any immediate way. The whole set of inclinations that we generally associate with the experience of sexual desire—whether the impulse to engage in particular acts or to enjoy certain relationships—does not appear to be the sole product of any deliberate choice. Our sexual appetites (like other natural appetites) are experienced as given, even if their expression is shaped in subtle ways by many factors, which might very well include volition. Indeed, far from appearing as a product of our will, sexual desire—however we define it—is often experienced as a powerful force, akin to hunger, that many struggle (especially in adolescence) to bring under direction and control.
Furthermore, sexual desire can impact one’s attention involuntarily or color one’s day-to-day perceptions, experiences, and encounters. What seems to be to some extent in our control is how we choose to live with this appetite, how we integrate it into the rest of our lives.
But the question remains: What is sexual desire? What is this part of our lives that we consider to be given, prior even to our capacity to
* “Operationalizing” refers to the way social scientists make a variable measurable. Homosexuality may be operationalized as the answers that survey respondents give to questions about their sexual orientation. Or it could be operationalized as answers to questions about their desires, attractions, and behavior. Operationalizing variables in ways that will reliably measure the trait or behavior being studied is a difficult but important part of any social science research.
Fall 2016 ~ 19