In fact, the minute I start talking about individual factors in sexuality, I'm labelled as being "unsophisticated" or even "stupid". The belief is that I haven't taken time to adequately consider social and political influences on sexuality. This is deeply upsetting. These people don't realise that when I take psychology classes, I go to great lengths to balance students' hyper-individualistic perspectives (the belief that everything is caused by individual factors and that social and political influences are relatively unimportant; if you recall, I am often in strong disagreement with students who think the individualistic, scientistic approach to human behaviour is the be-all and end-all; see also my paper on the topic). I feel bad that my peers in English do not recognise that I have already given this much thought and that I have what I consider to be a fairly balanced view of the "matter of things", especially when it comes to sex (unlike my peers who haven't even once cared to be open to my discussion on individual influences on sexuality).
I think that people who are of the worldview that everything is caused by social and political forces are actually scared of facing the more personal, individual facets of that which they feel is caused by forces external to them. An interesting instance seems to be with people who are seemingly obsessed with the notion that gender is a completely social construction. With all due respect, it seems that many people espousing this view are struggling with their own, personal sexuality issues. In a sense, they defend themselves against the often scary emotions that surround coming to terms with one's sexuality by externalising them onto society and then intellectualising and rationalising them by talking about sexuality as if it were purely a social phenomenon that can only be understood (and "cured") by indulging in elitist academic discourse. It seems to me that this is all a clever way of divorcing affect (feeling) from the more (comfortable) cognitive, intellectual components of individual sexuality.
As an aside: My bias that things are primarily individual and not social
My personal bias tends to be that even those behaviours which look like they are influenced/caused by culture are still primarily individual in several senses:
- Society still starts off with individuals; individuals create culture;
granted, the culture can then take on a life of its own and influence other people who are powerless against its oppressive forces; however, it is individual, psychological influences which determine the degree to which someone will be likely to be powerless to the culture around them, to resist it, to surrender to its tempting lure, etc. - Individual human beings seem to want (perhaps even have a need) to fall under their spell of their culture; this individual, human need seems to be more important than the culture itself in determining behaviour.
- Some individuals more than others have a psychological need to be able to make sense of the world around them (or even their own intrapsychic worlds); exploring and being aware of social, political, and cultural influences on their behaviours (and the behaviour of others) helps them achieve this cognitive need for "making sense" of what can otherwise look like a muddled, confusing world (indeed, the life inside one’s own head—what with all the psychodynamics, symbols, defences, etc. swimming around—can be utterly confusing for a lot of people).
I realise all this may strike many people as being quite naive, but I
really have given this a lot of thought.