ABSTRACT

While the sexual acceptability of contraception – or, the impact of contraceptive methods on individuals’ sexual experiences – is a growing area of research, less frequently do studies engage the importance of individual emotions around sex when it comes to perceptions of sexual acceptability. Building on Higgins and Smith’s model of sexual acceptability and drawing upon insights from the sociology of gender, we used qualitative interview data with 30 women in Utah (USA) to explore the importance of emotional understandings of sex for women’s assessments of the sexual acceptability of different contraceptives. Here we posit that emotional understandings of sex are not just individualistic – they are also structured by experiences with sexual partners and broader gendered expectations. This work adds insight into the importance of emotions in sexual acceptability and suggests the need for an amendment to Higgins and Smith’s model that reflects the synergistic nature of the micro/individual, meso/interactional, and macro factors related to sexual acceptability. We conclude that assessing the sexual acceptability of contraceptives requires a nuanced multi-level interaction framework.

摘要

虽然避孕的性可接受性——或避孕方法对个人性经历的影响——是一个不断增长的研究领域，但在涉及性可接受性感知时，很少有研究涉及个人对性的情绪的重要性。基于 Higgins 和 Smith 的性可接受性模型并借鉴性别社会学的见解，我们使用了对美国犹他州 30 名女性的定性访谈数据，探讨了对性的情感理解对于女性评估不同性别的性可接受性的重要性。避孕药。在这里，我们假设对性的情感理解不仅仅是个人主义的——它们还受到与性伴侣的经历和更广泛的性别期望的影响。这项工作增加了对情绪在性可接受性中的重要性的洞察力，并建议需要修正希金斯和史密斯的模型，以反映与性可接受性相关的微观/个人、中观/互动和宏观因素的协同性质。我们得出结论，评估避孕药具的性可接受性需要一个微妙的多层次交互框架。