Answer to Question 1
Many people believe that there is a natural or instinctive expression of sexuality that people are aware of largely or completely without learning. Reflecting this belief, some people refer to variant sexual acts as violations of nature. For many people in the United States, natural sex is sex between a man and a woman who are married. Sexsex for pleasure and sex for procreationis a principal concern of the Polynesian people on tiny Mangaia. They demonstrate that concern in the startling numbers of children born to unmarried parents, and in the statistics on frequency of orgasm and numbers of sexual partners. In Tahiti, young people are encouraged to masturbate. In the Truk Islands of the Pacific, sexual gratification is associated with pain and frustration, and sexual foreplay involves lovers inflicting pain on each other. Among most human groups, the female breasts are considered erotic, but this is not universal. Among the Mangaians, the breasts are not involved in foreplay and sexual arousal. Kissing is also a part of sexual expression in most human societies, but there are people among whom sexual intercourse occurs completely without kissing. The Siriono of Bolivia even find kissing to be a disgusting act.
Answer to Question 2
One important factor, certainly, is the emergence of easy-to-use, unobtrusive, and very reliable contraceptives. This has eased women's fears of pregnancy and widened their options as far as sexual behavior is concerned. A second major factor has been the feminist movement, which emphasizes that women should gain control of their lives and be able to make decisions for themselves. A third factor producing changing sexual practices has been technological developments, such as the automobile, that provide young people with more freedom and the means to escape surveillance by adults. A final factor producing changes in sexual behavior is the trend toward secularization: the process through which the influence of religion is removed from many institutions in society and dispersed into private and personal realms.
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