Thoroughly describe the theory of erotic habitus. How does this theory also help us explain more normative sexual desires? Which theoretical perspective does this theory fit best with?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Green's (2008) theory of erotic habitus explains that the ways we embody our sexualities are informed by our social worlds. The theory explores how individual psychological processes like sexual desire connect to the ways institutions influence the formation of sexual ideas and manifest through our bodies in sexual practices. It "is the sociological component of sexual desire that straddles social structure and unconscious processes" (Green, 2008, p. 622). Having an erotic habitus means that individuals have developed certain dispositions, or inclinations. What we find sexually arousing is based on the interplay between our psychic processing of social factors (Green, 2008). The theory of erotic habitus is a useful way to understand a variety of sexual practices. This framework has been applied to research on urban gay and bisexual men's sexual interactions (Green, 2011). It has been expanded on to explain transgender men's evolving sexual habitus, which helps account for the ways trans men's changes in gendered embodiment accommodate the sexual practices they experience (Schilt and Windsor, 2014). Another study found that the framework helped explore the ways heterosexual and bisexual cisgender men reconciled their sexual attraction to transgender women who had penises (Weinberg and Williams, 2014). These studies examined the effects of habitus for people navigating more marginalized sexualities.
The theory of erotic habitus can also help us understand more normative sexual desires. For example, erotic habitus can explain why women's breasts are sexualized in U.S. society. Why do heterosexual men identify women's breasts as sexually arousing compared to other body parts, like women's elbows or armpits? For some straight guys, paying attention to women's breasts may feel natural. They may experience sexual arousal upon seeing breasts and attribute their embodied reactions as totally normal. But the erotic habitus theory would explain that their sexual desires stem from a combination of their life experiences, structural factors in society, and their psychological processing of this information. The sexualization of breasts is a social construction, which means the meanings people ascribe to breasts vary across cultures and throughout history.