Human sexuality

This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.

Eroticism (from the Greek ἔρως, eros—"desire") is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love.

This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.

Most people partake in physical intimacy, which is a natural part of interpersonal relationships and human sexuality, and research has shown it has health benefits.

The clitoris is developed from the same embryonic tissue as the penis; it or its glans alone consists of as many (or more in some cases) nerve endings as the human penis or glans penis, making it extremely sensitive to touch.

The clitoris is the human female's most sensitive erogenous zone and generally the primary anatomical source of human female sexual pleasure.

The breasts are external organs used for sexual pleasure in some cultures.

A number of Western cultures associate breasts with sexuality and tend to regard bare breasts in public as immodest or indecent.

These theories are mostly consistent with observed differences in males' and females' attitudes toward casual sex before marriage in the United States; other aspects of human sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, incidence of oral sex, and attitudes toward homosexuality and masturbation, show little to no observed difference between males and females.

The sexual stimulation of one's own genitals has been interpreted variously by different religions, the subject of legislation, social controversy, activism, as well as intellectual study in sexology.

Someone's sexual orientation can influence that person's sexual interest and attraction for another person.

In 2012, the Pan American Health Organization (the North and South American branch of the World Health Organization) released a statement cautioning against services that purport to "cure" people with non-heterosexual sexual orientations as they lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people, and noted that the global scientific and professional consensus is that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation of human sexuality and cannot be regarded as a pathological condition.

In the resolution phase, the male is now in an unaroused state consisting of a refactory (rest) period before the cycle can begin.

In human sexuality, the refractory period is usually the recovery phase after orgasm during which it is physiologically impossible for a man to have additional orgasms.

This model was created by William Masters and Virginia Johnson.

Virginia E. Johnson, born Mary Virginia Eshelman (February 11, 1925 – July 24, 2013), was an American sexologist, best known as a member of the Masters and Johnson sexuality research team.

Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually.

Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality.

Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex, same sex, or both sexes.

Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract the sexual or erotic interests of other people, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice.

Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud adopted more accepting stances; Ellis said homosexuality was inborn and therefore not immoral, not a disease, and that many homosexuals made significant contributions to society.

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), was an English physician, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality.

Alfred Kinsey also examined child sexuality in his Kinsey Reports.

Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s.

Although Islamic sexuality is restrained via Islamic sexual jurisprudence, it emphasizes sexual pleasure within marriage.

Islamic sexual jurisprudence concerns the Islamic laws of sexuality in Islam, as largely predicated on the Qur'an, the sayings of Muhammad (hadith) and the rulings of religious leaders' (fatwa) confining sexual activity to marital relationships between men and women.

Alfred Kinsey also examined child sexuality in his Kinsey Reports.

The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.

The vagina is normally collapsed, but during sexual arousal it opens, lengthens, and produces lubrication to allow the insertion of the penis.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson conducted many important studies into human sexuality.

This concept is a modern one, and remains controversial, especially outside the West, since it deals, directly and indirectly, with issues such as contraception, LGBT rights, abortion, sex education, freedom to choose a partner, freedom to decide whether to be sexually active or not, right to bodily integrity, freedom to decide whether or not, and when, to have children.

Sex education is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including emotional relations and responsibilities, human sexual anatomy, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, age of consent, reproductive health, reproductive rights, safe sex, birth control and sexual abstinence.

With the domestication of animals, new opportunities for bestiality arose.

Zoophilia has been partly discussed by several sciences: Psychology (the study of the human mind), sexology (a relatively new discipline primarily studying human sexuality), ethology (the study of animal behavior), and anthrozoology (the study of human-animal interactions and bonds).

Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest.

Sexual desire is an aspect of a person's sexuality, which varies significantly from one person to another, and also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time.

These theories are mostly consistent with observed differences in males' and females' attitudes toward casual sex before marriage in the United States; other aspects of human sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, incidence of oral sex, and attitudes toward homosexuality and masturbation, show little to no observed difference between males and females.

While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research has shown that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects.

The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, music video, pornography, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling, sex work and other occupations.

An erotic film is usually a film that has an erotic quality that causes the creation of sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love.

The attraction may be to a person's aesthetics or movements or to their voice or smell, besides other factors.

Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability.

The G-spot, named after the Ernst Gräfenberg who first reported it in 1950, may be located in the front wall of the vagina and may cause orgasms.

Human sexuality

These changes to sexuality are argued to be largely effected by the enforcement of the gender binary and heteropatriarchy as tools of colonization on colonized communities as seen in nations such as India, Samoa, and the First Nations in the Americas, resulting in the deaths and erasure of non-western genders and sexualities.

With the emergence of queer theory around the 1980s and the 1990s and the questioning of the heteronormativity and the gender binary, this kind of domination is not only described in terms of sex or gender (the predominance of men over woman, or the masculine over the feminine) but also in terms of sexuality (the heteronormativity, or the heterosexuality above other sexual orientations and the cisgender over other identities).

He also proposed the concepts of psychosexual development and the Oedipus complex, among other theories.

A usual criticism of the scientific (experimental) validity of the Freudian psychology theory of human psychosexual development is that Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was personally fixated upon human sexuality; therefore, he favored defining human development with a normative theory of psychologic and sexual development.

These conservatives tend to promote celibacy for gay people, and may also tend to believe that sexuality can be changed through conversion therapy or prayer to become an ex-gay.

In 2012, the Pan American Health Organization (the North and South American branch of the World Health Organization) released a statement cautioning against services that purport to "cure" people with non-heterosexual orientations as they lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people, and noted that the global scientific and professional consensus is that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation of human sexuality and cannot be regarded as a pathological condition.