Top

Sexuality Research and Social Policy

Published in:

26-06-2020

Me First: The Relation Between Neoliberal Beliefs and Sexual Attitudes

Authors: Alyssa N. Zucker, Laina Y. Bay-Cheng

Published in: Sexuality Research and Social Policy | Issue 2/2021

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Background

Neoliberal ideology has permeated US culture, creating a climate that values individual choice and self-interest over collective welfare. This has extended into the domain of sexuality and intimate relationships in a discourse that encourages people to put their own interest first sexually, with little thought of their partner’s.

Methods

This project analyzed survey data from 249 US young adults collected via MTurk in 2015 to explore relations between neoliberal ideology and sexual attitudes while controlling for gender norm conformity.

Results

Neoliberal beliefs seemed beneficial in that they were predictive of self-affirming sexual attitudes. Less favorably, stronger neoliberal beliefs were also associated with endorsing a sexual double standard that disadvantages women, and with feeling more sensitive to the judgments of others.

Conclusions

We argue that the neoliberal call to prioritize oneself may come at a price, to others and oneself.

previous article Do You Feel in Control? Sexual Desire, Sexual Passion Expression, and Associations with Perceived Compulsivity to Pornography and Pornography Use Frequency

next article Development and Psychometric Properties of the Concerns about Juvenile Sex Offender Registration and Notification Questionnaire (C-JSORNQ)

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Adam, B. D. (2005). Constructing the neoliberal sexual actor: Responsibility and care of the self in the discourse of barebackers. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 7, 333–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691050500100773.CrossRef

Adam, B. D. (2016). Neoliberalism, masculinity, and HIV risk. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 13, 321–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-016-0232-2.CrossRef

Adams, G., Estrada-Villalta, S., Sullivan, D., & Markus, H. R. (2019). The psychology of neoliberalism and the neoliberalism of psychology. Journal of Social Issues, 75, 189–216. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12305.CrossRef

Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2012). Recovering empowerment: De-personalizing and re-politicizing adolescent female sexuality (commentary). Sex Roles, 66, 713–717. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0070-x.CrossRef

Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2015). The agency line: A neoliberal metric for appraising young women’s sexuality. Sex Roles, 73, 279–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0452-6.CrossRef

Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2016). Seeing how far I’ve come: The impact of the Digital Sexual Life History Calendar on young adult research participants. The Journal of Sex Research, 54, 284295–284295. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1139033.CrossRef

Bay-Cheng, L. Y., & Eliseo-Arras, R. K. (2008). The making of unwanted sex: Gendered and neoliberal norms in college women’s unwanted sexual experiences. Journal of Sex Research, 45, 386–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490802398381.CrossRefPubMed

Bay-Cheng, L. Y., Fitz, C. C., Alizaga, N. M., & Zucker, A. N. (2015). Tracking Homo oeconomicus: Development of the Neoliberal Beliefs Inventory. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3, 71–88. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.366.CrossRef

Bay-Cheng, L. Y., & Zucker, A. N. (2007). Feminism between the sheets: The relation of feminist identity to sexual attitudes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 31, 157–163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2007.00349.x.CrossRef

Brown, W. (2003). Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory & Event, 7, 1–43.CrossRef

Burns, A., Futch, V. A., & Tolman, D. L. (2011). “It’s like doing homework”: Academic achievement discourse in adolescent girls’ fellatio narratives. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 8, 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-011-0062-1.CrossRef

Chadwick, S. B., & van Anders, S. M. (2017). Do women’s orgasms function as a masculinity achievement for men? The Journal of Sex Research, 54, 1141–1152. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1283484.CrossRefPubMed

Coburn, D. (2000). Income inequality, social cohesion and the health status of populations: The role of neo-liberalism. Social Science & Medicine, 51, 135–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00445-1.CrossRef

Davison, T. E., & McCabe, M. P. (2005). Relationships between men’s and women’s body image and their psychological, social, and sexual functioning. Sex Roles, 52(7–8), 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-3712-z.CrossRef

Elliott, S. (2014). “Who’s to blame?” Constructing the responsible sexual agent in neoliberal sex education. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 11(3), 211–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-014-0158-5.CrossRef

Emmerink, P. M., van den Eijnden, R. J., ter Bogt, T. F., & Vanwesenbeeck, I. (2017). A scale for the assessment of sexual standards among youth: Psychometric properties. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 1699–1709. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1001-x.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Farvid, P., & Braun, V. (2006). “Most of us guys are raring to go anytime, anyplace, anywhere”: Male and female sexuality in Cleo and Cosmo. Sex Roles, 55, 295–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9084-1.CrossRef

Frith, H. (2013). Labouring on orgasms: Embodiment, efficiency, entitlement and obligations in heterosex. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 15, 494–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2013.767940.CrossRef

Gavey, N. (2012). Beyond “empowerment”? Sexuality in a sexist world. Sex Roles, 66, 718–724. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0069-3.CrossRef

Girerd, L., & Bonnot, V. (2020). Neoliberalism: An ideological barrier to feminist identification and collective action. Social Justice Research, 33, 81–109.CrossRef

Grzanka, P. R., Mann, E. S., & Elliott, S. (2016). The neoliberalism wars, or notes on the persistence of neoliberalism. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 13, 297–307. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-016-0255-8.CrossRef

Gurevich, M., Leedham, U., Brown-Bowers, A., Cormier, N., & Mercer, Z. (2017). Propping up pharma’s (natural) neoliberal phallic man: Pharmaceutical representations of the ideal sexuopharmaceutical user. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 19, 422–437.CrossRef

Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Heberle, R. (2016). The personal is political. In L. Disch & M. Hawkesworth (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of feminist theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 260–265 10.1111%2Fj.0963-7214.2005.00377.x.CrossRef

Katz, J., Gravelin, C. R., & O’Brien, C. (2018). Neoliberal beliefs and perceptions of unintended adolescent pregnancy after consensual or forced sex. Sex Roles, 78, 810–821.CrossRef

Lamb, S. (2010). Feminist ideals for a healthy female adolescent sexuality: A critique. Sex Roles, 62, 294–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-9698-1.CrossRef

Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Mann, E. S. (2016). Latina girls, sexual agency, and the contradictions of neoliberalism. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 13, 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-016-0237-x.CrossRef

Mann, E. S., & Grzanka, P. R. (2018). Agency-without-choice: The visual rhetorics of long-acting reversible contraception promotion. Symbolic Interaction, 41, 334–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.349.CrossRef

Merrill, A. (2019) I come first. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.lunya.co/blogs/our-bedroom/i-come-first

Parent, M. C., & Moradi, B. (2010). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory and development of an abbreviated version: The CFNI-45. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 34, 97–109. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01545.x.CrossRef

Parent, M. C., & Moradi, B. (2011). An abbreviated tool for assessing conformity to masculine norms: Psychometric properties of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-46. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 12, 339–353. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021904.CrossRef

Rottenberg, C. (2014). The rise of neoliberal feminism. Cultural Studies, 28, 418–437.CrossRef

Savani, K., Stephens, N. M., & Markus, H. R. (2011). The unanticipated interpersonal and societal consequences of choice: Victim blaming and reduced support for the public good. Psychological Science, 22, 795–802. https://doi.org/10.1177/2F0956797611407928.CrossRefPubMed

Snell Jr., W. E., & Kilimnik, C. D. (2019). The Multidimensional Sexual Self-Concept Questionnaire. In R. R. Milhausen et al. (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (4th ed., pp. 545–547). New York, NY: Routledge.

Teo, T. (2018). Homo neoliberalus: From personality to forms of subjectivity. Theory & Psychology, 28, 581–599 10.1177%2F0959354318794899.CrossRef

Waggoner, P. D., Kennedy, R., & Clifford, S. (2019). Detecting fraud in online surveys by tracing, scoring, and visualizing IP addresses. Journal of Open Source Software, 4, 1285–1289. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01285.CrossRef

Whitehead, C. (2015). How ‘you do you’ perfectly captures our narcissistic culture. New York Times Magazine Retrieved August 9, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/magazine/how-you-do-you-perfectly-captures-our-narcissistic-culture.html.

Title: Me First: The Relation Between Neoliberal Beliefs and Sexual Attitudes
Authors: Alyssa N. Zucker
Laina Y. Bay-Cheng
Publication date: 26-06-2020
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Sexuality Research and Social Policy / Issue 2/2021
Print ISSN: 1868-9884
Electronic ISSN: 1553-6610
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-020-00466-6

Springer Professional

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 2/2021

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: A Policy Analysis of the Swedish Guidelines for Trans-Specific Healthcare

Markers of Sexual Life and Health in Association with Internet Use for Sexual Purposes in Czechs Aged 50 and Older

Sexual Expression in Old Age: How Older Adults from Different Cultures Express Sexually?

Do You Feel in Control? Sexual Desire, Sexual Passion Expression, and Associations with Perceived Compulsivity to Pornography and Pornography Use Frequency

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Victims’ Reporting Behaviors to Informal and Formal Sources

Priority of Access to Fertility Treatments Based on Sexual Orientation and Marital Status: the Views of Gamete Donors and Recipients