Objectification, femininity ideology, and sexual assertiveness: A model of women's sexual functioning

Numerous research studies have investigated the relationship between sexual objectification and women's experience of their bodies , while fewer have focused on the possible role of endorsement of traditional femininity ideologies in helping to explain adult sexual functioning. The studies that do exist concentrate primarily on illuminating the differences between men and women versus exploring how endorsing particular attitudes or roles may affect women's experience of their bodies. This study investigated the relationships among traditional femininity ideology, sexual victimization, and self-objectification as well as how these variables related to body monitoring , sexual assertiveness for initiation and refusal, body shame, and appearance anxiety. All eight of these variables were investigated as they related to women's reports of sexual dysfunction. The primary investigator visited a large general psychology lecture in order to inform potential participants of the research opportunity and provide them with a general understanding of the study. Only women were recruited, as evidence sugges ts a greater incidence of sexual victimization among women and greater controve rsy regarding female sexuality two elements central to this particular study. Because of the focus on sexua l experiences and sexual health, students must have reported having engaged at least once in voluntary sexual activity or intercourse to be included in the final sample. While minimal discomfort was anticipated by participating in the study, students were asked to provide personal information regarding their sexual functioning and any history of sexual abuse. All informed consent and data collection were completed online via www . survevmonkev.com. No personally ident ifying information was collected, and students participated anonymou sly. Because no signatures were required for informed consent , there was no way to connect individual students to the private information they provided. The full survey consisted of approximately 130 items from the Chi ldhood Sexual Abuse Scale, Adu lt Sexual Victimizat ion Scale, Femininity Ideology Scale, Hyperfemininity Scale, Sexual Assertiveness Scale, Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, Self-Objectification Questionnaire, Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale, Appearance Anxiety Scale, Female Sexual Function Index, Psychosexua l Functioning Scale, and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding. Latent Variable Modeling was perfonned to analyze the research data using EQS software to investigate 13 main hypot heses primarily concerning sexual victimization, femininity ideology, and sexual assertiveness. As expected, a history of sexual victimization was positively correlate d with self-objectification and negatively correlated with sexual assertiveness . Endorsement of traditional femininity ideologies was negatively correlated with sexual assertiveness for initiation, but contrary to expectations, it was not correlated with selfobjectification or sexual assertiveness for refusal. Surprising ly, sexual assertiveness for refusal was directly related to sexual dysfunction. While the majority of relat ionships posited by Objectificat ion Theory were supported , neither body shame nor appearance anxiety was found to correlate with female sexual dysfunction. On the whole, this infonnation supports the body of knowledge concerning sexual victimization and objectification but challenges the assertion that the objectification variables traditionally studied relate to female sexual functioning. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT