13 years of Psychology & Sexuality: taking stock & outlining a new vision

The first 13 years

At the start of the twenty-first century, psychologists who studied sexuality (particularly sexual diversity) had few outlets for their work that were clearly positioned within the discipline, took a more critical and contextual perspective, and supported qualitative methods. Scholarly work on psychology and sexuality was relatively scattered across journals. While some sex-focused outlets were available, they tended to privilege quantitative or biological research or to explore sexuality in heteronormative populations, typically through the epistemological prism of a postpositivist universalism. As such, a journal that recognised the importance of lived experience, could provide a voice to marginalised sexualities, and welcomed more critical perspectives within psychology was needed. Enter Psychology & Sexuality, whose founding editorial team centred international voices and encouraged engagement with allied fields such as sociology and queer studies in the humanities, with the first volume of the journal published in 2010.

In developing the third editorial vision of the journal, we took the opportunity to look back and see how its pages came to embody the initial vision held by the founders. We discovered four areas in which the journal excelled in its novel contributions to the field and two areas in which it can (and should, in our view) go further.

First, the journal has promoted more intellectually progressive work on sexual diversity by expanding the scope of inquiry in the psychology of sexuality. From its inception, the journal provided a supportive home to work on such forms of intimate diversity as consensual nonmonogamy, asexuality, and BDSM/kink; these were not areas of focused study in psychology beyond moralising or pathologizing perspectives of the twentieth century. Work published in the journal also usefully examined links among these more newly recognised forms of intimate diversity, most notably between asexuality and kink.

Second, the journal appropriately came to centre gender diversity, recognising that our understanding of the experience of sexuality is predicated on a particular experience of gender. Hence there were many important contributions related to transgender and intersex experiences. A special issue was focused entirely on the intersex experience, and valuable scholarship appeared on transgender issues. Most issues after 2018 contained at least one article on transgender issues or experiences. While most empirical work on gender diversity that has appeared in the journal does not fully address issues of gender-sexuality intersection, we believe the journal is well-positioned to do so in its next chapter, and our new editorial vision calls upon scholars to do so.

Third, the journal’s centring of qualitative research was not only highly successful in its own right, but it also occurred in the midst of a larger disciplinary revolution that saw qualitative methods at last move from the margins of the field to claim its proper place in the knowledge production process. From the start, the journal supported work using diverse forms of qualitative methodologies, including narrative methods, thematic analysis, phenomenological analysis, and discourse analysis. We look forward to maintaining the support of rigorous qualitative inquiry in the study of psychology and sexuality in the next chapter of the journal.

Finally, the journal lived up to its promise to integrate historical, theoretical, and critical perspectives, with several key contributions in this area since its founding. Among these valuable contributions have included critical perspectives on diagnosis and historical accounts of the discipline.

Alongside these four main areas, the journal has published 14 special issues on important topics. Three of the 14 special issues have addressed clinical issues or concerns in some way. The first of these, ‘The DSM-5 as Political Battleground: Gender Identities, Sexual Norms, and Female Desire’, explored key issues relating to sexuality and gender in relation to the DSM. The second, ‘Critical Psychology Perspectives on LGBTQ+ Mental Health: Current Issues and Interventions’, broke new ground in more critical approaches to understanding mental health among those minoritized for their sexual and/or gender identity, particularly foregrounding cultural and intersectional perspectives. The third, ‘Bereavement in Older Age in LGBTIQ Adults’, shed valuable light on some of the unique challenges with bereavement experienced by those who are minoritized due to gender and/or sexual identity.

Two special issues focused on gender, though in different ways. The first, ‘Intersex/DSD Post-Chicago: New Developments and Challenges for Psychologists’, was a highly clinical issue and focused on the shift in approaches to intersex experiences that were occurring in the discipline and beyond. The second issue, ‘Critical Femininities’, explored critical femininities as a new approach to gender theory, applying the concept to expressions of masculinity, transprejudice, and femmephobia.

Two special issues focused somewhat on technology. The first, ‘Sex Blogging’, used a blog post by a BDSM practitioner to explore issues of sexual identity, debates within feminism, and web blogging. The second, ‘More Eclectic Views on Gay Male Pornography’, provided an updated collection of articles which build on a previous special issue on the same topic in a different journal; the issue addressed technological developments, conceptualisations of pornography, and unique perspectives on pornography use.

The remaining special issues all had distinct topics, often focusing on under-researched areas of sexuality from a psychological perspective. These topics were: asexuality, sexual consent, history of sexuality, queer theory and psychology, violence against LGBT people, and papers from an international conference.

The two areas we believe the journal could have gone further and ought to do so in its next chapter concern (1) culture, and (2) technology. While the journal developed a solid identity as international, publishing research from Mexico, Colombia, China, Malaysia, India, and Romania, most authorship teams and samples continued to be from North America and Northern Europe. As we detail below, our vision calls for a more explicit query of the cultural psychology of sexuality, by which we mean the diverse ways in which sexuality is constructed and lived across the world. Though we can go further and plan to in the composition of our Editorial Board, we are fortunate to have some key scholars doing work beyond North America and Europe, and we expect this type of work to grow during our tenure. Scholars of sexuality in the Global South are especially encouraged to contact us directly to get more involved in the journal.

Regarding the role of technology in sexuality, the journal has published some key research, including a special issue on pornography. However, the significance psychology as a field has attributed to technology and its role in our experience and development has not kept pace with the actual role of technology in people’s everyday lives. More research needs to move beyond the role of technology as a recruitment tool and instead explore how technology itself can be the subject of research. As we detail below, our new editorial vision highlights the study of technology and sexuality.

A new editorial vision

We recently had the opportunity to lead a special issue of Current Opinion in Psychology, focusing on Sexual and Gender Diversity in the 21^st Century (Hammack & Wignall, 2023), which allowed us to engage with the latest research being conducted in the field on various different topics. We used this knowledge, alongside the content analysis we conducted of the previous articles in Psychology & Sexuality, to consider what Psychology & Sexuality might look like moving forward. In doing so, our editorial vision highlights four broad topic areas. First, we encourage work that centres the psychological experience of sexuality—studies that foreground lived experience and situate data in context. Such work may focus on the experience of sexual desire, fantasy, or attraction; the development of sexual identities; experiences of stigma and prejudice (from the target’s perspective); experiences of resilience rooted in in both individual and community; diverse sexual behaviours, practices, and identities; and sexual subcultures and communities. This list is not exhaustive, and we welcome work that highlights experience in context. Although we will fully consider research that examines attitudes towards various forms of sexuality, we aim to prioritise studies of experience over attitudes.

Our second area of focus will be on sexuality and technology. Here we invite research that foregrounds the role of technology, especially social technologies, in the experience and development of sexual identities and practices. While not an exhaustive list, these technologies can include dating/hook-up sites or apps, the use of AI in dating/sexual contexts, exploration of sex tech/toys in augmenting sexual experiences, and theoretical papers on the consequences of digital technologies on sexuality.

Our third area of focus will be on the cultural psychology of sexuality. We intentionally call upon the framework of cultural psychology which focuses on cultural variability and particularity (rather than universalism) and is especially appropriate for work on indigenous, intersectional, and decolonial sexualities. Rather than assuming the cultural relevance of concepts formulated in North American and European contexts, we encourage scholars to consider cultural variability in sexuality from a psychological perspective, engaging with work in anthropology and ethnic and indigenous studies.

Finally, we seek to continue the journal’s longstanding tradition to encourage theoretical, conceptual, and historical studies of psychology and sexuality. Such work provides important opportunities for scholars to consider paradigm and practice as psychological scientists and practitioners. For larger review papers, we encourage contributors to reach out to the editorial team for guidance.

As we promote our editorial vision, it is equally important to specify the types of work we do not envision as an appropriate fit for the journal under our leadership. First, work that fails to take a primarily psychological approach will not be considered. Taking a ‘psychological’ approach simply means that the work engages with key concepts of historical significance to the discipline, such as questions of behaviour, identity, emotion, cognition, and the like. Early publications from non-psychology disciplines found a home in Psychology & Sexuality. However, we believe that there are now excellent alternative journals in other fields for work that does not include a psychological approach.

Perhaps most significantly, we actively discourage work that aggregates ‘LGBTQ+’ experiences except in situations where the research question is sufficiently broad as to focus on aggregate experience. It is our conviction that too much work in the history of the field has aggregated across various forms of minoritized sexual and gender identities, failing to capture heterogeneity of experience and obscuring intersectionality. Furthermore, research has well documented the distinct experiences that sexual minorities have. Hence, we encourage researchers to focus on the distinction of experience of sexuality across diverse identities.

A third area we will discourage is work that focuses solely on gender with little or no consideration of sexuality. As noted, we see the study of sexuality and gender as largely inseparable, given the centrality accorded gender in our understandings of sexual desire, behaviour, and identity. Just as we expect studies of sexuality to attend closely to gender, studies of gender and gender diversity must equally consider sexuality to be considered appropriate for the journal.

A fourth area we will discourage focuses on sexual health as a sole or primary focus, with little to no integration of psychological concepts. Our view is not only that a disproportionate amount of research has been expended on sexual health at the cost of focus on other key domains such as sexual identity and technology, but also that there are numerous other outlets that support this type of work. Furthermore, it is of central importance to understand social factors which underpin sexual health determinants.

A fifth area which will not be considered is work that explicitly delegitimizes sexual and/or gender diversity. Here we do not reject the possibility of critique or the recognition of social categories of sexuality and gender as produced and performed. Yet there is a difference between recognition of social constructionism and scientific prejudice as historically occurred within psychology for most of the prior century. Work that denies the experience of gender diversity or calls into question the legitimacy of affirmative approaches to gender or sexuality (e.g. by producing work intended to stigmatise or disenfranchise) is grounded in prejudice and bias rather than science and is not appropriate for the journal.

A sixth and final area we deem inappropriate for the journal is work that uncritically relies upon WEIRD (i.e. Western, Educated, Rich, Democratic; see Henrich et al., 2010) samples without the acknowledgement of limitations. Unless such samples reflect the population of interest, we discourage them and instead encourage researchers to engage in more thoughtful sampling procedures. Relatedly, a new practice we are requiring of all submissions is that the social and historical context of the research (including geographic location) must be acknowledged, both in the body of the paper and in the title and/or abstract. We believe it important to normalise the location of data collection in the title/abstract, rather than only including it when the data is from an under-researched geographic location.

Submissions to the journal must follow the articulated reporting standards for qualitative and mixed-methods research (see Levitt et al., 2018). Submissions that do not fall within the scope we have articulated here or that fall within the domains we have specified as being grounds for exclusion will be rejected and not eligible for consideration. Submissions that do fall within our current editorial scope and that meet the guidelines we have set forth will undergo peer review by at least two reviewers, most typically relying upon members of the journal’s new Editorial Board for review. We have assembled this Editorial Board with great care and intention, as we believe its members have produced work that embodies our vision. We intend to re-evaluate its composition regularly and encourage interested scholars to contact us to inquire about joining the Board, especially if they are asked to review papers regularly by our Associate Editors. We believe it important to recognise the invaluable work of peer reviewers.

We view it as a great privilege to lead Psychology & Sexuality in this next chapter in the journal’s history. Not only has the journal been home to some of our own work over the years, our scholarship has benefitted tremendously from the work published here. We accept the responsibility to continue the legacy of the journal, all the while pushing it towards new opportunities for heightened focus and relevance in our time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).