Analysis of Factors Affecting Romantic Love and Sexual Behaviour in Latin America
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DOI: 10.23977/ICEIPI2020003
Corresponding Author
Yichi Zhang
ABSTRACT
Romantic love and sexual behaviour in Latin America are in its own way unique and colourful, standing out for being passionate and sensual, yet a bit conservative when it comes to family and long-term relationship compared with the Western culture. Meanwhile, strong variations exist in different races, genders and social classes. Extensive race-mixture has formed a new path of the mestizos (and mulattoes) with more vitality and less restriction, developing a relationship of “Self and Other” that explains the impression of sexual appeal drawn between. The cultural images of masculinity and femininity in Latin America are called machismo and marianismo, mainly affected by Catholicism and other ethnic culture. It is changing, however, through modernisation that love and passion are becoming more important in the relationship. Moreover, while the upper classes people start to promote equal rights movement, the widening gap (both economic and cultural) between them and the lower classes is becoming worrying. Sex tourism as a newly appeared phenomenon has been discussed as well. Regional differences in Latin America, the meaning of love itself for people there, and comparison with other regions such as South Asia should be studied more in the future.
KEYWORDS
Romantic love, sexual behaviour, Latin America