When there’s an issue with your sexual health, as a woman, you face a long history of sexist stereotypes, as well as a fierce current debate as to how these stereotypes can be undone. Though you’d expect your doctor to be up-to-date with contemporary opinion, there still remains a problem with uneven diagnosis and treatment. Wellness experts and frustrated patients assert that while a man with a sexual dysfunction will most likely be taken seriously and given treatment by his doctor, as a woman, you’re more likely to be told to “relax,” and the problem is probably “all in your head.” Let’s take a look at the female sexual dysfunction debate; does it exist? And how does it affect your wellbeing?
In 1999, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study in which 43% of all women (and 31% of men) surveyed reported experiencing an episode of a sexual problem (meaning lack of interest in sex, difficulties with orgasm or erection, or finding sex painful). In this widely cited study, the researchers termed these troubles as “sexual dysfunction,” noting that these episodes were “significant public health concern” and needed new treatments—especially for women. But if it’s happening to almost half of women, doesn’t that make sexual problems “normal”, rather than dysfunction?
According to Irwin Goldstein, MD, director of San Diego Sexual Medicine and the editor in chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, “We can’t as physicians tell people what is normal.” Yet still we have a burgeoning industry of sexual health medications and centres which tell a different story; your sex drive and/or sexual response falls short of that nonexistent “normal” – but we have the solution for you. However, psychologist Joy Davidson, PhD, who’s on the board of directors of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counsellors and Therapists, asserts “If you say for two weeks out of the past year you had no interest in sex … Well, maybe you were stressed out at work, maybe you were pissed off at your husband. Maybe you had the flu! You can be a very sexually healthy, sexually vital person, but there may be times when your sex drive is low. That’s not a dysfunction; that’s life!”
Experienced sexologist Leonore Tiefer, PhD, a psychiatry professor at NYU School of Medicine, has taken this belief one step further and spear-headed a campaign against the “disease-mongering” actions of labelling problems with desire and arousal as female sexual dysfunction. Tiefer explains, “Sexuality is much more a cultural matter than it is a biological matter.” Biology she reserves for dysfunctions in terms of sexual pain, which she acknowledges can be a medical issue. Sexual problems with desire and arousal, then, may occur for non-medical reasons, so does that mean you have to grin and bear it?
Andrew Goldstein, MD, an associate professor at George Washington University, argues, “Hurricanes, AIDS, and earthquakes are all natural, but not desirable,” questioning how a doctor can dare to deny your wish to get back your sexual pleasure? In fact, during one of Dr. Tiefer’s lectures about the naturalness of losing libido after menopause, a woman in the audience reportedly protested “But I liked sex!” Aside from the sheer fun of it, sex is important in many wellness areas, be it for starting a family, connecting and growing as a couple or boosting your self-esteem.
So whether your sex problems are psychosocial or biological, who cares? “I think both issues are real,” says Marjorie Green, MD, director of the Mount Auburn Female Sexual Medicine Centre, and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. Biology and psychology overlap in the study of sex drive and sexual function more so than in most other areas of human health, and Dr. Green claims she prescribes therapy as often as she prescribes drugs. The important thing to note is that help is available, in whatever treatment it comes, so don’t let your sexual wellness suffer unnecessarily just because your problems are “normal”.