sexology

Orgasm Inc.

barbara — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

The orgasm. Feminists laud it, good lovers work hard to give it, pharmaceutical companies make it a business model. The inability to experience an orgasm is thought to be as devastating as the inability to delight in the joy of wine, sunrise, spring flowers, and other wonderment. But this is hardly an overstatement. Last week in London, I had the sheer privilege of attending a hugely popular talk by a doyenne of second wave feminism, Shere Hite. Her most well-known publication, The Hite Report, was a groundbreaking feminist version of the Kinsey report, a comprehensive study on female sexuality in '70s America that overturned all taboos of its day.

Hite contends that the traditional model of sexual intercourse privileges male pleasure and disregards any sense of pleasuring women to the point of orgasm. Not climaxing is tantamount to self-abnegating one self's right to wholeness, and women have long been denying their selfhood by committing to the patriarchal rituals of sex, argues Hite. She does have a point of course about the significance of pleasure, but her assertion that the “lack of sexual satisfaction is another sign of oppression of women” poses serious implications on how women must rethink sex. Woe betide the women who feel inadequate when they have difficulty getting sexually aroused, much less with orgasm during intercourse.

And so the many women who were once frustrated, frigid and unfulfilled are now medically certified as casualties of a new epidemic—female sexual dysfunction (FSD). But in a pill-popping culture such as the U.S., help is at hand and pharmaceutical companies are quick to exploit cultural expectations and women's most intimate insecurities. In Orgasm Inc., by first-time documentary film-maker Liz Canner, we are treated to the dizzying unravelling of pharmaceutical businesses devoted to the “female Viagra” and its role in creating, as it were, female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Canner is initiated into the shams and often shambolic world of drug companies through an invitation to edit an erotic video used during a clinical trial conducted by Vivus, a company dedicated to developing a cream for sexual arousal.

But when Canner delves deeper into Vivus's business plan, some things are amiss. Women on both active drug and placebo appear to be equally aroused when subjected to erotic videos, but Vivus goes ahead anyway pushing to get themselves on the market. Not that Vivus's drug was initially designed to treat male impotence really mattered, as the researchers placed their bets on a hunch that it can turn women on as well. It appears that the business of discovering a cure for the purported female sexual dysfunction is masculinist and penis-centred at best, one that is isolated as a problem related to the sexual organ and a matter of hormonal imbalance. There is little reference to how women get on with their partners in the bedroom, the happiness or lack of it in relationships, history of abuse, and lack of self-esteem. Furthermore, cultural expectations which are mistaken as "universal" sexual norms prescribe that sex without orgasm is a sign of abnormality.

Canner interviews other pharmaceutical companies that have also been founded on dubious science and run by “research” consultants who aren't able to explain in definitive terms what FSD is and react as if they are assailed by trick questions. When promoted by drug company-backed doctors and scientists who frame sexual inadequacies in often obtuse and intimidating language, lay persons beset with perceived medical disorders are like putty in their hands. The stage is thus set for a no-nonsense competition—a race—to win FDA approval and multiple million-dollar glory.

Soon companies dropped one-by-one off the race like flies due to unconvincing science, including a strong contender, Intrinsa, a trans-dermal testosterone patch. It did not, however, stop Instrinsa from being sold in the European Union. Fallacies poised to eternally discredit FSD notwithstanding, very few could stand in the way of the monstrously indomitable spirit of pharmaceutical companies. Like Hite's grand manifesto, much of drug research posit that desire and pleasure are like a switch within an autonomous body. I raised my hand to ask Dr. Hite about women who were unable to experience orgasm yet live happy and fulfilled lives, to which she struggled to offer a coherent answer other than there are no two ways about how important sexual satisfaction through an orgasm is.

Suffice to say, I felt equally dejected by her response and the outcome in Canner's thought-provoking film as the mystery of female sexuality is thrown further into abyss. How helpful is the medicalisation of perfect sexuality when desire, pleasure, and fantasy are made to fit a disease model, a model designed to reinforce crude normal/abnormal typologies? Yet we are besotted by medical science but unaware of its cultural and moral underpinnings that are adept at demonising “bad” bodies. Canner's film peels away much of the objectivity purported by pharmaceutical science, sexology, and medicine, and invites us to reassess the social values of health and happiness in radically new ways.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, March 9th 2011

Anachronism and Its Others: Sexuality, Race, Temporality

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Valerie Rohy

SUNY Press

Valerie Rohy’s exploration of the efforts to define both queer and Black identities and their subsequent intersections is as interesting as it is illuminating, as presented in Anachronism and Its Others, whether it is a discussion of the temporal implications of Frederick Douglass’ thought presented in his autobiography or demystifying the nebulous concepts of "queer time." Anachronism and Its Others also investigates how the modern field of sexology has recently made a connection between homosexuality and blackness, often for the negative purpose of justifying homophobic and/or racist socioeconomic worldviews.

One of Rohy’s strongest observations in Anachronism and Its Others is the split between "queer" and "straight time" as she notes within the initial chapters of the book. The idea of straight time as a historical metanarrative told through the evolution of American culture as defined by the goals of majoritarian interests is revelatory. As Rohy states, straight time is "promoted as the best form of progress and the only 'real temporality.'" The author illustrates an important connection to scientific racism as it forms the grounding of those seeking to connect homosexuality and Blackness with threats to the White family, to its perceived superior vitality, fecundity, and ability to function as the carriage of the national society. Rohy’s weaving of modern constructions of ethnic and sexual identity, the connection of contemporary sexology with scientific racism and the attempt to negate any alternatives to a Caucasian heteronormative national paradigm are brilliant.

Such connections and observations lead one to an important question: How does one combat attempts to frame progress and time itself as concepts in opposition to the existential utility of sexual and ethnic minorities within a particular society? As threats to the forward movement of that society? Rohy’s argument against the idea of "straight time" and other justifications of a narrowly defined national culture and destiny are made through the intellectual dismantling of its philosophical buttresses: contemporary sexology and its cousin scientific racism appear to be one large step toward answering such a daunting challenge.

Written by: Brandon Copeland, February 12th 2010

Sexualities Special issue: "Researching and Teaching the Sexually Explicit: Ethics, Methodology and Pedagogy"

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Edited by Feona Attwood, I.Q. Hunter

Sage Publications

I am just about to begin teaching a new course in Human Sexuality, so I was excited to review this special issue of Sexualities, the UK-published journal that features new and different voices from sexology, gender studies, and cultural studies. Each of the eight original essays provides teachers, activists and researchers with much-needed breathing space. As Attwood and Hunter point out, “The emergence of ‘porn studies’ in academic institutions has been met with widespread ethical and political opposition, even more so than the study of horror films. Sex media, rather like horror films in fact, are often seen as intrinsically obscene and harmful, effecting real changes in behaviour and attitude, and therefore potentially damaging to researchers and students.” Not so, say the contributors, at least not necessarily so. Porn appears now to be as central to our culture as its study has become prominent to academia.

The collection brings together theorists, educators, and activists from or working in the U.S. (Dennis Waskul), Finland (Susanna Paasonen), Hong Kong (Katrien Jacobs), Australia (Alan McKee, Kath Albury), and the U.K. (Brian McNair, Clarissa Smith, Steve Jones, Sharif Mowlabocus, Feona Attwood, and I.Q. Hunter).

The essays of Waskul, Smith, and McNair will embolden teachers to embrace new media technologies and push the envelope of eroticism in the classroom. Jones and Mowlabocus remind readers that punishing those who enjoy violent depictions of sexuality and/or who sexualize depictions of violence “does not eradicate or significantly hinder the production of such material” but does complicate things for scholars and teachers.

Katrien Jacobs examines the Hong Kong celebrity entertainer Edison Chen, whose DIY pornography made with other Chinese celebrities was inadvertently leaked to the press (darn those computer repairmen!) and led to mass hand-wringing. Paasonen details “something of a porn renaissance” that occurred in late 1990s Finland. Depictions of human sexuality had been regulated since the 1920s until this shift which enabled a wholesale mainstreaming of porn in Finland and other Nordic countries.

Kath Albury trades on her experiences from 2001 to 2003 as the Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council-funded project, “Understanding Pornography in Australia.” Albury’s first-rate critical reading of porn debates (in this case, in feminist circles) shows that few voices, however radical or conservative, manage to escape the restraints of moralism.

Alan McKee’s “Social Scientists Don’t Say ‘Titwank’” looks at how referees for journals in the humanities and social sciences have responded to his manuscripts about sex. He concludes that “in the humanities there is no longer a problem with the use of vulgar language.” Nevertheless, his essay reveals sharp differences in method, theory, and work-style between practitioners of cultural studies and anthropology. One statement really rankled me: “We surveyed over 1000 consumers of pornography as part of our research. In the correct social science manner, I will now claim this [sic] data as objective.” Other statements in this and other essays, such as “Older respondents had worse attitudes towards women . . . Christians had worse attitudes towards women . . . Those who lived in rural areas had worse attitudes . . .” made me long for the more fine-grained nuances of ethnographic writing about sex, sexuality, and sexual networking. Then again, few ethnographers are doing porn studies or pushing the erotic envelope in the classroom, so readers will find much else of great merit in McKee’s essay and the others.

Given the brevity and accessibility of these eight exciting contributions (not forgetting the six fine book reviews), this newest issue of Sexualities is an especially welcome resource for educators.

Written by: Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D., January 18th 2010