Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Photo by Flickr user pizzodisevo. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Dacia Ray of Waking Vixen lands hard on a recent study that seems totally trapped in status quo assumptions.

There’s a new study that’s just been released that is reporting the above fact: 43% of American women have some kind of sexual dysfunction (SD).

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With a percentage number that high, I want to know – dysfunctional compared to what? Compared to the rapid moan and groan of porn performers, the persistent cultural belief that orgasm from intercourse is ideal, or less concrete examples of the pressure that is exerted on women to conform to an ideal of sexual performance that is imagined?

She said it here.

I mean… what exactly are the assumptions in that study? This kind of thing is one of, my perpetual, and bugaboos. If we simply changed the definition of “sex” from “till he’s done” to “till she’s done” then if we changed nothing else then overnight bookstore self-help shelves would empty of books about “foreplay” and the “hard time” women have with orgasms to be restocked with of equally urgent and baffled books about men’s dysfunctional “prematurity.”

Of course that too would be looking at only half the picture but… it really would be nice to begin conversations that don’t assume men in general and ejaculation in particular is the be all and, especially the end all of sex. The benefits of pulling up that particular anchor could be pretty big. For all involved.