So thanks to a comment a few days ago on this post where I quoted Karen Forsythe’s point that intercourse is only one of several options I learned about a cool-concept blog, Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction. From the “About” page

Welcome to Feminists with FSD, a blog written by, for, and from the perspective of feminists with female sexual dysfunction.

This project began as after this blogger, a self-identifying feminist with vulvodynia, became fed up with the available information about FSD from a feminist perspective! There are relatively few discussions about this topic on the internet, despite the fact that up to 43% of women experience some form of FSD during thier lifetime according to the American Medical Association – and that’s just in the US! I found that what little material there is, while well-meaning, is all too often misinformed or jumps to distressing (or even outright wrong) conclusions.

This blog’s mission statement is: To provide women with FSD, and their partners, a voice on the internet where we can discuss how feminism influences our views of sex, and how our sexuality influence our views of feminism.

Read the quote in context here.

The intro says a lot, but it skirts the point: vulvodynia, vaginismus, vestibulitis, interstitial cystitis, and other conditions of the pelvic floor makes penis-in-vagina extremely painful. And consequently treatment tends to revolve around making it less painful. Or, ideally, not painful at all, but it’s considered progress if treatment only reduces how painful it is.

That’s a pretty androcentric outlook. And if we didn’t have feminism we could just leave it at that and be done — less painful good, more painful bad. And if we had only Rush Limbaugh and maybe Twisty Faster’s also-androcentric vision of political-lesbian “rad-fem” the answer would be nearly as clear cut: intercourse is bad for women anyway so just don’t have PIV intercourse. (Actually see the author’s nuanced take on Twisty’s ideas about it here.)

But in fact androcentrism isn’t the most helpful approach. The biggest one being that the pain often extends beyond PIV penetration to any kind of touch at all. Including wearing clothes, sitting down, walking, etc. The other being that even when the context is sex and even when the desired outcome involves contact, insertion, and intercourse it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the convenience of men.

Shocking I know. But all the more reason to examine it from the perspective of those who actually have it instead of their partners or random pundits and passers by.