Women's sexuality is becoming over medicalized

By Wendy Elliott

The Advertiser/NovaNewsNow.com

Dr. Leonore Tiefer, a psychotherapist and clinical associate professor at New York University, has long decried what she calls “the medicalization of women’s sexuality.”

Tiefer spoke to a young audience at Acadia University and passed on some of her accumulated wisdom. Everything sexual comes from some source, she said, so acquiring sexual knowledge is kind of like exploring uncharted territory.

Tiefer said today people struggle with options and experiences in order to gain sexual literacy. It is required, but gaining that literacy is not like falling off a log.

In our post-modern world, she noted, age is not barrier to reproduction. Now for the first time in history, it is possible to separate sexuality and reproduction.

Tiefer reached adulthood during the 1960’s when oral contraception first became widely available. In recent years, the development of artificial reproductive technology has brought about another social change.

Now we should ask what is sex for if it’s not for reproduction, she suggested. Issues of gender and values around sexual activity have gained in importance as a result.

Given a global culture that expresses a wide variety of sexual perspectives, Tiefer said she worries about increasing commercialization around sex.

The day she spoke in Wolfville was the 10th anniversary of Viagra. Now that physical unpredictability can be removed, Tiefer suggested, are consumers meant to it consider intolerable?

“I come from the 1960s when the attitude was roll with it,” she stated, now we must conform to an ideal, be perfect.

Tiefer loves live drama and her attitude is that in life, as in theatre, a wide range of experiences should be acceptable. In her mind the commercial view of sexuality is getting rapidly more rigid in a fluid world.

She described the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute, which operates to create smaller labia and tighter vaginas. Women feel pressured to be smaller, thinner and smoother when human beings come in all shapes and sizes, she said.

Variety is nature’s way, Tiefer insisted, as opposed to collagen shots in a ‘G’ spot.

There is no public science or bonafide research behind such notions, however, Californian Dr. David Matlock began in 1998 to franchise dozens of rejuvenation clinics around the world.

Tiefer said as a result she gets a little hot under the collar about medicalized sex and sexual standardization in order to ‘be right and look right.’

She and her allies – organized as the New View Campaign – are galled that huge amounts of money and media attention are lavished on marketing that raises expectations and creates anxiety.

Sexual anxiety, she said, is surrounded by myths, sexual ignorance and a culture of sexual negativity that results in individuals who feel inadequate.

Tiefer noted that since 50 to 80 per cent of women today hate their bodies, no wonder they have trouble relaxing and enjoying being touched.

In her experience, medical schools take one hour today to teach sexuality to fledgling physicians. It was a week in the 1970’s when Tiefer trained and now the subject has “shrunk down to organ grinding.”

Her advice is to maintain a healthy sense of skepticism and develop critical literacy skills around the topic of sex. Expect to be confused, and Tiefer warned, “beware of snake oil salesmen in the 21st century.”