female sexuality

My Cycle: My Sixth Sense, My Self

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Sexuality Without Synthetic Hormones

At the age of 52 I believe I am in a rather small minority in the developed world of women who have completed 30+ years of natural menstrual cycles, something over 400 cycles in total.  I am only now coming to realize just how lucky I have been.

It started accidentally. At the age of 21 or so I proudly presented myself at my local family planning clinic fully expecting to be put on the pill.  Instead, I emerged some time later, slightly disappointed, not with a prescription but a diaphragm.

I don’t know who that doctor was or why he gave me such unconventional advice but as time has passed, my gratitude to him has grown immeasurably, as has my anger and sadness for women who have not been as lucky.  I had been ready to start a lifetime on the pill with no awareness that I had anything whatsoever to lose.  Only over years and decades of natural cycling did I begin to appreciate the birth right I could have given up without a thought.

The natural cycles of fertility and loss I have lived through are at the core of who I am.  They are a source of strength, hope and dignity and of deep connection to other people and to my environment.  Without these cycles I would only be a shadow of the person I now am.

We are taught so badly about our menstrual cycle.  It is all shame and distress – the bleeding, the cramping, the premenstrual horrors.  Presented like this, femaleness seems like a terrible burden.  Small wonder that young women are so easily convinced to switch off the whole messy show with hormonal contraception.

The Fertile Time: A Wild and Magical Power

Nowhere does anyone tell us about the flip side, the other pole of the cycle: the wild and magical power of the time leading up to and during ovulation. How can it be that our winter time is so heavily publicized while the summer time of our cycle, our time of fertility, creativity and wild power is kept a massive secret?

I eventually began to notice and appreciate this time and look forward to that week every month of unstoppable confidence, heightened perception and extreme sexiness. I trawled the net for information but the most anyone seemed to be able to say was that “You may feel sexier at that time”. Or you may not. Who cares? As if female sexuality was at most an insignificant little buzz.

But it does matter. Desperately. My fertility and sexuality have been my life force. It is impossible to fully describe what they have done for me as they have been so fundamental to my identity, my perceptions and my life path. How could you enumerate the importance of the sense of vision or hearing in your life? This is equally hopeless but I will attempt to give some sense of what the summer of the cycle has been like for me.

Most obviously at this time, I experience astonishing desire, ripe to bursting desire, delight in the slightest touch, feel aching tenderness. This is not like desire at any other time. It is a force of nature, the unstoppable attraction of the female to the male, the force of sexual attraction through which we have evolved.

Conversely, I experience the attraction of the male to the female. At this time, I know I am desirable. I am immune to all of the marketing men’s insecurities. I may have spots, wrinkles, body hair and a thousand other faults but it doesn’t matter. I know I am attractive.

I feel confidence, unbelievable confidence. Everything seems to flow. Fear is gone from me and risk means nothing. I am bold and decisive and everything works out.

Creativity flourishes. Without fear censoring and killing them pre-birth, ideas get to bubble up and form in wild abandon in a way that would be impossible at any other time of the month.

My perceptions are astonishingly heightened. I experience a sense of wonder: in people, in nature, in art and music. I feel as if a dirty veil has been lifted and my perceptions are temporarily opened to the miraculous nature of things. This is perhaps the hardest aspect of all to describe as such unempirical experience has become heretical to our scientific-objectivist ideology.  It is, nevertheless as real to me as the duller and more concrete states of consciousness at other times and may be the cruelest cut of all to those deprived.

Our Sexuality Is Our Birth Right

Although this is a hopelessly inadequate account of what my fertility has meant to me, I hope it gives a sense of why I believe it to be a central part of being a woman.  Our fertility is not an optional add on. It is not a thing to be got out occasionally when we feel like making a baby. Our sexuality is not just a bit of a buzz. It is not something we can exchange for “convenient” contraception.

To be deprived of the experience of fertility seems to me to be cruelty beyond measure.   This is women’s deepest source of power, energy and connection. To separate us from it is a form of slavery for which our culture grooms us. But women continue to accept this loss unwittingly and may spend a lifetime without ever realizing what they have given up.

It’s time for those few of us who have slipped through the net to speak up.

Beyond Sex as a Zero Sum Activity

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After another series of posts on Hormones Matter focused on sex and libido, I realized how rarely we speak of sex and libido in a positive light. Certainly, our audience and topics are skewed towards negative medication and surgical outcomes, but across the internet (and history), it is difficult to find thoughtful discussions about sex and libido that aren’t in some way dominated by shouldn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t. I find that troubling, if not a little disturbing. Where are the conversations about sex and libido that include the positive, the pleasurable, or the passionate? I am serious, I couldn’t find any.

So, sorry mom, kids, I am writing about sex again. I’m not sure why I should have to apologize or why such topics are so taboo that one cannot speak openly about them, but they are and we cannot. And perhaps, that is the root of the problem.

Talking about Sex is Taboo, Unless…

I write about sex periodically and almost to a tee my mother chimes in, ‘you shouldn’t be writing about such topics, you’re too smart’ as if having a brain disqualifies one from writing or even thinking about sex. Apparently though, it does. This is perhaps even truer for women, where the topic of sex is veiled in cultural and political taboos so opaque that navigating them can be perilous to one’s career, if not one’s sanity and one’s health. That is, unless of course, the topic is framed in some feminist conception of power structures, patriarchy, or other implements of victimhood. Then discussing sex is alright because it is so far afield from the actual act and so cloaked in theory, and often violence, that it bears little resemblance to sex and no one but others of similar leanings pay much heed. This is not to say that discussions of sexual violence, sexual victims and the like are not important, they are, but what about the rest of it? Certainly, not all sex is framed within a power struggle of cultural, political and violent tendencies. Certainly, there is a space beyond theory, beyond advertising, beyond politics or religion, where a man is just a man, a woman is just a woman and sex is just sex.

If there is such a space, no one seems to write about it. Our entire conversation about sex involves intruding contexts delineating what we should and should not think about sex. Advertisers use sexiness to sell products. Politicians and religious leaders use sex to coalesce and manage followers, while theorists and power mongers of every ilk, use sex to realign power structures. Sex in these contexts is always a tool to be wielded and in many cases manipulated and controlled. Sex is never just sex. It is always about something else or for something else. What happened to sex as a pleasurable activity, in and of itself, absent all other contexts? Was sex ever just for pleasure? It is a legitimate question to which I have no answer.

Sex as a Zero Sum Game

What I do know is that sex today is portrayed as zero sum game of sorts and that framework has done more to erase any notion of pleasure from sex than perhaps any other in history. In a zero sum game there are always victors and losers, oppressors and the oppressed. It is a model built on old industrial economies of scarcity and fear where heat, read passion, means friction, an inefficiency to be controlled at all cost. It is a model where when the debts are tallied, the more I have, the more I win and dominate, the less you have, the better. In a zero sum game, there is an assumption of equal proportionality between the winners and losers, wins and losses, dominators and dominated. To the degree I become more powerful, you lose power and vice versa. There is no room for abundance, synergies, shared responsibilities or even just winners and losers. And there little room for pleasure or passion except perhaps as tokens of victory to demonstrate success, but more frequently as vices, impurities and inefficiencies to be controlled.

What a totally sad state of affairs.

One has to wonder if, at least in the space where sex and sexuality lie, there isn’t a better way to conceptualize, talk about, and perhaps even, experience sex. Aren’t there overlapping interests here? What would happen if we re-framed the conversation away from this zero sum illusion towards a more equanimous perspective where passion and pleasure for all parties took center stage? What would those conversations look like?

Are we even capable of talking about sexual pleasure openly and frankly, not as a means to an end, not as something to be controlled or protected from, not within the context of a power structure, but simply as it is?

If we talked about pleasure, if we aspired towards giving and receiving pleasure and understanding pleasure, if we didn’t shy away from it as we do now, wouldn’t we also totally change the conversations we have about sexual violence, sexual inequality, heck, even economic inequalities?  Wishful thinking perhaps, but when one considers the pendulum of history and the power of discourse, how the conversation is framed is as important as what is said. In the case of sex, we need to talk more about pleasure and a lot less about everything else.

Alas, that is easier to think about than said or done.

Sex in a Bottle: the Latest Drugs for Female Sexual Desire

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The 21st century quest for female sexual satisfaction comes not from romance, courting or even Kama Sutra type sexual prowess, but from the lab. Forget passion, forget lithe bodies moving rhythmically, forget needing to woo a woman, forget having any skill whatsoever in bed; why bother with any of that when you can get sex in a bottle. Every man’s dream right? Apparently, not. Sexual moirés what they are, there is nothing more frightening than a sexually hungry woman. With the newest, and dare I say, pharmacologically most interesting female desire drugs in clinical trials, concern over the potential explosion of female nymphomania is palpable. According to the New York Times reporter covering the story:

“…what if, in trials, a medicine proved too effective?” laments one scientist … and the FDA rejects “an application out of concern that a chemical would lead to female excesses, crazed binges of infidelity, societal splintering.”  

“You want your effects to be good but not too good,” says Andrew Goldstein, who is conducting the study in Washington. “There was a lot of discussion about it by the experts in the room,” he said, recalling his involvement with the development of Flibanserin, “the need to show that you’re not turning women into nymphomaniacs.”

And women, well, they’re not sure whether to jump for joy about the new drugs or bear arms against the 18th century misogynist perspective of female sexuality. I’m pretty certain no one worried about turning men into sex-crazed cads, the 8-hour Viagra induced erections or the potential blindness from said erections. (Fun fact: the same erection promoting enzyme blocked by erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra, Cialis, Levitra is also found in the retina and when blocked excessively can cause blindness). When all was said and done, a good, solid erection was considered beneficial in and of itself, no matter the cost. Lo, get those women going and watch out. Sex crazed and hysterical, they might upset generations of cultural oppression. Unless, of course, it’s used to maintain the monogamy and monotony of marriage, then by all means pop a libido pill.

The Quest for Female Sexual Desire in a Bottle

Sexual politics aside, these new sexual arousal drugs portend great things for the bedrooms of many. Though developed for women, I suspect they will be cross-marketed to men, almost immediately.

Called Lybrido and Lybridos, the two compounds address sexual desire both above and below the belt. These drugs combine a sexy mix of peppermint coated, testosterone to make you horny, coupled with the erection promoting, genital-blood-flow increasing Viagra (Lybrido), plus a boost of adrenaline with an indirect dopamine kicker (Lybridos). If that isn’t a chemical cocktail to promote copulation, I’m not sure what is. It is Lybridos that intrigues me most and here is why.

Motivating the Brain to Want Sex

Sex begins in the brain and there dopamine is king. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter released with all pleasurable activities, licit and illicit. Our brains are hardwired to seek pleasure via the dopamine reward system. Experience a little pleasure, get a boost of dopamine. Get too much dopamine and addictive behavior or psychosis ensue. Too little dopamine and there is no pleasure and no motivation to seek pleasure.

Adding a bit of dopamine to a hormonally primed and engorged sexual response system would seem to facilitate not only the pleasure response associated with the sexual act itself, but would likely increase the chances that future goal directed behavior would be initiated to sustain or repeat the sexual activity – and to take the drug again. And that is why this drug is so cool, but also, potentially addictive.

A Sex Drug and Sex Addiction

Though the crude and frankly misogynist comments about inducing nymphomania warrant scorn, there is a very real possibility that this cocktail could be addictive. Think about it, combining the pleasure of sex with a boost of dopamine is the perfect addiction. Really, who wouldn’t want to have hot sex, repeatedly. And if taking a small dose of the drug increases sexual pleasure to certain degree, then would taking more of the drug increase the pleasure to a greater degree? Can someone overdose on these drugs? (You know someone will try). Conversely, if one takes the drug repeatedly, does the dose necessarily have to increase to maintain the same level of pleasure?

Because Lybridos enhances sex, a pleasurable, dopamine and endorphin releasing activity in its own right, by increasing dopamine while simultaneously enhancing libido and genital sensitivity, the possibilities for addiction are high. Therein lies the rub. Not only could this be the perfect combination of behavioral and pharmacological addiction, but pleasurable sex threatens every puritanically ingrained, social moire we have, for men and women. Create a drug that makes sex more pleasurable, make that drug and that behavior addicting and social structures will change. Perhaps, not such a bad thing.

Female Sexuality, Penis Size, Eroticism and Language

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Several weeks ago I wrote a post about Penis Size and Condom Use. It was a legitimate commentary on the state of medical and science marketing, but, truth be told, I used it as much to get a post with the words penis size circulating in blogosphere as I did to comment on bad medical journalism. Penis size ranks among the highest search phrases around.  The post got a lot of hits, but no discussion. It was, after all, a bit of a bait and switch using research on penis size to describe the state of medical marketing – not what most would have expected when Googling that phrase.

Recently, however, a gentleman commented both on the content of the article and the nature of modern eroticism. This gave me pause on many fronts.  First, I had to consider whether to approve the comment at all – he used rather frank terms. Would our readers be offended? Would they discontinue reading because of the terminology?  The very act of having to consider whether to publish the comment, led me to wonder when our adult, female ears became so sensitive that we could not speak or write frankly about sexuality?  Probably around the time of Freud, but I think I missed that memo.

And then, there was the comment itself about the nature of modern sexuality or more specifically, eroticism.

It is that raw eroticism mediated by plastic [that] is devoid of real memory. When I think of some of my worst erotic encounters, they invariably are those mediated by plasticity.

How absolutely telling his comment was; modern eroticism is plastic.  From a physiological standpoint, the plastic barrier that a condom provides reduces the erotic sensitivity for both parties – even when the condoms fit appropriately. And apparently, as the original research suggested, more often than not condoms do not fit correctly.

From the language perspective, modern sex is most often discussed in terms of disease, violence or ‘safe sex’ – no pleasure, no passion, no eroticism and not even an appreciation those concepts – only power, disease and violence.  Even our images of what is supposed to be sexually desirable are plastic, modified and unreal – think unnaturally thin women, with fake boobs, botoxed lips and when at all possible, heavily photoshopped so that nary a glimmer of natural or erotic beauty comes through. Indeed, there is no reality to our plasticized versions of eroticism.

So how do we talk about sex in a modern culture, where disease from sex places a barrier on the act and the language of pleasure? How do we talk about sexuality when the medicalization of sex supersedes the erotic?  How do we talk about eroticism when the politics of power elevate the sperm of violent, repugnant men – rapists, pedophiles and incestuous degenerates – above the health and well-being of girls and women?  How do we talk about sex when women don’t enter the conversation, except to denounce the actions of men? How do we talk about sex, sexuality and eroticism in the 21st century?

We don’t.  We seem only capable of talking about or writing or even visualizing notions of plastic, unreal, violent or medicalized sex. To make matters worse, we fail to distinguish among the ‘types’ of sex, between sex and sexuality, between the erotic and the mechanical. It’s all just sex.  Well, it’s not.

We need a new language of sexuality; one that brings back to the fore a notion of beauty and pleasure for both participants; one that speaks frankly about sex, sexuality and eroticism. We need a language that is honest about female and male sexuality, anatomy and pleasure and that is capable of distinguishing acts of violence from sex.

I would argue that conversations about penis size and female sexual pleasure have to come into the mix in some form, preferably with honesty. Ladies, what beyond the obvious, do we really know about the male penis or male sexuality?  Probably, not a lot. Does penis size affect female sexual pleasure? Does penis size affect male sexual pleasure? Who knows. Nobody, but the purveyors of porn talk about this stuff.

And guys, how much do you really know about the female anatomy or more importantly female sexuality?  Sure you’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of pornographic images of women faking pleasure with over-endowed men. And of course, you imagine yourselves the wielders of such pleasure, but in reality how many of you know what a real woman actually wants and needs to achieve pleasure?  How many of you have taken the time to find out, or better yet, become skilled in these endeavors?

If we are to move beyond the plastic, the political, the violent, the sterile and mechanistic views of sex, we need to bring sexuality, eroticism and pleasure back into the conversation. We need a new language about sex and we need it now.