Why is it that men can buy Viagra at any of hundreds of Internet sites without seeing a physician, while women still can’t get birth control pills anywhere without a doctor’s visit and a prescription? When it comes to sex, we’re still in a male-dominated culture with an inherent double standard.

There are even television ads addressed to the one-third of men who allegedly suffer from erectile dysfunction. Buy a cure in the perfect form: take a pill and get a reliable erection without having to connect your heart with your penis in any way. It’s no wonder the most notorious side effect of this medication is sudden cardiac arrest!

Or how about the best-selling book that says a man’s annual number of orgasms—citing a figure of over 300—can enhance his health and slow the aging process. But when it comes to women, the author never bothers to tabulate or quantify how many orgasms a year could promote longevity. We get points only for being “satisfied with quantity and happy with quality.”

And then there’s talk of a “female Viagra” so menopausal women can wake up their waning libidos by using Premarin cream to reestrogenize their vaginas for smoother sex. My colleague Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz offered the best response: “Expecting this to be the female Viagra is a joke. All you’re doing is reducing the vagina and female sexuality to a runway that requires de-icing for the plane to be able to take off more comfortably!¹

On the positive side, the data on women is on the rise. But a change in our culture’s attitude about women and sexuality is still slow in coming. Here’s what we can do to help speed things up:

• Stop Seeking Permission: Remember, you don’t need permission to explore your own sexual energy on your own terms.

  As Linda Savage writes in her book Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality: “Women want the beauty of the context of sexual encounters to be more important than the act. They want to be touched in slow, sensual ways. They want to be ravished with intense passion that demonstrates how much their partners need them, rather than just needing an orgasm to relax. All in all, women want to be adored as precious feminine beings.”²

• Update Your Beliefs: Just because the word vagina is derived from the Latin word meaning “sheath for a sword” doesn’t mean that we must be as antiquated as the ancient Romans in our thinking!

  If female sexuality is seen predominantly in terms of how well our bodies meet and satisfy the needs and desires of males, rather than ourselves, this attitude (and the beliefs associated with it) will find its way into every aspect of our lives, including medical research upon which women’s health treatments are based.

• Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Sexual Response: Finally research has begun to validate what women already know: a woman’s experience of sexual arousal is more influenced by her thoughts and emotions than by feedback from her genitals. In other words, her emotions and thoughts must be in sync with the goal of sexual satisfaction for her body to perform sexually.
• Have the Best Sex of Your Life after Menopause! The most recent research of sexual function at midlife (which is increasingly being carried out by women) has found that menopausal status, per se, is not related to most aspects of sexual function. Though some women report a decrease in desire, less interest in sex, and changes in arousal, research on healthy nonsmoking menopausal women with partners shows that there’s no change in sexual satisfaction, frequency of sexual intercourse, or difficulty reaching orgasm.³

 

References

1. Northrup, C., 2006. The Wisdom of Menopause, Bantam: New York. Chapter 9.
2. Savage, L., 1999. Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality, Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, p. 23.
3. Basson, R., 2004. Recent advances in women’s sexual function and dysfunction, Menopause, 11, Nov/Dec, 6, part 2, 714-25.