Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Prostitutie Pornografie"This book is a tribute to the men and women who dared. Who, to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery. Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best." Mary ROACH - Bonk - The curious coupling of sex and science, p. 7
Mary ROACH"The retired British sex physiologist Roy Levin told me that the index of his edition of Essential Medical Physiology, a popular textbook in the sixties, had no entry for penis, vagina, coitus, erection, or ejaculation. Physiology courses skipped orgasm and arousal, as though sex were a secret shame and not an everyday biological event.
One of Levin’s earliest projects was to profile the chemical properties of vaginal secretions, the only bodily fluid about which virtually nothing was known."(4)
"Even when a researcher carefully explains a sex-related project — its purpose and its value — people may still suspect he or she is a perv. " [mijn nadruk] (6)
"This book is a tribute to the men and women who dared. Who, to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery. Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best." [mijn nadruk] (7)
"My point is that if you want to understand human sexual response, then studying animals is probably not the most productive way to go about it. However, for many years this was in fact the way scientists — wary of social censure and career demerits — studied sex." [mijn nadruk] (16)
"Many people think that the first to dip a toe in the potentially scalding waters of research into human sexual response was William Masters (aided by his associate — and, later, wife — Virginia Johnson). But long before Masters and Johnson and Kinsey became household names, Robert Latou Dickinson was undertaking the unthinkable, in his sunny, cheerfully appointed gynecology practice in Brooklyn Heights, New York."(18)
"It was Dickinson’s work that inspired Alfred Kinsey to pursue sex research."(20)
"The first research scientist to make the case for bringing sexual arousal and orgasm into the formal confines of a laboratory was the psychologist John B. Watson. Watson is best known for founding, in 1913, the psychological movement called behaviorism."(21)
"A decade would pass before medical research summoned its courage and hooked up its instruments to live human sex. It was 1932. The researchers, Ernst Boas and Ernst Goldschmidt, knew better than to publish their results in a journal."(24)
"It was 1954 when William Masters embarked on his own investigation of sexual physiology. Kinsey was under fire from conservatives. The Rockefeller Foundation, partly because of its funding of Kinsey’s work, was the subject of a congressional investigation. (As a result, the foundation pulled Kinsey’s funding. He died less than two years later.)
Given the political climate, it was exceedingly brave of Masters — then a gynecologist at Washington University in St. Louis — to undertake such a project. This was to be a large (nearly 700 participants), nonclandestine observational study of human sexual arousal and orgasm. To try to get funding and permission for such a venture in 1954 must have been, well, like trying to do it in 2007." [mijn nadruk] (39)
"Masters and Johnson launched their book-length write-up of the project, Human Sexual Response, in 1966. (Medical journals had rejected the team’s papers, deeming them pornographic.) “The hate mail was unbelievable,” Masters recalled during a talk at the 1983 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex. “For the next year and a half, we had extra secretaries … just answering mail ….”" [mijn nadruk] (41)
"The vaginal-clitoral distances, he said, turned out to perfectly predict which women would have orgasms in intercourse and which wouldn’t. The cutoff point, as Bonaparte had noted, lay at around an inch—the width of a typical thumb." [mijn nadruk] (78)
[Zouden veel vrouwen of behandelend artsen dit zelfs maar weten? ]
"Wallen, like Masters and Johnson, thinks it’s possible that a majority of the so-called vaginal orgasms being had during intercourse are in reality clitoral orgasms. But unlike Masters and Johnson, he doesn’t suggest that most women are having them easily. He believes, like Bonaparte, that the women having them—the paraclitoridiennes of the world—are an anatomically distinct group whose sexual response is different from that of the majority of women. And that maybe these women are “where the whole notion of the vaginal orgasm originally came from.”"(79)
"Bonaparte also discovered a correlation between a woman’s height and how close together her vulval features are. Shorter women tend to have shorter spans." [mijn nadruk] (81)
"Based on a small, anecdotal survey that he’d probably prefer I not mention, Wallen has also been finding that women with small breasts seem more likely to have shorter distances. Put it all together and it spells bad news for the stereotypical American male. The stereotypical ideal female—Barbie tall with Barbie big breasts—is the one least likely to respond to a manly hammering. " [mijn nadruk] (81)
"Sexually, the 1920s and ’30s were an oasis of openness and common sense between the twin deserts of Victorian repression and fifties-era conservatism."(86)
"The stage was set for Alfred Kinsey. The survey results presented in his 1953 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female gave vaginocentrists a drubbing from which you’d imagine they would not easily recover. Only a third of his subjects reported easily and consistently having orgasms from intercourse, and those that did were benefitting from clitoral stimulation by the man’s organ or body. Ninety-five percent of them said that their husbands practiced “manual stimulation” before the couple got down to the business of intercourse.
But times had changed. The fifties were not the twenties. Sex Behavior in the Human Female was met with a hail of outrage and criticism. American manhood would not abide the sexually sophisticated (i.e., demanding) woman, and it fought back hard."(91)
"The backlash to Kinsey and the general tide of conservatism turned the passive, vaginal orgasm into the holy grail of female sexuality, “the hallmark,” wrote Carolyn Herbst Lewis in the Journal of Women’s History, “of a well-adjusted and normal femininity.” The attitude was evident in the new crop of marriage manuals ..." [mijn nadruk] (93)
"Alfred Kinsey had the most sensible take on the intercourse orgasm conundrum. Sure, it may make a difference how your clitoris is situated. And, yes, some positions are more promising than others. But what matters more, Kinsey concluded, is one’s level of engagement in the proceedings. Kinsey believed the erotic responsiveness of a woman on top was not a mere matter of “anatomical relations.” He made the point that “the female who will assume such a position is already less inhibited in her sexual activity.” And it is the person on top who’s in control — making the movements and controlling their speed and depth and direction." [mijn nadruk] (99)
"The linking of sexual delight and fertility, for right or for wrong, dates as far back as Western medicine itself."(113)
"Happily for Western women, it was the Hippocratic version that stuck. Even long after the concept of womanly seed had been debunked, the notion that simultaneous orgasm bettered the chances of conception lingered on. It made a great deal of intuitive sense. If the man’s climax was essential to the makings of new life, surely the woman’s was similarly invested. Indeed, for centuries, physicians routinely advised men on the importance of pleasuring their wives. "(114)
"As far back as Dr. Beck and as recently as Masters and Johnson, there was no such thing as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and medical ultrasound was in its infancy. I found myself wondering whether modern-day high-tech imaging techniques have shed any light on the secret processes of fertility — or on anything else about sex. And, if so, about how you convince someone to have sex in front of an ultrasound technician or inside an MRI tube. "(133)
"Though they no doubt have their uses, ultrasound movies are a superficial rendering of the complex and varied body-mind meld that we call sex. Sex is far more than the sum of its moving parts. "(159)
"From the heyday of Freud all the way through the behavior therapy era of the fifties and sixties, the causes of impotence were thought to dwell in the psyche. Penises went limp from unresolved neuroses, deep-seated anxieties, distraction, obsession. If you wanted help, you turned to a shrink. All that began to change in 1980.(...) Viagra sealed the deal. In 1998, Pfizer—with a cadre of media-savvy urologists in tow—launched a massive publicity campaign to announce an exciting new approach to impotence. Only it wasn’t called impotence anymore; it was “erectile dysfunction.” The stigma of the psychological had been removed. Impotence had morphed into a tidy biological problem treatable with a harmless pill."(176-177)
"In truth, plenty of cases of psychologically based impotence exist, and it’s relatively simple to sort out which ones they are. If a man is medically impotent — because his smooth-muscle tissue is damaged, say, or there’s a problem with his nerves — then he won’t get erections in his sleep. If the problem is purely psychological, he will."(177)
"The desire to blame impotence on physiology rather than psyche is understandable. But caution is advised. You can’t always trust science to get it right."(194)
"In 2005, a group of professors at the University of the West of England reported in BJU International (British Journal of Urology) that Kegel exercises could cure erectile dysfunction. After three months of twice-daily Kegeling sessions, a group of impotent men showed significant improvement as compared with a control group."(217)
"Cole has what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders calls female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD): She is regularly in the mood for sex, but her body doesn’t respond to the preliminaries. To be more precise, it doesn’t respond the way she’d like it to. If it wasn’t a problem in Cole’s eyes, it wouldn’t be a problem in the eyes of the DSM. Part of the diagnosis is that the condition causes “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.”
FSAD is the ladies’ edition of ED (erectile dysfunction). It is distinct from FOD (female orgasmic disorder) and HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or low libido).* Confusingly, there is also female sexual dysfunction, or FSD, but this is simply the catch-all term for anyone who has one — or a combination — of these conditions. Lack of desire (HSDD) is the most common of women’s sexual complaints, and we will get to this later."(248)
"... why weren’t hysteria sufferers simply told to go home and masturbate twice a week? Because, as you will recall from chapter 6, masturbation has a long history as a shameful, dangerous, and much-discouraged act.
But now that we all know better, should gynecologists be recommending masturbation as a treatment for sexual dysfunction? Are orgasms the ticket to sexual health?"(276)
[Wat? En je inkomen achteruit zien gaan?]
Over allerlei vormen van orgasmes bij quadriplegen en andere mensen met een handicap.
"The Female Sexual Psychophysiology Lab is part of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin. Its goal is simple but complicated: to untangle the complex, quixotic interplay of body and mind as they pertain to female sexuality. You have no idea what a perplexing mess is female arousal. When a woman is turned on by something or someone, her brain sends a signal to open up more of the capillaries in her womanly recesses. This ups the amount of blood in her vaginal walls, and some of the clear portion of it seeps through the capillaries and coats the vagina. Hello, lubrication. This much we know. But just because a woman is a little moist, that doesn’t mean she’s going to report feeling aroused. Unlike a man. If a man has an erection, or even half of one, as part of a sex study, he will almost always report that he’s aroused. Partly, this is because a boner is easier for its owner to detect than is a damp vestibule. It may also have to do with men’s greater skill at detecting subtle physical changes. A 1992 study showed that men were more accurate than women at picking up changes in their heart rate and blood pressure. Conversely, when a woman isn’t damp, it needn’t mean she’s unaroused." [mijn nadruk] (315)
"In women, the correlation between photoplethysmographic measures of genital engorgement and their own assessment of how aroused they are is so low that some researchers have questioned whether the physical changes alone can be taken to mean anything at all about a woman’s state of arousal. Female sexual arousal disorder is rarely diagnosed by photoplethysmograph; it’s a conclusion typically reached solely on the basis of a woman having voiced a complaint. The equipment is used mainly for research."(315)
"Using the new device, Meston discovered that there are indeed women who show a nice correlation between body and mind. She is finishing up a study of three groups of women: one with arousal disorder, one with orgasm disorder, and controls. While all three groups’ photoplethysmograph responses to the erotic clips were similar, the dysfunctional women differed in that they didn’t seem to be taking note of the physical changes taking place. And this occurred independent of the level of physical arousal. “Among the functional women, some had a very small change to the erotic film, but they were detecting it, they were paying attention to it. So with these women, if you could amplify the signal with a drug like Viagra, that could be a good thing. But for a woman who has a normal physical response but she’s not attending to it—and really for her the only thing that is arousing is when she feels emotionally bonded or loved or is doing a very specific sexual act—then Viagra is just not going to help.” Meston says that although Viagra has not been approved for use by women, doctors often prescribe it anyway—mainly because they don’t have anything else to prescribe."(320)
"For obvious reasons, no one has done a controlled clinical trial of marijuana’s effects on arousal and overall sexual satisfaction. Too bad."(321)
[Die snap ik niet. Je kunt toch hoop ik met zo'n middel experimenten opzetten ook al is het middel normaalgesproken illegaal?]
"The importance of focus fits well with something that Masters and Johnson wrote about back in the 1970s. The team coined the term “spectatoring,” which refers to a tendency to observe oneself during sex. Not in an erotic, mirror-on-the-ceiling sort of way, but in a judgmental, critical way. Rather than focusing on the sensations of foreplay and sex, all the feel-good things happening in her body, a spectatoring woman worries about her performance or her appearance."(321)
[Dat is bij mannen ook zo. Maar misschien bij vrouwen meer gezien de maatschappelijke context.]
"A series of studies by Meredith Chivers and colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto showed that men are more discriminating than women when it comes to how they respond to pornographic images. Women, both gay and straight, will show immediate genital arousal (as measured by a photoplethysmograph) in response to films of sexual activity, regardless of who is engaging in it—male, female, gay, straight, good hair or bad. Men, contrary to stereotype, tend to respond in a limited manner; they are aroused only by footage that fits their sexual orientation and interests." [mijn nadruk] (324)
"Women’s genitals may respond indiscriminately to images of sex, but the women themselves will often report being totally unaffected by what they’ve viewed. Based upon how they feel, women are quite picky about pornography."(325)
[Ik denk dat daar culturele invloeden een rol spelen. ]
"Years after the Fruit Machine project had been shelved, someone got the bright idea of measuring changes in the circumference of a man’s penis — rather than of his pupils — while he looked at naked people. Even phallometrics, as this technique is sometimes called, is not a reliable indicator of sexual preference. A strongly motivated man — for instance, an accused pedophile — can learn to control his genital response to an image that he finds erotic. He can also, with a little training, develop a brand-new one."(329)
"If you want to unlock the mysteries of female arousal — the kind the females actually notice and appreciate — the brain is probably the place to turn. After the costly failure of Viagra for women, pharmaceutical companies shifted their attention from drugs that affect genital blood flow to drugs that act directly on the brain. The showiest hopeful to date is bremelanotide, nicknamed “the Barbie drug” ... "(331)
"The woman refers to the “special flat” as the Home for Prostitutes. The name, as well as the ages of Shafik’s subjects (most are in their late thirties), makes it sound like a sort of retirement home for the trade. It’s not. Prostitutes in Egypt are older than they are in the States; many are middle-and even upper-class women who have been divorced and left with no child support. Raised in an era when women received no education, they turn to prostitution as one of the few options to keep themselves afloat and fund their children’s educations."(344)
"Why hasn’t low libido been listed as a side effect for oral contraceptives? “The FDA doesn’t consider behavior and in particular sexual behavior to be something they’re concerned about,” says Wallen. And why don’t doctors mention it to women before they pick up the prescription pad? In part because not that many women on the Pill complain about low libido. One in four is the statistic I’ve heard. For many women, the freedom from worrying about pregnancy cancels out any mid-cycle dip in libido; they’re having more sex then, not less. The Pill doesn’t make women enjoy sex less, it doesn’t change their responsiveness; it just mutes their drive. A lot of them don’t even notice, and for some, it’s a price worth paying."(367)
"The team did mention that many of the men and women who had been assigned a partner worried that this person wouldn’t find them attractive. Oddly, the reverse anxiety never surfaced—no one seemed concerned about whether they themselves would feel any attraction to the stranger whose genitals they were about to experience in almost every way imaginable: manually, orally, coitionally." [mijn nadruk] (381)
"It seems to me that heterosexuals have come a long way since 1979. The media’s ubiquitous coverage of sex and sex research—as well as the genesis and population explosion of TV, radio, and newspaper sex advisors—have chipped away at the taboos that kept couples from talking openly with each other about the sex they were having. Bit by bit, sex research has unraveled the hows, whys, why-nots, and how-betters of arousal and orgasm. The more the researchers and the sexperts and the reporters talked about sex, the easier it became for everyone else to. As communication eases and knowledge grows, inhibitions dissolve and confidence takes root."(386)