Sex experts deal with sexual dysfunction

In the film ‘Doc Hollywood’ Bridget Fonda coquettishly asks Michael J Fox, playing the young doctor, whether doctors know more about sex than other people do. This is an easy and natural mistake to make.
We tend to think of sex as if it were a mechanical or biological aspect of our bodies. In fact, there is no reason why doctors should know any more about sex than the rest of us since sex is primarily about our psychology and our emotions. There are recommended positions and techniques for sexual intercourse but ultimately sexual arousal depends on what happens in the brain.
Most of us accept our sexual relationship for what it is and only seek help if there is a major problem. This is why the vast majority of people who consult sex experts are men with sexual performance problems.
People who go to sex experts do not represent the statistical norm. They are unusual, just as I am, because most people do not go along to complete strangers in order to discuss their sexual relationship, especially when they usually have to pay by the hour to do so! It’s not easy to find answers when a woman has difficulty reaching orgasm during sex.
By the time I was twenty I had read many erotic stories describing imaginative sex play so my difficulty was not ignorance of technique. Instead I wanted to know why (although everything worked by the book for the man) my body and mind did not respond as I assumed they were supposed to. As a well-informed couple, we had tried all the foreplay techniques in the book.
The modern liberated view is that women reach orgasm during sex almost as easily as men do. The more conservative view is that a woman only find sex rewarding as part of a loving relationship. Ironically both of these approaches imply that women enjoy sexual arousal ‘naturally’ during sex and make it difficult for women to compare notes on how to orgasm with a partner.
Sexual pleasure remains very personal
When I consulted therapists in the UK, I was asking: “How do women become sufficiently aroused during sex to enable them to orgasm?” After meeting with defensiveness and incomprehension over my concerns about orgasm, I came to realise that therapists don’t know the answer to this highly personal question any more than anyone else. Why should they?
People who qualify as sex specialists learn about human sexuality through textbooks full of theories, laboratory research and detailed analysis of phenomena such as orgasm. There is no particular reason why female sex experts would have explored their own sexuality, either through masturbation or through sex with a partner, any more than the average woman.
We can all be fairly sure that a man knows how to orgasm both alone and with a partner. But many women have sex without ever knowing how to become aroused enough to orgasm. So there is no guarantee that a woman who is advising others about female orgasm even knows how to masturbate herself to orgasm; let alone how to succeed with similar techniques during sex.
Some people claim to be unembarrassed about sex but only because they discuss other people’s experiences. Very few women (even sex experts) are willing to talk about their own experiences of arousal and orgasm. In particular, no one ever discloses which physical stimulation and psychological arousal techniques they use for orgasm.
So therapists’ understanding of the average woman’s experience of orgasm is based on the findings of surveys. Unfortunately, these can be highly mis-leading: (1) given the belief that orgasm is the normal experience many women assume they orgasm when they don’t; and (2) women often interpret their sexual experiences in the light of emotional rather than sexual criteria.
Self-evidently, women’s sexual performance is not a show-stopper and so most people assume that women do not have sexual problems. Relatively few women ever consult sex clinics. How many are concerned enough about lack of orgasm to pay out over $100 an hour to find a solution? Even in my own case, I went to a clinic more for my partner’s sake than for my own.
Even though experts refer to women’s sexual dysfunction, there are no easy solutions for lack of female orgasm during sex. I was left with a sense of hopelessness: the implication was that lack of orgasm was abnormal and yet there was no apparent solution. At the same time, it was also implied that I was simply expecting too much.
The subject of women’s arousal during sex is still highly taboo due to lack of understanding so that even experts are confused when faced with couples who have unrealistic expectations beyond the average couple. It would seem that female orgasm is simply not an issue for the vast majority of couples today.