An example of an article about FSD

10/20/2009 at 9:43 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments
Tags: experts, female sexual dysfunction, Feminism, FSD, media, medicine, sex, sexual health, Sexuality, surgery, TMI, vaginas, vulvodynia, what

There’s an article about female sexual dysfunction posted at The Nation. Found via Our Bodies Our Blog. [Edit 10/21/09 – I left two comments at OBOS, hopefully will be taken seriously; the second is a little more fleshed out with an explanation of some other problems I have when the media talks about FSD like that.]

I read it. Both of the linked articles.

I don’t get it.

Unfortunately reading the OBOS entry and the article in question has rendered me completely incoherent with rage so I will not be able to do an in-depth competent analysis at this moment in time.

Why am I enraged? I’ll have to use a short list of points list since that’s all I can handle right now. I don’t have the patience to go into great detail tonight. Let’s just briefly touch upon what’s running through my mind right now:

Well, for one thing, I see that dyspareunia, sexual pain, is not mentioned in either article at all. The Nation article places a very strong focus on orgasm in particular, to the exclusion of female pelvic pain. So sexual pain is ignored and erased. Where did it go? Why is it not there? Instead, we have a focus on questions such as,

How else to explain that a reality as old as god–that the vast majority of women do not climax simply through intercourse–has re-emerged as dysfunction? Or that another grab bag of indicators of dissatisfaction and low desire are renamed as symptoms of hypoactive sexual desire disorder, for which a female Viagra or a testosterone patch or cream or nasal spray must be developed?

But I’m not fully comfortable with minimizing a woman’s desire for higher libido and/or climax through intercourse either. I’d like to explore intercourse in general, whether or not my partner or I climax, so I don’t think it would be fair of me to to say that exploring orgasm through intercourse is unimportant to someone who feels it is. I think it’s great to expand the definition of sex and to improve sexual satisfaction & explore other types of sex besides just intercourse. But I want to leave it on the table too. Keep it as one of many options.

One of the first lines over at The Nation article says, “Sex has been missing from the healthcare debate.”

I wrote an article about Healthcare and Vulvodynia last week.
But then, this blog is micro-small, so it’s not likely that many people noticed.

The lines go on,

“A shame, because sexual health, and disputes over its meaning, reveals most nakedly the problem at the core of a medical system that requires profit, huge profit, hence sickness, or people who can come to believe they are sick or deformed or lacking and therefore in need of a pill, a procedure or device. Case in point: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), said to afflict great numbers of women–43 percent according to some, 70 percent according to others, an “epidemic” in the heterosexual bedroom according to Oprah. Ka-ching!”

I’m still not fully understanding the claim that FSD is profitable. If that’s the case, why is it so difficult for me, someone who falls into the pain category, to find a doctor who is equipped to handle me? My experience is that often, my first line of defense doctors get tired of seeing me after I don’t respond to conventional treatments. I think right now my local gyno probably never wants to see me again.

The article goes on to talk about hysteria. For the most part I don’t find this section of the article to be inherently problematic. Except for the part about “pelvic congestion,” being in quotes, since it is mentioned as a real thing in Heal Pelvic Pain (p. 16)

The article goes on,

How to explain that middle-aged women go under the knife for vaginal rejuvenation, basically pussy tightening, and that young women go under the knife for laser labiaplasty, basically genital mutilation, saying they only want to feel pretty, normal, and raise their chances of orgasm through intercourse?

I had vulvovaginal surgery. It was to address the vulvar vestibulitis pain, and not for cosmetic reasons or to tighten things up (Actually, tightness is a real problem for me – I have too much tension in the pelvic floor.) But there was a minor cosmetic change, an incidental one. So, does that count as FGM too? I asked a women’s health class professor, who is also a practicing nurse, if it counted as FGM before scheduling the surgery. And she said “No.” Does surgery for medial reasons also count as condemnable? Or does it get a free pass for some reason?

Things continue forward.

How to explain that a doctor like Stuart Meloy of North Carolina, a throwback to charlatans who tried to shock hysterics into health with electric charges, has even one patient to test his Orgasmatron, an electrode threaded up a woman’s spinal cord and controlled by a hand-held button that the patient can push (assuming the procedure doesn’t paralyze her) to make her clit throb with excitement during intercourse and reach the grail of mutually assured orgasm?

I said to myself when I read those lines, “Huh, that kind of sounds like the TENS therapy I had tonight at my chiropractic & acupuncture appointment.” So I looked into it, and, sure enough, the diabolical device referred to here was originally designed to treat chronic pain. Reading that ABC article though, I’m not sure where the Nation author is getting the sufficiently scandalous softcore erotica quality lines of “Make her clit throb with excitement during intercourse” from, since the ABC article doesn’t actually say that part. I wonder if that line is in the actual study in question. Is that really how it works?

It just keeps on going.

A terrific new documentary, Orgasm Inc., by Liz Canner, addresses those questions in terms of corporate medicine and the creation of need via pseudofeminist incitements to full sexual mastery by Dr. Laura Berman and other shills for the drug industry.

I can’t speak for Dr. Berman, but I suppose now would be a good time to state for the record that I personally have never once received any compensation for writing this blog. If I get something later, I’ll disclose that if/when the time comes.
I did not think that sexual health & FSD was a “Pseudofeminist” concern. Is that to say that I, too, am a false feminist then, for talking openly about it?

And it doesn’t stop.

Female sexual dysfunction, it turns out, was wholly created by drug companies hoping to make even bigger money off women than they have off men with the comparatively smaller market for erectile dysfunction drugs.

Emphasis mine.
I would disagree with that statement. After all, we have evidence that vulvodynia, which falls into the often-overlooked pain category of FSD, existed as far back as about 2,000 years ago. There’s no way for me to know this 100% for certain, but, I have a feeling that I probably would have developed vulvodynia & vaginismus even if Big Pharma did not exist. There’s a lot of variables going on in the history of my pelvis, but a few warning signs stand out to me now. Hindsight still isn’t 20/20 though…
But looking at what’s been written about vulvodynia for years, and seeing women disclose online that they’ve had it for decades, I feel confident saying that Vulvodynia existed long before Viagra. I’m still waiting on the magic pink pill that will take away my sexual pain & get me in the mood. Right now my main pill options are tricyclic antidepressants and anti-seizure medication, to be used off label. There’s also conventional painkillers like Vicodin. I don’t take those kinds of pills though. Actually scratch that, I have an expired prescription for Valium that I’ve taken maybe 10 or 20 of in the last year when my general anxiety got too strong to manage.

Finally, Rachel at Our Bodies Our Blog put the words female sexual dysfunction in quotes, which is another thing I don’t understand. Is that to mean that FSD is not real? I identify as having FSD. It’s very real to me. I do not identify as being distressed by my levels of libido, arousal or orgasm. For me, those three features are a function of the pain, and sexual pain is my main concern. When I’m having a bad pain day, the triad of libido, arousal and orgsam decrease. Sometimes they can hurt too.

So yeah, I’m not in the best mood and mental state right now. That’s all I have to offer right now, as I wasn’t even planning to do anymore vagina blogging at all this week.