After this post, you may not hear from me for a little while, given I’ll be out of town, yet again, when really, I’d like nothing more than to just grab a very fluffy blanket, my itchy puppy (that’s not a euphemism), and the nice pile of books I’ve been fascinated with lately. But alas.

When I return, I really need to get back to some visual and multimedia artwork, because my mind is begging me for it, so what I’ll likely do is get started on the full wall project I took photos for in Chicago regarding some of my history, and brainstrom text for each one by one in the journal. I haven’t used this as the creative workbook it’s often served double-duty as for me over the years in some time, and it’s high time I revisit that potent use. I also am beyond behind with photo processing: I have a good six or seven beautiful portrait sessions lying in wait, and you know, right about now, I could use pictures without words for a while.

However, now that I’m nearly finished with it, I have to take a minute to rave and then rave some more about Janice Irvine’s Disorders of Desire: Sexuality And Gender In Modern American Sexology. I swapped my very worn copy of bell hooks’ All About Love for this with my mother’s partner, and it was a very awesome swap (especially since I’ve read that hooks so many times, I can nearly quite it verbatim — that book is the best treatise on love ever written, as far as I’m concerned).

It’s exceptionally rare for me to find books that are really about the sort of work that I do and the history of the sort of work that I do. However mixed my feelings were through parts of the film Kinsey, for instance, I was in tears throughout just because it was so bloody nice to feel addressed, and to see some attention paid to this work. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: working in sexuality is seriously isolating, especially in this culture, with the groups I serve, and when the work you do isn’t “sexy” or entertaining. (And even then, nearly ANY sort of sex or sexuality worker is usually very isolated and very marginalized, but that’s stating what should be mighty obvious.)

But what’s fantastic about the Irvine book is that it focuses in great depth on how much all of sexology, sexuality reserach and sex therapy and education has been strongly biased due to the fact that it has been address of all genders which has been dominated and formed by one: men.

Really, when it all comes down to it, when we’re talking sexuality exclusively, rather than reproductive health, up untl the last twenty years — and really, more like the last ten — it is a field that has been completely male-dominated. Sure, Virginia Johnson was female, but she was in a very secondary position as an assistant to William Masters, and he ran the show, big-time. Shere Hite did work before the last twenty years, but in sexology her work was largely discounted because of her sex, because what she found did not support the status quo and because of what were seen as methodological problems (which, from what I can tell, was actually just her getting called on some of the same sorts of flaws male researchers had in their work, but she was being held to a higher standard because she had to prove her right to do the work simply because she was not male). It’s easy to forget that over just the last ten years, an awful lot has changed as far as women finally having some influence and part in sexology. For instance, I could have sworn Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography had been around for slightly more than ten years, but I just started rereading it again and lo, it was published in ye olde 1999.

It’s always been a bit of a strange balancing act for me to do the work I do and find the space between what is seen as the medical-credible, as well as sexological “standards” and what either clearly or probably are aspects of all of that which are so influenced by gender bias and heterosexism, and where the direct and cumulative observations one makes having done the work oneself through simply stand in total conflict, as do things when you consider the context and the biases afoot. And in this field, as with many, we often see the “science” or the medical speaking over the populace they’re supposed to be serving, stating that what the populace reports to be for them simply isn’t so because the science says otherwise.

I answer sexuality questions nearly every single day, and read personal testimonial and narrative on sex nearly every single day, and have for nearing ten years now. If I was reading, say, in 1965, women saying what they did then (when given the space to say so safely, which was infrequent) and still do now, about the fact that vaginal intercourse alone is not physically satisfying for a majority of them, the “science” would have stood in direct conflict to the women it was supposed to serve, largely because that “science” was dominated by a group of people for whom that was an unacceptable answer, and whose studies were completely skewed by their bias, and whose solutions to that “problem,” when it was recognized, were — as most things are — all about doing anything and everything to preserve the status quo, which, at that time (as if often the case now) were to be sure the nuclear family, the male-female unit and “normal” gender roles were protected. If I were to have said out loud that this conflict existed, or pointed out bias, I would have been laughed out of the room and ripped to shreds publicly.

Most of us know about turn-of-the-century approaches to women’s sexuality, but don’t know, or pass by, the fact that even less than twenty years ago, the new version of nymphomania, sex addiction, was defined as affecting women who did such clearly outrageous things as masturbate, use personals ads, have one night stands, prepare for sex (as in, clean one’s bedroom, choose to wear certain clothing), or engage in sexual fantasy. (Suffice it to say, this behaviour in men did not class them as sex addicted.) And of course, the opposite end of the spectrum, frigidity, would include things like not having an interest in, or satisfaction with heterosexual intercourse, not having sexual desire to a degree that matched that of a male partner, having body image issues, etc.

In other words, there’s often been — and often still is — no middle ground when it comes to women’s sexuality from a medical perspective, and often a clinical sexological one: too much desire is a disorder, too little desire is a disorder, and the criteria for both often overlap, resulting in no healthy manifestation of women’s sexuality whatsoever, save if it is in agreement with whomever the man in question — husband, doctor, greengrocer — just happens to be and whatever he happens to want.

Without digging deeply into the history of this arena, people often forget that even the gender essentialism we see in so much general and sex information now, and what we’re told are male and female diferences and male and female needs arose from gender theorists and sexologists with a huge bias (and too, funders they were trying to keep), and for whom it was an absolute given that one essential part of being a normal male and a normal female was being heterosexual, and that that given strongly influenced every assumption and conclusion drawn on top of it. One of the tragedies of this was that a focus on gender roles in the first place was bastardized from feminist theory, but the way it was applied in sexology was often to do whatever could be done to safeguard sexism and heteronormativity. Grr.

Without examining the history of sexology and sex therapy, we forget that a whole awful lot of it has been outright abusive to women: sex therapy in the 70’s into the 90’s often involved “prescribing” sex with one’s therapist, for instance, or group sex sessions without any foundation of healthy limits, boundaries and negotiation (or even the desire for group sex on the part of the patient).

Like it or not, accept it or not, it’s pretty well documented that sexologists during the second wave of feminism more often than not absolutely reviled the feminists pointing out these flaws, and contributed plenty to the idea that feminism was, in and of itself, anti-sex, because so much of it protested not sex itself, but the way sex was being presented and prescribed by sexology, the media and the medical — all male dominated — at the time. This, for the record, is one very substantial reason why much of second wave feminism is very wary of sexology as a whole, and it’s hardly an invalid concern. I’d say it took me more than a few years to really get that.

And boy, howdy: you want to look at a woman that could stand to toss out her well-worn .45 of “Stand By Your Man,” take a hard look at Virginia Johnson — I knew enough of some of the pretty creepy ways she’d (well, both of them) operated — like with their programs to “cure” homosexuals — but Irvine had some pretty choice quotes in there from her from conferences that seriously made my skin crawl. Johnson seems to me to have been aware that without the wagon she was hitched to in terms of Masters, she wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on, since she could easily see that the few female contemporaries she had who were trying to work without a man or a male organization behind them were quickly silenced and mocked. It strikes me as a pretty classic example of the struggle so many women deal with in anything when it comes to the rock and a hard place of supporting other women without winding up unsupported yourself. I’m not about to let that sort of thing go unquestioned and unobserved, nor say that I think tossing other women under the bus because they’re putting the man who you’re dependent on in some sort of quasi-jeapordy is by any stretch okay, but I do think it’s helpful to take stock of some of WHY this so often happens, especially with work in such male-dominated fields.

(I’m reminded, actually, of the female staffer for Girls Gone Wild who is quoted in Levy’s Female Chauvanist Pigs, who said things that felt flat-out harrowing to me when it came to the utter lack of care and concern for other women, who also clearly seemed to see herself as being in a struggle for their own survival — which she’d justify this with — even if that’s not really the case. The difference between good money and a shitload of money is not an issue of survival, folks.)

It’s been interesting to read this book, because some part of me had actually forgotten why, when I started developing Scarlet Letters in ‘97, and tried to focus on sexuality and eroticism in the latter half of my college years in ‘90, it felt like such strangely uncharted terrain, and like I just couldn’t find that information I wanted and needed. Why, in so many ways, it felt a whole lot like shouting into a void. At the time, not having enough of the background and history, I just assumed I was being a dolt and not looking in the right places: at first, it just didn’t even occur to me that much of the information I was looking for just plain didn’t exist, or that the reason why what I could found seemed so conflicting and unrealistic because there was no woman’s voice at all in the vast majority of the information about women. When I found out that the reason I wasn’t finding much was that there wasn’t much there to find yet, it was pretty shocking to me.

And it has been SO FREAKING REFRESHING to read this book because these are issues and problems I think about and talk about all of the time, but given how specialized a discourse they are, half the time no one else knows what on earth I’m going on about. It’s a dream to have someone else not only addressing this, but going over my head with it at times, and talking about facets of it that I wasn’t yet even familiar with: I relish opportunities for beginner’s mind, and am so grateful when they fall into my lap.

Things HAVE gotten better, for sure. But honestly, I get frustrated in this field a LOT, because in some many ways, they still aren’t very good, especially when it comes to women’s sexuality, and to sexuality or identity that is not heteronormative, gendernormative or heterosexual. I still see a majority of young girls being advised on sex by men, without a real effort made to understand that they are reared as and live as girls — if I hear an older man tell young women even one more time how much better casual sex would be for them than a serious relationship, totally dismissing their greater physical risks as well as the cultural climate they live in that punishes them profoundly for anything other than sex in the context of marriage or “serious” romance — and not mentioning, of course, that such a choice also benefits men — I swear, I’ll scream. I see them furnished with information that came primarily or solely through a male lens, and same goes for reproductive health and public policy on women’s reproductive health and rights, without any real examination of that fact, nor an urge to better balance it. Ridiculously, one often has to explain and defined why this is all so problematic, when were the shoe on the other foot, no explanation would be needed, as it would be a very easy — and equally valid — outrage. Can you imagine how men as a class would react if all of most of the information about their sexuality was coming from women, filtered through women, and women were setting up or enabling a system to be sure to keep their voices OUT or muted so that the information (and our unquestioned positions as Experts) could be sure to suit our agenda and personal sexual desires first and foremost, and their sexuality framed in such a way to be sure it always met our needs first?

I still see sexuality information for anyone who isn’t heterosexual prefaced endlessly with statements to us, from straight people, that it is OKAY (with them) that we’re not straight. Phew! We were so worried there for a minute! Sexuality information for anyone who isn’t gendernormative or even biologically XX or XY basically still mostly puts everyone in a space where we still have to choose within a binary system, even when the mere existence of anyone at all who is not gendernormative automatically renders that system meaningless as a default or a given. (I’ll give you that that’s a difficult one to practically handle, mind, and I know I haven’t got it anything close to down either, but when not only is the effort TO move away from that not made, but a lot of effort is put into making damn sure we remain there — heck, there’s a quote from John Money in DOD where he flat-out says that without a binary system of gender, the world would literally fall apart — I still get to bitch, even if I haven’t perfected the approaches yet myself.)

I’ve been asked more than once why I don’t just go and get a medical degree, to up my credibility. Beyond the fact that that’s a pretty silly thing to suggest to someone who is already poor, the fact of the matter is that I don’t want one, largely in part because I know full well what that experience would likely be like for me. For starters, most general and even OB/GYN programs have sexuality segments that, at most, are a few weeks long, and which involve a curricula of books which I have already read: my sexuality library is massive. I know that in many ways, med school for someone like me would be an agonizing process of railing against the machine for a piece of paper which would likely only put me in more debt, and give me no new practical options: I have no interest in directly practicing medicine, in being any more involved in the western medical system than I already am, and in being given a credibility which, while accepted by many, is strongly suspect in my book, because of a lot of the issues Irvine has brought up in DOD. I also know that right now, I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing to be best qualified to do the sort of work I do: I’m having one-on-one, unhurried, in-depth discussions with my “clients,” I’m reading a vast array of material at all times from a diverse group of perspectives, and I’m working in the field doing my level best to observe daily to find the needs had and then serve those needs, not as I determine them, but as those in need are directly expressing them. It’s pretty amazing, really, and the ‘net, of all things, really was the great open door I thought it might have been way back when when it comes to women’s sexual narratives and those of young people: there are certainly still big barriers to that online, given, but I’m not sure any other media has provided as many opportunities in this regard.

In short, over the last ten years, I’ve been getting the best kind of education possible in this arena, an education that I feel in many ways, is ideal and should be at least part of what the “credible” folks are getting to. But as it stands, that’s not often the case.

This book has also served as a really nice reminder for me that I really like the work that I do, quite a lot, and I like the way I am able to DIY it. I’m pleased as punch to be able to do it the way that I do, and what gets me the most down about it isn’t the work itself, but the external problems with it: the culture, history and (what should be) support systems that don’t support it or outright protest it, the problems I have in getting paid, and the fact that it’s very frustrating for me both for myself and for the people I serve that there are so many needless and destructive barriers to finding and getting real, inclusive and unbiased information, even from my back end (no, not THAT back end) here. The last few days, I’ve gone ahead and let myself get back in the groove of doing my job for as many hours as I want to — and this may sound silly — without feeling like I can’t answer question after question and read piece after piece when that’s the work I love to do because I’m not making ends meet with it at the moment. Ms. Irvine was a big help with that, so my hat’s off to her.

(What else has been on my bookshelf lately? As I said, I’ve been revisiting Natalie Angier’s — has anyone read The Canon yet? — going over Toni’s Cycle Savvy, and also getting started with Courtney Martin’ sPerfect Girls, Starving Daughters, which so far, I think is utter brilliance and right on target. Coincidentally per this entry, in her introduction she says that she feared people wouldn’t find her qualified simply by taking the time to observe and listen to tons of women in her life and outside it, rather than getting the piece of paper to be a body image or ED Big Person With Big Paper. Maybe it’s the ex-Montessori teacher in me speaking, but I am so troubled by the process of mindful observation somehow being tossed out of the credible pile, when, in fact, that is what”’scientific” data is supposed to largely be in the first place. It’s also troubling to me to hear casual discussion of how meaningless observation is because of biases or carelessness when, in fact, one can practice observation as a viable skill, and be mindful of biases to take them into account. We’ve got to be awfully careful not to toss the baby out with the bathwater, especially since without first-person reporting and credibility, and sensitive observation, we wind up with exactly the sort of fine messes I’ve been prattling on about.)

filed under Heather Corinna | soapbox | feminism | women | sexuality
posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 5:55 pm

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