This Blog Entry was originally posted on the Sisterhood

“His main premise is that young people will tune out educators if their real concerns are left in the shadows.” In the end, that perhaps was the most important line of all in the recent New York Times Magazine article, “Teaching Good Sex,” by Laurie Abraham.

The article described a course given by a beloved teacher in the Friends’ Central school in Philadelphia. What was unique about his curriculum (and for those of us in the field of sexuality it is a bit horrifying that it is unique, but really it is), is that his curriculum is not solely focused on safety — how not to get pregnant and what is a bad idea sex-wise — but also on how to incorporate sexual pleasure into one’s life. He also makes a point to answer the various complicated and messy questions the students have as honestly as possible.

So I’m a fan.

I would guess, though, that educators from institutions that consider themselves value-based (Jewish day school teachers for instance) may have had a knee-jerk, negative reaction to the article. Many probably feel that classes that focus on the joy and the pleasure, as well as the concerns and dangers, of sex might “send the wrong message.” The fear is that if you focus on pleasure and give out too much specific information, you are tacitly suggesting that teenagers run out and have indiscriminate sex.

That thinking is dead wrong.

Study after study indicates that the more information kids are given the later they become sexually active. I know that feels counter-intuitive. But maybe it’s not. Kids know about sex from the world they live in. They don’t live in a vacuum. If their only way of getting information is to try something, that’s how they’ll do it. If they feel that they have enough information, they will feel less of a pull to experiment.

According to Paglia,  over-education is an important source of diminished sexual desire among the ” anxious, overachieving, white upper middle class, ”  as she calls it.  This is an old myth about sex, going back as far as D. H. Lawrence and probably farther — that too much education separates a person from the raw physical sources of his or her sexuality.

There’s not much to support this myth about sexuality and education, and every reason to be suspicious of it.   We don’t really know what goes on in most people’s bedrooms.  A quality US study on sexuality that asked, the National Health and Social Life Survey,  found that frequency of sex didn’t change much with  educational level.  The study did find that highly educated people were having more oral sex, though.    Seems like higher education might give one a taste for more sexual variety — hardly a bad thing.

Paglia also contends that if you were unlucky enough to be born after the industrial revolution, then you’ve really missed the boat on  great sex.   As she writes, “The real culprit, originating in the 19th century, is bourgeois propriety. As respectability became the central middle-class value, censorship and repression became the norm. Victorian prudery ended the humorous sexual candor of both men and women during the agrarian era, a ribaldry chronicled from Shakespeare’s plays to the 18th-century novel.”

OK, I get that it would have been a blast making dirty jokes with my fellow groundlings at the Globe Theater.   But I’m not convinced that the late 16th century had much of an edge on us when it came to sexual enjoyment.    No indoor plumbing, not much bathing, no antibiotics to treat venereal disease — I’ll take the modern era, no matter how many hours I’m stuck answering email.

I agree with Paglia that a serious amount of organic sexual grit has been scrubbed off by the media and by the culture at large.    But I question whether there’s much of a connection between the kind of sex talk we hear, and the kind of actual sex we’re having.  Fact is, we don’t really know what kind of sex even our closest friends are having, much less people in other cultures and from other centuries.

I’m not convinced that we’re having worse sex, or less of it, than people in other times and cultures.    It may just be that our sexual problems  get more attention.   I suspect previous generations would envy us our greater sexual freedoms.  Our freedom to educate ourselves about sex if we choose to.  Greater freedom from sexual ignorance and shame.  And that most precious freedom of all — the freedom to kvetch about sex in print.

© Stephen Snyder, MD 2010    

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Sunday Magazine

November 29, 2009

Dear Editor:

Daniel Bergner’s article in the Times magazine section, Women Who Want to Want, once again poignantly expresses both the deep distress felt by women with the loss of their libido as well as the complexity of understanding and treating the condition. Women’s loss of desire, while experienced sharply and distinctly, can be extraordinarily varied in both its primary cause,  its contributing factors and in the range of treatment options. 

Women’s sexual problems, of necessity, must be assessed by integrating the emotional, physical, chemical and  psychosocial perspectives in order for us to be successful in treating them.  Most often, as your article states, recommended treatment protocols are unilateral; the underlying assumption being that one “magic bullet,” should alleviate the problem. Often we find that this leaves women who have tried a single approach feeling as though they have failed;  and more hopeless, resigned and unhappy.   

Only with an integrated approach to diagnosing and treating women with female sexual dysfunction, more will have a better chance at achieving what they are looking for, a full and satisfying sex life.  While critics may believe this is yet another “luxury” health problem, we’re certain none of them would want to settle for a tepid sex life.  And if what we see in our practice is any indication, they’re in good company. 

Bat Sheva Marcus LMSW, MPH, PhD

Clinical Director

Medical Center for Female Sexuality

2975 Westchester Avenue

Purchase, New York 10577

(914) 328-3700

260 East 66^th Street

New York, New York 10065

(646) 839-0700

www.centerforfemalesexuality.com