05 Sep The Conventional View of Sexuality
Contemporary sex is defined in terms of behavior or biology (Barratt, 2019), and contemporary sexology is primarily concerned with correcting sexual behaviors it considers pathological. There is very little emphasis on emotional or spiritual connection, or on the quality of the relationship between the people involved. Sex is viewed as a performance that should be orchestrated in a prescribed fashion in order to attain prescribed results. This was codified in 1966 with the work of Masters and Johnson and their four-stage sexual response cycle. The sexual act was posited as an activity that builds tension in order to relieve tension. Quick, easy, and predictable orgasms for both partners was the goal.
While the fact that attention to female sexuality was finally entering the mainstream may be applauded, there was much that was problematic with the research, as outlined by Tiefer (1991). First of all, research participants were selected as only those who would respond to the type of sexual activity the study was advocating, and would as well be comfortable being measured while having sex in a laboratory in front of observers. Participants who did not meet these criteria were eliminated, even though the results of the research were later generalized to the population as a whole. The question the research hoped to answer was how participants would respond to “effective sexual stimulation,” which was defined as stimulation leading to orgasm. These are only two of the many biases identified by Tiefer in her feminist critique.
Female researchers (Scantling, 1993; Bonheim, 1997; Ogden, 2006, 2007) have been quite vocal in their findings that strictly goal-oriented orgasmic sex is not most women’s preference. It is well-known in research as well as anecdotally that women prefer affectionate touch, romance, and a quality relationship over strictly genital contact. Mainstream sexology considers the 50 percent of women who do not orgasm frequently as “dysfunctional” rather than understanding that this is not the type of sex that most women prefer.
Within mainstream sexology there has been very little attention paid to what Kleinplatz & Menard (2007) term “optimal sex,” rather, as noted above, the emphasis is on curing “dysfunctional” sex. It is interesting for transpersonal theorists to note that Kleinplatz & Menard include as one of the eight characteristics of optimal sex “transcendence and transformation.” Beyond optimal conventional sex, there is no mention in mainstream sex of any connection between spirituality and sexuality, even though as Maslow noted (1969), sex is one of the two most common ways of accessing peak experiences (the other being music).
© 2024 Catherine Auman
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