A6 NEWS NATIONAL POST, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2007

HOW HAS THE EXPLOSION OF CHOICE FOR WOMEN AFFECTED YOU AND HOW HAS IT CHANGED IN YOUR LIFETIME?
Sarah Forbes-Roberts, co-owner of sex store Come As You sexual choices for all. In the 10 years since we’ve opened the
Talking openly Are: “Like many of my friends in their thirties, I grew up in store I’ve seen huge changes in women’s comfort around sex-

about sexuality a feminist household where I was told I could be whoever

I wanted to be. Yet there are still inequalities that limit our
uality. Women are so much more comfortable talking openly
about sex. This comfort around sexuality extends far beyond

no longer taboo choices as women. My career choice was to own a sex-posi-

tive, co-operative sex store that works hard to provide healthy
sex — you see it in women who are happy, confident and as-
sertive.”

THE WOMAN ISSUE

#
A GUIDE TO A WOMAN’S SEXUAL RESPONSE
Women initiate or agree to sex for a variety of reasons. Some spontaneously
feel the urge to have sex, but a lack of that initial urge is also normal …

1 2 3 4 5 6
Sheis willing Sheis Sheprocesses this Sheis Sheis Orgasmor
toget in sexually stimulation(mentally sexually physically satisfaction
themood. stimulated. andphysically). excited. aroused. without orgasm
*Afterward, the womanis motivated toget into themoodagainby her sexually satisfyingexperienceas wellas by non-sexual rewards likeemotionalintimacy.
INSPIRED BY THE FEMALE SEX RESPONSE CYCLE, DR. ROSEMARY BASSON’S 2001 DIAGRAM, PUBLISHED IN THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF OBSTETRICIANS AND GYNECOLOGISTS.

Is a low sex drive normal, or are women

really hope he doesn’t want to have sex
SEX

tonight.’ ”
Ms. Jansen, now a 41-year-old sex-

‘broken in the hot-and-wet department’?

BY MELISSA LEONG
In a small, downtown Toronto sex store,
two dozen women huddle together be-
tween shelves of videos and vibrators to
learn the secret of the orgasm. In order
to climax, the speaker at the workshop
tells us, we must relax, we must stop
thinking about our grocery lists.
That is not what I want to hear.
Nor is it helpful to my friend, whose
expectations are already low after re-
cently asking her doctor about vaginal
dryness and being told: “Watch some
porn.” If only the solutions for sexually
frustrated women were that simple. Or
as simple as popping a pill.
Pfizer began its quest for the “pink
pill,” the female Viagra, in 1996. But
after eight years of research and stud-
ies involving about 3,000 women, the
drug company’s researchers were flum-
moxed. The scientists cited a discon-
nect between a woman’s brain and her
genitals that does not exist in men; a
woman’s arousal, unlike that of a man’s,
is triggered by a complex network of
emotional, intellectual and relation-
ship-based factors.
And so, while Viagra became the
wonder drug for men, there is still no
equivalent for women. Instead, there is
only heated debate: Are we over-med-
icalizing the problem? Is low libido
caused by hormonal imbalances, or is
it all just in a woman’s head? Is female
sexual dysfunction even real?
The term did not even exist a dec-
ade ago. The Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders describes
it as an inability to get aroused, painful
intercourse, orgasmic disorder or the
absence of desire or urges prior to sex-
ual activity.
So controversial is the diagnosis
— and its myriad suggested treatments
— that the British Medical Journal
published an article calling female sex-
ual dysfunction the “freshest, clearest
example” of a “corporate-sponsored
creation of a disease.”
Lenore Tiefer is among those who
are wary. A clinical associate professor
of psychiatry at the New York Univer-
sity School of Medicine, she spearhead-
ed a campaign to reject the medical
framework of female sexual dysfunc-
tion, arguing that the belief that a
woman is “broken in the hot-and-wet
department” will lead to a dependence
on drugs and wrongly diminishes the
role of emotions in sex.
“After Viagra was approved, journal-
ists started writing, ‘Where is the Viag-
ra for women?’ ” said Dr. Tiefer. “This
was a perversion of gender equality.
In some strange commodified world,
the idea of sexual equality had become
product equality.”
The prevailing, although somewhat
disputed, statistics suggest that as
many as 43% of women aged 18 to 59
suffer from some sort of sexual dys-
function. But there are experts who say
that large percentages of women re-
port having no sexual urges, and these
women also claim to be satisfied.
“You might be like the women in Sex
and the City, but the evidence is very
clear that that is less common,” said
Rosemary Basson, a physician and dir-
ector of sexual medicine at the Univer-
sity of British Columbia. “What is more
common is having a flexible, adaptable
desire that is higher earlier in a rela-
tionship when everything is new, and
is less spontaneous as the relationship
continues, but still remains trigger-
able.” If more women knew this, they
might be less distressed, she added.
Unable to orgasm and unmotivated
to have sex, Carlyle Jansen suffered
sexual anxiety in her twenties.“I had
so many dating experiences in my
late teens and early twenties where I
avoided sex or I’d drink to numb every-
thing,” she said. “I’d curl up in bed, face
the other way and lie there thinking, ‘I
uality educator and therapist who
founded the Toronto sex shop Good For
Her, says she still does not have a high
libido but now considers that normal.
“We’re pathologizing women’s ex-
periences because they don’t match
men’s,” she said.
Researchers have offered various
theories to explain why women may
be more “turned off ” than men. One
is that sexual inhibition in women is a
protective mechanism evolved to dis-
courage women from having children
when conditions for motherhood are
not favourable; for example, when a
partner is unsupportive or the woman
has emotional problems.
There is even a movement to re-
brand a woman’s sometimes limited
sexual appetite as the norm, with new
books such as I’d Rather Eat Chocolate:
Learning to Love My Low Libido.
Still, the search for a “cure” con-
tinues. Dr. Thuy-Tien Dam, clinical dir-
ector of prevention studies at the Uni-
versity of California, San Diego, says a
flagging sex drive may be a “treatable
condition, not just a personal problem.”
“We assume it’s normal because we
don’t know how to treat it and we don’t
know what’s going on … Just like with
depression. Before they said, ‘It’s just in
your heads, there’s nothing wrong with
you.’ But later on, we found out that there
were imbalances with serotonin levels.”
André Guay, a clinical assistant pro-
fessor of medicine in endocrinology at
Harvard Medical School, said research
shows that women who complain of

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
decreased drive may have testosterone
deficiency, and there has been some
success in treating menopausal, hyster-
ectomized women with androgens or
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Paul Watson male sex hormones.
takes us to the front lines of Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, But even that breakthrough cannot
address one of the root causes of low
Iraq and Afghanistan — as only he has seen them sexual desire: relationship problems.
“I treated a woman for six months
with androgens. She was definitely de-
“A breathtakingly compelling and candid ficient,” Dr. Guay said. “Finally, after I
had treated her for six months and she
account of Watson’s career as one of was not better, I went over the differ-
ential again. When we started [talking
Canada’s premier foreign correspondents.” about] relationship problems, she said,
‘You know,’ with a tear in her eye, ‘my
– Montreal Gazette husband really is a jerk.’ ”

“Gripping and courageous… This book is a thriller.” BY THE

—Ottawa Citizen NUMBERS

“He paints a pretty vivid 6.9 A woman’s average num-

ber of sexual partners.
picture of the violence,
fear, grief and despair that
Your new 29 Percentage of women
worldwide who want sex

McClelland & Stewart
best friends.
more often.
is generated under wartime
circumstances. . . . Watson
is a natural storyteller, Rapture . Found at Birks. 41 Percentage of women who
told a date they loved them
because they hoped it would lead
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— Globe and Mail
pendant, from $1,700; line bracelet,
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71 Percentage of women who
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or sex toys because they thought it
right-hand ring, $3,600.
would lead to sex.
“Beautifully written
and pitilessly honest. . . . 22 Percentage of women who
have had a cyber-affair
(a sexually explicit conversation
[it] will haunt readers.” or video or photo exchange) with
someone other than their significant
– Maclean’s
other, compared with 25% of men.
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