The link for the article appears not to be working. It leads to page not found.

I can't say I'm really that upset if researchers/companies want to find a way to help women or men obtain more/any sexual pleasure -- even if, yes, they charge for it. Of course it is not without costs and risks, but we as individuals can decide for ourselves if it is worth it so long as those costs and risks are known (and that is an issue with so many things).

As for the "medicalization" -- what do people expect? These are largely bodily functions, after all. What other field do you want covering this? And there are indeed some medical problems seemingly unrelated to sexuality that can lead to sexual problems in men and women and so those things, imho, do need to be checked out for one's general health. And yes, I do think it is a problem when a person *wants* to orgasm but can't. Is it the end of the world? No. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve consideration.

Any individual woman could have all sorts of reasons why she might not be enjoying sex and/or having orgasms, and I'm sure there are many, many areas where beneficial change can be made, but for myself, just not hating my body made a huge difference, as did sleeping with more experienced and relaxed partners who were open to many sexual options. I wonder if, for many men and women, sex wouldn't be a hell of a lot more pleasant if we weren't socially brainwashed into such a narrow idea of what is an acceptably attractive body and what is acceptable sexual behavior with another consenting adult.

I wonder if sexual dysfunction would be so widespread if sexual dysfunction causing medications like Prozac weren't so widespread.

Pop a pill to fake you happy that kills your libido, then pop another to fake your aroused...

The thing is that sexual dysfunction actually does affect a lot of people! Some people really do need some sort of medial intervention to achieve levels of arousal and pleasure that they desire and/or would be considered normal. The medical industry's focus on solving these problems for people isn't necessarily bad. I just don't like the way they go about. YMMV, I should think.

The main problem, though? Is ingrained societally. It's not just that not enough people know about the clitoris - it's a lack of sexual health information all over. Too many young men and women think porn is something other than a ridiculously exaggerated fantasy. The same type of sexuality sold in porn is sold in the movies and related media. This trickles down into how we do and think about sex every day. (For the record, I'm not trying to paint porn as the sole culprit. I mean only to suggest it as one piece of the bigger puzzle that includes bad sex-ed for youth, prevailing attitudes about womens' sexuality, etc.) I mean, when my boyfriend expects me to enjoy penetration exactly the same way he does? We've got some miscommunication, I think.

This issue is pretty close to my heart because I suffer from less arousal and pleasure (than I want? than is normal? not sure, it hasn't been diagnosed). I have trouble becoming aroused and have never reached orgasm with a partner. I *have* been able to reach orgasm alone. This leads me to believe that the problem isn't just my genitals. (For me personally I think it's a combination of my personal biology - just a less sexual person - and medications I take.) I just can't help but feel that if attitudes about sex and sexuality changed we'd see a decrease in people diagnosed (diagnosable?) with sexual dysfunction.

Or, what E, Viola, and Lauri Lee said.

I support this research, but ONLY in conjunction with other approaches like education, counseling, addressing psychological issues and a broader acceptance of a relationship without penetrative intercourse.

I think part of it is Viola's point, that we have narrow ideas of attractiveness and narrow ideas of what a relationship means-- and it always involves penetrative sex. A good relationship has a lot of penetrative sex, a bad one doesn't. This narrow interpretation means that people who maybe don't even WANT sex feel like they must to be in a relationship, and completely ignores those who can't have sex at all for medical reasons.

Ultimately, though, I don't think that the availiability of things like Viagra, or a female equivalent, are bad things. SOMETIMES, the inability to orgasm, to experience sexual pleasure, or to maintain an erection is biological; and sometimes Viagra can help even with the non-biological issues because it makes an erection easier even when the person is anxious. So it should still be around, and be availiable.

Best solution for impotence: try with someone you love and respect.

I watched that documentary a few months ago and I found it totally sexist. Basically if men have sexual dysfunction it's a disease and if women have it they should put up with it.

@J-P: "Best solution for impotence: try with someone you love and respect."

I'll refrain from saying anything harsh here -- somewhat easy because it doesn't affect me -- but the people I know who feel most aggrieved about impotence are married to partners who have survived prostate cancer.

Ask them sometime whether a) the medical industry is "medicalizing" their partner's impotence and b) whether their partners need to "try with someone they love and respect."

Actually it would be better if you don't. They already feel bad enough -- why subject them to your ill-considered and zero-empathy opinions?

Meanwhile is there an issue with medicalization of sex? Oh yeah. There's plenty of that. And I think it's a very, very good idea to be wary of the industrial tendency to take a drug or procedure originally developed for people with genuine need and turn it into a mass-market product. But one shouldn't discount legitimate uses. Which, when it comes to sex, is enormously common. Turns out, though, there's more than one form of prudery influencing some of the radically bad ideas in the field. Those who think there should be no intervention because sex is bad, and those who think there should be no intervention because what could possibly go wrong?

Neither kind could be less helpful than the other.

figleaf

Not to mention that gays' and lesbians' sexuality has been medicalized - in an unequivocally negative way - for most of the 20th century. It's only relatively recently that the medical community has declared us to be "normal," and still, society had to wait until the doctors (in this case, mostly psychiatrists) said so. Ridiculous.

So, I've actually met Liz Canner, the director of Orgasm Inc., and I've viewed the film in its entirety. A lot of people seem to think that medicalizing FSD is okay, if it will help women achieve more sexual pleasure. But the problem is largely in defining FSD. Part of the film shows a diagnostic test used to determine if a woman has FSD. Some of the questions are things like, "Did you not want to have sex at some point in the last month?" Or, "Did you fail to reach orgasm in the last month?" And if you answer yes to questions like these, then they diagnose you with FSD, when in reality it could be due to any number of things that are not a biological disorder (e.g. stress, not liking your partner, sexual assault, not enough foreplay, just not being in the mood sometimes during the past month, etc.) I'm sure that some women really do have a biological reason for not orgasming that could be fixed with medication, but a lot of these diagnoses for FSD can be attributed to other things. The film also points out the risks in many of the treatments (such as testosterone or estrogen therapy or inserting machines into your spinal column - ugh), which are not necessary for the majority of women who are "diagnosed" with FSD.

Here's some notes from a discussion with Liz Canner at Dartmouth College: http://femnew.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/orgasm-inc-and-discussion-with-liz-canner/

I also question the definition of orgasm as the defining goal of all sex. There are many times that I or my husband don't achieve orgasm but we certainly enjoy the efforts we make. There are many positions and things we do that feel wonderful and satisfying but don't necessarily bring me to orgasm. So a month could go by where I might not have achieved orgasm as it is traditionally defined but I might have plenty of great sex.

This topic really moves me. I have been sexually disfunctioning as long as I can remember and finally my partner and I have pinponted the problem. I totally agree that socialisation plays a large role in it. In the past I had vaginismus, inoluntary contractiong of kegel muscles causing pain during penetration. For 2 years I had been apart of a large community/forum where women discussed vaginismus and some other problems causing unpleasant intercourse. Self esteem problems, an upbringing or environment that placed sex and masturbation in a negative/repressie light, two medical conditions which coul be fixed with operations, and lack of sexual knowledge were next to sexual assault the only reasons I've read and heard of hundreds of women for having trouble with intercourse. Almost all of us hated ourseles and our bodies for making us 'less worthy', for not giving our partners what they deserved. Mostly pleasing the male during love making is still deeply embedded in this society. Now finally I am breaking this pattern in my personal life, now I know how it CAN be, if there is a focus on me. I'm not talking about to simply giving attention to the clitoris, I'm talking about a mindset, an attitude towards sex. Sorry for the anecdote, just had to link this to this article...

oh sorry, that was me.

There are other forums for that and there actually was an article recently written about it on www.salon.com. I believe that the writer who herself experiences chronic pain during sex (or used to) gives some information about how to treat it.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/12/09/sex_chronic_pain