So it was speaking with my mum on personal intimate relationships that occur between consenting adults, that one aspect of our discussion kinda distilled for me the possible reasons for this – the act of having and not having sex is still taboo, and there are still so many cultural tropes around the fixed binary of gender that spill into sex and desire.

Further, that there is not a unitary and homogenous way to understand and discuss sex in which human beings engage and their associated desire/s (across the spectrum of gender and desire, along with the plethora of sex acts [and I don't just mean PiV!]).

So there are aspects of sex and desire that are public and private/ scholarly and medical (as in diagnotic for an individual)/ formal and informal/ and whole host of other ways in which sex and desire are discussed; a range of acts and types of desire, and it’s no wonder as annajcook says that there exists “so much moral judgement and personal blame into talk about sex”.

I do agree that having dialogue, and safe place to discuss these issues is important, especially where the discussion involves all participants practicing symmetry and good faith. I’ve seen some fantastic discussions on some pretty heavy issues on harpyness that do just that, so I’m hoping that these issues continue to be discussed. Thanks @annajcook for opening the floor.

In terms of sexual disfunction – given the difficulties with speaking about sex in multiple contexts (public and private etcc), there is no wonder the difficulties that exist with trying to find out what is going on especially where as K___ says “the disruption is strong enough to be considered a problem in and of itself by the individual”.

Actually, I’m much more used to seeing feminist perspectives which do exactly the opposite – perspectives on sex and especially sexual dysfunction that focus on external causes for sexual distress. External causes being stuff like, the sexual double-standards that encourage men to enjoy sex but discourage women to do the same (while ignoring people who do not fall somewhere on a gender binary,) and looking at poor lovers as a cause of sexual unhappiness, because they’re just that bad. Which feminists do I mean when I say this is the perspective I’m more used to? I’ve seen commenters on sex articles at Jezebel blame poor lovers and I’ve read a lot of Dr. Leonore Tiefer’s work on the social construction model of sex.

So from where I’m standing as someone with sexual dysfunction, it’s actually more unusual for me to see feminists look at bodily problems as the cause of sexual problems.
Which kind of sucks for me, seeing as that’s exactly the kind of sexual problem I have. Pain, I notice, tends to get glossed over whenever sexual problems are discussed. I still don’t know 100% why that is but I have a few ideas.

But what that means for me is that, I can’t find the outside explaination for my sexual problem. It’s not a problem of differential desire, though, at least not right now. It *was,* when I first noticed the problem, since pain crashed my libido.
(And even then I think the feminist critique would have been something like, “Well maybe your desire wouldn’t have crashed if we weren’t living in an intercourse-centric society. That way you would not have felt pressure to perform sexually and could enjoy stuff besides intercourse.” Well except for the fact that the pain I have makes it so that I wasn’t able to enjoy some forms of sex besides intercourse – I still have trouble masturbating solo with a dildo, for example, even when that is my desire. And the extension of this outside of sex means to this day I can’t wear tampons.)
I still find myself asking, well, if we’re supposed to look outside of ourselves for the cause of sexual problems – then where’s mine? Who do I turn to? Who can I blame for the chronic inflammation in my vulva? Who or what did this to me?

Nobody. It keeps coming back around to no one. There is no explaination. Or else there are multiple explainations and I can’t possibly pinpoint them all down. For me, it really *is* personal – there was something going on inside of my body that changed my very cells. To this day I doubt culture at large has the power to do that.
So, I stopped looking for an explaination.

So as a result of this, I’m more open to looking at changes in the body as causes of sexual distress or problems, because that’s what happened with me. And I don’t like upholding pain as somehow different from all other sexual problems, so it’s easy for me to imagine how frustrating it can be for some folks with sexual problems to be told (over and over again, even when seeking help) that there is no physical explaination for any other sex problem. I’m even willing to look towards physical changes as a possible cause for low desire in some cases.

At the same time though, I know that social forces can likewise impact sexual pleasure and problems. And also I know that not every sexual variation is a problem in the first place. I think low sex drive is probably the most commonly discussed sexual ‘problem’ in feminist circles, and yeah a lot of the time it’s not actually a problem in the first place – it’s just the way you are, so you don’t gotta do nothin’. The trick is then figuring out for each person who is feeling some kind of disruption in their sex life, whether that disruption is coming from social pressure (People who look down on you for not desiring and/or loving sex) or if the the disruption is strong enough to be considered a problem in and of itself by the individual. And even you do consider it a problem, then what exactly are you supposed to *do* about it?

As for your response to my second point…I’m still having a hard time articulating what exactly I found so interesting about that connection and my response to it. Re: #1 – yes, it is sad, I agree. Re: #2 – I don’t necessarily think she’s making a “just get over it” point. It’s more that, I can see how *other* people might get that impression from reading that post through the lenses of their own experiences. Just as I snorted “good for her that she can enjoy food and still be acceptable,” I can see others similarly snorting “good for her that she is in a relationship/position/wev where she can enjoy sex.” Doesn’t mean these responses are “right” (whatever that means), I recognize that both my own and these other responses are coming from an overly-personal interpretation. It just means I can see where they’re coming from, fwiw.

To say “it’s sad that you, specifically, don’t experience sexual desire” would be judgmental and wrong, unless the “you” in the sentence also feels that way about it. However, the statement “it’s sad that so many women have been pushed into experiencing less sexual desire than they otherwise would” seems incontrovertible.

Is sex a “fundamental” pleasure? I don’t know – maybe it’s safest just to say that it is a fundamental pleasure for most people.

Sex is a very personal thing so it is hard to remove that aspect of it. At no time in my life would I have ever considered sex a “fundamental, great pleasure” and Jill kind of presents it as if it should be that way for everybody and if it isn’t that’s sad.

1) Okay, so she’s in a position of privilege by being able to observe from a relatively outside perspective that it’s sad that people can’t enjoy food, and “pity” is a charged term. I’m with you there. But the thing is — isn’t it sad? Isn’t that sort of the point? It’s sad that our culture robs many of us of the ability to enjoy things like food and sex? I understand that she might have come off as condescending but I think it’s valid to say “I feel sadness that people have to deal with this in their lives”. Maybe I’m missing something?

2) That said, I don’t see anywhere where Jill said or implied that it’s easy to ignore social pressure and just enjoy things. I read her much more as saying that she observes that some people can’t, that this is a problem, and that we should determine the causes so they can be fixed or at least ameliorated. I honestly didn’t see any “just get over it” implications at all. I agree with you, however, that that seems to be the reaction that many of the commenters had (as if she had said that it’s easy). I’m not sure exactly where that’s coming from but, again, maybe I’m missing something?

I just want to say that, IMHO, there’s a world of difference between talking out of personal experience, and acknowledging it as such, and “taking this personally” … that is, experiencing someone else’s perspective as a judgment aimed at you or people you identify with.

Sometimes (often! in the case of sex) folks ARE totally judging you, which is why I get that we tend to feel defensive about our subjective experience when it comes to sex. Too often — WAY too often — we’re told that whatever our experience is is wrong or defective. Who we’re attracted to, what we like to do in bed, how we like to do it … all of those things get dragged out and critiqued politically, culturally, religiously, etc.

So it really isn’t that much of a mystery that we end up taking those arrows and stabbing ourselves. I think what I’m trying to figure out is how to change the conversation so that we can discuss the sexual narratives of our culture without folks feeling that they’re defective if they don’t match up with X or Y.

Anyway … long, rambling response here — but mostly I wanted to say, @viajera, that I don’t think you’re out of line here to speak from personal experience. It’s really only by sharing personal experience that we learn the variety of sexuality that’s out there.

As an obese woman who has fought my weight my entire life, I couldn’t help but catch myself snorting at the privilege she displays in saying she pities people who don’t enjoy food. Lucky her, that she gets to both enjoy food and maintain an acceptable body size. It’s taken me over 20 years to get to the point where I can enjoy food, and only after I realized I can’t obtain the acceptable body size even *when* I dramatically restrict food, so what the hay?

These are my internal, gut reactions, and I certainly recognize them for what they are and know better. I’m explaining them here only because I imagine a certain dynamic is playing out amongst some (many?) of the women responding to her sex comments. Women are constantly judged for being too sexual or not sexual enough, just as they’re constantly judged for eating too much or too little. I think it’s natural for women under such constant pressure to scoff at someone telling them it’s oh-so-easy to just ignore the intense societal pressure.

Don’t know that I have a bigger point here…just found it interesting.

Ok, I’m totally being the epitome of the person this post is talking about, taking this personally – but really, I can only talk about my own personal experience when it comes to sex. I have a couple female friends I talk about sex with, but even so, I wouldn’t presume to speak for their experience.

Baraqiel makes an important distinction between losing interest in partner sex and masturbation. But, IME (n=1), it’s a package deal – when I lose interest in sex with my partner due to emotional and relationship issues, I lose interest in sex *period*. Not even masturbation interests me. Maybe it’s because the relationship issues sends me into depression (something I struggle with), and the depression then weakens my libido – it would be hard to disentangle these. But I’ve seen this happen multiple times now: relationship starts falling apart, I lose all interest in sex *or* masturbation, relationship finally ends, interest in masturbation slowly starts coming back, then I meet someone else and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am it’s all back.