Historical conceptions of female sexuality

Representations of female sexuality date back to prehistoric times; there is clear evidence of the depiction of female fecundity in ancient Venus figurines. Fertility goddesses are common in many ancient cultures, and in many cultures are also the gods of sex, marriage, and love.

In the ancient civilizations of India, Japan, and China, the subject of female sexuality found expression in several writings and commentaries. For example, much of the Kama Sutra, an ancient treatise on sex and sexuality, deals with female sexuality.

Historically, female sexuality has been seen in many male-dominated cultures as subordinate to male sexuality, and as something to be controlled by society by restrictions on female behaviour.

Traditional cultural practices such as enforced modesty and chastity have historically tended to place restrictions principally on women, without imposing similar restrictions on men. Some controversial traditional cultural practices such as female genital cutting have been described as attempts at removing women's sexuality altogether. Other cultural practices such as honor killings threaten uncontrolled female sexual behaviour with death, often by the hands of the woman's own relatives.

Even in the twentieth century, many people did not believe that respectable women should enjoy sex; rather, it was said that they should "lie back and think of England".

Nevertheless, many studies have shown that women's actual sexual behaviour throughout history appears, like that of men, not to have been controlled to anywhere near the degree desired by society.

Modern studies of female sexuality

In the modern age, psychologists and physiologists engaged in the formidable task of exploring female sexuality. Sigmund Freud propounded the theory of two kinds of female orgasms, "the vaginal kind, and its kid sister, the clitoral orgasm." Though, studies (1960s) by Masters and Johnson reject this distinction ^*. Further studies have revealed the existence of uterine orgasms , so there remains some debate.

Other medical ideas from the nineteenth century have also fallen into disrepute; the concepts of disorders of female sexuality such as hysteria and nymphomania have disappeared from modern medical thought, to be replaced by a variety of clinical conditions that are no longer gender-specific.

The female sexual appetite is also the subject of many researches and tests.

Feminist concepts

The feminist movement, and the increasing social status of women in modern society, have led to women's sexuality as being reassessed as a subject in its own right.

During the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the sexual revolution, numerous feminist writers started to address the question of female sexuality from their own female perspective, rather than allowing female sexuality to be defined in terms of largely male studies. The first such popular non-fiction book was Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden, and other writers such as Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir and Camille Paglia were particularly influential in this, although their views were far from being uniform.

Lesbianism and female bisexuality also emerged as topics that could at last be talked about in public. A short-lived movement towards political lesbianism within the feminist movement led to temporary schisms within the feminist movement between heterosexual and (real or self-avowed) lesbian women, then rapidly floundered in the face of the acceptance that most women's sexuality was not defined by politics, but by their own sexual preferences. Most modern feminist movements now accept all forms of female sexuality as equally valid.

Feminist attitudes to female sexuality have taken two, superficially opposing, directions. The first is that female sexuality should be accepted and women should be free to have sex when they like, with who they like. The other is that women should be empowered to refuse to have sex when they want to, or to have their sexuality respected in society. A minority view within radical feminism states that even if it appears that women consent, heterosexual sex is inherently nonconsensual and women cannot ever be said to truly consent to it, because their decision is forged by the expectations and influences of growing up in a predominantly male-oriented society.

This has led, for example, to different groups of feminists simultaneously embracing and opposing pornography as sexually liberating and sexually oppressive respectively, both in the name of women's empowerment over their own sexuality.

See also

• Human male sexuality
• Human sexuality
• Femininity
• Feminism

References

Popular Literature

• Maggie Wittlin, "Girls Gone Wild...For Monkeys", Seed Magazine" (10/14/2005)

Human sexuality | Women

Sexualität der Frau | Sexualité_féminine