Is sexual arousal merely the art of observing a change in the body? Studies have shown that there is a difference between men and women when it comes to feeling sexual arousal. For men, genital response corresponds with their feelings of arousal. Women on the other hand, can have a genital response without feeling aroused.
In their essay ‘How Do Men and Women Feel?’ sexologists Erick Janssen and Ellen Laan investigate this gender difference and argue that for women, sexual arousal is not just a matter of genital response: “Sexual stimuli evoke mostly sexual emotions in men, but a host of other
nonsexual meanings, both positive and negative, in women.” (Laan & Janssen, 2007: p. 285). This would mean that for women, on top of bodily changes, social and situational factors are important to be able to feel sexually aroused. Factors that might influence their feelings are for example, whether a situation is safe or not, or whether the sexual situation takes place in a relationship or in a casual one-night-stand. As Janssen and Laan state: “more conditions need to be met before women experience bodily sensations as pleasurable and exciting.” (Ibid.: p. 287).
The way we experience the body is influenced by societal and cultural influences. I do not think it is a coincidence that women need certain environmental conditions to be met before they can experience their body as pleasurable. As we know, women are sexual gatekeepers, which means they have been taught to control not only their own but also male sexual desire. On top of that, women have to deal with sexual objectification on a daily basis, and in many cases also with sexual harassment and sexual violence. Taking this all into account, it does not sound very surprising that women associate many different emotions to genital changes than just sexual arousal.
In this chapter, I will argue that women have been cut off from their sexual feelings because their sexuality has been forced into the domain of immanence, which results in an alienated relation to their bodies. In the previous chapter, Beauvoir showed us how women's sexuality is perceived as immanent through social rules and regulations. She observed that women in sexual settings are ashamed, objectified, passive and inhibited. Through Merleau-Ponty's theory of the lived body, I will argue that the way women position and experience their bodies in sexual situations, can also be characterized by immanence.
I will do this by investigating feminine sexual behavior that is correlated to sexual
dysfunction, which can be defined as having difficulties to feel sexual arousal or pleasure. In this thesis, I have mainly focused on difficulties reaching a climax. However, we need to be careful with
the term dysfunction. Women that have difficulty reaching a climax, often state that they feel pressured to orgasm and that when they do not succeed, they feel like something must be wrong with them (Potts, 2000: p. 57), which definitely does not help their ability to orgasm. We need to make sure that we do not worsen the problem by pressuring women to have orgasms. Science and philosophy have a responsibility to be aware of the impact their research has, and whether the reason for studying a certain phenomenon is neutral to begin with. Possibly, our focus on the orgasm stems from patriarchal influences as well. I will discuss this more elaborately in the
conclusion. We first need to discuss a final question: why focus on sexual dysfunction specifically, and not all sorts of other sexual behavior that is not related to dysfunction? First of all, to limit the extent of this investigation. But more importantly: in the next chapter, we will converge our findings to investigate the orgasm gap, which as stated above is correlated to sexual dysfunction.
This phenomenology on feminine sexuality will most definitely not be exhaustive.
In investigating sexual dysfunction, I noticed three important themes in women's sexual experience: firstly, women take up a third-person perspective on their own bodies when having sex.
This phenomenon is called “spectatoring”. Secondly, women have a passive role in sexuality: they have a limited range of actions that they can perform, and they often end up waiting until someone comes towards them. And lastly, they tend to put on a show which incorporates the male gaze. In all these cases they have a strong sense of bodily self-reference. I will start with dissecting these three themes. I will then go into the phenomenological implications, and the way this relates to Merleau-Ponty's concept of the sexual schema and his explication of transcendence.
Before we begin, I want to emphasize that the way Merleau-Ponty described the sexual schema and transcendence, should not be read in a normative manner. For example, when one states that women's sexual schema does not fit into Merleau-Ponty's (masculine) description, one runs the risk of stating that the masculine version is the way it should be. I merely want to show how these sexual schema's relate. I do state on the other hand, that the feminine sexual schema is an oppressed or deprived version compared to the masculine one, but by no means do I argue that women's sexuality should become more like that of men.
SPECTATORING
“I don’t like being on top cause then it’s just, kind of, you’re there jiggling.” (Weaver & Byers, 2018:
p. 73)
This is a quote from one of the participants in a study that examined women's perception of their
bodies during partnered sex with a man. Most women in this study, which consisted of 16 participants, described having negative thoughts about their body image during sexual intimacy, which had a negative impact on their sexual experience.8 These were thoughts like: “Oh my God!
What do I look like?”, “Oh my God, my pudge is rolling over on the side”, and: “Are my stomach rolls, are they present, is he able to see them?”. Several women reported preferring sexual intimacy in the dark, meaning they literally try to hide their bodies. Moreover, several women reported preferring and disliking certain sexual positions. Most commonly disliked position was “being on top”, because of the feeling of being on display (Ibid.: p. 69-73).
In a much larger study consisting of 232 college student women, approximately one third of the participants reported feeling self-conscious about their body image during sexual activities with a man (Wiederman, 2000: p. 66). To test women's body image self-consciousness, Michael
Wiederman created the Body Image Self-Consciousness Scale (or BISC Scale, for short). A higher score on this scale is associated with sexual anxiety and lower sexual self-esteem. The statements on this scale are indicative of the kind of thoughts women have. Let us look at a few examples of these statements: “While having sex I am (would be) concerned that my hips and thighs would flatten out and appear larger than they actually are”, “If a partner were to put a hand on my buttocks I would think, “My partner can feel my fat””, and: “During sex, I (would) prefer to be on the bottom so that my stomach appears flat” (Ibid.: p. 68). We see very similar statements formulated in the Body Exposure during Sexual Activity Questionnaire (or BESAQ, for short), which assesses the level of anxiety about the body during sex. One statement I want to highlight from this
questionnaire is: “During sexual activity, I am concerned that my partner may lose his excitement from the sensation he will get from touching parts of my body” (Cash, 2007).
The process of viewing yourself through a third-person perspective during sexual activities, is called “spectatoring”. When spectatoring, you do not experience your body as an actor, but as an observer. Instead of experiencing how the body feels from the inside, you focus on how the body looks on the outside (Curtin, 2011: p. 51). Spectatoring does not limit itself to viewing oneself through other's eyes; we have seen in the BESAQ that some people try to take up the other person's perspective on how their body feels to the touch. When a man puts a hand on a woman's thigh, for example, the woman might not focus on whether the sensation on their thigh feels nice to her or whether it excites her. When specatoring, she tries to imagine what that touch feels like for the other person. She then positions and manipulates her body in such a way that it (in her mind) feels and looks best for the other person. She might turn off the lights or hide under the sheets, she prefers to
8 It is important to note that almost all of the women reported that they could still enjoy sex, despite the negative thoughts.
lie down to make her stomach look as flat as possible, or she makes sure the man cannot touch her hips because she is worried about how big they feel.
Although weight in general, the waist, thighs and hips are the most common worries for women during sexual activity (Cash, 2007), every woman9 will have her unique set of concerns and therefore a unique way of manipulating and positioning the body. For example, the size of the breasts might influence how you experience being on top. A woman with relatively bigger breasts might make sure she sits up as straight as possible, because when bending over, gravity will pull at them and the breasts will start to hang. Having relatively smaller breasts might invite a different response, although the result might end up being similar: because the beauty standard generally prefer women with bigger breasts, she might feel uncomfortable when being on top, because her breasts will be more on display.10
TO BECOME PREY
Sexuality entails much more than what we typically consider as the act of sex. A sexual fantasy can be about a kiss, a touch, an unfulfilled longing: things we do not consider as part of the act of sex, but are very much erotic nonetheless. And eroticism is more than just a feeling in our sexual organs.
The entire body can become an erogenous zone: a hand in a neck, sucking on a finger or scratching someones back can sometimes be a lot more pleasant than the thrusting of a penis. Luce Irigaray writes: “[...] woman has sex organs more or less everywhere” ([1977] 2000: p. 63).11 In this paragraph, I will not focus on what we consider the “sexual act”. I will look at the things that happen before or around it. For example, undressing, a first kiss or moaning. I will do so by looking at gendered sexual scripts.
According to social scripting theory, there are two separate, normative sexual scripts that women and men have internalized. As Michael Wiederman has stated in his essay on gendered sexual scripts, these scripts are a form of guidance that give us rules on how to behave. It offers predictability. He does nuance that every individual constructs his or her own sexual script based on
9 Of course, every man will have his unique set of concerns as well. I do not state that only women have body image issues during sexual situations, or that only women spectator. But I do argue that women have a stronger
internalization of body image concerns than men, leading to sexual dysfunction. A study done by Thomas Cash showed that both men and women with an anxious body image reported lower sexual enjoyment. However, this correlation was stronger for women than it was for men. It also showed that the concerns are gender specific:
women are more focused on their thighs, hips, waist, buttocks and weight in general, and men are more focused on muscularity, waist, chest, scalp hair and also weight in general (Cash, 2007).
10 This is a matter of speculation. More research is needed to know if the size of the breasts really impact the way women position themselves during sex. But, needless to say, a different body invites a different response to sexuality and the manipulation of the body. And we have clearly seen that women internalize a spectator-view on their bodies during sex. It also goes without saying that the breasts are immensely sexualized, and therefore it is probable that the breasts influence the way women position and experience their bodies.
11 I do not think that this only upholds for women, men can have sex organs over their entire body as well.
personal and cultural differences. And I want to stress that there are plenty of women and men that have broken free from these rules. But generally speaking, we can differentiate between a male and a female script, and both are still very active in our modern “emancipated” society. And
unfortunately, it really is a matter of “breaking free” from those prescriptive rules. Moreover, there will often still be aspects of these scripts that are in some way visible in everybody's lives.
So what do these two scripts entail, and how do they influence bodily experience? We have already seen in the previous chapter, that women are sexually more restricted than men. They have less opportunities to express their sexual desire or to be sexually assertive, and they are put in the role of sexual gatekeeper: they have the responsibility of holding off sex, because they run the risk of getting pregnant, their social reputation is on the line, and they have a higher risk of getting their feelings hurt (because, as Wiederman shows, the feminine sexual script promotes sex as part of a relationship, whereas the masculine promotes sex as a purely physical pleasure-driven act
(Wiederman, 2005: p. 498)). This complements the masculine role, which is that of the assertive aggressor. The masculine role is more assertive and promotes exploration, and the feminine role is more focused on restraint and passivity (Ibid.: p. 497).
We see this passivity when we look at a description of a specific set of actions that heterosexual men and women perform during sex:
“First there is kissing, then tongue kissing, then touching of the breasts through the clothes (perhaps here a break in sequence), touching of the breasts under the clothing or the genitals through the skirt or outside the underwear,” (Gagnon & Simon, 1973: p. 75-76)12
We see that touching the breasts is part of the heterosexual script, as well as touching the genitals through the skirt. A big part of the sexual script therefore, is touching the woman, and less so the other way around.13 The woman is being touched, and the man touches. The woman is therefore less in control of what happens sexually: the man is supposed to “take” and the woman is supposed to give or undergo.
As seen in the previous chapter, it is not much appreciated when the woman takes certain actions, like asking someone on a date or taking initiative for the first kiss. So what if the woman wants to kiss a man? Personally, I want to promote that the woman should ask the man if she can
12 This is a text from 1973, but more recent studies have shown that the passive role of the woman and the active role of the man expressed in this script, is still very common nowadays. For example Wiederman 2005 and Kiefer &
Sanchez 2007.
13 Admittedly, a man can wear a skirt and a man can have breasts. I think in this case however, it is safe to presume that it is the woman who wears the skirt, considering it is a very heteronormative script. Having sex with a man that has breasts or a man wearing a skirt probably comes with a different sexual script.
kiss him. Unfortunately, our sexual script still does not promote this freedom for women as much as for men, and therefore many women are uncomfortable doing this (and many men would feel emasculated if this were to happen14). So what can she do? Her activity often comes from a position of passivity. She can give signs to the man that she wants to be kissed, possibly by giving him a certain look, or maybe by putting her hand on a table inviting him to touch it.
One should tread lightly here, and therefore I want to add: the situation in which a woman's hand on a table can be seen as an invitation for a man to touch her, is not a flirting dynamic that I promote. First of all, body language can easily be misinterpreted: a hand lying on a table, can just be a hand lying on a table. On top of that, with men being the active aggressors, we have gotten into a situation where plenty of men feel they can touch and grab a woman whenever they want,
blatantly ignoring her boundaries, and interpreting every hand or knee that is in his reach as an invitation to touch her. One could also say that in many situations the problem is not so much about interpreting a visible knee as an invitation for touching, but seeing a woman as property; that he is entitled to touch a woman, whether she wants it or not. On the other hand, we should also not exaggerate the gravity of a situation like a woman giving signs to the other person: looking at each other, maybe softly touching each others arm, are all part of the flirting process, done by both men and women. It is common way to let someone know that you are interested. Where it becomes problematic is the situation in which a woman's range of activity stops at giving signs, in order for the man to take action. I am reminded of the way women in the 19th century had to signal their interest in a man using handkerchiefs. Drawing the handkerchief across the lips, for example, meant wanting an acquaintance with the person you are talking to (Journal of the Telegraph, 1869: p. 45).
“The handkerchief, among lovers, is used in a different manner than its legitimate purpose. […] in
“flirtations” it becomes a very useful instrument” (Shafer, 1877: p. 231). Because women were unable to express their sexual or romantic desires openly and because they were unable to take initiative, they had to give a sign to the man. We do not need handkerchiefs anymore, but our gender scripts still force us to use similar techniques.
Let us get back to the situation at hand: the woman signals with a look that she is interested so that the man can take action. She needs to be patient, wait, and make sure she is looking as pretty as possible. In other words: the woman manipulates her own body or positions it in a certain way (put a hand on a table, flutter her eyelashes); she then waits for the man to come towards her. The way in which women can be active, if they follow these scripts, is to become prey.
We see a similar dynamic when it comes to undressing. As seen in the previous paragraph,
14 To those men I say: get over yourself.
women often have a strong feeling of being on display. One of the reasons that they have this feeling, is simply because they are. Social scripting theory tells us that women's role in sexuality is linked to being visually attractive, as opposed to the role of the man which is more focused on his sexual skill or performance (Wiederman, 2005: p. 499). A woman's sexuality is much more self-referred: she is supposed to be a seductress, giving the man the possibility to take an active role. Let us look at the act of undressing: whereas undressing is mainly a necessity for a man, for a woman it can be part of seduction. She can reveal her body and/or her lingerie, giving the man the
opportunity to gaze at her. This is of course not necessarily a bad thing. Presenting oneself in a sexy way, does not only lead to feeling worried about one's looks; it can also lead to feeling sexy and enjoying that feeling while having sex. Notice that even when enjoying this process, it is still a way of experiencing oneself from a third-person perspective. The woman manipulates her body in the most visually appealing way, and then waits until other people come toward her. Her active range is limited to her own body, and not extended (as much as for men) towards the world around her.
PUTTING ON A SHOW
Finally, women's sexuality within the heterosexual sexual script is very reactionary. As stated above, a man's notion of being a good sexual partner is connected to his performance, for example, his ability to maintain an erection and his ability to “please the woman” with penile penetration.
Besides being visually attractive, a woman's perception of being a desirable sexual partner is mostly connected to responding erotically to the man's performance (and in a lesser degree her sexual skill as a lover, for example her ability to perform oral sex). The woman being sexually responsive is a way to show the man that he is doing a good job, turning her sexuality into a form of emotional labor (Ibid.: p. 499).
It has been theorized that the way women show arousal and sexual pleasure, is influenced by movies, magazines, pornography, and other media (Frith, 2013: 505). For example, a porn movie shows a woman very loudly reacting to male thrusting. If she is on top, she might curve her back as much as possible, putting her hands in her hair, showing off her breasts, moaning loudly. What is often a key element of these scenes, is that the man is doing a certain activity and the woman is enjoying it, showing her arousal as much as possible. Interestingly, the way women show their arousal in these scenes, is very much guided by the male gaze. Or is it a coincidence that female arousal goes hand in hand with making sure the breasts look as perky as possible? This would mean that the way women show sexual arousal is not only influenced by the media and pornography, but therefore also strongly influenced by the male gaze.
It has also been argued that women turn their arousal into a “spectacular and noisy