Social, Cultural, Psychological And Partnership Facts Associated To Female Sexual Disfunctions

Dr. Gerardo Gimenez Ramirez

Everything learned at school and through culture and society, as well as all that’s passed down through your family on morality, philosophy, ethics and religion is part of what contributes to an individual’s development of their own Normality Criteria. These criteria determine postures and behaviors in all aspects of their lives. It is necessary to remember that, through all this, we are expressing what we think. It is a way to correlate the relation between social and cultural facts with the psychological ones.

This process is performed individually and, as one of the human aspects we involve in socializing is conforming as couples and groups, a very particular and interesting dynamics originates when confronting identical or different criteria.

One of the main parts of human beings is sexual life which is now studied with huge interest due to it’s tremendous scientific importante. Our sexual lives are being focused on from different points of view because of the well-being it supplies to our biology, mind and relationships. Sexual criteria can confront phisiology (normal functioning of the body) and make the individual get into conflict(s).

What was discovered gives evidence of the great influence and capacity of social, cultural, psychological and relationship factors that affect in a positive or negative way people’s sexuality and well-being as well as creates sexual dysfunctions.

Women’s belief in the conception of the right to equity has been marked and conditioned through social modernity though they still carry some of the stigmas which affect woman as an integral person (individually and socially).

As mentioned, there are very close relationships among psychology, society and culture. To differentiate and separate one from another when focusing and treating, is not adequate.

Some of these factors are:

• Moral, philosophical and ethical principles that are mainly inherited from the family (generational transmission), but also from teachers and professors on whom people typically blindly trust considering them “models to imitate” (when idealizing occurs). These principles, independently of the source, are misconceived and/or misunderstood, and perform inadequately on the formation of the normality criteria and when facing female sexual physiology. But, as women belong to groups and all their members share those criteria, they tend to hold them strongly as time goes by and it is difficult to them to understand any situation or information in a different way.
• When talking about school education, sexual information girls get is not enough or well oriented, what makes it ineffective for their psychological, intellectual and sexual maturity.
• Latinamerican society, characterized for being “machista”, determines a passive role, also submissive, of women concerning relationship and sexuality. This makes women tolerate male postures and requirements. The same machista pattern that has affected lots of women, predisposes to those beginning sexual active life, to see themselves on other women (because of the present and an uncertain future), making them fear, nor being expressive of what they think or feel, low self-esteem, and depression. This is also valid for the moment women want to express fully sexually, letting pleasure and desire lead them to be active and do what their bodies want. Men can critize her, even disqualify her, reject her, diminish her, and abandone her.
• The previous aspect has to do with anticipation to failures in women sexual perfomances, making them feel anxious and having less probabilities to get pleasure and enjoy sex.
• The authority men have does not allow him to solve relationship problems pretending they are always right and because of the intrinsic tendency to avoid talking about conflicts to other people, including profesional staff.
• Traumatic sexual experiences in women, during childhood or adult age, with sexual offenders or their partners, cause anxiety and resistance to sexual activities. This is also valid when women get sexual trasmitted infections or suffers an abortion.
• Fear to pregnancy also causes high levels of anguish in women to enjoy sex.
• Religion considers that all sexual practice is a sin if this is not aimed to reproduction. Women are more inclined to religious principles, making them generate revulsion towards sexuality, extreme and persistent aversion, diminishing or repression of sexual impulses, desires or fantasies, anguish and relationship conflicts.
• Love, feeling that is very much important to women, could cause impairments when they perceive themselves “sexually used” by their partners, as men are less affectionate and try to have sexual intercourse since the very beginning of the retionship, if it is the only way they want to feel attached to women, or if men are married and just wish to have extra retionships.
• Getting along very well with their partners is vital to women. This originates from marriage concepts (it has to last all life - till death do them apart - they do not want be labeled as “divorced”, their kids are the most important people for them and mothers do not want to raise them up without a father for avoiding being blamed by kids for that, a divorced woman is always sought just to have sex, etc).
• If they get no satisfaction with sex, women are afraid to express it to their male partners, specially if men do not perform very well in stimulating before coitus or they just want a vagina to penetrate forgetting that all body can become erogenous, or if sexual life is very monotonous. It is very difficult for women to stablish an extra relationship involving just sex or feelings because of their sense of faithfulness due to their own criteria, critics or social punishing.
• Abandonment, loneliness and recent deaths of beloved people guide women to engage in unstable relationships or unusual or unsatisfactory sexual practices.

When discussing Female Sexuality, it is imperative to treat these aspects to make women aware of what can be impaired in her and that they should seek for professional help to resolve everything that affects them, added to the fact to be able to change their point of view about sexuality or to handle properly any sexual dysfunction they can be suffering from.