Humanist approach to erectile dysfunction
While Irvine acknowledges the significant impact the work of Masters and Johnson had on the burgeoning field of sexology, she explains how this impact was soon divided between two camps of sexologists: hlumanist and scientific. Humanist sexologists claimed - as social scientists haq in their critique of Kinsey - that scientific sexologists omitted the capacities Ifor variety in human expression and relationship in their development of methods to regularize human sexual response. Meanwhile, scientific sexologists were quick to criticize the experimental therapeutic techniques inherent in humanist sexology - e - techniques that reflected a commitment to the philosophies of America’s counterculture but were clearly unprofessional from the scientific perspective. What followed was a sort of territory war that is personified at annual conventions of sexologists even today. As Irvine describes it, “The patchwork of programs and lifestyles at sex conferences reflects the dilemma of contemporary sexology: how to consolidate and establish legitimacy as a profession, yet retain diversity and flexibility. “27 This dilemma, Irvine makes clear, was further problematized by the simultaneity of the feminist and gay rights movements of the 1970s. Both movements were loath to accept not only scientific sexology’s bias for gender stereotyping and traditional expectations of tnarriage and family, but also humanist sexology’s tendency to equate “sexual liberation” with “women’s liberation,” as if women’s interests inhered in male - prescribed notions of sexual freedom
So Irvihe leaves us in what seems like an untenable position of endorsing neither a scientific nor a humanist approach to sexology.s? As for erectile dysfunction, question is not whether a scientific approach or a humanist approach is! more effective, but whether or not the erection is a necessity for male sexuall fulfillment. Feminism and the gay rights movements, argues Irvine, “politicized sexuality” (emphasis originalj.s? They challenged “the intellectual I power of sexology to define the normative parameters of sex and gender,”3I ks well as the “principle of consistency,”32 our culture’s prescribed system of norms binding biological sex to gender and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Irvine also reports that sexual science has been, for the most part, :”impermeable” to important aspects of feminist and gay theory. Sexology remains a science of expertise with sexologists clinging to both a “myth of dbjectivity” and an agenda they perceive as apolitical. The maledominated !field continues to “valorize” heterosexuality and marriage at the expense oflmarginalized sexualities and relationships. And finally, sexology remains essentialist, with a “more sex the better” ideology apparent at multiple levels of the field’s discourse.
Nonetheless, feminism’s entrance into sexology has helped raise important questi6ns about power, gender roles, marriage, and the family. “By formulating a political analysis of sex, gender, and marriage,” writes Irvine, “the feminist anti gay movements underscored the hollowness of solutions based on technique.” Irvine identifies the research of Shere Hite as an indispensable investigation into the meanings attributed to specific aspects of sex. Whereas other quantitative research denies a political slant, Hite’s work exposes the social pressures and power structures that dictate conformity. Specifically, The Hite
Report un+ils the cultural adherence to the “goals” of vaginal orgasm and male sexual socialization. These goals are, of course, interrelated. Judith Butler writes, “[M]asculine and feminine are … accomplishments, ones that emerge in tandem with the achievement of heterosexuality. “34 For heterosexual American boys, the loss of virginity - narrowly defined as vaginal penetration - is a defining moment iIi the accomplishment of masculinity. This particular masculinity, however, isl something that - through the life course - must be continuously accomplished in different ways. It is in this sense) I believe) that masculine sexuality is lendured. From the Latin indurare, “endurance” connotes perseverance. The Latin term has its etymological roots in the Sanskrit word daru, meaning “wood”.
