Women face being quizzed about their sex life at the surgery

This weekend, news broke that GPs, consultants, midwives and health visitors are being urged to quiz women about their sex lives as a matter of routine.  The guidelines, drawn up by organisations including the Royal College of Physicians, British Society of Sexual Medicine and British Fertility Society, encourage specialists to ask women about their sex lives even when the appointment is for something entirely unrelated. 

Their reason for such proposed unnecessary intrusion is because they believe that most women are ‘too embarrassed’ to raise any problems with their GP.  Experts who drew up the guidelines suggest that lack of a good sex life is one of the main reasons that relationships and marriages break down.  They do not mention the fact that many marriages break down due to circumstances outside of an individual’s control, not to mention the many and varied non sexual reasons behind a relationship breakdown, such as stress, financial worries, incompatibility issues and outside interference from family, friends or another love interest.

It is highly inappropriate to expect a doctor to deal with one’s sex life, just as it would be inappropriate and unreasonable to suggest that a counsellor medicate a patient. 

Just as teachers - once expected simply to teach and inform - are now expected to talk to youngsters about ‘safe’ sex, so too, it seems, will doctors soon feel obliged to ask searching questions relating to the sex lives of their patients.  This surely has nothing to do with embarrassment in a society which has encouraged us to talk openly and unreservedly about sex for decades.  Believe me, there is sadly more shame in our society in telling one’s doctor that the reason you haven’t had a smear test at thirty years old is because you’re still a virgin. 

Studies suggest that up to 44 percent of woman suffer some form of ‘sexual dysfunction’, such as not wanting sex or inability to have orgasms, but are these issues really problems at all?  Many women have a low sex drive and aren’t worried about this unless society makes them believe that they are different or abnormal, and that is exactly what the medical profession seek to achieve, for there is more profit to be gained in treating someone as opposed to assuring them that all is OK.

One much quoted study suggests that 43 percent of women have problems with sex, or ‘female sexual dysfunction’ (FSD), as it’s termed.  The question is:  if such a huge amount of women have FSD, it is really a problem or abnormality at all?  Let’s face it, if a man doesn’t like football, should we give him a pill in order to make him fit the mould of what society has come to expect of men?  What of the young person who prefers a stroll in the countryside and baking cakes with grandma as opposed to clubbing and pubbing?  Maybe a pill might encourage her to be more socially inclined?  Such suggestions are of course quite ludicrous, but no more so than the harmful idea that women must fit into a box labelled ‘sexually functional, always available and orgasmic.’ 

Of course, medicalising such ‘conditions’ is not just irresponsible and unnecessary, but potentially harmful too.  Some drugs used to heighten sexual awareness have side effects including dizziness, nausea and a raised risk of heart disease, yet people are being encouraged to take them for a problem which often isn’t a problem at all, or at least, not a medical one. 

In fact, the idea that such a large proportion of women suffer from sexual problems is based on spurious research.  Over a decade ago, a questionnaire was given to 3,000 American women that included a short section at the end about difficulties with sex.  Women were asked if they ever had a lack of interest in sex, anxiety about performance or pain.  Any woman who answered ‘yes’ to just one of those questions was classed as suffering from sexual dysfunction, hence the high percentage.  No consideration was given to whether the problem was temporary or indeed, whether the woman felt distressed or concerned by her lack of interest in sex.  It was simply assumed to be a problem.  Financially of course, it was a convenient problem.

In his new book, journalist Ray Moynihan says that a massive 95 percent of the experts who proposed the medical definition of female sexual dysfunction that’s widely used in promotional literature had financial relationships with the company making the drug to treat it.  

In 2003, a business report from Datamonitor suggested that the market for female sexual dysfunction drugs could soon approach $1 billion per annum.  It is clear to see how and why the industry is so focussed on sexualising women, having already conquered the male Viagra market.  Women make up a huge new pool of potential customers, and many have already been seduced and brainwashed by a society which tells us that not wanting sex is at best unusual and at worst, abnormal.  Encouraging us to talk about our sex lives at the surgery is just the tip of a very cold and calculating iceberg.