It's not often that we go to conferences where sessions open with the line "let's talk about sex", but that's precisely what happened when Anneliese Schwenkhagen was introduced to the stage at DLD Women in Munich. Schwenkhagen is a doctor who focuses on hormonal imbalances in women, and she outlined the differences between the male and female approach to sex.

She started by highlighting the fact that in the 1800s, medical professionals believed that menstruation and sexuality had a deleterious effect on the intellect of women. Conditions such as hysteria, nymphomania and moral insanity were thought to be the result of inappropriate reading or even playing music. The physiological cause of these conditions was the clitoris, and masturbation.

An 1886 book by gynaecologist Isaac Baker Brown suggested that a clitoridectomy (*winces*) was the cure for diseases including epilepsy, catalepsy, depression, insanity and hysteria. He described one such operation where the "patient made a good recovery. She remained quite well and became in every respect a good wife". Her "illness" had been her desire to obtain a divorce under the new divorce act.

French neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot also believed that mental disease in women resulted from the excitation of female genitalia. "These were the really dark ages of sexual medicine," said Schwenkhagen.

Modern sexual medicine, on the other hand, focuses on how female sexuality "works". Masters and Johnson introduced the first model of female sexual function in 1966, which followed the path: arousal, plateau, orgasm, resolution. Later, "sexual desire" was introduced at the start of the process.

However, Schwenkhagen questioned whether sexual desire was the driving force behind sexual activity in women -- at least after the honeymoon period. Studies have shown that women in general have sex out of a desire to express love, to feel emotionally closer to their partner, to please their partner, increase wellbeing, feel attractive and reduce feelings of anxiety of guilt about sexual infrequency. Desire comes only after the initiation of sex, at least according to Basson's intimacy-based model.

She went onto explain that women can easily lose this desire if they lose focus. "They might be engaged in sexual activity but then start thinking "it's hot and the room needs to be painted'. They then lose the desire."

"Men and women are not alike," she explained. Sexual stimulus goes really fast in a man's brain, taking the "quick and dirty" pathway through the thalamus. Meanwhile a woman's pathway relies heavily on both the thalamus and hippocampus, which is both hormone- and context-dependent.

The evolutionary reason for this is the imbalanced investment that the different sexes make. For a man it's about losing sperm, but for a woman it could lead to pregnancy.

"Men are like bicycles -- you just hop on and get off. Women are like aeroplanes -- there's a long checklist of things before any flight. If there's one red light, the plane is not going to take off." 

Image: Shutterstock


  1. Awesome now I look at my bike differently and start saving for a plane trip!  

    Guru pa
    Jul 12th 2012

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