Urologist Rachel Rubin noted that when she attended medical school, there were 27 fields of specialization in men’s sexual health but only one dealing with female sexual health. This meant that women experiencing sexual difficulties literally had nowhere to go in the medical field.
Why was women’s sexual health so thoroughly neglected? [A recent] PBS segment offers two possible explanations. The first is that physicians and scientists looked upon women primarily as baby-producing machines. The other is that female sexual pleasure was perceived as shameful.
In some societies, it was, and is, perceived as such a problem that female genital mutilation was used to reduce sexual pleasure, thereby minimizing marital infidelity.
The intricate functional characteristics of the clitoris imply that these were produced by natural selection to improve sexual, or reproductive function. If so, then they cannot be merely a developmental side effect of penis development.
What is the function? When we hear it is only for pleasure, this often implies that it is otherwise unimportant. This conclusion is contradicted by research on pair bonding in other species.
