Why sex as we know it doesn't matter | Dr Bella Ellwood-Clayton | TEDxSouthBank

[Music] let's pretend we're at a dinner party we've introduced ourselves small talked for a little while and then inevitably the topic of work comes up my job well here it comes I'm a sexual anthropologist now imagine the look imagine the other moms at the fundraising dinner or my husband's colleagues at the Christmas barbecue or get-together I have to explain what it is I do quickly before people get the wrong idea so I study the ways that sex and sexuality are shaped by culture because humans have this knack of thinking that the norms of our own society are absolute but they're not they change and that's why I'm here today to tell you as a sexual anthropologist that sex doesn't matter let me explain the more we question our assumptions and look at sexuality across cultures and across time periods what we see is that the range is truly astonishing for instance take the Zen eni's then about the east coast of Africa and I find their culture very fascinating in Vanna the sensuality of women is celebrated and seasonal of festival festivities women wear small clay amulet necklaces of the only body part designed purely for pleasure the clitoris it's a lovely design and hammam Minami is a common greeting which translates roughly to I celebrate your beauty for in Zanna women old and young alike feel beautiful as her virginity it's not lost but consecrated when a young Zen and woman feels it just feels right to her her mother throws her a party her friends come over a grandmother maybe will come or great ends and then they drink a little alcohol look a little bit of Radhika and make their way down to the men that wear men's services are for sale once there they choose a man to pleasure the young woman and afterwards that that she goes on to have as many lovers as she pleases and it looked upon as an omen of great prosperity wait a minute the woman at the dinner party says to me it's not true of course it isn't don't you think it's kind of a cool example of how gender and culture shape our sexual practices so my mythological XANA is actually to absolute reverse of my PhD research it all started with my friend Erica she was my best friend in high school and she came from Chile she told me in her home culture it was common for men to have their first sexual experience at a brothel I found that really earth-shattering how it that affect our future and how they felt about women and their sexuality I later learned it's common in many Latino cultures and is considered normal so herein lies a truth about human sexuality we are sexually ethnocentric meaning the sexual norms of our own society are often considered standard or the ideal without critical reflection what this can cause is unrealistic expectations and sexual ank's that need not exist so my friends casual comment it went on to have quite a big impact on me I studied anthropology and read about the sexuality of women in the Middle East the Polynesian islands and in my native Canada it appeared that everything from puberty rites dating homosexuality polygamy divorce it's all enacted differently depending on where you grow up sociologist William Simon and John Gagnon have a name for these lessons or sexual lessons we have in our culture they're called sexual scripts I'll ask you to remember that and it's true that much of our behavior is guided by scripts whether we know it or not did you take look at the classic first date I don't suspect you arrange your meeting on tinder show up at the cafe sit down order lattes and then start fondling each other's genitals under the table might that come at the end of the date or the end of session of dates we are guided by these things whether we know it or not I think I might move on from that image I did my PhD research in the Philippines and one of the things I looked at was virginity and I found a giant double standard such as in the West here's another sexual truth about human culture it seems throughout much of history what men can do women usually cannot we've had a lot of stigma and this script we're having a hell of a hard time getting rid of despite filipinas modernity urbanization high levels of Technology premarital sex is still considered a giant no no you are just glad a disgrace it's the best gift you can give your husband now although many men in the Philippines have their first sexual experience with a girlfriend or wife many to have it with a commercial sex worker it's perceived as a rite of passage from adolescence to manhood and the woman's body is given as a gift CD seen this sort of theme we're talking about here a woman's virgin body is given as a gift to her new husband a woman's contaminated body is given as a gift to the sexual novice so what for men it's like Christmas every day ironically from my research I found that if young Filipinas saved their virginity for their husband is often quite likely he'll be unfaithful unlikely she'll bring it up and have discussions about it and unlikely they'll discuss safe sex this leaves wives at risk of transmitted sexual infections and of course heartache it also reminds me of that Japanese practice when women are packing their husband's suitcases prior to going away on a business trip do you know what they often throw in there an extra pack of condoms pretty considerate a have fun while you're away love my point is far from being natural our ideas about sex and sexuality shift across cultures and time periods and therefore they don't need to be taken so seriously and we don't need to feel bad if our sexuality does to match the current cultures ideals to me I find this quite liberating as a sexual practitioner helping people with their sexuality and as a member of society myself who's not immune to such messages if these are script can't we to some extent rewrite them the scripts I would like to debunk could have to do with female sexual dysfunction and female sexual desire we heart my notes in a paper that the sexual behavior that we engage in is judged against the specific culture we are in whereas a hundred years ago a sensuous and sexually interested woman was regarded as mentally disturbed nowadays a lack of sexual interest as judges requiring treatment it's a clinical symptom oh the pendulum swings and we have seen culture and religion shifting as defining focuses on human sexuality two other major players taking over their job the media met a medical and scientific world and of course pharmaceutical companies but we'll get to that let's move on and talk a little bit about our sex drive by this I mean our desire for sexual union and pleasure fantasies seeking sexual activity things like that do you know what women's number one sexual concern is lack of sexual interest in many top researchers have shown that once women are in an established relationship they no longer feel spontaneous desire and initiate sex so what's the reason for this well for both men and women desire dissipates during the duration of a relationship during the duration of a life and in the crossover of becoming parents just another way children cramp our style anthropologist Helen Fisher has looked at limerence when were first and love and our sex drives are typically higher and serotonin and dopamine are zipping about unfortunately over time we developed a chemical tolerance to the person that were in a relationship with meaning they just don't ignite that same chemical reaction kind of sad that passion and familiarity don't mix but imagine our productivity otherwise of everybody was in love constantly poetry rather than foreign policies quickies in the backseat rather than carpooling now women specifically often don't feel like sex because they don't feel sexy another topic for another day but what they do feel alongside is guilt but they should be desiring more there's this pervasive message that to be in a healthy relationship you should be having lots of sex trading on our hyper sext public space with films and the media and popular culture and in many cases are quite muted private sexualized the societal message is strong it says not only should women look desirable and actively desire while steering a career and raising glossy articulate children in our eco homes or organic dinner tables and for those who fall short they're deemed not just inferior but dysfunctional do you know what the commonly cited definition of a sexless marriage is one in which a couple has sex ten times a year or less now I can understand a teenage boy coming up with this definition really but world-weary adults who've been around the romantic block come on if a long-term couple are having sex about once a month I think they're doing wonderfully we should congratulate them for keeping their sexual spark alive and by the way who has the right to deem how often we should be having sex it's up to us it's up to us individually and out to us between ourselves and our partner now I'm going to talk about female sexual dysfunction we're basing our knowledge of female sexual dysfunction from the dsm-5 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders an idiot there's a dysfunction that greatly concerns me this is the female sexual interest and arousal disorder no as you can see from this using it as a template the couple came into my practice and they've been you know together for eight years and had two children and over the last six months she's been feeling too stressed because she wasn't that interested in sex wasn't having too many fantasies and was knocking her partner back all the time well according to the dsm-5 she has a sexual dysfunction according to me she's perfectly normal so how could something so commonplace be pathologized into a disease some say it's the result of high profile high profile sex researchers being in bed with pharmaceutical companies and it's certainly true that many of the papers and the projects about sexuality are being funded by pharmaceutical companies inflated rates of female dysfunction create the need for treatment enter Big Pharma so drug companies are in a race trying to create a pink viagra a global sex drug for women these drugs come in different forms patches pills braids and creams they work by targeting different parts of our body our blood flow our hormones or our brain chemistry and though they're not quite yet on sale at a pharmacy near you they're not far off the reason they're not quite on sale is because the FDA the Food and Drug Administration haven't considered them quite effective enough or quite safe enough I'm worried about a drug like this being roped into a discussion about female sexual inadequacy or dysfunction because I've seen each time a potential new sex blockbuster drug goes to the FDA that the pharmaceutical parent of that drug unleashing a global campaign to market the so-called disease and what do women themselves say when what's causing their sexual problems do they think it's a complex medical condition no usually they boil it down to relationship problems or the natural declining of libido in most relationships I'll finish off here by saying that women sexuality is still mysterious we don't know what constitutes female sexual dysfunction we don't know what female sexual response looks like and we can't agree if women have a definitive sexual peak therefore it is unrealistic to expect us to have a similar sex drive it's crucial for us to question the scripts that we are given and to question who defines normal and abnormal sexy or sexless and since sex as we know it doesn't matter there's nothing to prevent us from writing our own scripts since there's never been a society we're all women from socioeconomic different socio-economic groups have been encouraged to explore their sensuality without censure we do not know what female sex sexuality truly is free range who knows given us given time to experiment maybe one day XANA will exist Anton's Anna it will not matter how much sex a woman has she could have as much as she likes or as little as she likes the new script should be that it up to us to decide and that really does matter you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

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Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 02 2015