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Dear Leo,
What age do women start not liking sex as much? Me and my wife both are 32 years old and I have researched and found out that 32 year
olds still have sex at least 3 times a week. She is starting to act like an old woman. I often have to masturbate because I like to have sex
at least once a day, even if its 3 minutes. Sometimes I think she is cheating.
Biblitz replies:
Hardcover
William Blake (1757-1827)
The Question Answer'd
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
(Beside Salvador Dali's black and white photo-collage, The
Phenomenon of Ecstasy, pgs. 70-71)
By Barry Worsfold, Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University
The right chemistry in our body is almost certain to improve our sexual function. Changes in these chemical levels have a direct impact on
effective sexual relationships as we age. I believe the brain is our key sexual organ. It is brain chemistry that drives our sexuality
and all the organs associated with that. Neurochemicals are powerful agents of attraction: we have PEA, which speeds up information flow and
visual stimulation: dopamine, the fee-good neurochemical; norepinephrine, which stimulates adrenaline and helps us feel euphoric; and myriad
neural pathways that drive these chemicals to different parts of the body. When we begin to feel love, the endorphins take over and produce
feelings of intimacy. The longer the relationship, the stronger the endorphin reactions.
Endorphins, let loose at orgasm, can instill a sense of well-being. Another 'love' chemical, oxytocin, is a peptide that makes
people feel calmer and more sensitive to each other. It works in two phases: first by arousal and secondly by calming. The earlobes,
lips and nose are especially sensitive to this chemical reaction adn to touch. Testosterone acts as a sexual stimulant for both sexes,
governing erectile function in men and working in synergy with estrogen in women. Balanced testosterone levels are critical for both men
and women, as low levels can mean apathy and disinterest in sexual activity. (-- p. 94)
By Daniel Bergner
More than by any other sexual problem - the elusiveness of orgasm, say, or pain during sex - women feel plagued by low desire. The problems
often overlap, but above all the others that can thwart an erotic life, the remoteness of lust is what impels women to seek treatment. And as
(Lori) Brotto (a scientist at the British Columbia Center for Sexual Medicine in Vancouver, B.C.) discusses the disorder, she is not talking
about something physical. She regularly wires the genitals of her patients to a photoplethysmograph to measure whether the women respond
with surges of vaginal blood flow while they watch a pornographic video. Almost always, they do.
Brotto is dealing in the domain of the mind, or in the mind's relationship to the body, not in a problem with the body itself. Beneath
Klimt's couple, she opened yellow case folders and described the desolation and bewilderment recorded in her notes. She spoke about a woman
in her 40s who, years ago, had sex with her husband as often as seven times in a day but who now, more than a decade into a marriage with
this still-handsome man, cringes at the very same gesture, the very same touch to her back, that once electrified her. Two or three months
might go by now without their having sex. "It's fine for me not to have sex at all," Brotto quoted the wife, and commented, "I hear that
from a lot of women." And yet, at the same time, the lack of libido isn't fine at all. "What exactly is turning me off?" Brotto read the
wife's plaintive question.
... As she considers her cases, as she carries out related research and pores over the studies of other sexologists and as she molds
criteria for the next D.S.M., Brotto is careful to keep in mind that not all women who feel erotically uncharged are desperate to change.
Some may not be dismayed in the least. As is so often true in the poorly financed realm of sex research, relevant surveys are scarce, and
statistics can't be cited with much confidence. But judging by what figures exist, Brotto says, between 7 and 15 percent of all young and
middle-aged women - an age range that researchers generally set between the neighborhoods of 20 and 60 - feel distressed over the absence
of desire. Next to nothing is known, she adds, about a host of basic questions, like whether most women with the condition have been
affected from the start of their sexual lives or became afflicted during the course of adulthood. She estimates that the hundreds of
cases she has seen are divided about equally between the two categories but laments that there are no studies to supply a solid answer.
Little is established, either, about why women may be somewhat more likely to become devoid of desire as they get deeper into middle age -
and even this tendency itself is far from proven and is contradicted by some data. In any event, Brotto points out, while menopausal
women generally lubricate less, their genitals still respond to with rushings of blood when they sit in front of erotic videos.
Brotto speaks, as well, about how varied the experiences of her patients with low desire can be, and about the "enormous
heterogeneity" of women's sexuality in general and thus the extreme difficulty of establishing meaningful norms or outlining
dysfunctions. The current D.S.M.'s criteria for hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or H.S.D.D., criteria that apply for both women and
men, are nothing if not terse: "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity." That
is basically it. And Brotto talks about the sense, among an array of sexologists and therapists, including herself, that this language
fails to reckon with women's complex sexual beings - that the criteria are much too simple and maybe much too male.
a magazine of suppurating poetry edited by F.A. Nettelbeck and published whenever there is some money on the table - hopefully quarterly by The Horseheard Nebula Press, mailing address: 15930 Kings Creek Rd., Boulder Creek, Calif. 95006 - 75 cents a copy, $2.50 per year's subscription, (be a patron for $50.00, fucker!) ...
8.) Does your cock still get as hard as you would like it to?
Nobody's cock gets as hard as they would like it to. But, being 51 this August 16th, I can't complain. I still go 2 pieces a day
sometimes, maybe 4 pieces in 3 days, then a couple of days off. Of course, there are dry periods when I don't have a girl friend or don't
look for one. I don't search women out. If they don't come to my door then it doesn't happen. A writer, of course, should have experience
with women. There's much pain involved with me as I am sentimental and get quiite attached. I am not much of a lady's man and unless I get
some help from the lady, not much happens. I'm not married now, have one child, 6. I've been lucky to have 4 long term relationships with
4 unusual women. They all treated me better than I deserved and they were very good on the love bed. Should I stop loving, fucking right
now I believe I have been far more fortunate than most men. The gods have been good, the love has been fine, and the pain, the pain has
arrived in boxcar loads. (-- p. 58)
Quite often, in Biblitz's vast experience, interest in physical love in both genders is directly proportional to the size of the mascot in the family closet, that whuffling oughing plumpster of woman hate that often belies the primary relationship: He leaves another mess knowing she'll clean it up. He makes more money so she is automatically elected to stay home with the sick child. He has work to do from the office/for a hobby and can't be disturbed. She is passed over again for promotion by an inferior male colleague she helped train. He won't wear the expensive hearing aid he requires, forcing her to shout or refrain from conversation altogether. He snores all the long, weary night, keeping her awake yet knowing this, he refuses to do anything about it. Tut-tut - very bad for both men and women. Loutishness continues; female turtle dove, inured and wishing to keep the peace, forgives. She forgives. But she does not forget. How could she? When she tries, Life only regales her with six more of the best from the old lead pipe! Embrace, forsooth! When either partner is affected by lack of desire, the only way back, alas, is talk, laughter and love, love, love.
Hardcover
Edited by Michael S. Kimmel
... No matter how subterranean the pornographic market, it is intrinsically tied to that market.
It is not simply the case that pornography
is first produced for some other purpose, like an erotic work of art designed to express some aesthetic/erotic impulse, and then put on the
market. Rather, pornography is produced for the market. ... Anti-pornography campaigns should be conceptualized not as attempts at
literary censorship, but as consumer boycotts for product safety. ...
... It is an open question to what extent, if any, completely personal erotic experience remains a possibility in today's
commercialized society, or whether the ingression of mass media into the human psyche has become so pervasive that all sexual experience
has become to some extent pornographized, i.e. stamped by commercial imagery. ...
Commercialized sex requires dependably replicable standards of beauty. Hence, personal idiosyncratic tastes must be obliterated and
sexual desire forced into a single mold, with minor variations whose function is to obscure the fundamentally monolithic nature of the
image. If taste were left free to develop, one would expect a great deal of variety in the objects of desire, if indeed in a truly free
society there would even be anything approaching what we today think of as "standards" of beauty. Perhaps individuals in such a society
would be free to appreciate the natural beauty of all. In any case, the ease with which consensus is reached today on what makes someone
"attractive" reveals the degree of coercive manipulation imposed on all of our sexual desires. The supposed freedom all men then enjoy to
participate in joint evaluations and grading of women's bodies, whether in pornographic literature, in the streets, or in organized beauty
pageants, is in reality a sign of how completely men have internalized the standards of the commercial industries that dominate them. The
same system that sells women's bodies also uses them to sell some men's products to other men, and requires the same standardization and
levelling of differences for both purposes. A freedom that amounts simply to discretionary application of the standards used by others to
control one's own desires is a freedom hardly worth the name. ...
... Reducing the diversity of desire and the humanity of the object of desire tends to correspondingly reduce the intensity of desire.
As one analyst of the effects of pornography on men puts it:
By limiting sexuality through its standardization, sex becomes greatly narrowed and ultimately boring. By reducing sensuality
to genital orgasm, porn contracts a large, varied and hard-to-control human need into a small, quick, controlled jerk-off. By unlimited
exposure of breasts and cunts detached from real people, over-saturation eventually reduces to near-nothing the porn consumers' capacities
to be genuinely stimulated by human beings. ... (From Eros Thanatized: Pornography and Male Sexuality by Harry Brod, pgs. 191-
194)
By Georgie Binks
You'd think it would be less problematic for women who are menopausal or post-menopausal and have experienced a lessening of their libido. But
sexual or not, these women have learned that one of the worst things a woman can say to a man experiencing erectile dysfunction is,
"It doesn't matter if we have sex." A woman may not actually care, or she may be trying to make her partner feel better, but hearing
that may make a man feel as though the last 30 years of sex meant nothing.
Unfortunately, though, women aren't given much advice as to what they should say. Men are often told simply to "try Viagra" - or worse,
given no information. Their partners complain they're invisible in the process. ... "A lot of women feel doctors ignore these issues. ...
The doctors need to be educated about that part of the treatment. If people knew where to go or how to get the
information, there would be fewer problems." ...
... "It doesn't mean the end of sex, but it means men lose spontaneous erections, which is common in middle-aged men, anyway. Men
can restore erectile function - it's just not spontaneous." ...
Sometimes oral medications, such as Viagra or Cialis, are successful. ... If oral medications don't work, there are other options,
including injections, pumps and implants. ... says (Laurence) Klotz (a urological oncologist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences
Centre). "They have needle phobia. However, men who've tried it are enthusiastic about it. It's just a matter of getting over that natural
apprehension of putting a needle in the side of the penis, but it's a tiny needle and not painful at all."
Men who are treating prostate cancer with hormone therapy (which is used in more advanced cases) are at risk for
depression. Klotz
explains, "With hormone therapy, which blocks the production of testosterone, a man who has looked at women all his life with obssessive
longing might as well be looking at a chair or table now. Testosterone gives men their fire and ambition, their psychological energy and
force, and that diminishes. Without it, men are more prone to depression, and often undergo some personality changes, which can take a toll
on a relationship. ...
... advises Barbara Alterowitz (co-author of the book, right, who was 40 when her husband was diagnosed), stop concentrating on the erection. "If you don't have the
crutch of the erection, you have to really focus on each other, the touching and giving pleasure part, and asking what gives you pleasure.
If you are focusing only on the erection, you lose everything else. We don't feel we can have sex only if Ralph has an erection, because
there are so many different ways to give each other pleasure. It's a real discovery process - almost like meeting a new person. As well,
men can also have an orgasm without an erection - they're called dry orgasms." (-- pgs. 134-136)
