Is sex more like dancing or digestion?

Leonore Tiefer, PhD is a clinical psychologist in the Psychiatry Department at the NYU School of Medicine. She is author, educator, researcher, therapist and activist in sexology and has keynoted conferences around the world. In 2000 Dr. Tiefer initiated the Campaign for a New View of Women's Sexual Problems  to challenge the new medicalization and Big Pharma trends.
She is the author of Sex Is Not a Natural Act (2nd edition, Westview, 2004) and other works.

This presentation will examine the ongoing tension between competing models of sexuality including a “dancing” (cultural diversity) model and a “digestion” (medicalization) model. The current dominance of a function-based model of sexual desire, conduct and experience that emphasizes the centrality of orgasm results from many converging social, political, economic, demographic and intellectual trends. Initially attractive because it seemed to promise gender equality, physical pleasure, and freedom from taboo, the biological function model has become its own source of oppression and insecurity and led to an overuse of surgeries and medications to "treat" so-called sexual dysfunctions. How do commercial and political forces affect our personal sexual lives and values? How have they hijacked academic and clinical work? How can we construct a model of sexuality that will support humanistic goals?