Reviews for Sex life

The average rating for Sex life based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-24 00:00:00 Steven Pearlston Sex is not an natural act and other essays is a compilation of feminist sexologist Lenore Tiefer's writings. Starting out studying hormones and mating behaviors in hamsters, Dr. Tiefer later re-specialized in clinical psychology, and was at one time seeing erectile dysfunction patients and their sexual partners at the urology department at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Thus, she speaks from a unique vantage point, clearly, passionately, and articulately. According to her website, her career shift was prompted by "the call of feminist politics and the world of sexology for people" which also motivates her critique of the medicalization of sexuality. Instead of an essential, natural biological reductionistic model (i.e., men are from mars, women are from venus, and this is the way it has always and will always be everywhere), her approach is based social constructionism, and her toolkit includes deconstructionism, à la Michel Foucault. While her arguments about how Masters and Johnson's biases influence their findings on the human sexual response cycle, which carried over into the DSM's classification of sexual dysfunction, is based on solid ground, I found other strands of her work dated and incomplete. Her critique of "impotence" is not as relevant as "erectile dysfunction (ED)" has become more popular. The treatment options for ED have broadened and improved beyond her quoted statistics. While it is always important to be reminded to treat the entire patient, especially when sexuality is concerned, referring to the "imperialism of urologists" seems going a bit too far. Everywhere around her she sees everyone else as biased individual actors in service of their own ends acting in bad faith'sexologists seeking more scientific methodology in order to gain more prestige in the academic hierarchy, urologists and pharmceutical/medical device companies cornering a lucrative market, the media and society in general suppressing female sexuality'but fails to point out that her own position and its adherents similarly privilege one set of ideas over another, and doesn't truly attempt to flesh out her vision. Nonetheless, I think Tiefer superbly fulfilled the deconstructionist's agitator role in this thought-provoking work.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-02-11 00:00:00 Rickey Davis Fantastic! Tiefer is as formidable a feminist theorist as she is a psychologist, plus funny to boot. This is a fascinating book exploring how sexuality is socially constructed in contemporary American culture and how medicalization and the pharmaceutical industry are doggedly at work to erase the contexts that make sexuality as complicated and nuanced as it really is. This would be an easy and accessible read even if you have no background in sex research or feminist theory, but incredibly insightful nonetheless. Tiefer is who I want to be when I grow up, combined with Sue Johanson from "Talk Sex." I wish I could make everyone read this book.