Fear and desire pain and pleasure. There’s more to the study of female sexuality than documenting partners and practices.

With the rise of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections in the general population researchers have been searching urgently for clues about everyday sexuality and sexual behaviour in hopes of finding some key to preventing these diseases. The international women’s health movement and ICPD also stoked interest in women’s sexuality and in gender research. But much of the current inquiries seem limited to understanding issues of sexual partners and practices—who does what with whom where when and how often. These approaches generally leave out what could be a more useful understanding— the question of why. Ironically much of the early research on sexuality—from Freud to Kinsey to Foucault—focused on motivation probing the complex relationships among sexuality and social cultural and psychological life. They spoke mainly in terms of sexual desire and pleasure. These are all dimensions of sexuality that are largely missing in the current reproductive health literature. (excerpt)