Reply To: Sex workers and vaginismus

[recessivegenequeen]

Mark, thanks so much for your detailed answers, it’s amazing to hear your perspective and what you’ve learned over the years. I can completely imagine that you can only emotionally handle working with so many patients – I can tell vaginismus is draining for partners of women undergoing treatment, and in a way you’re taking that partner role for MANY people at the same time!

It’s interesting that a huge part of your work is just deprogramming the absolute mountain of assumptions and pressures women bring into the bedroom with them after a lifetime of absorbing these damaging cultural ideas (you must be hairless and have a perfect body to deserve sex, which should be painless, etc.) It’s amazing what you do but also heartbreaking that so many of us need to hear things as simple as “you don’t need to shave your armpits to have a sexual experience.” There’s so much our society needs to do better. I’m glad there are people like there working to fight these stigmas and take all that pressure off. I wish this was a more mainstream practice!