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. How Does Phallocentrism Influence Understandings Of Male And Female Sexual Dysfunction?

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Since there have been dramatic improvement of biotechnology and biomedical inventions in modern history, the medical technological treatment in relation to the issues of sexuality, sexual function, and sexual health have been also developed by various clinical and scientific organisation (Lau, Kim, & Tsui, 2005). According to Wood, Koch, and Mansfield (2006), although the sexual issues have been considered as fundamental, innate, and universal phenomenon for both females and males in biomedical paradigm, the phallocentric cultural frame have influenced the different understanding of the concept of sexuality based on men’s sexuality. Since there has been longer history of research on men’s sexual response and behaviour as the norm of human sexuality, it has been often argued that the current society perceives the understanding of the sexual issues by heavily focusing on men’s sexuality (Irvin, 1990). In this essay, it will be discussed how the sexual dysfunctioning can be perceived differently based on the culturally embedded gender basis. The essay will start from the exploration of the traditional, fundamental, and socio-cultural understanding of human bodies, to the consideration of the phallocentric perception of current biomedical interventions to treat sexual dysfunctioning.

In traditional western culture, there have been different culturally embodied narratives to understand individuals’ bodies, based on the biological differences of different sexes (Potts, 2000). However, although the anatomical differences of reproductive systems initiated the differentiation of human bodies into either male or female, it is actually the phallocentric cultural constructions that create further distinctions by embedding the culturally sexualised conceptualisations to the body (Bray, 2001). According to Grosz (1994), the major body component that critically distinguishes the differences between the sexes into two mutually exclusive categories is...