Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/34233
Author(s): Quintão, A. M. P.
Editor: Carmen-Pilar Martí Ballester
Date: 2024
Title: The vulva dialogues: The sexual-bodily experience of cisgender women
Volume: 7
Book title/volume: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Gender Research
Pages: 458 - 465
Event title: 7th International Conference on Gender Research, ICGR 2024
Reference: Quintão, A. M. P. (2024). The vulva dialogues: The sexual-bodily experience of cisgender women. In C.-P. Martí Ballester (Ed.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Gender Research (pp. 458-465). Academic Conferences and Publishing International. https://doi.org/10.34190/icgr.7.1.2010
ISSN: 2516-2810
ISBN: 978-1-914587-99-3
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): 10.34190/icgr.7.1.2010
Keywords: Clitoris
Female sexual-bodily experience
Female sexual pleasure
Medicalization of female sexuality
Vagina
vulva
Abstract: Sexuality is an essential part of our lives. Despite being personal, it is deeply impacted by our culture and social scripts. Thus, the sexual-bodily experience of the cisgender woman relates to her life experiences through her body. Nonetheless, the female body is often subjected to prejudice, stigma, and misconceptions, driving women into genital alienation. There is plenty of misinformation on the vulva and the clitoris, even within the scientific community, which not only contributes to many women’s unawareness of their own bodies, but also puts their health at risk in the hands of poorly trained surgeons. Furthermore, the sexual-bodily experience of the cisgender woman is commonly observed from a phallocentric perspective, which tends to override and neglect her agency. My research seeks to analyse the most relevant aspects of the sexual-bodily experience of Portuguese cisgender women who date mostly men, focusing on their relationship with their vulva, their clitoris, and their sexual pleasure. I also want to identify the role of medicine and health professionals in that relationship, within the Western medicine perspective of the female body. The fieldwork is being carried out by qualitative methods, divided into three parts: 1) a minimum of 15 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with health professionals (gynaecologists, gynaecological surgeons, and sex therapists) working in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA); 2) a minimum of 15 in-depth interviews via the Biographic-Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) with Portuguese cisgender women residing in the LMA who date mostly men; and 3) a review of how female genitalia are portrayed in anatomy books used in Portugal’s top medical schools. Therefore, I aim to understand how centuries of control over the female body and decades of medicalization of female sexuality have impacted the corporeality and sexuality of Portuguese cisgender women, to contribute to an in-depth debate on such matters in Sociology.
Peerreviewed: yes
Access type: Open Access
Appears in Collections:CIES-CRI - Comunicações a conferências internacionais

Files in This Item:
File SizeFormat 
conferenceObject_104116.pdf546 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


FacebookTwitterDeliciousLinkedInDiggGoogle BookmarksMySpaceOrkut
Formato BibTex mendeley Endnote Logotipo do DeGóis Logotipo do Orcid 

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.