ABSTRACT
The anatomic, somatic, and psychological differences that exist between men and women have largely been responsible for the striking sociocultural gender disparities-and discriminations-that have endured over centuries and into the present day throughout the majority of the world’s civilizations. Even in the field of modern sexual research, this deep-seated dichotomy has generated some major consequences. First, in the medical sciences, a traditionally male-dominated perspective has influenced the development of interpretative models of sexual function based on a basic male frame. This resulted in the essential “overgenitalization” of dysfunctional states and the consequent design of disappointing classification systems, with their associated diagnostic and therapeutic approaches (1-3). Second, because women tend to enjoy greater representation in the humanistic sciences such as psychology and psychosexology, the sum product of these particular occupational gender biases has resulted in the misconception that while the mechanisms of sexual function are biologically determined in men, they are chiefly driven by psychology in women (4). The deleterious perspectives of “medicine without soul” and “psychology without body” only serve to deprive each gender of a more comprehensive understanding of the continuous interactions between biology, psychology, and context-dependent factors (5-7).
