Home › View content

Female orgasmic ability associated with gait

Fri, 09/05/2008 - 01:31 - NLN

A new study found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks.
The study is published in the September 2008 issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, the official journal of the International Society for Sexual Medicine and the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health.

Led by Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland in collaboration with colleagues in Belgium, the study involved 16 female Belgian university students. Subjects completed a questionnaire on their sexual behavior and were then videotaped from a distance while walking in a public place. The videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology, who were not aware of the women's orgasmic history.

The results showed that the appropriately trained sexologists were able to correctly infer vaginal orgasm through watching the way the women walked over 80 percent of the time. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women. "This could reflect the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine," the authors note.

There are several plausible explanations for the results shown by this study. One possibility is that a woman's anatomical features may predispose her to greater or lesser tendency to experience vaginal orgasm. According to Brody, "Blocked pelvic muscles, which might be associated with psychosexual impairments, could both impair vaginal orgasmic response and gait." In addition, vaginally orgasmic women may feel more confident about their sexuality, which might be reflected in their gait. "Such confidence might also be related to the relationship(s) that a woman has had, given the finding that specifically penile-vaginal orgasm is associated with indices of better relationship quality," the authors state. Research has linked vaginal orgasm to better mental health.

The study provides some support for assumptions of a link between muscle blocks and sexual function, according to the authors. They conclude that it may lend credibility to the idea of incorporating training in movement, breathing and muscle patterns into the treatment of sexual dysfunction.

"Women with orgasmic dysfunction should be treated in a multi-disciplinary manner" says Irwin Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine."Although small, this study highlights the potential for multiple therapies such as expressive arts therapy incorporating movement and physical therapy focusing on the pelvic floor."

Wiley-Blackwell


Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

Comments

Fri, 09/05/2008 - 05:08 — quantum_flux

- 0 -

Given the subjective nature of the experiment, and the fact that all of the evidence is clearly biased, I hereby call bullshit on this piece of crap! This is not credible scientific research at all, even if the conclusion is somehow correct which it most likely is not.

Fri, 09/05/2008 - 14:15 — CindyB

Evidence

That may very well be the case, but you have not provided any evidence to support your contrary point of view.

Sat, 09/06/2008 - 00:03 — quantum_flux

Re: Evidence

(1) Girls generally lie about their sexual experiences on surveys
(2) Sexology sounds more like a made up religion than it does a made up profession.
(3) They only studied 16 Belgian University students, hardly a representative sample....I'll bet the "sexologists" even picked them out for this "research study".
(4) I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps the sexologists "played" with their data a little bit too, if you know what I mean

....etc, this sounds more like a sort of clever marketing ploy than a valid experiment.

Sat, 09/06/2008 - 02:07 — CindyB

More about evidence

I'm sure you're a nice person and I don't wish to offend you, but much of what you call evidence is mere speculation. I do not profess to agree or disagree with the article in question. Even apart from the subject matter and whether or not the study was valid, I think we can all help to "raise the bar" regarding what evidence actually is, and how it is presented. If I may use your statements as examples:

(1) Girls generally lie about their sexual experiences on surveys.

I am a woman, and I have taken many surveys in my life--some of them of a sexual nature. Are you speaking for me as well? You have provided no verifiable statistics to support your claim that women generally lie on such surveys; you have simply made a blanket, sweeping, unsupported statement about a specific class of human beings.

(2) Sexology sounds more like a made up religion than it does a made up profession.

The fact that the study reminds you of a made up religion more than it does a profession is interesting--but this reveals more about you and your beliefs than the study itself. Your statement does nothing to further your argument that the study is bogus.

(3) They only studied 16 Belgian University students, hardly a representative sample....I'll bet the "sexologists" even picked them out for this "research study."

You make a good point in stating that the study relies on only 16 subjects. More research is warranted if the study is to be taken more seriously. Still, the article stops short of drawing any broader conclusions for the general population, and ends with the following statement: "Although small, this study highlights the potential for multiple therapies such as expressive arts therapy incorporating movement and physical therapy focusing on the pelvic floor."

I remind you that we have no way of knowing whether the sexologists "picked out" the subjects before hand. Speculating that they did serves no purpose--unless you can produce evidence to support you claim.

(4) I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps the sexologists "played" with their data a little bit too, if you know what I mean.

Again, this is speculation on your part, and does nothing to promote your thesis.

Sat, 09/06/2008 - 05:56 — quantum_flux

re:re:evidence

(1) Surveys do not amount to scientific evidence, especially when there are only 16 participants, and especially when those 16 participants all go to the same University which means an insufficient and unrepresentative sample was taken.

(2) Then, there were only two teams consisting of a "trained sexologist" and a "research assistant" that judged videos of the 16 different women walking. Sexology is, at best, a controversial profession, but has widely been criticized for its lack of objectivity, meaning I'm not alone to critique it as such.

(3) Given the nature of the experiment, this is no more scientific in terms of scientific controls (walking in public places) than say having only 2 judges at the olympic sports judging gymnastics. How the judges in sexology didn't rely on other extranious data (say, perhaps the girl wore permiscuous clothes or whether they wore high heels or had belly rings, etc) is merely on the honor system which is by no means a controlled experiment. Furthermore, there is no assurence of double blindness or of any other quality control (did the girls take the survey before or after being filmed? Did they know beforehand that the filming of them had anything to do with sex which could have affected the way they were walking?).

(4) In my opinion, there is every reason to believe this test is corrupt just like the tests that say other bizzare things such as "cigarette smoke does not cause cancer". (How do I know these tests weren't funded by a party with a vested interest, when that seems suspiciously like the case being published in the "The Journal of Sexual Medicine" which has a disclaimer on the cover of every issue saying that the contents within are the opinions of the authors?)

(5) Anyway, it is a scientific obligation to have skepticism as a default when you see such poor quality testing measures being taken. Sexologists don't get off the hook of peer review easier just because it is sexual behavior that they are studying.

Syndicate content