“The perfunctory vagina”: exploring the experiential discourses of sexuality and self-regulatory performances to invoke the appearance of ‘well-being’ with Karen, a mental health service user

Smith, L.-A. (2009) “The perfunctory vagina”: exploring the experiential discourses of sexuality and self-regulatory performances to invoke the appearance of ‘well-being’ with Karen, a mental health service user. Paper presented to: British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section (POWS) Annual Conference 2009, Windsor, 15-17 July 2009. (Unpublished)

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Abstract:

“When you’re married well people suppose you want to do it and I don’t and I never have really. It must be like shagging a bag of potatoes really and I can’t even see what he gets out of it”. Here Karen, a 53 year old mental health service user, talks about her emotional and bodily indifference to vaginal penetration in terms of sexual relations with her husband. From a prima facie perspective, we are presented with the dominant cultural discourses of heterosexual marital rights and one woman’s lack of sexual desire, or frigidity. Nevertheless, Karen’s narratives are more complex than this and weave between the self-regulation of outward appearance to avoid the familial ‘gaze’ of certain behaviours imbued within her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and the submissive, ritualised bodily performance of allowing unwanted sexual intercourse to occur. Compliancy within the hegemonic parameters of sexuality and appearance however afford Karen to seek her own ways of achieving sexual satisfaction namely, in her secret acts of self-harming. In this way, her vagina functions as an apparatus to both stabilise her physical and emotional position of well-being as well as mediating her subversive hidden pleasures.

Subjects:

H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women > HQ1101 Women. Feminism > HQ1206 Psychology
H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women > HQ19 Sexual behavior and attitudes. Sexuality

Creators:

Smith, L.-A.

Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:

University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > School of Social Sciences (to 2016)
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Health & Society > Psychology
Faculties > Faculty of Health & Society > Psychology

Date:

June 2009

Date Type:

Publication

Event Title:

British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section (POWS) Annual Conference 2009