“A Woman Should Still Be a Woman” – A Grounded Theory of the Origins of Sexual Pain and Difficulties with Intercourse

Abstract

The origin of women’s sexual pain and difficulties with intercourse is still under-researched. The aim of this study was to examine women’s constructions of origins. Twenty-eight participants previously diagnosed with vaginismus or dyspareunia were recruited via patient lists and private practices. Interviews had a semi-structured biographic-narrative format; transcripts were analyzed using Grounded Theory. Participants’ narratives were constructed based on two major processes: Negotiating Womanhood and Othering the Body. They were integrated in an explanatory model. Identified processes permeated women’s subjective experience and construction of the origin of their sexual difficulties, and were related to societal discourses and women’s embodied experience.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all women who participated in our study for sharing their personal stories and experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The dataset involves data from former patients of the Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Medicine, and Forensic Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, and is therefore not available for public access.

Notes

1 Such rates need to be to be interpreted with caution, as studies lack comparability for example with regard to the examined time window or in the assessment of distress, and mostly do not reflect diagnoses.

2 The term circlusion is adopted due to the heteronormative and misrepresentational implications of ‘penetration’ in this context, as suggested by Bini Adamczak (2016) (for a version in English language see Lewis (2016)). It refers to the active intake or surrounding of an inanimate object or body part by someone/something (“pushing something – a ring or a tube – onto something else – a nipple or a shaft”).

3 Original quotes were translated into English by the first author. To preserve the character of participants’ direct speech and their train of thoughts, translations were kept as literal and close to the original as possible. Quotes may therefore display disruptions in grammar or fluency of speech.

Transcript explanations: (.): short pause <1 sec.; (x): x sec. pause; ((y)): non-verbal expressions; @z@: laughingly spoken; °why° : quietly spoken; bec-: incomplete word; well:: : stretching of sound; […]: editing.