Sexual Medicine in India Needs Sex-Ed

India's medical community is beginning to address the paradox that while their ancestors produced the Kama Sutra, sexuality and sexual medicine have been in the dark ages for quite some time, according to the India Times.

Experts, who came together at an ongoing conference of the Asia Pacific Society for Sexual Medicine on Sunday, pointed out that this was one area in which the country's medical sector clearly lagged behind.

"If people still believe in sexual myths related to penis size, masturbation and virginity, doctors are as much to blame as quacks. There just aren't enough qualified sexologists in the country," said KEM Hospital's head of sexual medicine department Prakash Kothari. The civic-run hospital is the only one in the country to have a full-fledged department in sexual medicine. And incidentally, there is no separate discipline of sexual medicine taught in any Indian medical college.

While I'm all for greater openness and understanding around sex, I cringed to read this quote:

...sexual dysfunction is a common problem — an ongoing study, for instance, has found that one out of every ten Indian women suffer from early orgasm response (a condition wherein females reach orgasm during foreplay).

It reminds me of the old joke that men don't suffer from premature ejaculation, women do. But it also makes me sad. Does sex really have a timetable? Are we going to try to fit our lovemaking into some chart or graph provided to us by our doctors or the Department of Homeland Sexuality?

First, define "foreplay." If "foreplay" is everything before a penis goes in a vagina, then only straight couples do it, and it cuts time spent "actually having sex" down to about five minutes if the first 20+ don't count.

Second, do you have to stop altogether if you have an orgasm? Hell no. If you're too sensitive for a moment you might have to back off on direct touching for a bit, but why not enjoy the orgasm and then keep going? You might have more, you might not, your partner might get there or might not, but so what? You'll have other chances to make love again, most likely, and it would be boring if every single time was the same as the time before.

I worry that in our zeal to turn sex into something with a right way and a wrong way, or a standard way and a dysfunctional way, so we can prescribe drugs to fix it, we're losing sight of the most important concept: there's no high score, there's no clock, there's no referree – and there are fewer "dysfunctions" than advertisements would have you believe.