Franziska could easily do without sex. She suffers from sexual arousal disorder — she hardly ever feels sexual desire. Her marriage has suffered. Because a relationship without sex cannot function — can it?
Image: Colourbox/Syda Productions/L. Dolgachov
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When Franziska senses that her husband wants sex with her, her body cramps. "Should I allow it or not?" she asks herself. A few times, a situation like that has even turned into a full-blown panic attack.
"Sex is the absolutely worst problem in our relationship," says Franziska. The 37-year-old psychologist has been with her husband for 20 years. The couple has two children and a big problem: He likes to have a lot of sex, but her desire is almost zero.
This is an extreme burden for the relationship. "I'm under constant pressure," says Franziska. If her husband wants to have sex with her, she does him the favor, but at the same time constantly violates her own limits. Sometimes, she also says no. "That's not an intuitive decision, but a rational one. Depending on how long it's been since the last time." If it's been too long, she feels that sex is her duty. Sex — for Franziska and her husband, it means above all distress and quarrels.
People who are affected by it have no or few sexual fantasies. They rarely, or never, react to erotic stimulation with sexual desire.
As a psychologist, Franziska became aware that her lack of desire and her reaction to certain ways of being touched could point to traumatic experiences in her past. However, she cannot remember anything. The therapies she has undergone have not been able to shed any light on the cause, either.
Franziska feels inadequate, as if she were not a real woman. She cannot give the man she loves what he wants, even though the couple has tried everything from sex toys and porn to medical drugs. Franziska had her hormone balance checked. Everything was fine.
From a modern day perspective, sex toys such as vibrators only serve one purpose: to bring enjoyment. However that was not always the case. In fact, vibrators were invented to exert men's control over female sexuality.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/P. Grimm
All natural: the world's first dildos
From unripe bananas to dried camel dung coated in resin - people in ancient Greece and Egypt turned out to be creative in finding sexual aids. Alternative materials used to carve dildos included stone, leather or wood. The world's first (discovered) dildo was found in Germany and dates back 28,000 years. The 20 cm long stone object was not only used as a sex toy, but also to ignite fire.
Image: Phallus von der Hohle Fels/J. Lipták/Universität Tübingen
Open wide for delight
The term dildo came up about 1400 AD, and comes from the Latin word "dilatare", which means "to open wide" and the Italian word "diletto", meaning "delight." During the Italian Renaissance approximately 100 years later, sexual aids were typically made of leather and were used with olive oil as a lubricant. It might sound like a lot of fun, but it was not at all about that, as history has it.
Image: Vassil
Female desire?! It's hysteria, stupid!
For a long time, sexual intercourse equated to penetration until the man achieved orgasm. This male-centered worldview ignored that penetration alone is not satisfying for women and quite insufficient in bringing them to orgasm. Men's strategy? Labeling female desire a disease - "hysteria" - and prescribing treatment: marital sex, water jet therapy or horse rides.
Image: Fleury/Siegfried Giedion
"Manipulator" tables: Doctors take control of women's orgasms
The hysteria "illness" was a pandemic: it was cited as the most common disease across the ages, only sometimes overtaken by fevers. And where do you go when you are ill? Doctors or midwives would also conduct genital massages to "cure" hysteria - in a time when masturbation was forbidden. As no one really wanted to use their fingers on female genitalia, the invention of "medical aids" accelerated.
Image: George Henry Taylor
From stiff to moving: dildo turns vibrator
Rich women particularly would regularly return to be "treated" for their "disease." Doctors soon realized the need to make treatment more efficient (read: treat more patients = make more money). It was in Victorian England that Dr Joseph Mortimer Granville patented the first electromechanical vibrator in the 1880s. With inventions like his, female orgasm could be reached within 10 minutes.
Image: Collections of The Bakken Museum, Minneapolis, USA
"Health aids" making housewives happy
At the turn of the 20th century, companies were producing vibrators for personal use. Next to tea kettles, bread toasters and sewing machines, ads in women's magazines promoted them as "health aids." Doctors were not at all in diletto of this development. Critics feared women might not need men to have orgasms anymore. Turns out, men don't need women for that either.
Image: Sears, Roebuck and Company Catalog
Losing fear of female sexuality
The vibrator lost its innocence as a socially camouflaged health aid during the 1920s when it was used as a sex toy in porn. The 1950s famous Kinsey study on sexuality proved what women had known for centuries, something that then was undeniable: that more than 70 percent of women don't orgasm purely through penetration. This gave vibrators new ad strategies, promising 50 orgasms in a row.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/P. Grimm
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Is it a 'disorder' after all?
If Franziska were single, everything would indeed be fine. She could live very well without sex. A lack of sexual desire mostly becomes a problem, "a disorder," only within a relationship.
Many couples with such problems turn to sex therapists like Gertrud Wolf. Wolf is not a big fan of the term "sexual disorder." Focusing on sexual dysfunction, she says, often leads to the real problem being overlooked: the problem of damaged self-esteem.
She has the couples describe a typical situation: In the evening in bed, he touches her. She turns away, gives signals that she doesn't want it. "How does that feel?" Wolf wants to know. Her clients then often describe themselves as feeling inadequate, under pressure or unloved, says the therapist. "These couples usually have no sexual problem at all," she points out. "Nobody says: 'I don't know where to put my sperm.' What makes the partners unhappy is the feeling of being unloved and rejected."
Wolf doesn't like the word "disorder" for another reason: It pathologizes refusing intercourse and classifies it as a deviation, while sexual lust is declared the norm. "I would see that as a disorder as little as I can," she says. "That's crazy. It would be like accusing your neighbor of having a disorder because he is too quiet."
No desire? No problem!
That's why Wolf urgently advises people like Franziska to reduce the self-inflicted pressure. "The important message is: 'There's nothing bad about it. We don't have to have sex to feel complete.'" Instead, she says, the focus of a therapy should be on strengthening the patient's self-esteem.
Some couples, Wolf says, find very creative ways of dealing with their disparate degrees of desire. She recalls a couple who barely have sex because the woman feels no desire. That woman therefore allows her partner to sleep with other women. In this way, both do justice to their needs and their love for each other,.
After a serious crisis in their marriage, Franziska and her husband found a new way of coping with the subject of sex. Since then, it has no longer been the biggest problem. Physical approaches on his part are more cautious, and Franziska more often allows herself a "no." Her partner helps her. "My husband pays much more attention to my body signals," she says.
But still, Franziska says that if anyone came up with the idea of completely abolishing sex, she wouldn't complain.
Why Little Red Riding Hood is caught between innocence and sexuality
Is Little Red Riding Hood just a naive little girl? Only in the tale by the German Brothers Grimm. In older versions of the story, she flirts and the wolf seduces her. Here's a look at various Little Red Riding Hoods.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
German Romanticism
The Brothers Grimm describe Little Red Riding Hood as a young girl, innocent and blond - but that wasn't always the case. The girl is much older in other versions of the tale, and there wasn't always a happy ending either. That was a German twist to the story. Little Red Riding Hood first started in France.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
The seductive French wolf
"Viens te coucher avec moi" - Come to bed with me. That's how the wolf tries to entice Little Red Riding Hood into his bed. Accepting his invitation, she undresses - clearly an allusion to sex. In 1697, Charles Perrault wrote his story of the "Petit Chaperon Rouge;" the copper engraving was done by Gustave Doré. In those days, the story was told as a warning against male seducers.
Image: Gemeinfrei
First English version
The tale of the coquettish French Little Red Riding Hood was adapted into English in 1729 - without a happy ending. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are devoured by the wolf, and that was that. No hunter came to their rescue. Typical for the English version is that the girl wasn't only wearing a red hood, but also a red riding coat.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
Little Red Riding Hood with a happy ending
The first German version of the Little Red Riding Hood was not the work of the Brothers Grimm, but of writer Ludwig Tieck. The romanticist who disliked the gloomy ending of the French version added a hunter who rescued the girl to the original tale. And in 1812, the Brothers Grimm turned the flirtatious Little Red Riding Hood into an innocent little girl, avoiding any sexual connotations.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum der Burg Wissem in Troisdorf
Little Red Riding Hood gets famous
Very quickly, the tale of Little Red Riding Hood became a hit in Germany and the rest of Europe. Elements from the story were printed on post cards and imitated in parlor games. Even today, the sweet little girl with the red hood embellishes champagne bottles, cheese packages and chocolates.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
A modern, headstrong girl
Little Red Riding Hood continues to be en vogue while being constantly reinterpreted. In his children's book "Rothütchen" (Little Red Hat), Geoffroy de Pennart turned her into a recalcitrant girl that even attacks the wolf, reflecting a modern idea of obedient, but self-conscious children.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum der Burg Wissem in Troisdorf
A less violent take
The 1980s were dominated by yet another educational theory. Back then, the objective was nonviolent education. That's why, in a more contemporary version, the wolf didn't devour Litte Red Riding Hood, but restrained himself to controlling her movements with a loop around her foot. That's illustrated here in the book "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" by Laurence Batigne and Bruno de la Salle.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
The wolf as a sex object
The 1990s saw yet another reinterpretation of the tale. This bold 1993 fantasy by Bettina Bayerl called "Keine Gnade!" (No Mercy!) brought back the obscenity and sexuality that was only hinted at in the original French version.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
Little Red Riding Hood becomes the villain
In this version, Burgi Kühnemann portrays Little Red Riding Hood as the real villain who overruns the poor wolf, which is threatened with extinction. Kühnemann is a book artist who works fairy tales. In another version, she draws parallels between Little Red Riding Hood and Hitler, who she claims loved calling himself "Uncle Wolf" and enjoyed being adored for his manliness.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem/DW/L. Albrecht
Little Red Riding Hood - a bit abstract for a change
There's also a version of the Little Red Riding Hood that does without any moral assessments. In the 1960s, artist Warja Honegger-Lavater depicted the tale only with dots. The resulting radical abstraction permitted all kinds of possible and impossible fantasies on the theme, releasing is from various cultures, eras or age groups.
Image: Bilderbuchmuseum der Burg Wissem in Troisdorf
