Information on popular complementary and alternative medical topics

Any long-term (chronic) disease can exhaust the individual as can long-term drug therapy, hospital visits, treatment and so on. All of these can adversely affect the most sex-centred person, as well as those who were content with very infrequent sex before their trouble began. Many diseases actually cause a loss of libido (sex drive), as do many drugs; so if you think your sex life should be better, and you are suffering from a long-standing illness, discuss it with your doctor in case the two could be linked.

Strokes-Far too little is known about the sexual problems of stroke patients, of whom there are many thousands in the UK alone. The trouble is that a stroke is a very complex business and results not only in physical weakness and loss of sensation but in mental and psychological changes too. This raises all kinds of anxieties about sexual performance and the physical problems often make physical sexual expression difficult even if the heart is willing. All of this can alter the way a couple relate to each other after a stroke, but physical closeness, other manifestations of love and sexual activities which are not genital-to-genital can work well. Loss of bladder and anal control is very upsetting, but many couples who really want to can find ways around these practical problems. Sex therapy can greatly help stroke sufferers and it can be useful to experiment with sex until the couple finds a way of living with the disability.

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No perversion, apart from rape, arouses such public outcry as does paedophilia, the condition in which an adult or older adolescent takes an erotic interest in a child under the age of fourteen. Even hardened criminals cannot tolerate this crime and paedophiles often have to be isolated in prison for their own safety.

In heterosexual paedophilia the victims are usually seven to ten-year-old girls who are sometimes harshly treated or even killed. Usually a paedophile wants the girl to show her vulva, to look at pornography, or to handle his penis. He may fondle or smack her, or attempt to have intercourse with her. How parents can rear girls so as to avoid such individuals without encouraging them to fear all men or become discourteous to men who are being socially pleasant towards them is a real problem and there are no easy answers. On balance it makes sense to teach children never to go anywhere with strangers without first asking permission from their parents and children should never take sweets or anything else from people they do not know unless their parents are there. It is upsetting to think that we have to bring up our children fearing anyone they do not know but one has to be realistic and child molesters can be dangerous.

Oestrogen, anti-testosterone drugs and castration have been used in attempts to control paedophiles and rapists but the best course must be prevention. Usually men and women show a tendency to consort with individuals corresponding to their own stage in psychosexual development. Heterosexual paedophiles are immature, scared of women of their own age and often revengeful against them. They masturbate a lot to vivid fantasies of little girls, concentrating perhaps on their buttocks or even on things such as the ankle socks they wear. Whatever the precise cause, clearly the psychosexual development of the heterosexual paedophile has not prospered and he needs professional help.

The more common form of paedophilia is that in which men are attracted to young boys. To say they are homosexual may overstate the case since many, although not too attracted to it, do have heterosexual intercourse. Many are married. Their love of small boys is probably

self-centred since what they really love is the image of themselves when young. They often shave off their pubic hair and watch themselves masturbate in front of a mirror. They are fascinated by boys, especially nude.

A number of people who are mentally disordered also commit sexual offences against children.

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The total number of cases of AIDS in the UK; how the infection was originally caught; and the number of deaths so far (end of May 1988)

These numbers are not very horrific compared with say, injuries and deaths from road accidents but it must be remembered that the people these figures represent were originally infected with HIV some years ago. The statistics are history. People infected now will not appear in these statistics until well into the next decade. There is also evidence that the figures may well underestimate the number of AIDS deaths not all of which are identified as due to AIDS or notified even if so identified. Even if the HIV mutated itself out of existence now the number of AIDS cases will rise for some years to come.

The World Health Organisation estimates that there are now 150,000 cases of AIDS in the world although only 94,000 have been notified to it. Of these 69,000 are in North and South America; 12,000 in Europe; and 11,000 in Africa. It expects 15 0,000 new cases in 1988.

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The short answer is that no one knows. As we have seen, the vast majority of boys go through a developmental stage around puberty during which some degree of homosexual behaviour is normal. Some experts believe that most adult homosexuals have remained frozen at this stage of their development.

Recent evidence has found that a specialised area of the brain (the hypothalamus) that controls all the hormones of the body is ‘cycled’ in its activity in all young foetuses. In male foetuses it normally becomes uncycled but in some male homosexuals it may remain cycled. Perhaps this points to something happening early in pregnancy that prevents the developing male foetus from becoming a typical male.

Some young people and, indeed, adults of any age, have problems with narcissism – that is, they are attracted only to someone like themselves. They are consequently predisposed to choose a sex partner from their own sex.

Many people deprived of sex with the opposite sex for long enough (for example in prison) will turn to some kind of homosexual activity, even if it stops short of intercourse. Some women turn to homosexuality after bad experiences with men and many more at least consider doing so. These homosexuals often return to the heterosexual life once the balance of their lives returns to normal again.

Sometimes homosexuality arises in a man because he is so tense with women that he cannot relax and so never has satisfactory sexual relationships with them. Such men turn to other men and find that they have better quality, more enjoyable orgasms with them. The ‘cure’ here must surely be to ensure that boys are not brought up to fear women, as too many are. Thankfully this is less true today than it was in the past. A similar situation also lies behind some

lesbianism – some women can relax more with another woman and climax more easily.

Lastly, experimentation in sexual matters has become a feature of the current scene and experimenting with homosexuality is sometimes simply a part of this. Some youths, frightened of getting girls pregnant or simply wanting to sample both sides of the fence before deciding, try a homosexual relationship. Unfortunately, there are real dangers in this because, at this young age, a boy can become locked into the homosexual sub-culture all too easily and so does not get a chance to develop his heterosexuality. An extension of this type of homosexuality is that in which a rebellious teenager uses homosexuality to punish his or her parents and rebel against society.

If all of these ’causes’ seem to point to a clear, black and white picture of homosexuality, this would be wrong. Certainly, about one in twenty-five adult men choose to be exclusively homosexual, but there are many others who have fleeting homosexual experiences.

Broadly speaking, homosexuality can be latent (beneath the surface) or openly expressed. Many people are latently homosexual and with very little provocation demonstrate their homosexual side on occasions. (Incidentally, the fact that many people, men and women, find anal stimulation erotic does not make them homosexual.) Overt or expressed homosexuality is less common and is unfortunately plagued with unhelpful stereotypes in many people’s minds.

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Once children get to school they discuss sex just as they would anything else. Both during this and the later phases leading up to puberty we feel that a child’s parents are the best people to give information because they know the child and what he can cope with day by day and year by year. Parents also have the advantage over formal systems in that they can take opportunities as they arise and use them to talk about sex in an informal, unplanned way. Satisfying a child’s curiosity is ideally done in a spontaneous way and the old notion of saying nothing until you sit your child down to talk about ‘the birds and the bees’ is not only unfashionable but far less pleasant for both child and parent.

There is so much in daily life that raises questions about sex that can be dealt with a low-key, matter-of-fact way that the average child can end up very well sex-educated without ever realising it. TV, shopping, the people a child meets and his or her mother’s experiences with carrying, bearing and rearing a baby can all lead to questions which are best answered simply at the time.

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