On the Outside Looking In

Abstract Predominant notions in our culture of sexuality per se and of female sexuality in particular obscure the discovery of alternate models. There is an absence of paradigms reflecting female sexuality and emerging out of women's experience. Women's life-cycle events, specifically pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, are used as examples to illustrate how narrow definitions of sexuality prevent our society and our field from recognizing and appreciating the spectrum of female sexual experience. Such events have been sanitized and denuded of their sexual dimension, reduced to medical and reproductive events, thereby depriving us of an avenue for exploration of fully embodied, female sexuality. New models, more sensitive to phenomenological experience as well as to the contextual origins and nature of women's sexual difficulties, are required. The value of attending to women's voices in developing new models of female sexuality is emphasized.