Fear of Sex
Erotophobia
It was never meant to be a phobia. Erotophobia describes fear of or aversion to sex and related matters, and it entered the literature as one pole of a continuum whose other pole is erotophilia, positive feeling about sex. A person is not diagnosed with it. A person scores somewhere on the line.
Who is credited with the word
The usual account credits a group of researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, defining the pole to anchor a scale. A second account credits Cindy Patton, the AIDS activist and health researcher, with coining it in 1985 to name an irrational fear of the erotic, arguing that this fear shapes how sex and sexuality are socially organised. What is not in dispute is what happened next: Fisher, Byrne, White and Kelley and the personality researchers who followed took the word out of activism and made it a measurable dimension of individual difference.
What a high score goes with
The findings are consistent and mostly about behaviour rather than distress. People scoring high on erotophobia express guilt and fear about sex, discuss it less, react more negatively to sexually explicit material, and have sex less often and with fewer partners over time. They hold more stigmatising attitudes toward sexually transmitted infections, report less sexual knowledge, and are less likely to seek sex education. Erotophiles sit at the other end, expressing less guilt, talking more openly, and viewing explicit material more favourably.
One correlation carries public health weight. High erotophobia scores go with less willingness to use condoms, though not necessarily other contraceptives, which is precisely the pattern that makes the dimension worth measuring in the first place. Marital and relationship difficulties associated with it have been reported in study after study going back to Kinsey.
Where the clinic comes in
As a clinical matter the word is a misnomer, since no current classification manual lists it as a specific phobia. What clinicians see instead is a fear of some sex-related object, person or act, severe enough to impair or entirely prevent sexual relationships, appearing inside something else: sexual dysfunctions, post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, avoidant personality disorder, body dysmorphic disorder. Sometimes it appears alone, attached specifically to lovemaking with another person and to nothing else, with no other fear or syndrome in sight.
The personality dimension and the clinical picture connect. A high erotophobic disposition, understood as a product of early learning and socialisation about sex, is treated as a vulnerability factor: negative perspectives absorbed early plus direct bad experiences later produce a tendency to view sex in negative terms, and a traumatic sexual event or a condition such as painful intercourse or delayed ejaculation can convert that tendency into something highly distressing. Women report greater levels than men, which is attributed at least in part to gender-role socialisation.
Because the causes differ, so does the treatment, and identifying the cause is the first step. Fear of sex arising from rape, with flashbacks during intercourse, is treated as post-traumatic stress disorder, with the aim of reducing avoidance of sex and intimacy. Fear arising from erectile dysfunction is treated medically and psychologically at once.
Which words sit underneath it
The general term shelters a set of specific ones, each naming a different piece of the same territory:
- genophobia, for sexual intercourse
- haphephobia, for being touched
- philemaphobia, for kissing
- gymnophobia, for nudity
- paraphobia, for sexual perversion Erotophobic attitudes come in equivalent variety, and a person or a culture may hold one or several: fear of nudity, fear of sexual imagery, hostility toward homosexuality, hostility toward people with sexually transmitted infections, fear of sex education, fear of sexual discourse at all.
What the political reading claims
John Ince, in The Politics of Lust, treats the whole thing as a public matter rather than a private one, naming three forces that feed it: antisexualism, meaning irrational negative response to harmless sexual expression; nasty sex, by which he means rape and violent pornography; and rigidity, the inability to enjoy sex that is playful and spontaneous. His argument runs from there to social inequality and politics, and to the claim that getting past erotophobia is an early step toward a genuinely democratic society.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Sex
- Fear of Sexual IntercourseGenophobia is the narrower of the two, naming the act. Erotophobia covers the whole territory including imagery, discourse and education, and is measured rather than diagnosed.
- Fear of NudityGymnophobia is listed as one of the specific terms sheltering under erotophobia, and fear of nudity is also named as one of the erotophobic attitudes a person or a culture can hold.
- Fear of Being TouchedHaphephobia belongs to the same family of coined terms and can produce the same avoidance of intimacy, but attaches to contact rather than to anything sexual about it.
Common questions
Questions about Erotophobia
- Is erotophobia a diagnosis?
- No current classification manual lists it as a specific phobia. It functions as a personality dimension in research, one pole of a scale whose other end is erotophilia, and clinically it turns up inside sexual dysfunctions, post-traumatic stress disorder and social anxiety disorder rather than under its own heading. It was built to be measured, not to be diagnosed.
- What does a high score predict?
- Less sexual knowledge, less openness in discussing sex, more stigmatising attitudes toward sexually transmitted infections, less sex with fewer partners, and less willingness to use condoms.
- What is at the other end of the scale?
- Erotophilia, characterised by less guilt about sex, more open discussion of it, and more positive attitudes toward sexually explicit material. The pair was built as a continuum to be scored rather than a diagnosis to be made, which is why nobody is diagnosed with erotophobia.
- Who coined the term?
- Two accounts circulate. One credits researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s defining a scale pole; the other credits the AIDS activist Cindy Patton in 1985.
- Does treatment depend on the cause?
- Entirely, and identifying the cause is the first step. Fear following rape is treated as post-traumatic stress, with the aim of reducing avoidance of sex and intimacy; fear arising from erectile dysfunction gets medical and psychological work at once.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of Sexual IntercourseThe Greek root means offspring and the Latin root means the act itself, and what people actually describe is usually neither of those two things.
- Fear of NudityChanging rooms, showers, gyms, hostels, hotel rooms, pools, beaches and medical facilities. Most sufferers route around all of it and cope.
- Fear of Being TouchedThe clinical record offers a definition and a list of symptoms. The only accounts of where the fear comes from are in fiction, and they say abuse, consistently.
- Fear of GenitalsCouples in some cultures avoided sex in lit rooms so the vulva stayed unseen, which makes the individual version a private survival of a public rule.
- Fear of PleasureOne proposed origin is solidarity with the world's poorest countries, which turns enjoying anything at all into something that feels unearned.
- Fear of PornographyThe first recorded use of pornophobia, in 1968, called it a mental condition. Britain's Longford Report shows what the aversion did to the trade it opposed.