Fear of Sexual Intercourse

What genophobia costs

The damage is mostly relational. Sufferers may avoid getting involved with anyone at all, on the reasoning that a relationship leads eventually to intimacy, and the loneliness that follows is compounded by embarrassment and shame about the fear itself. Existing romantic relationships come under strain from the same source.

Which routes lead into genophobia

Sexual assault and abuse account for a large share of it, and the mechanism is not mysterious. Rape has been described as less an invasion of the body than an invasion of the self, and the reactions that follow it tend to arrive in a recognisable order, which is why they were given a name of their own in rape trauma syndrome. Victims often carry a lowered sense of self-worth and a loss of control over their own lives, and how hospital staff, police, friends and partners respond can add to that rather than relieve it. Both routes to a fear of sex are open afterwards, the physical one through injury and pain, and the psychological one through the fear of it happening again, through distrust of others, or through the strain the whole thing places on a relationship.

Child sexual abuse produces the same outcome on a delay. Force is often absent, because a child may cooperate without understanding what is happening, or from being intimidated by an adult or older adolescent. The feelings frequently arrive much later, when the person is old enough to grasp what was done: a sense that privacy was invaded before consent was possible, that trust was exploited, and a general distrust of others afterwards that can settle into a fear of sex.

Two other routes are documented. One runs through the body, when self-consciousness about appearance or about a specific feature becomes severe, or when erectile dysfunction or gender dysphoria supplies the anxiety. The other runs through a fear already present. Nosophobia can produce it by way of infection, gymnophobia by way of undressing, and a pronounced fear of being touched by way of contact. Some people have the fear with no identifiable cause at all, which the literature states plainly rather than explaining away.

What the older catalogue lists

The 2008 encyclopedia treats it as fear of coitus specifically and lists the shape the fear takes rather than its causes, and the list is a good record of what people actually report:

• impotence, and the inability to achieve or maintain an erection
• inability to ejaculate
• intercourse without orgasm
• penetration of various kinds, and pain accompanying it
• vaginismus, the tightening of vaginal muscles that impairs penetration
• coitus interruptus The recommended treatment there is behavioural sex therapy, built on gradual desensitisation of the fear response alongside enhanced stimulation, relaxation and sexual excitement.

What is done now

There is no universal cure, and the routes to help follow the route in. Therapy with a psychiatrist, psychologist or licensed counsellor addresses the anxiety, medication is sometimes prescribed for it, and pain during sex sends a person to a doctor or gynaecologist first, because a physical cause is worth excluding before anything else is attempted.

Marianna Palka's independent film Good Dick, released in 2008 and written and directed by her, built its story around a young woman with the condition and what it does to her relationships.