Women and low "genital self-esteem"

[Butterfly]

Women and low "genital self-esteem"
Feministing
02 October 2009


http://www.feministing.com/archives/018085.html


The Kinsey Institute folks over at Indiana University are the bomb dot com. Particularly, Debby Herbenick has been doing some really great, sex positive, feminist research. This ranges from the skinny on the prevalence of sex toy use to the recent study on the issue of low "genital self-esteem":

    The anxiety some women feel about their genitals is rooted in messages gleaned from parents and pop culture, said study author Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator with The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
    "Individuals may adopt negative attitudes toward women's genitals as a result of cultural-level scripts that suggest that women's genitals are unclean or dirty," writes Dr. Herbenick, who is also associate director of Indiana's University's Center for Sexual Health Promotion in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.