Category: Bonk – Mary Roach

Injured Veterans, Sex, Divorce, and Suicide

Injured Veterans, Sex, Divorce, and Suicide

Posted on by jabittan
I recently published a post about Mary Roach’s book Bonk, where she researched and discussed the researchers and scientists who study sex and sexual physiology. Sex, our sexual desires and urges, and how sex fits into our lives is generally understudied and taboo. This may not seem like a big problem on the surface, but a lack of understanding of human sexual relationships can contribute to divorce, depression, and even suicide.
Roach returns to the idea of our sexual taboo in her book Grunt, specifically asking what happens to wounded soldiers when they get back from war and still have sexual desires, but may be challenged sexually as a result of their injuries? How does an amputee still have a pleasurable sexual relationship with their wife? How does someone with genital injuries engage in sex? Does anyone help these individuals, and what happens to them when they can’t get help or speak with anyone?
In the book, Roach roach asks about the divorce rate for injured veterans. She quotes Christine DesLauriers who founded the Walter Reed Sexual Health and Intimacy Workgroup as saying, “Divorce rate? How about suicide rate. And what a shame to lose them after they’ve made it back. We keep them alive, but we don’t teach them how to live.” This quote shows the seriousness of our society’s sexual taboo when it comes to injured veterans. It is likely that many of the men who go into service fall into the typical macho-man stereotype (though certainly not all!) and it isn’t hard to imagine that many of these men want to have plenty of sex, as would be typical within the stereotype. Failing to help them adapt to injuries, losses of limbs, or reconstructed penises means that we fail to help them adapt to a new life. As DesLauriers was quoted saying, we fail to help them live, and that can lead to depression and a feeling of disappointment that may lead to suicide.
Hopefully our sex taboo doesn’t push most of us to suicide or depression, but it certainly makes it harder for us to have conversations with our sexual partners about what we want in a physical relationship. Without being able to discuss research on sex, we don’t know what is normal, what is abnormal, and how we should handle sexual feelings and urges. At the extreme, this may leave wounded soldiers feeling like they can’t live up to expectations of what it means to be a man, but for many, it may create confusion and dissatisfaction with a sexual lifestyle or a partner. Bonk and Grunt both make a case for being less ashamed to talk about sex, especially within academic, scientific, and medical contexts, so that we can live better lives and better adapt to our sexuality and changes in our physiology throughout our lives.

Bonk

Posted on by jabittan
On one of the first few pages of her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach writes the following tribute: “This book is a tribute to the men an women who dared. Who, to this day, endure ignorance, closed minds, righteousness, and prudery. Their lives are not easy. But their cocktail parties are the best.”
Bonk is an exploration of our scientific exploration of sex. For many reasons, sex research has been difficult to carry out and often taboo. Researchers face extra challenges getting funding, are treated with skepticism, have trouble finding subjects, have trouble publishing important findings, and can be publicly ridiculed for their research. Roach writes about the euphemisms that researchers have to employ when describing their studies, switching words related to sex to more physiologically based words. She also writes about the range of topics that become difficult to study because of their relation to sex – topics related to genitals, especially to the female body, even if they are not sex specific topics.
Across the book Roach identifies important themes in global culture. Humans are often driven by sex, surrounded by sex, or confused by something sexual, but we rarely discuss sex or anything related to it in a direct way. Even intimate couples find it difficult to have honest and direct conversations about sex. In some ways it is fair to say that sex is hyper-present in the United States, but this doesn’t mean we are ok with openly discussing our sexual experiences with other people, even neutral and independent researchers.
This has created a challenge where we all have many questions and uncertainties related to our sexual development, our sexual orientation, and physiological sexual responses to stimuli throughout our lives, but few good places to get answers to those questions. Even if we can study these topics, it is not easy to access, share, and discuss that research. People who do such research, or claim to be interested in such research, are often stigmatized and other people who know their research interests may not want to associate with them to avoid the same stigma.
Ultimately, what I think Roach believes is that we should work to be more honest and develop better conversations around the science of sex. I think this is something Roach believes is necessary in many academic and scientific fields, not just those related to sex. Her work has generally made an effort to study and explore topics that are gross, taboo, and overlooked, but are always present and important. Sex is something that has many individual and social factors, and failing to research sex leaves us stuck with ignorance, where strong voices can win out over the reality of many people’s experiences. Better science, study, and discussion will hopefully help us better understand ourselves, our bodies, and our physical relationships with others.