Myths about women`s sexual desire busted

New York: There is so much misinformation floating around about women`s sexual desire, that it is time to set the record straight.

Huffington Post has decoded five myths based on the science of desire. Firstly, the fact that women have lower sexual desire than men does not hold true. Research has found that women and men are equally likely to be the partner less desirous of sex. Myth two - sexual response involves desire, then arousal, and then orgasm. Desire doesn`t have to come before arousal. Another myth is that 43 percent of women suffer from sexual dysfunction. The still frequently-cited statistic from a study by Laumann and colleagues conducted in 1999 that 43 percent of women suffer from sexual dysfunction is, simply stated, inaccurate. It is based on a yes/no response option, where participants were asked whether they had experienced any of seven problems for two months over the past year. If the women answered `yes` to any of the problems, they were categorized in that 43 percent statistic. This question didn`t give any context to the reason around the experienced problems (such problems included lack of desire for sex, anxiety about sexual performance and difficulties with lubrication). There are a lot of reasons other than `dysfunction` that may account for those types of problems, such as health concerns, relationship issues or cultural expectations. It`s not known how many people suffer from sexual dysfunction. Fourthly, women with high sexual desire are anomalies. A study on what were called `highly sexual women` was recently published by Wentland and colleagues. Based on the responses of 932 women to their online questionnaire, they found that 52 percent of their sample could be classified as "highly sexual." Lastly, women are vastly different from men when it comes to sexual desire. The most surprising (and perhaps interesting) result has been that there is just as much variation in desire within men and women as there is between men and women. People make assumptions that men and women are so different (not just regarding sexual desire-it goes beyond that), and this may all stem from the whole (recently debunked) "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus" idea. But this focus on differences doesn`t bring us closer together; it pushes us further apart. It is believed that variations in sexual desire are much more of a relationship issue than a gender issue. ANI