Understanding women's vaginismus experiences from a social work perspective

Vaginismus is a sexual difficulty experienced by a large number of women in Turkey. This challenge has now been medicalized through biomedical discourse, and women experiencing vaginismus have been framed as "patients" in physiological and psychological terms through medical diagnosis systems. This situation has been criticized by feminist sexuality researchers on the grounds that it pathologizes the sexual difficulties women experience, hides the injustices and environmental factors surrounding female sexuality, forces women to conform to masculine heteronormative standards, puts the responsibility entirely on women, reduces them to treatments based on the female body, and ignores the whole of women's experience. The aim of the research is to understand the vaginismus experiences of women living in Turkey from a social work perspective. In this study, which is prepared based on the qualitative method and phenomenological design, in-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 22 women with vaginismus experience. In the study, it has concluded that vaginismus is a politically based sexual dissatisfaction with socio-cultural, political, structural, psychological, physical and interpersonal complex causes rather than a personal disease, largely shaped in the axes of gender, culture, heteronormativity and social injustice. It has been determined that the factors that reveal vaginismus also play a role in prolonging the vaginismus process. It has concluded that it is important to expand the limited definition of medicalized vaginismus by including environmental factors and to support women with vaginismus through social work practices in a multidisciplinary framework. In order to prevent vaginismus, it is recommended to eliminate gender inequality and to work against socio-cultural factors that suppress female sexuality.