Genital lubrication: A cue-specific sexual response?

Is Mode of Delivery Associated With Sexual Response? A Pilot Study of Genital and Subjective Sexual Arousal in Primiparous Women With Vaginal or Cesarean Section Births

“…Furthermore, it is still unclear what a lower genital response means in terms of the functional implications. That is, although it is widely held that less genital blood flow results in less genital lubrication, 65 there is mixed evidence for this assertion, based on objective measures of genital lubrication, 39,66,67 and in the present study, groups did not differ on the FSFI lubrication subscale. In addition, even if lower blood flow to the genitals during an erotic film does translate to less vaginal lubrication, the realworld implications may be negligible, given the wide availability of vaginal lubricants and the fact that many women may prefer tactile sexual stimuli instead of, or in addition to, visual sexual stimuli.…”

“…39 Furthermore, other studies have reported no relationship between vaginal vasocongestion (as measured by vaginal photoplethysmography), and vaginal lubrication. 66,67 Certainly, although the absence of vaginal lubrication may be related to sexual concerns (eg, pain during penetrative sexual activity), it is unclear whether lower relative levels of genital blood flow have problematic functional outcomes. Even women who self-report low or absent sexual desire and arousal have been shown to have robust vaginal vasocongestive responses.…”

Concurrent measurement of genital lubrication and blood flow during sexual arousal

“…In a second study employing the litmus test strip, Sawatsky, Dawson, and Lalumière (2018) presented a range of sexual stimuli from categories that have been shown to elicit varying degrees of genital response in previous research (i.e., male masturbation; female masturbation; male-male A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T oral sex and anal penetration; female-female oral sex and vaginal penetration; male-female oral sex and vaginal penetration; Chivers, Seto, & Blanchard, 2007). Contrary to their hypothesis that sexual stimuli of low versus high sexual intensity would elicit different lengths of colour change on the litmus paper (i.e., masturbation vs. partnered sex), Sawatsky et al found that genital lubrication was specific to a single stimulus category (i.e., male-female partnered sex; M = 19.0 mm, SD = 10.4 mm) and that all other sexual stimuli elicited similar amounts of genital lubrication as the nonsexual stimulus (M = 13.3 mm, SD = 7.4 mm).…”

“…The findings that genital lubrication was not correlated with vaginal vasocongestion is puzzling (Dawson et al, 2015;Sawatsky et al, 2018), given that genital lubrication is purported to arise from increased genital vasocongestion (Levin, 2003;Masters & Johnson, 1966). Though the vaginal photoplethysmograph is a specific measure of genital response, detecting changes in vaginal vasocongestion in response to sexual (but not emotionally laden nonsexual) stimuli (Laan, Everaerd, & Evers, 1995;Suschinsky, Lalumière, & Chivers, 2009), it provides an indirect measure of vasocongestion and the precise physiological process it measures remains unclear .…”

“…Previous research has established the specificity with which the litmus test strip and LDI measure genital responding in women; however, neither measure has been shown to be sensitive to varying degrees of genital response (Bouchard et al, 2017;Sawatsky et al, 2018). Conversely, studies of genital response using vaginal photoplethysmography and thermography demonstrate an intensity effect whereby reliable differences are detected across stimuli of varying sexual activity intensities (e.g., Chivers et al, 2007;Prause & Heiman, 2009;Suschinsky et al, 2009).…”