The role of religiosity in the etiology of vaginismus in the light of socio-cultural features: The case of Turkey

Abstract

Objective: Vaginismus is the most common female sexual dysfunction in Turkey and Middle East countries. Looking at the medical literature related to vaginismus, studies/patients have concentrated in the Middle east geographic area. Turkey is a developing, secular country located between Middle East and Europe with a mostly Muslim population. Many factors have been discussed in the etiology including psychosocial, cultural, biological and sexual causes. Religious beliefs of a person in the form of religiosity affect all social and spiritual spheres of his/her life in some way positively or negatively. One of the most affected life areas by religious beliefs is sexual life, which has a lots of taboos. In this study we aimed to compare religious belief levels that are thought to be effective in the etiology of vaginismus between patients and healthy controls and to discuss some of the other socio-cultural features.Methods: 49 patients and 37 healthy volunteers were included. Sociodemographic data form, religious life scale and a form of common sexual myths were used as the measurement tools.Results: No statistically significant difference was found between the participants with and without vaginismus in terms of education duration, working status, occupations, economical status, longest living place and marriage type (p>0.05 for all). No statistically significant difference was found between the belief, emotions, behaviour, knowledge and total scores of both groups in terms of the presence of vaginismus (p>0.05for all). Conclusions:In conclusion, most of the sociodemographic data involved in the etiology of vaginismus, including religiosity, can be equalized for both groups -with or without vaginismus -over time in the changing world and in life and mental factors can remain as independent variables therefore expanding our research in this direction will help us understand this disorder better. In addition, it can be considered that male hegemon culture is one of the important factors in the etiology of vaginismus. The interpretation of religion with a male -dominated language may be a result of this hegemon culture.