Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

These chapters deepen Roach’s exploration of how sexual science is often shaped by the tension between what is measurable (objective results) and what is meaningful (subjective experience). Roach moves from the cultural awkwardness of early research into fertility labs, ultrasound suites, and operating rooms, where sex is treated as a set of measurable outcomes. Roach’s narrative voice remains steady, but here she leans more heavily on the contrast between sophisticated instrumentation (equipment to measure physiological sexual response) and the human experiences those instruments inevitably bracket out (the emotional response to pleasure). Her structural strategy (describing animal experiments, imaging technology, and surgical innovation side by side) highlights how different disciplines approach sex studies with sharply different priorities (e.g., to prove uterine “insuck,” visualize sex in real time, or to address erectile dysfunction), revealing the implicit assumptions embedded in each scientific frame.

A recurring pattern in these chapters is that bodies are treated mainly as tools, especially in fields that care about sex only when it affects measurable outcomes. Roach spotlights this blunt pragmatism in a remark from a Danish pig-production researcher: “‘We don’t know. And to be honest? We don’t really care whether she has an orgasm. We just know these contractions seem to improve the semen transport and the fertility’” (98). The flat dismissal of subjective experience captures a worldview in which pleasure becomes valuable only when it enhances reproductive output. Roach includes this not to critique animal research itself but to show how easily scientific frameworks reduce complex behaviors to mechanical efficiencies. A parallel emerges in Chapter 6, where erectile dysfunction is described in strictly vascular terms: “Erections are all about blood. Blood is the backbone of a stiff penis” (134). The crisp parallel phrasing reflects how ED has been redefined as a hydraulic problem. In both cases, Roach’s curation of clinical language illustrates how modern science privileges what can be optimized or fixed, a dynamic that aligns with questions thematically central to The Science Versus the Soul of Sexuality: Physiological insight illuminates but does not fully capture subjective sexual experience.

In addition, Roach uses historical material to expose how scientific authority has often been entangled with spectacle, misinterpretation, and cultural anxiety. Her reference to 19th-century gynecologist Joseph Beck’s description (“Instantly that the height of excitement was at hand, the [cervix] opened itself to the extent of fully an inch…made five or six successive gasps as it were” [102]) reveals the theatrical style in which early male clinicians narrated women’s bodies. The breathless diction (“height of excitement,” “gasps”) positions the clinician as both an observer and a storyteller, blending prurience with scientific posture. By juxtaposing such accounts with later dispassionate validations and refutations, Roach demonstrates how early sex research often reflected the era’s moral scripts more than empirical rigor. This historical layering supports a broader thematic argument connected to The Cultural Politics of Sex Research: the boundaries of legitimate knowledge have long been shaped by gender norms, propriety, and institutional discomfort rather than objective inquiry.

The chapters on coital imaging highlight another dimension of Roach’s approach: what pictures can and cannot tell us about sex. When she describes a London lab where a scientist attempted to capture three-dimensional ultrasound footage of human genitalia during sex, the sentence’s journalistic precision underscores the extraordinary lengths required to “see” sex in action. The locked room, off-hours scheduling, and intricate imaging apparatus emphasize both technical ambition and persistent cultural unease. However, Roach is careful to show that clearer pictures do not necessarily produce fuller understanding. Her concluding observation—“Sex is far more than the sum of its moving parts” (130)— quietly corrects the experimental impulse to treat sexual experience as a solvable mechanical problem. Imaging can map motions and angles, but it cannot account for context, desire, discomfort, or pleasure.

Roach points out gender imbalances in what sexual science chooses to measure and value. Fertility research centers on semen transport; ED treatment prioritizes penetration; and historical “cures” treat male function as the default benchmark. Roach’s account of the 1998 Viagra rollout (“Viagra sealed the deal. In 1998, Pfizer—with a cadre of media-savvy urologists in tow—launched a massive publicity campaign to announce an exciting new approach to impotence” [141]) illustrates how institutional power, marketing, and language combine to redefine male sexual difficulty as an urgent biomedical issue. The absence of equally robust institutional attention to female dysfunction underscores a pattern that the book returns to later. In this sense, Roach’s account of early and modern interventions thematically foreshadows The Importance of Communication in Finding Mutual Pleasure, showing that scientific priorities often mirror cultural hierarchies more than shared sexual well-being.

Throughout these chapters, Roach’s narrative strategy reveals how sex research advances through ingenuity and precision yet continually encounters the limits imposed by culture, technology, and the assumptions that researchers bring to the work.