Sexless sisters just need their love button flicked to
turn on
Sick of the negative connotations implicit with being labeled
sexless, growing numbers of celibate Japanese women who've also
given up on love are referring to themselves as having turned their
sex switches off.
Mayuko is one woman who turned her sex switch off, saying she gave
up on both men and mounting for three years after an acrimonious
split with her boyfriend just over a decade ago.
Now 39, Mayuko had lost her virginity at 21 to a man other than her
boyfriend of the time and had been fairly active. But, after
turning her switch off at age 28, she shacked up with a classmate
from her school days, and though they shared the same bed, their
relationship was otherwise purely platonic.
"My love switch was turned on, but the idea of sex was repulsive,"
the IT industry worker tells AERA. "I just didn't want to be
touched."
Eventually, Mayuko got her groove back, but it took four years. And
she got the urge the very moment her patient boyfriend had finally
had enough and walked out on her, traveling to the United States.
She was about to start playing the field when her man returned, but
their relationship was never the same and after they broke off,
Mayuko learned he'd been two-timing her anyway.
Feeling down, she sought help from her gynecologist, who said she
was pre-menopausal and suggested her condition could have been the
result of not having sex. She promptly went out on a naughty romp
with a much younger man.
"I realized that it's always nice for a woman's body to get some
Mr. Moisturizing Cream," she says.
Mayumi Nimatsu, a marriage counselor, says she advises women not to
refer to themselves as sexless, instead saying that they've turned
their sex switch off.
"The word 'sex off' is more interesting than 'sexless.' For women
who find it a huge emotional burden to not have love or sex, it's
much easier to handle if they tell themselves they have simply
turned their sex switch off. It could make things much easier,"
Nimatsu tells AERA.
"I think couples work better if there's a sexual link, but there's
no need for them to set down in concrete exactly how they should go
about their intimacy."
Tomomi Shibuya, author of "Nihon no Dotei (Japan's Virgins)," says
that men should take more of the blame for the lack of sex amongst
Japanese couples.
"Love technologies have improved incredibly since the late '80s.
With schoolgirls now, you've got to send them 10 e-mail a day
reminding them how much you love them, or they will start to think
that they're not being loved at all. The game involves getting more
and more advanced all the time," Shibuya says.
"There are loads of guys who couldn't be bothered with dealing with
that sort of stuff."
Indeed, statistics seem to bear out Shibuya's claims that guys have
to take more of the blame for Japan's lack of sex. Japan Family
Planning Association figures show that about 10 percent of Japanese
men in their 40s are virgins as opposed to about 0.6 percent of
women.
"There are increasing numbers of women in their 20s burdened by
their belief that love and sex leads to an improvement in the
quality of their lives. But the biggest problem -- about women only
being popular with guys as long as they're young - fails to
surface. Actually, there are many guys in their 20s who've gone
beyond switching off sex, they simply don't have any interest in it
at all," virgin expert Shibuya says.
She may have a point. Ad man Hitoshi bundled his girlfriend and
sent her home by cab rather than take her to a hotel for a wanton
romp after they went out drinking and she missed her last train
home.
"Even if I do find a woman I think is nice," he tells AERA. "Having
sex is all just such a nuisance I couldn't be bothered."