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Special Report

Jenny Higgins: The Pleasure Deficit

First published online:

| DOI: https://doi.org/10.1363/psrh.12070

One of the foundational experiences in Jenny Higgins's career was reading a 1993 article by sociologist Ruth Dixon‐Mueller, who posited that a visitor from another planet who relied on demographic and family planning journals for information would be "mystified about sexual behavior." Higgins, who is associate professor in the Departments of Gender and Women's Studies and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was particularly struck by the article's contention that contraceptive researchers and family planning programs were ignoring the seemingly obvious fact that enjoyment is a central component of human sexuality and contributes to "risky" behavior. Higgins explored in depth this disconnect between contraceptive research and sexuality—a problem she called the "pleasure deficit"—in a 2007 article in Perspectives. More recently, she discussed the problem in an interview with one of the journal’s editors. That interview originally appeared on Perspectives@50, a blog celebrating the journal’s 50th year of publication, and will also appear in our September issue.