Sex research has been chronically underfunded relative to its universal relevance

Roach documents how researchers studying human sexual response have historically struggled to secure funding, journal publication, and institutional support compared to researchers in almost any other area of human physiology, despite sexual function affecting reproduction, relationship satisfaction, and public health broadly. She traces this to enduring cultural squeamishness among funding bodies, universities, and even scientific journals, who often treated legitimate physiological questions about arousal or orgasm as unserious or embarrassing rather than as valid medical science. This scarcity of resources meant many foundational questions about human sexual physiology remained genuinely unanswered well into the twentieth century, not because they were unanswerable but because almost no one was permitted or funded to ask them properly. Roach uses this pattern to make a broader point about how social taboo, rather than scientific difficulty, has been the primary bottleneck limiting knowledge in this field, a dynamic with parallels in other historically stigmatized areas of medical research.

Takeaway: Taboo, not difficulty, has been sex research's biggest obstacle.