I have to admit that I approached Johnson's article with an incredible amount of skepticism, and was truthfully blown away by how convincing I found her arguments. Certainly, The Scarlet Letter, confronting in its plot the issue of adultery, would naturally face analysis of a sexual nature, but Johnson's exploration of the role of impotence in the work was suprising and yet extremely plausible.
It seems that the most obvious approach to the work would be to consider sexuality of a female nature, considering that the only character we find with any kind of consistent and blatant sexual element is Hester. Hawthorne highlights her sexuality and youth, removing her sexual nature from the realm of censure which it encounters in the work. It seems that the most obvious sexual element in the work then is Hester's, seemingly representative of female sexuality as a whole. Johnson however, moves away from this aspect of the work, and chooses instead to focus on male sexuality, and how it is this sexuality, or lack thereof, which motivates the plot of the story. It is not female sexuality then, which is the main element of the story, but the exploration of male sexuality, including the narrator's own.