Female sexual dysfunction

Female biological function has long figured as the focus of medicine. Sexuality and libido too have been included in this medical fixation. The drivers of medicalisation are increasingly positioned outside of medicine, issuing instead from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and from the patient-consumer, primed by these commercial entities to consider themselves in need of medical support. This chapter identifies the agents and actors involved in the medicalisation of female sexuality and the interests served by seeing libido in medical terms. It explores how the commodification of hypersexuality and discourses around female inequity contribute directly to the characterisation of low levels of sexual desire as disease. The chapter shows how, in the context of the normalisation of female hypersexuality, the commercial interest in developing a lucrative pharmaceutical aid to female sexuality has resulted in the perfect storm for the development and promotion of female sexual dysfunction. The interests in the medicalisation of women&s;s sexuality are anchored in the pharmaceutical industry.

Psychoanalysis · Sexual dysfunction · Pelvic floor disorders treatments · Psychology · Sexual Differentiation and Disorders · Sexual function and dysfunction studies