Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Kimmel, Michael | Marrone, Catherine | Otis, Eileen | Diedrich, Lisa.
Date
2013-12-01
Keywords
Sociology | Female sexual dysfunction, Gender, Medicalization, Sexuality
Department
Department of Sociology.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76818
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Scholarly interest in the social construction of female sexual dysfunction has tended to focus on the medicalization of women's sexual desires and behaviors, which can be traced back to the early 1970's with the publication of Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Inadequacy. Not much is known, however, in regards to the ways in which women make sense of sexual problems as " dysfunctions" , or the ways in which medical interpretations of these problems affect the ways in which women experience gender, sexuality, and their bodies. In this qualitative study, I am interested in understanding: a) how, and to what degree, women come to view their sexual problems as sexual dysfunctions; and b) how the medicalization of female sexual dysfunction - or lack of it - affects women's gendered and sexual identities and practices. To do so, I conducted a comparative qualitative study of three populations: women with sexual pain, including (but not limited to) women with vulvodynia (a condition causing pain during penetrative intercourse), women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (commonly understood as low libido), and women with anorgasmia (the inability to achieve orgasm). I first examine the ways in which women are expected to achieve normative gender via sexual activity and/or feeling, as well as the consequences of the inability or disinclination to engage in such activity for women's sense of themselves as gendered beings. Next, I elucidate the causal narratives women used to explain their sexual problems, as well as the strategies used to address them. Finally, I examine the ways in which both women and their physicians lay claims to bodily expertise in regards to sexual difficulties, paying particular attention to the delegitimation of women's experiences and strategies of resistance. In doing so, I hope to contribute to the literature on the ways in which gendered sexuality is constructed by examining what happens when sexual experience is medically pathologized, as well as the means by which women attempt to restore their sexual capabilities. | 166 pages
Recommended Citation
Braksmajer, Amy, "The Medicalization of Gender and Sexuality: Women's Responses to " Female Sexual Dysfunction"" (2013). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2694.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2694