Low Desire, Trauma, and Femininity in the DSM-5: A Case for Sequelae

The recently released DSM-5 (2013) includes a new sexual dysfunction: Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD). For the first time, the low sexual desire disorders are split along gender lines, and lack of sexual ‘receptivity’ is offered as a criterion for diagnosis in women only. Although ‘severe relationship distress’ or other ‘significant stressors’ are to be considered during evaluation for FSIAD, the patient’s trauma history is not evaluated as part of the protocol. The presence of violence or distress can potentially elicit a differential diagnosis, but what constitutes ‘severity’ is not articulated either, except to designate ‘partner violence’ as the primary example. Thus, past relational violence, sexual abuse, and trauma are not explicitly considered—nor is the vast spectrum of gendered violations that many women describe experiencing on a regular basis. I examine potential problems with separating the trauma diagnoses (i.e., Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, and other Trauma- and Stressor-Related or Dissociative Disorders) from FSIAD in the DSM-5. Drawing on interviews with low-desiring women who describe being violated, I elaborate how this diagnostic separation may be re-traumatizing for women who have experienced such violence and have low sexual desire as a result. I also question the utility of framing psychological disorders and symptoms as comorbid (i.e., concomitant but unrelated) and argue instead for more thorough etiological or sequelic investigations of low desire

Diagnosing Desire

In Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century, Alyson K. Spurgas examines the “new science of female sexuality” from a critical, sociological perspective, considering how today’s feminist-identified sex researchers study and manage women with low desire. Diagnosing Desire investigates experimental sex research that measures the disconnect between subjective and genital female arousal, contemporary psychiatric diagnoses for low female desire, new models for understanding women’s sexual response, and cutting-edge treatments for low desire in women—including from the realms of mindfulness and alternative healing

Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century

Sexual difference and femininity in sex therapy and sex research: examples from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries -- Interest, arousal, and motivation in contemporary sexology: the feminization of responsive desire -- Women-with-low-desire: navigating and negotiating sexual difference socialization -- Embodied invisible labor, sexual carework: the cultural logic and affective valorization of responsive female desire -- Reclaiming receptivity: parasexual pleasure in the face of compulsory and feminized trauma

Editors’ Introduction: Lateral Changes

This issue marks the addition of a new co-editor and several special projects, including Lateral's first podcast, Positions. This issue presents two important sections of work, both building on conversations in the field and across publications: "The Black Shoals Dossier," curated by Beenash Jafri, and the second part of "Crip Pandemic Life," edited by Alyson Patsavas and Theodora Danylevich. In addition to these impressive sections, the issue features three research articles and ten book reviews

The Taxonomy and Ontology of Sexual Difference: Implications for Sport

When it comes to sexing the body, the effect of increasing knowledge has not been to consolidate the two-sex model of sexual difference, but to challenge the certainties of binary thinking. While this has consequences across all discourses, sport finds itself in a particularly bright spotlight because of its reliance on a clear distinction between male and female bodies. This article argues that sex testing is not based on knowledge of reality, but on an edifice of gender ideology that is simplistic and out-dated. It proposes that, in the light of recent controversies, there is now an urgent requirement to take the growing challenges to the taxonomy and ontology of sexual difference seriously. This should be done through a pro-active programme of education, targeted at all those concerned with sport, so that they can think differently rather than attempt to bolster the status quo