Just What Is FSAD?

The initials in the name stand for Female Sexual Arousal Disorder.

The name itself was coined when a University of Chicago Sociology Professor (Ed Laumann) re-analyzed a 1992 survey asking women to answer yes or no to whether they had experienced any of seven sexual problems or concerns for 2 months or more during the previous year.
The questions included seven issues, including lack of desire, anxiety about “sexual performance,” and difficulties with lubrication.

About 1500 women were included in the survey.

This new look at the data found 43% of the women answered yes to at least one of the questions.

That’s all it took…just one yes out of seven…to be labeled as having Female Sexual Arousal Disorder.

A very short step from difficulties or disinterest to having a “disorder.”

Even though a strong article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a highly cited weekly medical journal that publishes peer-reviewed original medical research, cautioned that these survey results were “not equivalent to clinical diagnosis” the die had been cast.

It was too juicy an opportunity to pass by. Even though there is no way of knowing if the number is accurate or even valid, it has been quoted extensively and widely used to justify medicalizing women’s sexuality.

Sure enough…the process has continued…it won’t surprise you at all to hear that the pharmaceutical companies are now hot on the trail of finding the perfect pill, salve, or potion that will “cure” FSAD.

Doesn’t matter that decreased lubrication is a very common occurrence after menopause. Decreased lubrication is not dysfunction…it’s life! It’s what happens to almost all of us. Are we all dysfunctional? All sick?

I don’t think so…

Dr Sandra Leiblum, professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a clinical psychologist, is very concerned about this trend to redefine normal changes of aging as dysfunction.

She believes real dysfunction is much less prevalent than 43%, and that the figure has contributed to an over medicalization of women’s sexuality. “I think there is dissatisfaction and perhaps disinterest among a lot of women, but that doesn’t mean they have a disease,” she said at an educational workshop addressing these very issues.

There is more to come about how normal changes of aging are being redefined as dysfunctions, opening the way to redefining these “dysfunctions” as medical disorders…and you know who is working on a variety of pills and potions that will cure the disorders.

There is more on FSAD in the category FSAD…just click on the FSAD link in the Category listing.