Wellcome Trust Blog

What does our perception of Female Sexual Dysfunction say about our societal perception of female sexuality, desire, and indeed our reflection of ourselves? Katherine Angel discusses.

My academic research focuses on Female Sexual Dysfunction, an umbrella term for diagnostic categories in the American and Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which has provoked much controversy. At stake in debates about Female Sexual Dysfunction are the questions of who can speak about female sexuality; what kind of language is appropriate to describing – and treating – problems relating to desire, arousal, orgasm, or pain; and, indeed, whether phenomena such as low desire or lack of orgasm are to be seen as medical problems in the first place.

The larger preoccupation that suffuses both this research and my book of literary non-fiction, Unmasteredis how we talk, in the public realm about female sexuality – and with what effects. Unmastered

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