Apples and Oranges: “Sexual Medicine” and the Effort to Deny That Counting and Classifying Are Political Acts

Abstract

Criticisms and controversies about scientific method are rarely just about science. As or more often, they are sociological exercises in boundary patrol, helping determine which work is in and which is out. The recent back-and-forth on the question of whether psychological treatments for sexual desire complaints are sufficiently “rigorous” is part of the effort to define the field of sexual medicine. Limiting good sexual science to quantitative clinical trial style is a rhetorical maneuver which must be challenged.