How is asexuality different from hypoactive sexual desire disorder?

Abstract

Since around 2000, asexuality – conceptualised as a sexual orientation – has begun to emerge as an identity and a movement. Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which emerged in the late 1970s with the rise of sex therapy and is currently listed in the DSM, has gained increasing attention – promotion and a backlash of criticism – with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry in sex research. The relationship of these categories has often been noted but largely unexplored, and when explored, authors have tended to focus only on how much they do or do not overlap. This article examines the relationships and differences between asexuality and HSDD by examining the histories of each, the conceptual sources that each has primarily drawn on (various clinical/medical traditions vs. LGBT discourses and reactions against dominant beliefs about sexuality that asexuals find incongruent with their experiences); it examines how each functions in the primary contexts where they are used (asexual spaces and clinicians' offices, respectively) and in larger social discourses.

Keywords:

• asexuality
• hypoactive sexual desire disorder
• sexual interest/arousal disorder
• medicalisation

Notes

1. This importance of this point is easily underestimated. A major difference between asexuality and HSDD is that the former focuses on lack of sexual attraction, whereas the latter focus on lack of sexual desire.

2. In March 2010, the APA (2010) announced that beginning with the 5th edition of the DSM, Arabic numerals would be used rather than Roman numerals.

3. http://www.asexuality.org/home/general.html

4. http://www.asexuality.org/home/relationship.html

5. While there has not been any research on the question of what asexuals think about while masturbating, the subject of what asexuals think about while masturbating comes up from time to time in asexual spaces, and anecdotal evidence indicates that some do not think about anything in particular and some use some kind of sexually arousing fantasies. Yet I am not aware of anyone using a distinction between ‘uses fantasies to masturbate’ and ‘does not use fantasies to masturbate’ as the basis of an asexual typology.

6. http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=To_scientists