ABSTRACT
This chapter is a critical analysis of sex addiction discourse as it has developed since the 1980s. Without denying the distressthat can result from experiences of compulsive sexuality, the author argues that the construction of sex addiction as an analogy of drug dependency produces troubling effects. For example, the category ‘sex addiction’ reproduces a conventional and moralised binary of ‘good/healthy’ versus ‘bad/unhealthy’ sex. Gendered norms are also embedded in this discourse. The author argues that sex addiction locates the problem of desire firmly within the disordered individual, taking attention away from the social and cultural constitution of sexuality.
