ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the issues surrounding the tendency toward the medicalization of sex and love. When new treatments like pharmaceuticals are involved, medicalization is often accompanied by a shift in our understanding of what is a problem or dysfunction. The chapter focuses on a few specific issues to show how our judgments about what is disordered rest on our social and ethical evaluations. Some research into women’s sexuality illuminates those social dimensions of medicalization and its relation to norms of sexuality and appropriate sexual function and behavior. A woman might seek out the experiences and interactions that will lead to her having sexual desire rather than having sexual desire and being motivated by that to seek out certain experiences and interactions. Emily Nagoski offers an alternative view, arguing that the kind of “craving” and pleasure people feel in contexts of unpredictability may be more related to fear and relief than to good and healthy sexual relationships.
