The Ideology of Addyi: Feminizing Medicine, or Medicalizing Femininity?

Abstract

Sigmund Freud is famous for having asked, "What does a woman want?" In the context of therapeutic, interventional psychoanalysis, his unanswered question suggests another, even more unsettling one: "What should women want?" The so-called "female Viagra", as flibanserin is so often called, is more polarizing than its manufacturer's tagline, "the little pink pill," suggests. While much attention has been paid to the advocacy surrounding Addyi, I wish to investigate how transformations of experimental techniques and diagnostic technologies have created this ideologically divisive medicalization of desire: that is, the material conditions for Addyi. Desire has been medicalized to accommodate historically contingent anxiety over female desire, and evolving diagnostic methods have attempted to reify desire into a medically treatable disorder; meanwhile, the trivialization of drugs like the Pill, Viagra, and Prozac has made Addyi viable, though still controversial.