Public health spending I believe in

[pktechgirlbackup]

Just watched Orgasm, Inc, a documentary on the creation of the diagnosis Female Sexual Dysfunction and the search for treatment (verdict: decent, but not spectacular). My short thoughts:

• If 80-something percent of people who can have the diagnosis do have the diagnosis at some point in their lives, it is probably worth reevaluating the concept of what merits the dysfunction label.
  
• There was a woman who had new wires put into her spine in order to correct the deficiency of being unable to orgasm from penetration. Goddamnit doctors, you should not be so bad at this.
  

My longer thought involves the (long term) use of testosterone to treat FSD. Testosterone is a critical chemical in many biological pathways. Using it to treat one very localized problem seems like using a sledgehammer on a fly. On the other hand, testosterone seems like an excellent treatment for low testosterone levels, for which low libido is definitely a symptom. Because of the way medical patents work, there's no financial incentive for a drug company to investigate what a normal testosterone range is, and what symptoms indicate a person would benefit from more testosterone even if their numbers look normal. This seems like an excellent thing for the government to invest in.

Comments

[squid314.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the documentary and don't know much about this subject (I can already imagine my girlfriend making some kind of mean joke here) but I'm not sure I agree with you that the creation of the disorder is a mistake.

We have this strong belief in our society that you're not allowed to seek medical help for something unless it's an Official Disorder. If women want doctors to help them with their (perfectly normal) difficulty achieving orgasm, the only way they're going to get it is for someone to pronounce perfectly normal difficulty achieving orgasm an Official Disorder.

Obviously this doesn't excuse giving treatments that are much riskier than the mild nature of the condition could possibly merit, but I think it's probably useful in the form of allowing people to research/talk about/evaluate treatment options for this at all.

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

Actually, you're probably a good person to ask about this. How does calling something a symptom, rather than a disorder in and of itself, change the investigation or treatment?

[scythe-of-time.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen this documentary either, but did it also cover how many men/transwomen have difficulty orgasming, especially though penetration? I'm wondering how much of this is a medial issue* or how much of it is a communication or crappy sex partner issue.

*which I believe exists, but 80% is a pretty high number

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

The doc was very much focused on vaginas and clitorises, the only mention of erectile dysfunction (which seems like a subtly different framing of the issue than "female sexual dysfunction") was to talk about attempts to use drugs developed for ED to treat FSD.