Female Sexual Dysfunction
A story about Women’s Libido aired on ABC’s Catalyst today. It was a repeat of a previous show that aired in May 2004.
It dealt with the complex issue of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), which 43% of women experience.
It asked the question, ‘will there ever be a pill for women’s passion?’, since researchers announced that Viagra for women didn’t work (despite a widespread want for such a drug), and also questioned the libido depressing effects of the contraceptive pill. The pill has adverse effects on the sexuality of about 1/3 of women, yet there doesn’t seem to be much public discussion about the issue. One of the side effects of the pill is loss of libido, but most women with a sexual problem say ‘how come no one ever told me that?’, so there seems to be a lack of education, and possibly media attention on the issue. And they questioned why more research to develop a pill that didn’t supress libido, hadn’t been conducted by now. An interesting point was made - “if it had been a male pill we’d have done that by now”.
The program also asked how much of fsd is in the mind, and how much in the body - as the prevailing view is that FSD is psychological. Experts testify that this view leads us to ignore the physical problems.
Interviewees challenged the move to medicalise women’s sexuality, suggesting that this unecessarily turns normal women’s libido into a disease.
When I searched for this program’s transcript on the Catalyst website, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ABC had broadcast and published numerous stories on the issue of female sexual dysfunction, including on Radio National, and in Health Matters. Yet each report comes to the same conclusion - that there is still little known about FSD and the female orgasm, and that it’s an extremely common problem.
