How is asexuality different from hypoactive sexual desire disorder?

Abstract

Since around 2000, asexuality – conceptualised as a sexual orientation – has begun to emerge as an identity and a movement. Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which emerged in the late 1970s with the rise of sex therapy and is currently listed in the DSM, has gained increasing attention – promotion and a backlash of criticism – with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry in sex research. The relationship of these categories has often been noted but largely unexplored, and when explored, authors have tended to focus only on how much they do or do not overlap. This article examines the relationships and differences between asexuality and HSDD by examining the histories of each, the conceptual sources that each has primarily drawn on (various clinical/medical traditions vs. LGBT discourses and reactions against dominant beliefs about sexuality that asexuals find incongruent with their experiences); it examines how each functions in the primary contexts where they are used (asexual spaces and clinicians' offices, respectively) and in larger social discourses.

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