A Brief History of Women's sexuality According to the medical industry.
I wish these weren’t parody material...
Ancient Greece
400 BC
"Your uterus is literally wandering around your body"
The womb, bored and loveless, would allegedly dislodge itself and float through the body causing anxiety, fatigue, and general inconvenience. Treatment: marriage, pregnancy, and strong smells near the vagina to coax it back into place.
The prescription for female distress has always been: have more sex (with a man). RECOMMENDED BY MEN OF COURSE. We're off to a great start.
Diagnosis: Hysteria
Treatment: marriage
THAT TRACKS! (read ironical tone)
Victorian Medicine
1880s
"She has too many feelings. We shall massage them away."
Hysteria is now a catch-all diagnosis for: anxiety, depression, grief, opinions, not enough sex, too much interest in sex, boredom, or simply being a woman who is inconvenient.
Physicians used "pelvic massage" to induce "hysterical paroxysm" as a legitimate medical treatment. The vibrator was invented, as a medical device, to save doctors' wrists.
Diagnosis: Hysteria (still)
Treatment: clinical orgasm
The vibrator was invented by doctors, for doctors, to treat women's feelings...
Freudian Psychoanalysis
1905
"You want the wrong kind of orgasm"
Sigmund Freud, who had opinions about everything, declared there were two types of female orgasm: clitoral (immature, childish, basically embarrassing) and vaginal (mature, healthy, correct).
Women who didn't orgasm vaginally were diagnosed as sexually immature or neurotic. The clitoris, it was decided, was just a little failed penis. Women who disagreed were, naturally, in denial.
Diagnosis: vaginal frigidity
Verdict: immature
Freud had never studied female anatomy formally. This theory dominated clinical psychology for 60+ years.
Mid 20th Century
1952
"Homosexuality is a mental illness" (first edition)
The first DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) arrives. IT is listed as a sociopathic personality disturbance. Any sexual desire that wasn't heterosexual, penetrative, and reproductive was by definition disordered.
Female sexuality existed largely in relation to male sexuality. Desire that didn't serve men's needs was, medically speaking, a problem.
DSM-IPathologised: queerness
The DSM-I listed homosexuality as a diagnosable mental illness until 1973. That's within living memory.
Sexual Revolution Era
1966
Masters & Johnson arrive. The clitoris is vindicated.
William Masters and Virginia Johnson actually study female orgasm in a laboratory. Revolutionary findings: the clitoris is the primary organ of female pleasure. Vaginal orgasms, as Freud defined them, don't really exist the way he thought.
Sexual “dysfunction” is finally studied. But "dysfunction" is still measured against a norm, and the norm is still male response.
Progress! Sort of…
Progress is Measured against male norm
It took until 1966 for anyone to formally study how female orgasm actually works. Freud published in 1905.
DSM-III Era
1980
"Inhibited sexual desire" is now officially a disorder
The DSM-III introduces Inhibited Sexual Desire Disorder, if you don't want sex frequently enough, you are medically disordered. No definition of "frequently enough" is provided. It is presumably whatever your partner thinks.
The pharmaceutical industry takes note. A pill for female desire is going to be very, very profitable.
DSM-III” Low libido = disorder
This is where the story of "female sexual dysfunction" as a marketable condition really begins.
DSM-5 / Modern Era
2013 - Now
Finally: responsive desire is real. but Also, you might have FSIAD.
The DSM-5 makes progress: it merges desire and arousal CHALLENGES (acknowledging they're connected), removes the requirement that distress comes from the person, not just their partner, and acknowledges that responsive desire is normal.
But the pathologising continues. "Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder" is new. Asexuality is still sometimes treated as a problem to solve. And the benchmark for normal desire remains... vague, culturally shaped, and largely designed by men.
DSM-5: Progress (real, partial)
DSM-5 is genuinely better. It's also still a manual written within a culture that has never been neutral about women's bodies.
