In 2010, Thea Cacchioni testified before the US Food and Drug Administration against flibanserin, a drug proposed to treat low sexual desire in women, dubbed by the media the “pink Viagra.” She was one of many academics and activists sounding the alarm about the lack of science behind the search for potentially lucrative female sexual enhancement drugs.
In her book, Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love, Cacchioni moves beyond the search for a sexual pharmaceutical drug for women to ask a broader question: how does the medicalization of female sexuality already affect women’s lives? Using in-depth interviews with doctors, patients, therapists, and other medical practitioners, Cacchioni shows that, whatever the future of the “pink Viagra,” heterosexual women often now feel expected to take on the job of managing their and their partners’ sexual desires. Their search for sexual pleasure can be a “labour of love,” work that is enjoyable for some but a chore for others.
An original and insightful take on the burden of heterosexual norms in an era of compulsory sexuality, Cacchioni’s investigation should open up a wide-ranging discussion about the true impact of the medicalization of sexuality.
Thea Cacchioni is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Victoria.
Table of Contents
Preface: Testifying at the FDA Introduction: The Labour of Love in the Sexual Pharmaceutical Era Chapter One: The Rise and Decline of Pharma’s ‘Sexual Revolution’ Chapter Two: Treating Women’s Sexual Pain: Biomedicalized, Demedicalized, and Do-It-Yourself Approaches Chapter Three: The Limits of Normative (Hetero) Sex Chapter Four: Sex Work: A Labour of Love Chapter Five: Refusing Heteronormative Sex Work Chapter Six: A Woman’s Work is Never Done Epilogue: The Sexual Pharmaceutical Industry and Its Discontents
Appendix 1: Women’s Sexual Problems: a New Classification Appendix 2: Participant Profiles (in Alphabetical Order) Appendix 3: Biofeedback Readout
What People are Saying About This
Jennifer Terry
“Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love is a model of ethical and engaged research on a deeply intimate and sensitive subject.”
Meika Loe
“Thea Cacchioni’s book is well thought-out, beautifully written, and important. Her research shows that women themselves are not clamoring for a pink Viagra. If anything, they deserve a break from the labors of love that they perform.
Leonore Tiefer
“For this excellent overview of medicalization, female sexuality, and Big Pharma, Cacchioni gives us theory from gender studies and sociology, activism from a participant observer perspective, and some fascinating original research that will be of interest to clinicians. She digs below the rhetoric of female sexual empowerment to uncover a highly important unexplored stratum of ‘relationship sex work’: the ‘labor of love.’”
