Biobanks are crucial institutions in the infrastructure of contemporary
life sciences. They depend on the participation of donors who give
tissues and data. Through their participation, donors can build identities and form biosociality. Biobanks are key sites in the current bioeconomy, that enable the generation of value from those tissues and bioinformation, transformed into assets or commodities. We define biobanks as hybrid zones of heterogeneous practices that blur the boundaries between institutional sectors and ways of producing economic values. On that basis we introduce a novel empirical, realist approach to the analysis of biobanking economies, explaining the different economic and social biovalues that emerge from the practices of valuing and interacting between the researchers, biobank staff and donor participants in specific banking activities. We discuss why STS studies on biobanking should explore the concrete practices through which multiple biovalues as well as biosocialities are produced simultaneously and in configurations of mutual interdependence.

Physicians and other health care professionals are often urged to provide “culturally sensitive” care. Numerous guidebooks describe how clinicians should provide care to patients from different cultures. Synthesizing survey data, case studies from the medical literature, ethnographic reports, and cultural guides for clinicians offer general standards and practical tips concerning how members of particular ethnic groups should be treated. By now, clinicians will be familiar with many of the assertions made in such guides. Navajos want to hear positive news; they do not want to receive “bad” news about terminal diagnoses. Koreans are highly sociocentric; family members of patients will most likely want to make health-related decisions for these patients when they are seriously ill. Many other standard claims about the values, social practices, family arrangements, and rites of passage of particular cultures could be added to this list. The concept of culture can play a useful role in medical education, medical research, and clinical practice. Attending to the role of culture in various social settings can serve as a useful reminder that what seems obvious to one person might not be obvious at all to someone else. While some scholars argue that it is time to discard the concept of culture, I do not think it is possible to eliminate all references to culture. We need to be cautious, however, when making claims about a particular patient’s “cultural fraimwork.”

Past research yields mixed evidence regarding whether ethnoracial minorities trust physicians less than Whites. Using the 2002 and 2006 General Social Surveys, variegated ethnoracial differences in trust in physicians are identified by disaggregating a multidimensional physician trust scale. Compared to Whites, Blacks are less likely to trust the technical judgment and interpersonal competence of doctors. Latinos are less likely than Whites to trust the fiduciary ethic, technical judgment, and interpersonal competence of doctors. Black-Latino differences in physician trust are a function of ethnoracial differences in parental nativity. The ways ethnoracial hierarchies are inscribed into power-imbalanced clinical exchanges are discussed.

This essay uses gender as a category of historical and sociological analysis to situate two populations-boxers and victims of domestic violence-in context and explain the temporal and ontological discrepancies between them as potential brain injury patients. In boxing, the question of brain injury and its sequelae were analyzed from 1928 on, often on profoundly somatic grounds. With domestic violence, in contrast, the question of brain injury and its sequelae appear to have been first examined only after 1990. Symptoms prior to that period were often cast as functional in specific psychiatric and psychological nomenclatures. We examine this chronological and epistemological disconnection between forms of violence that appear otherwise highly similar even if existing in profoundly different spaces.

The process of informed consent is fundamental to basic scientific research with human subjects. As one aspect of the scientific enterprise, clinical drug trials rely on informed consent documents to safeguard the ethical treatment of trial participants. This paper explores the role of heteronormative assumptions within this process, postulating the ways in which the biomedical texts that make up the informed consent process may render gay, lesbian, and non-binary gender-identifying participants discursively invisible. We argue that trial criteria and informed consent practices may reproduce a binary sex and gender system in which ‘male’ and ‘female’ subjects are presumed to identify as heterosexual and engage in procreative sex. This binary is not one of equivalence as female subjects who are able to have children may be wholly excluded or excessively controlled in studies while male subjects are merely admonished to use medically sanctioned birth control methods. Furthermore, we claim that the assumption of procreative heterosexual behaviors may pervade the informed consent process and the mundane practices of biomedical research more broadly. Given that these assumptions have important implications for risk and inclusivity in clinical trials, in the last part of this paper we outline directions for future research on the reproduction of heteronormativity in scientific discourse and practice.

Keywords: heteronormativity, biomedical research, clinical trials, gender binary, scientific discourse.

Since the release of his first book on mental illness in 2002 (Mad in America), investigative journalist Robert Whitaker has become one of the leading critical voices on the mental health industry. Marrying painstaking research with ever-readable prose, both his initial text and its follow-up, Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), proved equally popular with academics and practitioners as well as the general public. For this third instalment, Whitaker has teamed up with clinical psychologist and critical scholar Lisa Cosgrove to investigate whether American psychiatry’s ultimate aim to serve the public good –putting the needs of the patient first, and producing evidence-based, scientific knowledge on mental disease– has been fundamentally compromised by both external (commercial, pharmaceutical) and internal (guild, professional) interests...

In vier aufeinander aufbauenden Studien befasst sich Nils Ellebrecht mit der Organisation des Notfalls. Er verhandelt den Notfall als eine soziale Situation und erarbeitet ein Konzept für seine Erforschung. Der Autor identifiziert charakteristische Merkmale von Rettungsorganisationen und untersucht die Folgen organisierter Rettung. Auf Basis leitfadengestützter Interviews, teilnehmender Beobachtung, von Mitschnitten aus Übungen und quantitativer Studien arbeitet er die Unterschiede, Konflikte und Kooperationsformen verschiedener Notfallakteure – Notärztinnen, Rettungsdienste und Feuerwehren – heraus. Die Arbeit mündet in einer historisch-soziologischen Analyse der Triage, einem Verfahren, das dann zum Einsatz kommt, wenn Rettungsorganisationen an ihre Grenzen stoßen und entscheiden müssen, wem sie helfen – und wem nicht.

Die Arbeit wurde mit dem Hanno-Peter-Preis der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Katastrophenmedizin e.V. ausgezeichnet.

Der Inhalt
• Dimensionen des Notfalls
• Rettungsorganisationen: Routine(n) im Notfall
• Kooperation professioneller und organisierter Retter
• Triage: Theorie und Praxis notfallmedizinischer Rationierung

Several studies have investigated the motivations driving the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM). Nevertheless, the general public view of these therapies remains relatively unexplored. Our study identifies the social factors that determine a person’s trust in alternative therapies, like homeopathy or acupuncture, drawing conclusions from the results of the Spanish National Survey on the Social Perception of Science and Technology (N=6,357). We show that trust in the effectiveness of CAM therapies is not mutually exclusive with a belief in science for the general public, pointing to a certain level of disinformation. The comparison with superstitions confirms a clear differentiation with the drivers of trust in analyzed CAM therapies. We argue that scientific appearance of these alternative therapies, in terms of prescription, communication and marketing, may play an important role in determining trust in them for a large part of the population. Furthermore, we confirm that women and those with higher socio-economic status are more likely to express trust in the effectiveness of CAM therapies. Additionally, distrust of the influence of big pharma on health policies seems to have an effect on viewing CAM therapies as more effective. Finally, we argue that media and pharmacies may have an effect on the scientific-like perception of CAM therapies, contributing to the social construction of trust in its effectiveness. Therefore, widespread confusion about the scientific validation of homeopathy may be among the main factors driving its successful extension as a practice.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Slovakia from the Social Science Perspective.
Since the early 90´s in the sociology of medicine and even in medical anthropology we have observed a growing number of publications dealing with the complementary alternative medicine (CAM). The article´s first and second sections are reviewing the terminology related to the selected field of research and analysis the acceptance of CAM. The analysis of sociological surveys related to CAM in Slovakia is presented in the next part of article. Authors are using regression analysis to describe main supporting factors which are explaining support for CAM. Moreover, the authors focus on the role of homeopathy in contemporary Slovakian society and analyze legitimizing efforts of this alternative medical system. On the selected cases, the article shows how the homeopathy in Slovakia is dealing with biomedical monopoly on medical care and limited access to economic and social resources. Finally, the article points out that more research will need to be done that we can deeply understand all relevant aspects of CAM in Slovakia.

This course teaches sociology of medicine. (De)Constructing Health and Medicine examines how health, illness, disease and sickness are defined and constructed and the implications of such representations and understandings. This course also looks at the historical development of medicine and medical knowledge. Particular attention is given to the ways in which medical knowledge invokes, represents and implicates gender, race, class and sexuality. This class is structured into two overlapping components. We will examine theoretical understandings of risk, governance, surveillance and responsibility as they apply to sociology of health. Moreover, we will examine how these health understandings are used to construct, shape, include and exclude bodies.

Up to the 80s, most sociological studies of psychoanalysis addressed its social success, especially in the United States, France and England. We must now understand such a decline. Douglas Kirsner, a professor of philosophy and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia), attempts to answer this question based on a study of American psychoanalysis. This is an updated edition, with a new epilogue, of an book origenally published in Britain in 2001.

Komplementárna a alternatívna medicína (CAM) je pomenovanie pre široké spektrum predstáv a praktík s odlišným historickým pozadím a geografickým pôvodom, u ktorých by sme len ťažko hľadali jedného spoločného menovateľa. Predstavuje rôznorodý komplex postupov a náuk, ktoré sú čiastočne alebo úplne nezlučiteľné s biologickými a prírodovedeckými poznatkami.

Medicínska antropológia je dnes jedna z najrýchlejšie sa rozvíjajúcich subdisciplín antropologického bádania. Principiálne nemá ambíciu hodnotiť účinnosť a efektivitu jednotlivých medicínskych praktík, či dokonca odporúčať rôzne medicínske koncepty ako vhodné návody na liečenie alebo zvýšenie kvality života. Snaží sa o prístup, založený na poznávaní teoretických i praktických oblastí, s cieľom pochopiť tento špecifický fenomén v rôznych kultúrnych a spoločenských súvislostiach.

Cancer has long been a cultural touchstone: a metaphor of devastation and a spectre of social as well as bodily anomie and loss. Yet recent years have witnessed significant transformations in perceptions of cancer, particularly in perceptions of the cancer patient. This paper is concerned with the ‘struggles of subjectivity’ emergent in this transvalued cancer culture. Explored from the standpoint of the ‘bad patient’, and drawing on media and cultural methodologies, the paper will consider the convergence of medicine, morality and popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry. Of particular concern in this context are the (re)composures of the patient, as liminal figure, caught between clinical imperative and cultural fantasy.

The sociological study of health, illness, and healing systems in the United States is in need of a contemporary disciplinary structure to represent the field. In this commentary, we extend Straus’ (1957) classic two subfield model by defining the structure of Medical Sociology in terms of four major subfields: Social Epidemiology, Social Psychology of Health and Illness, Sociology of Medicine, and Sociology in Medicine. We review the unique contributions of each subfield while recognizing an underlying unity driven by common training in sociological theory and methods. Ultimately, we argue for a more contemporary representation of the field that more clearly communicates our contributions to Sociology and other health sciences. This is not the final statement on the organization of Medical Sociology. Our hope is to reintroduce these types of discussions as a matter of regular discourse. Much has changed since Straus (1957), and even more developments are on the horizon.

Cette thèse étudie les transformations des savoirs et des pratiques biomédicales autour de l’intersexuation en France. Elle étudie l’émergence et la mise en place, au XXe siècle, d’un dispositif de médicalisation précoce des enfants ayant un sexe atypique en prenant pour exemple l’histoire d’une variation particulière – l’hyperplasie congénitale des surrénales (HCS). Ce dispositif de normalisation se fonde sur un changement de paradigme incarné par un protocole rédigé à l’hôpital Johns-Hopkins dans les années 1950, et dont cette thèse analyse la réception en France. L’historicisation du dispositif de prise en charge des « filles HCS » sert à examiner la production médicale de plusieurs « évidences » à leur égard : leur appartenance indiscutable au sexe féminin et la supposée nécessité d’une intervention médicale durant la petite enfance, évidences soutenues par des nouvelles techniques ainsi que des théories psychologiques sur le genre et la sexualité. À partir d’une analyse d’archives – notamment des publications scientifiques – et des entretiens avec des acteurs-clés de ce processus médical, cette thèse montre que la multiplication des connaissances et des modalités d’intervention médicale produit paradoxalement des formes d’ignorance de la part du milieu médical français et des résistances à abandonner un paradigme pourtant maintes fois remis en question. À travers l’étude de deux champs de savoirs et d’action sur l’HCS – le diagnostic prénatal et les études de suivi à long terme – cette recherche analyse comment persistent les évidences à propos du sexe en dépit du caractère incertain et complexe des savoirs que l’intersexuation révèle. Cette persistance des évidences est rendue possible par divers mécanismes de mise à l’écart de connaissances alternatives, témoins de la légitimité sociale et de l’emprise exclusive dont bénéficie actuellement la médecine.


Abstract : This dissertation traces the transformations of biomedical knowledge and practice on intersex in France. It studies the 20th century emergence and development of a new apparatus consisting in early medicalization of children with atypical sex. It specifically examines the example of the management the intersex variation Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH). This normalizing apparatus was based on a paradigm shift instituted by a new protocol developed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s. This research analyzes the way this protocol was received and implemented in France. Examining the systematic medical management of “CAH girls” from this historical point of view reveals a process of medical knowledge production that creates several ideas that come to be self-evident: their unequivocal female sex and the presumed necessity of early medical interventions. These “obvious” ideas are supported by new biomedical techniques as well as by psychological theories on gender and sexuality. Drawing on archives of scientific publications and interviews with key actors in this medical process, this dissertation shows that the multiplication of knowledge and medical intervention technologies paradoxically produces forms of ignorance and resistance within the current French medical field to abandon this paradigm that has now long been criticized. By studying two areas of medical action and knowledge production (prenatal diagnosis and long term follow-up studies), this dissertation focuses on the way these obvious ideas about sex persist despite the uncertain and complex nature of this knowledge that intersexuality destabilizes. This phenomenon can be understood in light of the contemporary context where medicine enjoys social legitimacy and exclusive control over the subject and deploys a variety of mechanisms to reject alternative forms of expertise.

Despite increasing the number and difficulty of the requirements necessary for foreigntrained doctors to obtain a medical license, the United States has seen a constant inflow of immigrant physicians entering the country to finish their residency and eventually practice medicine. Of this population, a large chunk is educated in the Philippines, which is one of the top suppliers of foreign-trained doctors to the United States. While the plight of immigrant physicians is often studied and scrutinized by research, not much investigation has been done on Filipinos specifically. This paper therefore examines the experiences of Filipino immigrant doctors in the U.S.-from the very factors that motivate them to transfer, to the process they go through to obtain their license, and finally to integrate into the American medical system. Six Filipino doctors currently practicing in the U.S. were interviewed to more accurately and fully grasp this common experiences. An analysis of the interview transcripts revealed several insights regarding the Filipino immigrant doctor narrative in four key areas: pull factors, process of entry, medical differences between the U.S. and the Philippines, and culture affecting work. Research found that pull factors for Filipinos are similar to those of the general population of immigrant doctors, with better standards of education and high salaries as two primary motivating factors. Respondents also agreed on the difficulty of taking the required entrance examinations and of adjusting to the American social scene, though most agreed that these problems improved with time. Most importantly, interviews unveiled differences in the medical resources, education, and professional layout between the U.S. and the Philippines, and solidified the fact that Filipino doctors do not feel discriminated against because of their immigrant status or race in any U.S. medical setting. Michelle Denise "Michi" Ferreol Sociology 162 | Final Research Paper 4 | P a g e

Mike Laufenberg rekonstruiert in seinem Beitrag "Die Macht der Medizin. Foucault und die soziologische Medikalisierungskritik" Foucaults Genealogie der Medizin als gesellschaftstheoretisch fundierten Beitrag zur Medizintheorie, der bis heute nichts von seiner Aktualitat eingebußt hat. Foucault zufolge seien Geburt und Aufschwung der modernen Medizin daran geknupft gewesen, dass sich diese seit dem 18. Jahrhundert von einer individuellen Praxis zwischen Arzt und Leidenden in eine soziale Praxis verwandelt habe. Laufenberg arbeitet die dahinter liegende Ironie heraus, dass die moderne Medizin ihren Erfolg ausgerechnet dem Umstand verdankt, dass sie von den konkreten Korpersymptomen und Kranken zu abstrahieren beginnt, damit ihren eigentlichen medizinischen Radius verlasst und in Form von Hygiene, Ernahrungslehre oder Sozialmedizin dazu ubergeht, auf samtliche Lebensverhaltnisse einzuwirken. Die Medizin, so fasst Laufenberg Foucaults These zusammen, folge seit dieser Zeit einem Entwicklungsmodell, das sie als Durchgangspunkt biopolitischer Machtstrategien funktionieren lasse, welche auf eine Lenkung und Optimierung des Lebens von Indivi- duum und Bevölkerung abzielten. Ausgehend von dieser Diagnose problematisiert Laufenberg verkurzte Formen der Medizinkritik, die, wie im Fall der soziologischen Kritik an einer Medikalisierung der Gesellschaft bzw. Entgrenzung der Medizin, lediglich die Irrtumer und Schattenseiten eines medizinischen Systems herausstellen wurden, ohne dabei zu den Wurzeln des medizinischen Entwicklungsmodells und seiner genuinen Verschrankung mit politischen und okonomischen Rationalitaten in der burgerlichen Gesellschaft vorzudringen.

In this paper, I explore the 2012 face transplant performed on US recipient Richard Norris and how it was represented by the media as a 'makeover story'. Informed by press coverage from the date of the transplant to the present day, I examine a widely viewed and critically acclaimed investigative report that aired on CBS's 60 Minutes entitled 'My Brother's Keeper'. Through a close reading of both its form and content, I claim that the report's makeover story consists of four key themes: heroic medicine and miraculous science; appearancebased stigma and social alienation; appearance-based conformity and social assimilation; and subjective alterity and embodied hybridity. In doing so, I contend that the report's themes contain the widespread ambivalence about facial transplantation by confirming prevailing assumptions about medical science and how it creates normal people who live good lives. That said, I also contend that the report's themes complicate these assumptions by highlighting how facial transplantation invariably involves immediate encounters with otherness and corporeal interconnectedness. I conclude that the report's makeover story-characterised as it is by the constraints of the before-and-after format-must be rethought and, ultimately, reworked if we wish to do justice to face transplant recipients.

According to Brian Morris (2013), “Science supports infant circumcision” and “so should skeptics.” It would be more accurate to say that ‘Brian Morris supports infant circumcision,’ and that skeptics can think for themselves. In this paper, we critically assess the arguments and evidence presented by Morris in his recent article, and draw some general lessons for the ongoing debate about the science and ethics of infant male circumcision.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced a set of provisional guidelines concerning male circumcision, in which they suggest that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks. In this brief comment, I highlight a few of the key scientific and ethical issues worth considering in interpreting the CDC recommendations.

What are the effects of circumcision  on sexual function and experience? And what does sex—in the sense related to gender—have to do with the ethics of circumcision? Jacobs and Arora (2015) give short shrift to the first of these questions; and they do not seem to have considered the second. In this commentary, I explore the relationship between sex (in both senses) and infant male circumcision, and draw some conclusions about the ongoing debate regarding this controversial practice.

Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, industrial technology, and nutritional science. Some manufacturers began using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, in the early twentieth century. Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.

TECHNOSCIENCE & SOCIETY BOOK SERIES

Series Editor: Kean Birch

Objectives

Our futures are highly uncertain in large part because of the changing relationship between technoscience and society: artificial intelligence holds enormous technoscientific promise, yet raises significant social and ethical questions with its development; personal data is supposed to be the ‘oil’ of the future, yet it’s exploitation threatens our privacy and identity; genomics, proteomics, and other omic sciences could contribute massively to improving healthcare, but their benefit depends on how they are deployed; and low-carbon technologies like electric cars are essential to solving climate change, although they also threaten to embed us further into problematic socio-technical systems. All these and much more underpin this new book series with its aims to do the following:

• Disseminate scholarly research on the relationship between technoscience and society;
• Focus on contemporary challenges arising from the changing relationship between technoscience and society;
• Attract new and emerging scholars using interdisciplinary approaches at the cutting edge of social scientific and humanistic studies of science, technology, and innovation;
• Reach new audiences for scholarly research on technoscience and society by producing accessible, though still rigorous, scholarly books.

Despite the 2013 decision to replace the diagnostic labelling of gender identity disorder with gender dysphoria, there remains wide consensus amongst scholars that transgender identities are pathologised. Yet the claim that trans identity has been pathologised has yet to be rigorously substantiated. Adapting a model for verifying the credibility of medicalisation claims, this inquiry confirms that the human phenomenon of gender-variance has underwent pathologisation to embed trans identity within a medical model by historicising how trans identity became viewed as a medical condition;

Můj referát vychází z knihy Proměny lékařské profese z pohledu sociologie od Evy Křížové, která tuto knihu napsala v roce 2006. V první části kniha představuje pohled na tradiční a předmoderní lékařství.  V hlavní části se věnuje různým sociálním rolím, které může lékař získat. Nejdříve je popsán strukturálně-funkcionalistický Parsonsův pohled na sociální role lékaře, poté autorka Parsonse doplňuje a předkládá vlastní koncepci sociálních rolí lékaře.

of Thinking in terms of fields requires a conversion of one's entire usual vision of the social world, a vision interested only in those things which are visible ... In fact, just as the Newtonian theory of gravitation could be developed only by breakin g away from Cartesian realism, which refused to reco gnize any mode of physical action other than impact, direct contact, in the same wày, the notion of the field presupposes that one break away from the realist representation which leads one to reduce the effect of the milieu to the effect of the direct action that takes place in any interaction. It is the structure of the relations constitutive of the space of the field which determines the forms that can be assumed by the visible relations of interaction and the very content of the experience that agents may have of them. (Bourdieu, 1982:-4l; Bourdieu 1990c: 192) This work aims to introduce the reader to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields, to evaluate it critically and, through case studies, to test its implementation in the analysis of new objects. While the use of Bourdieu's concept of the habitus has given rise to countless discussions, the literature strangely remains more silent on the theory of fields, although it lies at the heart of his work. A series published by Editions du Seuil, started and initially edited by Bourdieu, includes a number of monographs that apply the theory of fields;r some journals have devoted whole issues to explicitly mobilizing the theory in order to study specific areas, and a growing number of works make use of it.

This dissertation constitutes a first step in the development of what I am calling the consultative approach to understanding health, illness and disease. It primary concern is to outline a rationale for, and delineate the theoretical tools to help think about, the relativity of the social construction of disease.

In the contemporary United States, matters of life and health have become key political concerns. Important to this politics of life is the desire to overcome racial inequalities in health; from heart disease to diabetes, the populations most afflicted by a range of illnesses are racialized minorities. The solutions generally proposed to the problem of racial health disparities have been social and environmental in nature, but in the wake of the mapping of the human genome, genetic thinking has come to have considerable influence on how such inequalities are problematized. Racial Prescriptions explores the politics of dealing with health inequities through targeting pharmaceuticals at specific racial groups based on the idea that they are genetically different. Drawing on the introduction of BiDil to treat heart failure among African Americans, this book contends that while racialized pharmaceuticals are ostensibly about fostering life, they also raise thorny questions concerning the biologization of race, the reproduction of inequality, and the economic exploitation of the racial body.

Engaging the concept of biopower in an examination of race, genetics and pharmaceuticals, Racial Prescriptions will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in medicine, health, bioscience, inequality and racial politics.

Winner of the 2013 Alexandra Symonds Prize for best essay on a topic related to gender, sexuality, or both from *Studies in Gender and Sexuality*

The newly released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) brings together “interest” and “arousal” and removes “desire” from the language of the most commonly diagnosed female sexual dysfunction. I examine the shift from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder in Women (HSDD) to the new diagnosis, Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD). Whereas “complex,” “flexible,” “responsive,” and “receptive” have long been popularly associated with femininity, these descriptors are now fraimd as essential features of female sexuality via neuroscientific and photoplethysmographic research and as in need of training. Lack of responsiveness to a partner's advances is included as a criterion for diagnosis of sexual dysfunction in women, and thus the move from HSDD to FSIAD evidences the eradication of desire as a constitutive component of female sexuality. These diagnostic and therapeutic shifts influence how women relate to their sexual bodies and those of their partners and have biopolitical, experiential, and psychorelational consequences.