Last week we discussed Hinderliter’s “How is Asexuality Different From Sexual Desire Disorder”:
The paper expands on previous discussions on the differences and similarities between Asexuality and Hyposexual Desire Disorder by focusing on their histories, conceptual sources, and the contexts in which they are used, and their primary functions. Ace-Muslim on tumblr has also posted a helpful summary here.
A transcript of the conversation can be found here. Some of the points discussed included:
- the differences between extensional and intensional definitions (and extensional and non-extensional differences between HSDD and Asexuality)
- whether HSDD and Asexuality should be thought of as alternatives within the same system or as seperate aspects of two non-intersecting systems; as well as various possible ways of classifying people in relation to HSDD and Asexuality
- whether the question of “is asexuality a dysfunction” can be answered empirically
- the differences between “lack of sexual attraction” and “lack of sexual desire”
- how the language of HSDD is interpreted in a clinical context
- subtypes of HSDD
- what the practical benefits of various clinical responses to sexual issues might be
- the history of the DSM and it’s various revisions.
Also, we’d like to announce a few procedural changes: Paper discussions will now be moving to a biweekly schedule, so while we will still meet every week we will alternate between paper discussions and free talks. This week (June 13th) will be a free talk week. As usual, the journal club is held at 1:00 PM PDT on Saturday afternoons over a group Skype chat. People who would like to be added to the skype chat should contact Skype user sennkestra and ask to be added to the group
The next paper will be “Asexuality as a Spectrum: A National Probability Sample Comparison to the Sexual Community in the UK”, a Master’s Thesis by Caroline H. McClave, for our July 20th discussion.
The Asexual Agenda 