Vassar College Digital Window @ Vassar Senior Capstone Projects 2019 ‘Female Viagra’ and the intersection of medicine, gender, and desire: reinforcing misconceptions of female sexuality in the sexopharmaceutical era Mikayla O'Bryan Vassar College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone Recommended Citation O'Bryan, Mikayla, "‘Female Viagra’ and the intersection of medicine, gender, and desire: reinforcing misconceptions of female sexuality in the sexopharmaceutical era" (2019). Senior Capstone Projects. 926. https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone/926 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Window @ Vassar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Digital Window @ Vassar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ‘Female Viagra’ and the intersection of medicine, gender, and desire: Reinforcing misconceptions of female sexuality in the sexopharmaceutical era By Mikayla O’Bryan April 2019 Advised by Nancy Pokrywka and Tara Mulder A Senior Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Vassar College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of the Arts in Science, Technology, and Society Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………. 2 Introduction: Designing a ‘female Viagra’.……………………………………………………… 3 Chapter I: The history of the disorder and the drug ……………………………………………... 9 The frigid woman Bringing sex into the lab The evolution of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder Defining desire The contemporary Diagnostic Statistical Manual Addressing the 43% Chapter II:The quest for the little pink pill in the sexuopharmaceutical era…………………… 23 The Viagra phenomenon Early attempts at addressing low female sexual desire The discovery of Boehringer’s little pink pill Sprout’s fight to “even the score” through FDA approval A rift in the feminist community The score becomes 26 to 1 The paradigm of Viagra Chapter III: The “real launch” of Addyi and the Pink CEO…………………………………….