Syracuse University SURFACE Theses - ALL May 2019 Sexually “Broken”: The Rhetorical Production of The Distressed Nonsexual in The Flibanserin Debate & Beyond Hannah Helene Thompson Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/thesis Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Thompson, Hannah Helene, "Sexually “Broken”: The Rhetorical Production of The Distressed Nonsexual in The Flibanserin Debate & Beyond" (2019). Theses - ALL. 302. https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/302 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract Using a Foucauldian-influenced approach to discourse and power, this thesis analyzes the production of nonsexualities, such as the lack of sexual desire, in the contemporary United States. In psychiatric discourse, the distressed nonsexual subject is produced as the patient with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). This discursive formation was put to use in the debate surrounding pharmaceutical drug flibanserin (Addyi) in order to secure its approval by the FDA in 2015. I posit that, by emphasizing the distress of the HSDD patient experience, the rhetoric of pro-flibanserin advocacy succeeded in producing an ethical exigency, arguing that it would be cruel for the FDA to reject the drug. Centrally, its support for this claim relies upon the construction of an ideal (hetero)sexual marriage and problematizing nonsexuality as a threat to love. Flibanserin’s rhetorical support depended, then, upon casting nonsexuality in the role of a destructive enemy force.