Gay != Crazy: Help me with my research paper, please?

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So I'm doing a research paper on asexuality, for a sexuality and endocrinology class. It's got to be about ten pages long, or else "long enough to cover the topic adequately".

One of the problems I've run up against is the difference between hypoactive sexual desire disorder and asexuality. HSDD is a condition in which people who want to have sex, just can't get in the mood, and it troubles them. It's a psychological disorder. Asexuality, on the other hand, is an orientation which is usually identified in childhood and does not involve distress.

I'm already getting at the endocrinological angle, but I'd like a bit more on how we define things as psychopathology or not. Which is where you guys come in.

I know that some time ago, we used to have homosexuality in the DSM as a diagnosis, and that after we realized that it neither caused distress nor dysfunction, we removed it. What I'd like to find out, though, is how exactly we made that decision--who campaigned for it, what rationale they used--because I think that the reasoning we used to understand that being gay is not pathological, may be critical to explaining exactly why asexuality cannot be subsumed under the category of HSDD.

Any tips on how to find that information would be helpful, whether links to gay-rights history pages or journal articles or anything else you think might help. If it's a journal article and you have to pay to see it, just send me the link anyway; I can probably get it through my university's library.

Thanks in advance.

Once you get your source material, ten pages will be a breeze. What you might have to worry about is creating too long a paper LOL

Even within a wikipedia article, you could find good sources. Then, when you obtain those sources, you could obtain sources from THOSE sources.

What level class is this?

Of course, I'm a straight male--so I guess I shouldn't have answered the question LOL

I think: all you have to do is find a combination of scholarly and anecdotal sources pertaining to hypoactive "disorder" and asexuality. Of course, what I've just written is obvious. Do you have to take a position, or do you just have to convey the facts and others' impressions?

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_s ... ealth.html

i found this by googling "history of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder"

Hi Callista, this might be a good source:

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/etiology,4.html

The short answer, why did the APA (American Psychiatric Association) change the classification of being lesbian, gay, bi-, or trans in 1973, was activism. It was the LGBT and their allies speaking out. (one pretty good group which may have come about later was P-FLAG, where parents and friends spoke out in favor of their own children.

So, the bad approach kind of continued with a new name under this "ego-dystonic homosexuality," although that was revised in 1986.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 14 Jun 2014, 1:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think you've hit it pretty well. Does it cause distress, and does it interfere with what a person most wants to do (or a person's highest aspirations)?

I think shot through much of psychology and psychiatry is a pro-normalist bias to a huge degree. With LGBTQ rights back in the bad old days, we had parents, 'Oh, my God, how is my child ever going to have a normal life! . . . How is she [or he] ever going to have children!! !' And back in the 1960s, unless you were rich and unless a you had an unusually advanced and supportive family, these were real issues. And now, LGBTQ persons can live quite regular, standard, inclusive, even 'normal' lives, and can take on the responsibilities of parenthood if the family unit or single parent so chooses. At least, they can in many parts of the world. Although still a lot of progress yet to be made.

And with asexuality, there is also a large component of the pro-'normalist' bias, and even the parent mania for grandkids. Yes, this is a human desire, but it can't be pursued by running over the adolescent or even young adult. With all kinds of issues, I could have probably used my parents in my 20s and I mean sensible advice and liking and believing in me but also having their own lives, but things didn't work out that way.

I think part of the answer is it's okay to be 'normal,' but it's certainly not a requirement. And I think we on the Asperger's-Autism Spectrum can learn a lot from Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, and from the right now movement and activism for Trans Equality.

If there is no pathos, no suffering, a trait or condition should not be considered pathological but simply a variation of normal.

(Of course gay people did and still do suffer from discrimination and heteronormative societal expectations, as do many asexual people, but that's not quite the same. Discrimination is an illness of society, not of the individual).