Though it may not be officially recognized as a disorder, hypersexuality or sex addiction—call it what you will—is typically portrayed in the realm of men. The disparity is striking and important. Fictional sex addicts, like those seen on the show Desperate Housewives, and in the recent films Shame and Thanks for Sharing, are almost always men. So it is perhaps not surprising that research about sex addiction among women is scarce.
One of the only studies focusing specifically on female sex addicts was published just last year, and it has some surprising findings: For one, exposure to pornography as a child was a stronger predictor of hypersexual behavior than sexual abuse as a child. Prior to that, the one study that did include women (from 2003, which compared rates of sex addiction among males and females on a college campus) actually found that nearly twice as many women as men fell into the “needing further evaluation” and “at-risk” categories. But you won’t have any trouble finding research on female hypoactive sexual desire, also known as “low sex drive,” which is neatly consistent with societal norms about sex: that men want it all the time and women never do.
It seems as if the sexual double standard and stigma around female sexuality are spilling over onto science. This has created an enormous blind spot in the research on sex addiction, so almost all of the research has been conducted with men, while female sex addicts have largely been ignored—except by the clinicians who’ve been treating them for decades. Linda Hudson is a licensed professional counselor and former president of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health who has been working with female sex addicts for more than 20 years. She and several other female therapists recently published the first book offering a targeted treatment for therapists working with female sex addicts called Making Advances: A Comprehensive Guide for Treating Female Sex and Love Addicts.