Low sexual desire in women as both a construct and a diagnosis has been the subject of controversy and reconceptualization over the past several decades. Despite an abundance of discussion surrounding the causes of low desire within clinical and academic circles, there is a gap surrounding research on what women themselves attribute to be the cause of their low desire, and the potential consequences of these attributions.

The current study helps address this gap by investigating women’s causal attributions for low desire in non-clinical populations. We assess the relationship between these attributions and subsequent feelings of responsibility and emotions surrounding one’s low desire, and the relationship between attributions and perceived loci of one’s low desire (e.g., “inside” oneself, “outside” oneself, or within one’s interactions with others). We also investigate the perceived role of social location in women’s low desire.

Through qualitative analysis, our results indicate that participants who attribute the cause of their low desire to sociocultural or sexual orientation/identity-related causes express lesser feelings of responsibility and endorse fewer negative emotions surrounding their experience of low sexual desire than women who attribute the cause of their low desire to psychological, biological, and relational causes. This study provides support for the heteronormativity theory of low desire in women partnered with men (van Anders et al., under review), which emphasizes the role of heteronormative gender roles in women’s low desire, and the tendency for mainstream discourse to frame low desire as a problem that exists within the minds and bodies of women.

Read the undergraduate thesis paper here.