“Is Sex More Like Dancing or Digestion? Unpacking the Dangers and Complexities of the Medicalization of Sexuality”

7:00 p.m., Pratt Auditorium

Leonore Tiefer, scholar, therapist, and activist, will address the medicalization of men's and women's sexuality as the keynote for the Sex and Gender Conference.

Internationally recognized as the foremost critic of “disease-mongering” trends in the medicalization of women's sexual problems, she has lectured internationally. Her work has appeared in the media and is featured in the popular and controversial film Orgasm Inc., which will be shown in the HUB on April 12, 2012, at 3:30 p.m.

Tiefer has worked at several hospitals in New York, including Montefiore Medical Center, where she worked in the Urology Department and co-directed the Sex and Gender Clinic from 1988 to 1996. She is currently an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at both New York University School of Medicine and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has a private psychotherapy and sex therapy practice in Manhattan.

Tiefer has written widely about the medicalization of sexuality. She has been interviewed by international news media and has appeared on many news shows as a critic of the medical management of women's sexual problems. For more information on Tiefer's anti-medicalization campaign, visit the New View Campaign website.

She has received many professional awards, including the 1994 Alfred C. Kinsey Award, the 2004 Distinguished Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and the 2004 Lifetime Career Award from the Association for Women in Psychology. She has been elected to many professional offices within sexological and feminist organizations. She serves as vice chair of the board of directors of the National Coalition Against Censorship and serves on the steering committee of the Shelter for Homeless Men at the New York City Unitarian Universalist Church.

Tiefer has authored more than 150 scientific and professional publications and is the author of Sex Is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays. She co-edited A New View of Women's Sexual Problems in 2002 and co-authored a classroom and workshop teaching manual to accompany the text.