ADHD and sexuality: a feminist issue in its core
Picture by Anton Malanin on Unsplash
Women and ADHD. A long history of misunderstandings
“No, you cannot have ADHD; you have a college degree!”
I wish I could say that I have heard this sentence only once, but I would be lying. It took me a long time to understand this sentence is actually rooted in misogyny as much as in ableism. I could write a sadly long list of statements that I have heard about why I “do not look ADHD” (sigh), but the thought only fills me with a weird mixture of sadness and anger.
The most common depiction of ADHD is the one of a boy between 6 and 11 years old who runs around the classroom and gets yelled at for not sitting down. While I do not deny that hyperactivity is a huge part of the disorder – it stands in the name itself –many studies are confirming that women tend to be less likely to externalise symptoms in that way. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most undiagnosed people are females (with a ratio of boys being three times more likely to receive a diagnosis than girls), and late diagnoses are much more common for women – I got diagnosed in my late twenties as well. Medical gaslighting toward women is unfortunately pretty standard, and the tendency to not believe us or dismiss us (‘you’re making it a bigger deal than what it is!’) is scarily common.
However, there is something else that I consider (maybe even more) frustrating: the unspoken truth of how this disorder impacts the sexuality of millions of women all around the world. This silence creates damage and made many people feel ‘weird’, isolated, and unsatisfied.
What’s the relationship between ADHD and sexuality?
It comes as no surprise that, being an ADHD person, I am really pleasure-driven. I have a challenging time saying no to “a good time”, and it is not rare that it tends to capture most of my attention. Many people with the same disorder as mine define themselves as hypersexual, which means that they perceive themselves as experiencing more sexual desire than their peers. Not such a big deal if you live in a society that applauds you and even adds value to your persona if you do have a lot of sex; a bigger deal if you’ve been told since your teenage years that there is something wrong with you, that you’re unlovable and people will treat you only as an object because of it.
This comes close to my experience, but it is not the only implication that ADHD had on my sexuality. Consensual sexual touch can be overwhelming when focusing is such a struggling thing to do. This can lead partners to frustration, feeling rejected, perceiving a lack of interest by the other party, or wondering if they did anything wrong. If you combine this with an overall lack of knowledge about women's bodies and how we feel pleasure, it can easily become a frustrating experience.
In addition, having undiagnosed ADHD for such a long time did not help me develop a harmonious relationship with my body image. Self-esteem problems are a huge side effect of undiagnosed people. Not feeling in tune with your body can make sex feel awkward, especially when erotica tends to over-represent specific types of women – skinny but at the same time with big breasts, white, and conventionally attractive.
Why are these aspects of ADHD kept as a ‘secret’ from us?
Once again, female sexuality is such a taboo topic, and all of this information was never given to me directly. It was only by confronting myself with other neurodivergent women and talking about it in feminist spaces that I realised that my anxiety (and yet, ‘obsession’) with sex was relatively normal, or at least not as uncommon as I thought it was. If only sexuality was not treated as something so scary and uncanny that it has to be kept as a secret, like a crime. Instead, the mentality is still the same: do not talk about it, do not think about it.
Imagine having such strong feelings toward sex while at the same time feeling that focusing on it can be overwhelming, not knowing why and not having the proper vocabulary to discuss it. It comes as no surprise that dissatisfaction with sex is one reason for the high rate of break-ups in couples with an ADHD member.
To conclude, ADHD is a feminist issue. If women are the ones who are more likely to live a life not knowing themselves, struggling with keeping a job, struggling with anxiety and depression and struggling with living a sexual life that can make them feel fulfilled, it becomes evident that this is gender violence.
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