Thea Cacchioni

Joined UVic Gender Studies in 2011

My research examines the medicalization of sex, gender, and sexuality, broadly, as well as through specific diagnoses and life stages such as Female Sexual Dysfunction, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (now Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome) and peri/menopause. I am interested in the ways in which medical professionals, authors of popular ‘self-help,’ social media wellness influencers, and industry sponsored public relations figures shape understandings of ‘normal,’ ‘functional,’ and ‘healthy’ across categories of gender, racialization, and class. Whether analyzing qualitative, interview-based research or deconstructing a wide variety of health-related texts, my work exposes the gendered labour expected of medically endorsed, socially celebrated, heterosexual norms, the creative ways in which the rules of heterosex are rejected, and the power of social stigma in spite of these efforts. As documented in my book Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love (U of T Press), I am also scholar activist, having twice testified twice at the US Federal Drug Administration against a controversial desire drug for women.

Cross Appointments

Sociology, University of Victoria

Research Interests

• Medicalization
• Healthism
• Sexual ‘Dysfunction,’ PCOS/PMOS, peri/menopause
• Heteronormativity

Courses Designed and Taught

• GNDR 204 Gender, Health, Power and Resistance
• GNDR 209 Families, Intimacies and Nationhood
• GNDR 300 Gender Studies Seminar
• GNDR 321 The Medicalization of Sex

Recent Awards

2026 Faculty of Humanities Fellowship Award

Publications

Books

Cacchioni, Thea (2015) Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love University of Toronto Press.

Other Publications

Cacchioni, Thea (2026) ‘The Patient Work of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)’ Women’s Reproductive Health 1-15.

Cacchioni, Thea (2026) ‘The Aesthetic Labour of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS): The Strife of Heterosexual Standards and the Possibilities of Queering’ Sexualities 29 (4): 689-706.

Cacchioni, Thea (2026) ‘Feminism’ Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behaviour, and Society Second Edition William C. Cockerham, Robert Dingwall, & Stella Quah (eds), Wiley Blackwell.

Cacchioni, Thea (2021) ‘Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again’ Sexualities 24 (7): 973-974.

Cacchioni, Thea (2015) ‘The Medicalization of Sexual Deviance, Reproduction, and Functioning’ Handbook of Sexualities Rebecca Plante & John Delamater (eds), Springer, pp. 435-452.

Cacchioni, Thea (2015) ‘Sexuopharmaceuticals’ Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin (eds), Wiley Blackwell & Sons, pp. 1-5.

Gupta, Kristina & Cacchioni, Thea (2013) ‘Sexual Improvement As If Your Health Depends On It’ Feminism & Psychology, 23 (4): 442-458.

Cacchioni, Thea & Tiefer, Leonore (2012) ‘Why Medicalization? Introduction to the Special Issue on the Medicalization of Sex’ The Journal of Sex Research 48 (2): 307-310.

Farrell, Janine & Cacchioni, Thea (2012) ‘The Medicalization of Sexual Pain’ The Journal of Sex Research 48 (2): 328-336.

Cacchioni, Thea & Wolkowitz, Carol (2011) ‘Treating Women’s Sexual Difficulties: The Body Work of Sexual Therapy’ The Sociology of Health and Illness 33 (2): 266-279.

Cacchioni, Thea (2007) ‘Heterosexuality and “the Labour of Love”: A Contribution to Recent Debates on Female Sexual Dysfunction’ Sexualities 10 (3): 299-320.

Affiliations

The New View Campaign: Challenging the Medicalization of Sex