Female vulnerability and susceptible brains: Gendered discourses of addiction

Despite clear evidence that men use illicit drugs more than women, use them at higher levels and use them from an earlier age, female vulnerability has been a central theme of medical, public health, and popular discourse on drug use. Discourses of vulnerability and norms of responsibility for familial and social wellbeing combine to produce women’s drug use as more unnatural and more deviant than men’s use. This article draws on Campbell’s notion of ‘governing mentalities to highlight the way the figure of the vulnerable female drug user” is reproduced in contemporary US government discourse on addiction and drug use. It thus aims to contribute to the feminist project of deconstructing gendered discourse on drug use and addiction. The article begins by examining contemporary neuroscientific accounts of the brain as the site of addiction, highlighting the co-existence of generic and sex-differentiated accounts of addiction. It then discusses the recent US Surgeon General’s report Facing Addiction in America (2016) along with “fact sheets” on drug use and gender produced by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. It argues that the governing mentality that collapses sex and gender while emphasising female vulnerability obscures the multiple ways women experience drugs. The article also suggests that attention should be paid to the complex relationships between maleness and masculinity and drug use, without reiterating the history of foregrounding and universalising men’s experiences.