Name Diane Fordney | Role Physician | |
Diane Sharon Fordney (born 1940) is an American physician and sex therapist best known for her work on sexual function and dysfunction. She has also published professionally as Diane S. Fordney-Settlage.
Career
Fordney earned her BS in 1960 from University of Arizona and her M.D. in 1964 from University of California at Los Angeles. She later earned a M.S. in 1971 from University of California at Davis.
Her early work looked at mechanisms of sperm motility following intercourse. She also published findings about sexual experience among teen girls. In 1975 she wrote an overview of heterosexual dysfunction.
Fordney served as Assistant Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology Division of Reproductive Biology at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. She then took a position as Associate Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School of the Stony Brook University.
Fordney was an early critic of gynecologist James C. Burt and his unconsented surgeries on the vulvas of patients: "Dr. Burt is a nice person but he is a zealot and that makes him dangerous." She served on the subcommittee on psychosexual disorders for the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
During her tenure at the University of Arizona Medical Center’s fertility clinic, Fordney assisted in helping hundreds of couples with fertility issues bring babies to term.