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The purported cause of impotence - and this relates significantly to why the condition is now referred to as erectile dysfunction - has undergone a radical shift. Perhaps due in large part to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s ideas in our culture, the inability to sustain an erection was, for most of the twentieth century, thought to stem from psychological problems. I Over the past twenty years, however, physiologists have reversed tHis tenet. Concomitantly, erectile dysfunction has all but replaced impotence lin the scientific arena. “Impotence” has a rhetorical quality that erectile d1sfunction does not. The condition of impotence implies the sufferer himsetjis impotent - that is, a powerless man. We don’t make this same implication with erectile dysfunction. Those suffering from ED are not considered ) “the erectily defunct.”

That men with erectile dysfunction are most often cast than patients, victims, or “cases” - merits further scrutiny. !The verb “to suffer” has its etymological root in the Latin ferre, meaning “to bear” (as in “bear inl mind” or “he couldn’t bear to think about her”). This particular verb has alkays evoked for me the image of one who willingly endures substantial ps1chic weight without relief. It would seem, then, that while the condition has undergone a name change, the characterization of its embodiment remains one that - - simultaneously - maintains both a psychological etiology and the ever - elusive cure. By manufacturing a treatment, rather than a cure, Pfizer guarantees a constant customer base for its product.

The separation of mind and body fortified by the change from “impotence” to “erectile dysfunction” raises important questions for the couples portrayed tn these news stories. Wray Herbert’s U.S. News & World Report article “Ndt Tonight, Dear” encapsulates some of the research in the area of psychological and physiological interconnectedness. For example, Herbert’s article rev9als how financial stress has been linked to sexual dysfunction in both men land women. Because depression is a characteristic response of many kinds of stress and because stress is a major contributor to heart disease, it is no wo’nder that discovering a single cause of sexual dysfunction is complicated. Also in Herbert’s article, Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey argues for combination therapy under the assumption that prescribing a drug is insufficient if depression is the culprit.sf Similarly, sex therapist (and author of The New Malei Sexuality) Dr. Bernie Zilbergeld suggests, in an interview with Newsweek’s John Leland, that erectile dysfunction remedies can be useful, but not if they [are being used “to get around other problems. ” The news stories that forefront the relational aspects of order Viagra show exactly hot and where mind and body are divided and applied. In another article, Leland describes how trends in dysfunction therapy “reflect the different natures” of approaches for men and women. For many women, fixing the problem means fixing the relationship, “establishing prober conditions for good sexuality,” says Dr. Richard Kogan, a New York psychiatrist and sex therapist. “Male dysfunction is better studied from a physiological Standpoint. ” I find this quotation especially interesting because, according to feminist critiques of binary thinking, women are typically associated with the body (and nature) alld men are associated with the mind (and culture). The male body - as ‘f body - is celebrated in sport and sex, but only until something goes wrong. Whenever things “go wrong” on the ballfield or in bed, the male bodyi is othered, abject, and accused of betraying the command of the “real” rational self. Men are “alienated” from their bodies, then, because to be aligned I with the body would mean being aligned with femininity. Yet anbther Newsweek article by John Leland, “The Science of Women Sex,” inclJdes the perspectives of sisters Jennifer and Laura Berman. Jennifer is a urologist and Laura is a sex therapist. Together they are “the telegenic faces of female sexual dysfunction, a two - headed Oprah for the erotically aggrieved. “38 Despite the seemingly multiple - disciplinary approadh - a “tagteam” of mind and body therapy - the Bermans reinforce cultural expectations of gendered attitudes toward health, sexual and otherwise, in their report: For women, more so than for men, simply “medicalizing” the problem is too reductive. While manyViagra - enhanced men are happy just to get erections, fixing women’s blood flow will cure little iflibido - killing stresses still assail the relationship, the home life and the woman’s self - esteem. Women presenting identical complaints might require a drug, a weekend retreat or a sex toy, or some combination of the three. Because men are aligned with the mind (and rational thinking) it !seems that any aberration to the otherwise invisible body must be masked quickly, The male body must never become a site of investigation - a subject qfthe medical gaze. For the imperfect male body to become a subject of the gazethrough prolonged examination (whether physiological or psychological would render the male body feminine.

What makes Kogan’s and the Bermans’ attitude about gendered treatments for sexual dysfunction predictable, however, is that our society’s expectations and stereotypes make it a woman’s responsibility for maintaining relational health.e? And despite cultural assumptions that men want kex for fun and women want sex for love, survey research concludes that mqst men do prefer relational sex to recreational sex.v! The combination of relational silence due to a stigmatized condition and the biornedically’ endorsed mind/body split regarding the etiology of impotence can lead the’n to a kind of matrimony acrimony. But the major revelation here is that gendered social behavior is often perpetuated by “hard” science that claims to bbjectively describe reality without acknowledging how its own solutions propel stereotypes. !

The third motif in this theme of relational communication haslto do with the puzzle that Viagra can’t solve. Studies have demonstrated thaf mediated depictions of relationships promote fanciful versions of what a “normal” rela - tionship is.42 Despite the overwhelming public perception that Viagra is rev - olutionary in its ability to quickly repair the relational costs of erectile dysfunction, I was surprised (and encouraged) by some of the news stories that questioned Viagra’s value to relational harmony. An article by Stadey Schultz in U.S. News & World Report) “When Sex Pales, Women May Nfl eed More

Than Viagra,” unveils the complexity of relational desire: Stress, anger, or a cooling relationship can kill desire as surely as a disturbance in hormones or blood flow, and “no pill is going to fix that,” says Aline Zoldbrod, a sex therapist in Peabody, Massachusetts. In a New r’ark Times article, Douglas Martin interviews sex therapist Karen Martin, who worries about the perception ofViagra as a cure - all.

“This il not going to make years of emotional damage disappear.” … Viagra could h1ave the effect of focusing sexual experience too narrowly, something she says already limits many couples. “In this culture we see being sexual as having intercourse,” she said. “We’re a very meat - and - potatoes culture. In other cultures, they toss in a few mushrooms. ” Similarly, Jon Nordheimer article in the New York Times) “Some Couples May Find IViagra a Home Wrecker,” reveals other complications. Although this article’dernonstrates (refreshingly) that medical doctors, too, are capable of recogntzing the entanglements of emotion, desire, identity, and the dynamics fundamental to sexual relationships, other assumptions and stereotypes embllematic of larger societal expectations are promulgated. In this lengthy arҐcle,45 Nordheimer reports that [women who suffer medical afflictions associated with age or a severely reduced sex dri1e may be disturbed by a husband’s restored potency and cool to his advances, experts said. Moreover, when other problems have derailed a relationship, they said, no little blue pill is going to make them magically disappear …. For sOljle men … restored sexual function can create issues of fidelity that previously had been moot. A man suddenly empowered sexually after years of inactivity may go flying out the door looking for someone else ifhis partner doesn’t share his enthusiasm or flatly rejects him …. Many impotent men compensated in the wast by becoming very attentive lovers. If they now turn sex into prolonged rthletic contests their partners may quickly rebel.46

In these articles that do important work in questioning the perceived value of Viagra for irelationships, several assumptions should be examined: