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The second major theme I identify is that erectile dysfunction - b9th in professional journals and the popular press - is often described as a couple’s disease. This implies that although impotence may afflict only one n’lember of the relationship, both members of the relationship (or all three for that matter!) are affected. The stories in the popular press devote a great deal of ink to the issue of communication between couples. In fact, the longest stories of those in the sample are concerned with the derivative relational consequences of Viagra’s effectiveness. This subsection addresses a number of motifs with

regard toll communication and relationships reported in these news stories including (1) the silence between partners about ED; (2) the meaning of a biomedidl (rather than a communicative) solution; and (3) the need for relational repair that “no pill will cure.” An in’lportant motif has to do with the communication about erectile dysfunction that takes place and, perhaps more frequently, does not take place between couples. “I felt as if we were colleagues,” confides a man in an article in U.S. News & World Report. “We’d go places, we’d get done what needed td get done around the house, but there was this huge, dark subject we would1n’t discuss.”

Alon with fueling the stand - up routines for dozens of comedians, Douglas Ґartin’s New York Times article, “Thanks a Bunch Viagra; The Pill That Revived Sex, Or at Least Talking About It,” suggested that Viagra’s availability got people talking about sex generally and got men to visit their doctors.vi But once prescribed, couples were confronted with more than the capability I of (hetero )sexual expression. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New YOrk Times repbrts: When Ithe possibility of sex resurfaces, a couple is often at a loss. They never talked [much about their problems before, and now they have no idea how to approach the change. In the meantime, all the issues that contributed to the impotence or resulted from it have been long swept under the rug.

As Steinhkuer implies, impotence has both organic and psychological etiologies and Yiagra impacts both happy couples and unhappy couples. These

issues are] of course, related. Jane Brody, also of the New York Times, uncovers similaJ sentiments when she writes: Viagra does nothing per se to reawaken sexual desire and foster communication a4d loving feelings between loving partners who may have long ago put these aside. Men who are impotent often refrain from any physical or verbal expressions of tenderness and desire for fear of raising false hopes in their partners, ‘:tho may do lifewise to avoid inducing guilt in a man unable to perform sexually [my emphasise] The frequency with which “performance” is used to describe sexual health has been established as an ongoing theme in this website. Its use here points out the functional - c - or efficacious - definition of performance and provides an openidg for the ways in which performance is a presentation of self, a self sometimes compromised by a stigmatized condition. Regarding the performance of social stigma, Erving Coffman distinguishes passing from covering. “Passing” conceals a stigma from uhknowing persons while “covering” assuages concerns for those in the knowl or those he calls “the wise.” It would be difficult for a man to conceal his impotence from a partner with whom he has previously enjoyed sexual relations - that is, to pass. “Covering,” on the other hand, is a tactic requiring the !participation - whether active or passive - of both partners. Covering intimktes complicity of some kind. By representing erectile dysfunction as organic and developing a pill as the cure, biological sexologists are aligned with passing. Goffmtn writes, “[A] strategy of those who pass is to present the signs of their stigmatized failing as signs of another attribute, one that is less significantly a stigma. When erectile dysfunction can be attributed to an organic - or physiological - cause rather than a psychological or relational cause, three things happen simultaneously: (1) the ED sufferer situates the source of the problem outside of his ego and places it resolutely in his body; (2) the dreadbd visit to the physician lasts only as long as it takes to get a prescription fori Viagra;33 and (3) discussions with his partner concerning their romantic desires, differences, and difficulties can be avoided. At the risk of reinforcirlg stereotypes, I’d guess that these consequences would be pretty attractive tp the typical American baby boomer male. “[That] impotence is a problem of mechanics can be appealing,” writes John Leland in Newsweek. “It takes all the blame and guilt out of the equation. ” These media stories are clear in this conclusion: although Viagra may have people talking about sex, it doesn’t necessarily get couples talking about it. As long as impotence is attached to an organic etiology, couples are likely to avoid an interrogation of relational obstacles and obstructions. I I turn now to the second motif in this theme of communication between couples - the mind/body split in biomedicine.