March 23rd 2010
Women’s Desire: Does It Really Need Fixing?
Since when do 20-, 25- or 28-year-old women need a pill to pop so they can get aroused? Or a battery-operated device placed in their spinal cord?
Since major pharmaceutical companies decided they did, according to a documentary that is rolling out on campuses around the country, including Colgate University and the University of California-Davis.
Orgasm Inc. does for allegedly desire-inducing drugs and surgery what Fast Food Nation did for hamburgers. It shows us the lengths an industry will go to to make money with products that may or may not be safe and may or may not produce the hoped-for results.
The creators of Orgasm Inc are not the first to raise questions about this budding industry (nor about the motives and methods of pharmaceutical companies in general). You can also read about this in last month’s Vogue, in which writer Alexis Jetter describes some sexual enhancements currently in development:
- The Orgasmatron spinal-cord stimulator: a battery implanted near the spine to deliver orgasms on demand. Risks? “Paralysis, infection and incontinence,” Jetter says.
- Bremelanotide: an injection. Risk? Blood pressure jumps up.
- Flibanserin: a prescription drug. How does it work? Unknown. “The makers of flibanserin keep saying that they have no idea how it works,” says a psychologist quoted in Vogue. “That just strikes me as terrifying.”(Flibanserin, by the way, is being targeted specifically for premenopausal, as opposed to postmenopausal, women. In other words, women in their 20s and 30s.)
One scary thing about these drugs is that, unlike Viagra or Cialis for men, they must be taken regularly to be effective, and for the foreseeable future. This has financial, as well as health, implications.
Women are thought to be more complicated sexual creatures than men. While men generally get aroused easily but may need help performing, women complain about lacking desire. That’s a lot more difficult than fixing a limp penis.
A woman can boost her pleasure with a "Rabbit" vibrator. But manufacture the emotions that precede the physical by ingesting something or rubbing something on her skin? Now you’re talking about experimenting with hormones and that can be dangerous, says Steve Nissen, a physician quoted in the Vogue article.
According to the article, Nissen is “particularly worried about testosterone, especially if women start taking it in their 20s and 30s and continue for decades." "We know that manipulating hormones in women has a bad history,” he says.
It’s not clear that there’s a big problem with female desire to begin with. Studies report anywhere from 3 to 43 percent of American women suffer from sexual disorders. That’s a pretty big range.
What is clear is how much commercial pressure there is on young women these days to project desirability. Lingerie retailers tout bust enhancers and butt bras (to wire up a sagging derriere.) Women’s magazines promise to tell you how to be “Sexy in 60 Seconds!” and teach “12 Little Things Every Guy Wants in Bed!” Watching the women on CW’s One Tree Hill, you’d think that 20-something American females spend most of their time thinking about how to get good-looking men into their beds. Is the problem that we expect young women, not to mention young men, to want sex all the time, so we assume something needs to be fixed if they aren’t always in the mood?
Or, to take it even further, could it be that the more pressure an ordinary woman feels to play the siren, the less sex she actually wants?
What Others Have Said...
Anonymous says:
"could it be that the more pressure an ordinary woman feels to play the siren, the less sex she actually wants?"
Let's not forget about the double standard. There is also powerful pressure in our culture for women to suppress their inner siren. Too much siren and a girl is called a slut and too little and she's called a prude. I think the post above presents only one side of the story. I suspect that the pressures in our country over time to de-sexualize women have done far more damage than the relatively recent pressures that over-sexualize them. The long term fight to liberate women's sexuality is not yet over and yet the post does not acknowledge that important context. While we shouldn't pressure women to "play" the siren, we also must be careful not demonize the inner siren that I believe is there and is still fighting off centuries of oppression.
With regard to orgasm specifically, while the obsession with female sexuality in our culture may have a negative impact on women's sexual pleasure, I think the far more dangerous force is the condemnation of female sexuality. My suggestion for a better last line of this article:
Most women don't need drugs to unleash their sexuality. What they do need is a culture that tells them that sexuality is ok, to be valued and expressed. It is natural and ok for women to want and enjoy sex for their own pleasure, not just to please their partners.
Living in a society like our that still has powerful sexism, it is important to recognize that therapy has helped many women achieve orgasm through the realization that their sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of. The burden of this sexism is not overcome overnight.
What Do You Think?