First there was Viagra, a medicine to help men who had a physical problem being sexual, for example due to prostate maladies. (Remember those awful Bob Dole ads?) But very quickly, the proper therapeutic use of the medicine mutated into something else–using the drug to create hyper sex drives in the young, and to make 60 something men feel as if they were 18. That is to say, it became an enhancement chemical.
Some think that is unfair to women, that they too deserve a drug to make them friskier in their middle and later years. So far, no go. Camille Paglia opines about this in the NYT, and blames middle class morality for the supposed loss of sex drive in the country. From her column, “No Sex Please: We’re Middle Class:”
The implication is that a new pill, despite its unforeseen side effects, is necessary to cure the sexual malaise that appears to have sunk over the country. But to what extent do these complaints about sexual apathy reflect a medical reality, and how much do they actually emanate from the anxious, overachieving, white upper middle class?
In the 1950s, female “frigidity” was attributed to social conformism and religious puritanism. But since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, American society has become increasingly secular, with a media environment drenched in sex. The real culprit, originating in the 19th century, is bourgeois propriety. As respectability became the central middle-class value, censorship and repression became the norm…
Pharmaceutical companies will never find the holy grail of a female Viagra — not in this culture driven and drained by middle-class values. Inhibitions are stubbornly internal. And lust is too fiery to be left to the pharmacist.
Please. This is way over thought and a throwback to 1960s nonsense about repression and hang ups. Aging people have less sex because of biology. Our sex drives normally ebb as we age, allowing us to gain better control over our urges rather than the other way around.
That’s not in any way unhealthy (although absence of all sexual desire can certainly indicate a problem). It’s simply part of life. Indeed, I think we do middle age and older men and women a distinct disservice trying to convince them–us, I’m 61–that we are somehow inadequate if our hormones don’t froth as they did during our teenage and early adult years. In fact, it seems rather pathetic to me when someone who has moved past the urgency of a high sex drive wants to use chemicals (or porn) to get it back (as opposed, again, to using it therapeutically). It’s a form of transhumanism-light that says normal humanity isn’t good enough and that there’s something wrong with getting old.
June 27th, 2010 | 7:52 pm
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June 28th, 2010 | 7:37 am
All this article tells us is that in your opinion loss of libido in late/middle age isn’t important enough to be concerned about, because it’s just a”a part of life.” Lots of things are “a part of life” including pain, but would you ask your dentist to perform a root canal procedure on you without one of those awful chemicals like Novocain? When your eyesight begins to change in middle age would you avoid using eyeglasses because “it’s a form of transhumanism-light that says normal humanity isn’t good enough and that there’s something wrong with getting old”? Or perhaps you’d avoid cataract surgery for the same reason? I doubt it. So what’s the bottom line? It seems to be that YOU don’t think sexual activity is very important for YOU. Speak for yourself.
June 28th, 2010 | 10:44 am
HistoryWriter, you’re using the wrong analogies. Instead, imagine drugs that make it so that 80 year-olds have the cardiovascular endurance of a 25 year-old. Or the 70 year-old woman who wants to be pregnant.
The difference is separating what is a natural part of the cycle of life and that which is a disease worth curing.
Sex, speaking biologically, is designed for reproduction. At some point it is no longer necessary for that as our reproductive capacity goes away. At that point, it is part of the natural cycle that our sexual drive isn’t as important.
Eye sight, to use your example, is always important.
June 28th, 2010 | 12:07 pm
“transhumanism-light that says…there’s something wrong with getting old.”
Hmmm. So, there should be no problem with rationing care to old people, then. It’s just aging and natural – like old, arthritic grannys (you know, the ones who stepped up during WW2 to keep the country afloat by making P51 Mustangs) struggling with osteoporosis – how dare we treat them to ameliorate the natural aging process and ease their suffering.
And even if there were such an FDA approved drug, isn’t it up to the customers of consumerist medicine to decide if they want it or not? I guess it must be necessary to control people over the most trivial of matters – like heaven forbid an elderly couple here or there wants some sex -they should be at church instead.
Ken, what evidence do you have that sex was designed, speaking biologically. I’ve never heard this before. What kind of experimental data supports this? I can’t think of an experiment one could perform to support this. And if you want to decide which diseases to focus on, why not work for a private pharmaceutical company then, to dictate the focus of their work? (perhaps you do)
June 29th, 2010 | 8:25 am
Ken: If sex was “designed [only] for reproduction,” why is it that (a) post-menopausal women can continue to experience orgasms, (b) many older men continue to produce sperm, and (c) many older men continue to have completely functional “hardware.” And how come it keeps feeling great?
I think the “procreation, not recreation” argument went out with Pius XI.
June 29th, 2010 | 10:17 am
“Aging people have less sex because of biology. Our sex drives normally ebb as we age.”
Yeah, that’s true–but not until your 50′s or 60′s.
Paglia’s referring to the loss of sex drive among 30-somethings and 40-somethings, not among grandparents.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 11:03 am
“Not among grandparents.” Ouch. That wasn’t how I read it, but okay.
June 29th, 2010 | 12:47 pm
David and HistoryWriter, only in our post-modern world can someone attempt to argue that there’s a minimal relationship between sex and reproduction.
I didn’t say “[only]“, but it is clearly the main point of sex. That it has additional benefits does not negate the truth of it’s main purpose.
And whether it was “designed” or it is its “purpose” or whatever word you want to use, the function of the sexual act is primarily reproduction. Whether it was God who designed it or it’s a natural outgrowth of design-free natural selection, there’s no denying what sex is about.
July 1st, 2010 | 10:50 am
yizmo gizmo raises the main point, biology aside, dual income, professional parents live in a neutered, PC, environment at work and a frazzled, efficiency machine at home. Paglia’s comment about overfamiliarity is what needs to be explored. (Some) Men and women do not occupy different worlds as much as in the past. Familiarity breeds contempt?
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