91色情片

AFTER all the commercials, news reports and talk show jokes, who today hasn鈥檛 heard of Viagra? The little blue pill has earned billions for the Pfizer corporation and made male impotence鈥攏ow reconfigured as erectile dysfunction鈥攁 topic of public discussion.

What most participants in the current debate tend to ignore is that impotence is nothing new. It has been a preoccupation of western culture since the time of the ancient Greeks. The inquisitors of 16th-century Venice reported that women could render men impotent simply by tying three knots in a rope while repeating a spell. Quacks in Victorian England claimed that masturbation was the main cause of flaccid members: 鈥淎s in man, so in woman, this pernicious habit takes away the inclination for those pleasures with which the multiplication of the species is connected, sometimes it destroys the actual power of effectual communion.鈥� Early 20th-century psychoanalysts attributed impotence to the oedipal complex; today鈥檚 pharmaceutical corporations blame poor blood circulation.

What becomes clear from studying the history of impotence is that public discussion of it and attitudes towards it have always been culturally framed. Each age has turned impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships and society. Even the meaning of the term has changed: when reproduction was highly prized, it was often confused or equated with sterility. In modern times, too, it has been interpreted in different ways鈥攆ailure to achieve an erection, failure to penetrate, failure to ejaculate or ejaculating prematurely.

In one way, at least, the history of impotence has come full circle. In late 17th and early 18th-century Europe, when patriarchal power depended on a man producing heirs, people discussed the treatment of impotence and the problems posed by it as openly as they do today. Much was at stake: family fortunes and dynastic stability demanded successful coition. Carlos II鈥檚 failure to sire an heir led to the Hapsburgs losing Spain, and rumours about Louis XVI鈥檚 inability to perform fed the public unrest that ultimately resulted in the French Revolution. Indeed, impotence was both a metaphor for and an actual cause of failures of the body politic.

In the 19th century, concern for family privacy and male sensitivities meant that respectable society avoided the discussion of such topics, but that didn鈥檛 stop doctors putting about theories of what might cause the affliction. Some advanced the notion of a sort of bourgeois spermatic economy, according to which a man鈥檚 impotence was due to his having spent too much in his youth. The pendulum swung back the other way in the 20th century, when a consumer-oriented culture lauded arousal and fulfillment: the injunction now was 鈥渦se it or lose it鈥�. 91色情片ators nevertheless warned that the stresses of the modern world鈥攐ffice work, school exams, automobile riding, demanding women鈥攃ould result in the male flops. At the same time, psychoanalysts attributed rising rates of impotence to fears of castration, endocrinologists blamed an insufficiency of 鈥渕ale鈥� hormones, and novelists pointed to the hen-pecked male鈥檚 fear of cock-sure feminists.

This resulted in the 鈥渄iscovery鈥� in the 1970s of the new impotence. While the old impotence represented tired, older men bored with their middle-aged partners, the new impotence was purportedly experienced by younger men increasingly daunted by the demands of sexually liberated women. Some traced this back to the female sexual revolution made possible by the invention of the contraceptive pill. Accordingly, the makers of Viagra promised a second sexual revolutionary that would benefit men. Notably, Pfizer has never suggested that the purpose of its radical new drug was to overcome problems of infertility. In the new small-family culture, male potency is apparently no longer proven by siring children but by being an accomplished sexual partner.

鈥淢en prove their potency by being accomplished sexual partners鈥�

Viagra is not the first medical attempt at a cure for male sexual dysfunction鈥攆ar from it. The ancient Greeks listed a vast number of herbal aphrodisiacs, medieval Christians turned to prayers and votive offerings, Victorians purchased electric belts and vacuum pumps guaranteed to renew 鈥渧itality鈥�, and early 20th-century men perused a range of therapies from goat-gland implants and hormonal treatments to sex therapy sessions. Yet no matter what the quacks claimed, before the emergence of modern biochemistry most doctors insisted that men unable to attain an erection had no hope of a cure. Of course, things are more complicated than that: no matter what urologists might say, impotence is not just a plumbing problem.

What of Viagra? Some see its triumph as a sign that the mechanistic notion of impotence that is championed by urologists鈥攚hereby sexually inactive older men are simply suffering a dysfunction that can be corrected鈥攊s winning out. Others construe Viagra鈥檚 success as evidence that consumers have adopted almost impossibly high expectations of well-being and sexual happiness鈥攁 desire to be 鈥渂etter than well鈥�. Such an ambition reflects a peculiarly modern impulse towards self-improvement, as well as a more general western secular notion that to be ill somehow represents a moral failing.

Above all, the massive sales of Viagra reflect the pharmaceutical industry鈥檚 adroitness in convincing men that sexual activity is an essential sign of health. Yet instead of eliminating the fear of impotence, Viagra and similar drugs, in raising the bar, have led to greater anxieties. Anxious 30-something men reportedly take them as 鈥渄ate insurance鈥�. One doctor has likened this to keeping snow tires in the trunk. Automobile metaphors abound in such discussions: some suggest that Viagra can 鈥渏ump start鈥� the sluggish.

As in previous eras, the current debate over impotence says much about the sexual politics of the age. Some feminists claim that the way in which Viagra was rushed onto the American market represents yet another flagrant privileging of male demands. The decision by insurers in the US to cover the cost of the drug guaranteed its success. Yet only 15 per cent of insurance plans cover the oral contraceptive pill, which has been on the market for 40 years. The companies knew that women would readily pay to avoid unplanned pregnancies. In Japan, where approval of the contraceptive pill was postponed for 34 years, Viagra took just six months to get the green light.

The history of impotence tells us much about the history of male sexuality鈥攁 topic that, unlike female sexuality, has not been well documented. Probing such issues reminds us how different cultures constructed their own particular ideas of sexuality鈥檚 pleasures and dangers, its private and public functions. New explanations for sexual failures have not always displaced older ones. Even in the scientific age, some still attributed flops to irrational forces. As was made clear in songs, plays, novels and movies, western culture has always regarded impotence as life鈥檚 greatest tragedy and life鈥檚 greatest joke. Because sexual dysfunctions are spoken of openly today, it is probable that the spectre of impotence haunts more men than ever before. It is not yet history.