This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 39, Summer 1999.
Has something got right up your nose recently? Have you a bone to pick or an issue you want to chew over? This is a space in T&S where women (under an assumed name if necessary) are invited to bark back at the annoyances which dog radical feminists. This can be a brief yap or an extended growl, on any subject of concern to radical feminists. Here Julia Parnaby explains why Viagra makes her hackles rise.
Ah Viagra! The power to inflate column inches more rapidly than it lifts a flaccid dick. The new Prozac, the drug that will restore pride and virility to the world’s poor drooping men and make everything right again. Restore balance and harmony, heal marital strife, bring us joy, happiness, bouncing babies, and if we’re lucky maybe even fix that damn millennium bug.
Call me a cynic, but there came a point last year when I thought I might retch if I heard its name once more. The nation’s journalists, loth to miss out on the latest bandwagon, leapt aboard this one as if it was the ride of their lives. Thrusting that little blue pill into the headlines. Pricking its way into every paper, news report and TV show, serious or not, as though lives depended on it.
Viagra, we’ve been brainwashed to believe, will provide succour for millions and transform lives. So why wasn’t I convinced? Well maybe because I just don’t accept all those stories about male sexuality. The whole Viagra story is based on the view that penises are more important than anything — they must be honoured and respected, and when necessary coaxed and cajoled. They can’t be left alone, ignored, RETIRED. No they must be fiddled with, faffed with, inserted, wiggled and jiggled. They must be used, because they are more important than anything — no really, I mean ANYTHING. Go on, think of something more important than a prick.
Well damn it — you know you’re right! Just about anything is more important. So why didn’t I get that impression for the longest time? Why did Viagra take over the world for those few months, and why does it continue to pop up like an unwelcome guest every few weeks? Well I guess we all know why — because, despite everything, despite the backlash and feminist responses to it, despite girl power, we still live in a world that’s run by and for men, and most of their interests still run to an ancient pattern of beer, birds and getting their end away.
To me this is a worrying situation. The widespread perception of male sexuality has been as a pent-up force which needs to be unleashed regularly for fear of dire consequences. Feminists have become used to challenging this idea, not only in relation to rape and child sexual abuse, but in the context of heterosexual relationships in general. What concerns me is that in this historical context how should we feel about those men wandering round with chemically enhanced sexualities? Self-control shouldn’t have to be an issue, but I fear that it is.
I’m not suggesting a causative link between Viagra use and rape, sexual assault and abuse, but on the other hand, it seems absolutely inevitable that Viagra will become inextricably linked into the pornography and prostitution industries at the very least. That bothers me because we know how cruel and abusive to women those environments are. This can only worsen matters. Already seizures of black-market Viagra from Soho sex shops have been reported. The sex industry knows this is a trend which is worth a fortune to them, both as drug providers (since distribution of Viagra is already becoming harder and harder to regulate with, for example, the apparent ease of availability over the internet) and as providers of the paraphernalia and ‘entertainment’ which go along with the commodification of sexuality. It also provides them with a limitless supply of ‘horny’ male consumers of their ‘goods’. (How long too before we see yet another bizarre switch — men on Viagra claiming their women can’t last long enough to satisfy them and turning ever more to prostitution?)
Making impotence cool
The reconceptualisation of impotence, its cause and relief is a really interesting one. Impotence — the body’s own rebellion against what it knows is crap and shallow — now need not be an embarrassing mark of failure to live up to the required standards. In fact it’s interesting that any mention of Viagra is universally seen as a badge of pride. Impotence isn’t unfashionable or humiliating anymore. It’s a good thing, an excuse to take drugs, which in turn has become an intensified expression of virility. Even Les Battersby wants a fix and isn’t ashamed to fake impotence in his quest to score. This turnaround in attitudes may be one of the most astonishing of the 1990s. Viagra man has become attractive, sophisticated and very, very desirable. Someone for other men to admire, a role model and someone to aspire to.
Caught up by the hype, gay men and clubbers are popping Viagra as their drug of choice. Once the heady mixture of dancing and E made them feel invincible, now Viagra gives them the wherewithal. E made you feel like you loved the whole world, but you expressed it by dancing and grinning like a loon for hours. Following it up with Viagra now means you get to carry through your desires. Dealers are even targeting women with the drug, selling it as female-friendly — ‘Even if he’s off his face this will make your man last all night’, as if that was ever the point.
We’re back to that tiresome old myth that penetration is the only way for women to enjoy sex, reinforcing the idea that if men could only last longer then women’s problems would be solved. Just like that dumb car ad that’s trying to tell us, in its tricksy little postmodern way, that size matters, so Viagra sells us down the river with the half-baked notion that having a man who can poke you all night long is all you need in life. Can’t anyone be a little more imaginative?
Now in the age of Viagra old gits with limp dicks are able to be ‘proper’ men again; and terminal wankers, saddoes and perverts, pornography’s client base, now have even longer to keep their hands busy and their brains vacant.
In our society which demands instant gratification, Viagra removes any necessity to explain or resolve problems or question the causes of impotence. Surely it happens for a reason — physical illness, stress, depression, relationship problems. But no! Why should people examine this? Why should anyone feel anything other than happiness and immediate fulfilment of desires on demand? Viagra, like Prozac once that had slipped into being a global panacea, ignores and fails to address the problem. It allows men to carry on regardless, to keep performing, never really understanding or caring about themselves. Emotionally barren, but fully functioning. It dooms users to dependency and reliance on something over which they have no control, in place of making real, meaningful changes in the way they conduct their lives and think about themselves and their beliefs.
Impotence has become just another inconvenience to be brushed aside. In fact it perversely has become a means to an end, a way of getting to somewhere akin to nirvana where pleasure is produced on demand. Perhaps it’s even become the late 90s newest fashion, one of our society’s sickest trends.
Curiously this new wave of acceptable drug users are helping to bring dependency into the front room (or should that be bedroom). Parents for so long have been terrified of drugs, scared that one whiff of dope will by necessity lead to an addicted child. Now , in a weird twist they’re barricading the House of Commons, GPs’ surgeries and local hospitals demanding their very own fix of recreational chemical fun.
The real crisis in the NHS, we’re being told, isn’t incompetent managers, waiting lists, no cash and righteously pissed off nurses — it’s the queue of men being denied their fix, their right to fuck as often and as freely as they choose. (But only at the expense of their £6 a time fix out of our pockets.) Why should they be denied this? Why should diabetics get insulin, premature babies have incubators, heart patients get transplants when they can’t have an erection? (An article by a Viagra user in the Times last year ended with the outrageous demand that Viagra should be prescribed on demand to any man, and in preference to all other NHS treatment.) It’s not right they pout. Well, I disagree.
In addition to sensible ideological objections, the estimated cost to the NHS for prescriptions of Viagra is £1 billion a year.1 Enough tablets for a shag three times a week would be expected to take up a quarter of a GP’s drugs budget. This at a time when rationing of drugs for life-threatening disease is of real concern. But many men don’t seem to care, they want Viagra and they want it NOW. Driven on, no doubt, by that baffling view that has held sway for so long that for men sex (and perhaps more centrally, ejaculation) is a God-given right and a biological necessity.
Education not medication
The issues continue to be clouded by an industry desperately trying to convince women that Viagra is for us too. So, what is in it for women? Well, you know you really are a great receptacle, it’s what you’re designed for. Now your man can keep going hammer and tongs what more could you want? Foreplay, non-penetrative sex — damn! that was all discredited years ago. It’s all g-spots and pounding now you know, and what better to sort you out than a four hour long erection. Come on ladies, don’t you realise, this is for your benefit too? Or you could take Viagra yourself, both of you buzzing away, having the time of your lives. (No really, it’s not just for men, no really. The industry is trying really hard to find a way to make women use Viagra — they’re failing because there are no benefits for women, and also because women know what they need to achieve orgasm, and education not medication is the answer.) Just pleasure, a stupendous shag (the longest of your life!).
Or maybe serious cardiovascular events, seizure and anxiety, temporary vision loss, ocular burning, retinal vascular disease or bleeding (adverse reactions mentioned by Pfizer, Viagra’s manufacturers on their website)2, along with headache, upset stomach, stuffy nose, urinary tract infection, diarrhea (reported by the US Food and Drug Administration)3, or a painful erection lasting over six hours, but isn’t it worth it? Well, for millions it seems it is worth it. Any amount of risk seems worth taking because in our world gone mad there’s only one thing worse than not having copious penetrative sex, and that’s missing the latest trend. Put the two together and you’ve hit upon a sure fire winner; a salve for sexual anxieties and a great new set of tales for the lads — you’d have to be strong to resist!
So now it’s great that you don’t have to be ‘English’ about sex anymore. You can talk about it, you can get on with it, you can even laugh. (Did you hear about the first death from an overdose of Viagra? A man took twelve pills and his wife died. Boom bloody boom.) No you can be proud — you went out there and you changed your life. You made a stand, you put your foot down, you fought for your rights. You got what you deserved.
I hope it makes you happy. Because it sure as hell pisses me off.