ED – It’s not just a talking horse anymore
According to the Mayo Clinic, erectile dysfunction (commonly referred to as impotence or ED) can refer to a range of disorders, but usually it refers to the inability to obtain an adequate erection for satisfactory sexual activity.
There are a lot of theories out there about the causes of ED, why we may be seeing more diagnoses of ED, and what men who experience ED should do about it. Last week, The Washington Post published an article implying that one reason more men may be experiencing erectile dysfunction is because women are becoming more sexually assertive and may initiate sexual behavior more often than in the past. This, reportedly, puts more pressure on men who subsequently experience less pressure in their nether regions.
This didn't go over very well with a lot of folks. For example, articles in both Salon and the San Francisco Chronicle blasted the article, pointing out that one could just as easily argue that a leveling of the sexual playing field would relieve pressure that men may feel to carry the burden of initiation and may open the door for a wider range of sexual roles, behaviors and identities. In addition, they point out that the Post's survey data is incomplete. We can't make generalizations about the experiences of one group of male college students without knowing more about their identities, their experiences, and their behaviors. Perhaps there are more obvious explanations for why a young man being hit upon by a young woman may not be able to get an erection -- like maybe he's gay?
I, myself have incredible sympathy for men whose penises are misbehaving and not doing what they want them to do. I have a two-year-old, so I know how that feels. Unfortunately though, we've created an environment in which adolescent men, college-aged men and men who are aging are all thrown into a panic and are encouraged to run to their pharmacy the instant their penis falls limp.
I think we may be missing the point by stirring up strategies to make their penises behave, whether it's in the form of a prescription or not. If performance anxiety and social pressures really are causes of ED, how about if we all agreed that sometimes, it's ok for our parts to malfunction or misfire? How about if we spent more time learning how to communicate with our partner(s) so that a shift in initiation roles or sexual play wouldn't have to feel so threatening? How about if we acknowledged that all of us, men and women, don't always have perfect sexual responses and that's ok?
It's not really doing the issue justice to boil it down to whether or not a penis gets hard. In most cases, that only gets at the mechanical aspect of the issue. And it isn't that changes in cultural norms and social roles have only impacted men as indicated by their lack of biological sexual response. Women's bodies may just be better at concealing similar symptoms. In fact, one might argue that women have been experiencing a lack of satisfactory sexual response far longer than men have -- not because there is something wrong biologically with them, but because many of them were having sex with men who didn't know what was pleasurable for them or who weren't willing to give them that.
Before we all go looking for pills and creams and patches that can make our bodies harder or wetter, perhaps we should explore first if there are ways in which we might alter our strategies for relating and communicating around sexuality. Gender roles aren't the only things that have shifted over the years. We are also living in a culture that has been steadily slipping backwards to adopt more puritanical standards for sexuality than we had even a decade ago. If the answer to solving the erectile dysfunction puzzle is for women to revert back to being passive sexual prey whose job is to do what it takes to coax a man's penis to attention, a lot of women are going to be really pissed off. A lot of men who have enjoyed getting sexual attention from women are going to be disappointed. A lot of men who have sex with men are going to be left out of the equation and a lot of lesbians are going to have to scrap their weekend plans.
Posted by Jenn on May 17, 2006 7:15 AM
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