Event Title
Pharmacological treatments for female sexual dissatisfaction: Towards a systems approach
Start Date
26-6-2010 2:45 PM
End Date
26-6-2010 4:15 PM
Description
This presentation is part of the “Female Complaints”: Medicine, Markets and Women's Health track.
This paper uses insights offered by feminist science studies scholars, including Susan Oyama and Karen Barad, to examine the implications of pharmacological treatments for male and female sexual dissatisfaction.
In the 1980s and 1990s, medical professionals and researchers developed Erectile Dysfunction (ED) as a diagnostic category for male erectile problems. In 1998, Viagra came on the market as a treatment for ED. In 2008, Pfizer reported revenue of over $1.9 billion from sales of Viagra (Pfizer 2008). Since the late 1990s, clinicians and researchers have tried to develop a similar diagnostic category for female sexual dissatisfaction, called Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), and have sought to develop pharmacological treatments for FSD. Feminist scholars and activists have generally critiqued this move to “medicalize” female sexual dissatisfaction. Members of a feminist group called “The New View Campaign” testified to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) against approval for Instrinsa, a drug designed to treat some forms of FSD.
Feminist scholars opposing FSD and pharmacological treatments for FSD have usually adopted a “social constructionist” understanding of sexual dissatisfaction and associated pharmaceuticals. This approach generally involves three main elements: first, an understanding that ED and FSD are socially constructed diseases; second, a belief that drug companies and doctors are perhaps inappropriately medicalizing or pathologizing male and female sexual dissatisfaction; and, third, a belief that drug companies and doctors are promoting a phallic model of sexuality at the expense of other forms of sexuality. Yet, at the same time, many of these scholars and activists have acknowledged that many women have actively sought the development of pharmaceutical treatments for sexual disorders (see, for example, Nicolson 2003).
In this paper, I briefly review the history of the development of ED, Viagra, FSD, and pharmacological treatments for FSD. I also review and critique the main arguments offered by feminist scholars and activists opposed to the development of pharmacological treatments for sexual dissatisfaction. I argue that this feminist opposition to pharmacological treatments for female sexual dissatisfaction is based on a linear, “single cause” and “single effect” understanding of drug interventions. In this view, drugs are released into the market, messages promoted by drug companies reach individual consumers, and consumers proceed to pathologize their own sexuality and adopt and enact phallic models of sexuality.
As an alternative to this linear model, feminist science studies has offered powerful new analytic tools for feminist scholars in our search to understand and make political decisions about issues involving gendered and sexualized bodies. Specifically, thinkers like Susan Oyama (The Ontogeny of Information 2000) and Karen Barad (Meeting the Universe Halfway 2005) have developed an analytics best described as “feminist systemic thinking” or “feminist systems thinking.” Briefly, this analytics approaches “problems” as parts of an overall system, in which the elements do not predate the system but rather are mutually constituted within the system through dynamic, ongoing and complex processes.
It is my contention in this paper that if we understand sexual dissatisfaction as a complex, dynamic system, which is productive of and produced by pharmacological treatments for sexual disorders, then we can understand that the approval of Viagra and similar drugs by the FDA and their marketing by drug companies will have multi-directional, dynamic, complex, and not-entirely-predictable effects. Indeed, the evidence suggests that male sexual dissatisfaction was a complex system prior to the introduction of Viagra. For example, men have been using technology (from shark fins to vacuum devices) to “intervene” in the functioning of their penises for thousands of years. The evidence also suggests that the approval and marketing of Viagra has had complex, dynamic, and sometimes unexpected or at least un-willed effects. For example, the ethnographic work of Potts et al suggests that some men and women have incorporated Viagra into their sexual lives without adhering to a phallic model of sexuality.
Because female sexual dissatisfaction is an equally complex and dynamic system, I would expect the approval and marketing of Intrinsa and/or other drugs for female sexual dissatisfaction to have equally multi-directional, complex, dynamic, and unexpected effects. Based on this understanding, I believe feminists should perhaps direct our political energies away from blocking the availability of drug treatments like Intrinsa to other political projects. More speculatively, I argue that blocking the release of Intrinsa might actually be a poor political choice. If we block Intrinsa, we may be blocking off possibilities for creative appropriation and other unpredictable, and perhaps unimaginable, outcomes.
Pharmacological treatments for female sexual dissatisfaction: Towards a systems approach
This presentation is part of the “Female Complaints”: Medicine, Markets and Women's Health track.
This paper uses insights offered by feminist science studies scholars, including Susan Oyama and Karen Barad, to examine the implications of pharmacological treatments for male and female sexual dissatisfaction.
In the 1980s and 1990s, medical professionals and researchers developed Erectile Dysfunction (ED) as a diagnostic category for male erectile problems. In 1998, Viagra came on the market as a treatment for ED. In 2008, Pfizer reported revenue of over $1.9 billion from sales of Viagra (Pfizer 2008). Since the late 1990s, clinicians and researchers have tried to develop a similar diagnostic category for female sexual dissatisfaction, called Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), and have sought to develop pharmacological treatments for FSD. Feminist scholars and activists have generally critiqued this move to “medicalize” female sexual dissatisfaction. Members of a feminist group called “The New View Campaign” testified to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) against approval for Instrinsa, a drug designed to treat some forms of FSD.
Feminist scholars opposing FSD and pharmacological treatments for FSD have usually adopted a “social constructionist” understanding of sexual dissatisfaction and associated pharmaceuticals. This approach generally involves three main elements: first, an understanding that ED and FSD are socially constructed diseases; second, a belief that drug companies and doctors are perhaps inappropriately medicalizing or pathologizing male and female sexual dissatisfaction; and, third, a belief that drug companies and doctors are promoting a phallic model of sexuality at the expense of other forms of sexuality. Yet, at the same time, many of these scholars and activists have acknowledged that many women have actively sought the development of pharmaceutical treatments for sexual disorders (see, for example, Nicolson 2003).
In this paper, I briefly review the history of the development of ED, Viagra, FSD, and pharmacological treatments for FSD. I also review and critique the main arguments offered by feminist scholars and activists opposed to the development of pharmacological treatments for sexual dissatisfaction. I argue that this feminist opposition to pharmacological treatments for female sexual dissatisfaction is based on a linear, “single cause” and “single effect” understanding of drug interventions. In this view, drugs are released into the market, messages promoted by drug companies reach individual consumers, and consumers proceed to pathologize their own sexuality and adopt and enact phallic models of sexuality.
As an alternative to this linear model, feminist science studies has offered powerful new analytic tools for feminist scholars in our search to understand and make political decisions about issues involving gendered and sexualized bodies. Specifically, thinkers like Susan Oyama (The Ontogeny of Information 2000) and Karen Barad (Meeting the Universe Halfway 2005) have developed an analytics best described as “feminist systemic thinking” or “feminist systems thinking.” Briefly, this analytics approaches “problems” as parts of an overall system, in which the elements do not predate the system but rather are mutually constituted within the system through dynamic, ongoing and complex processes.
It is my contention in this paper that if we understand sexual dissatisfaction as a complex, dynamic system, which is productive of and produced by pharmacological treatments for sexual disorders, then we can understand that the approval of Viagra and similar drugs by the FDA and their marketing by drug companies will have multi-directional, dynamic, complex, and not-entirely-predictable effects. Indeed, the evidence suggests that male sexual dissatisfaction was a complex system prior to the introduction of Viagra. For example, men have been using technology (from shark fins to vacuum devices) to “intervene” in the functioning of their penises for thousands of years. The evidence also suggests that the approval and marketing of Viagra has had complex, dynamic, and sometimes unexpected or at least un-willed effects. For example, the ethnographic work of Potts et al suggests that some men and women have incorporated Viagra into their sexual lives without adhering to a phallic model of sexuality.
Because female sexual dissatisfaction is an equally complex and dynamic system, I would expect the approval and marketing of Intrinsa and/or other drugs for female sexual dissatisfaction to have equally multi-directional, complex, dynamic, and unexpected effects. Based on this understanding, I believe feminists should perhaps direct our political energies away from blocking the availability of drug treatments like Intrinsa to other political projects. More speculatively, I argue that blocking the release of Intrinsa might actually be a poor political choice. If we block Intrinsa, we may be blocking off possibilities for creative appropriation and other unpredictable, and perhaps unimaginable, outcomes.