In American culture we tend to view sex as an act of work, and subconsciously as a way in which we tend to perform our gender. By framing it in this context, we tend to de-humanize sex and sexuality, to make sex and sexuality into a thing removed from ourselves. As a result of this disconnection from ourselves, and our bodies, we as a society have begun moving towards a system of breaking every aspect down into purely physical parts. What this means for sexual dysfunction is that it is no longer a result of some combination of forces, mental and otherwise, but is purely a lack of a working part. This in turn allows us to medicalize the whole situation and simply treat the broken part, through drugs and/or surgery.

Sexual dysfunction has become the three-ring circus of the twenty first century. This has happened because we have made the whole issue into a medical "event". By this I mean that there is no sanctity of the bedroom anymore, Viagra and other sex drugs have become the talk of the town and are used with no compunction, as well as discussed sometimes in terms of the grandiosity of the newfound sexual abilities of the participants. We have removed the social constraints of personal interaction and given free reign to the tyranny of the disembodied penis. The penis is it's own fully functioning entity and can be made to "work" through pure medicine now, with the vagina and clitoris hot on it's tail in the same way. In the Article " The Second Sexual Revolution" (1999) by Jack Hitt, he truly illuminates this way of thinking when he says "Viagra was just the beginning. Soon we will all be medicated and wired for high-performance romance."(1999:34).

Another example of how this has become a seriously disconnected medical "event" is evident later in the same Hitt article. Hitt is describing an experience he witnessed of the doctor diagnosing a male patient with sexual dysfunction; he talks of how the wife and himself, the patient and the doctor are all present, with the doctor asking several personal questions, moving back and forth between crisp professionalism and crass "guy-talk". After getting the patient to reveal what is happening during intercourse with his wife, the doctor then proceeds to tell the patient exactly what is wrong with his equipment. The doctor does a demonstration with the sink, then he lights up a video display with a surgery being performed to correct just the problem the man must be having, and the mood of the room is full of laughter and fun. It read to me like a description of a game show, with the doctor being the game show host: "Today Mr. X you and your wife have won a fabulous new surgery. It is guaranteed to improve your sex life a hundred fold....". The game show atmosphere is replete with fancy color and a full video display to show the process. Hitt even describes the reaction of the patient as "- the kind of irrepressibly giddy laughter that accompanies extremely good fortune on par with winning $100 million or being selected by NASA to fly to the moon."(1999:37). In the case of this patient, Viagra was still prescribed, not as a cure for the sexual dysfunction, but as a sleeping aid, to allow the penis "recharging" time like a battery.

The process of making sexual dysfunction into a medical event is not exclusively claimed by men and penis disorders, women have become an increasingly larger area of study and doctors are practically drooling over female sexual dysfunction as a "new frontier" to be tamed. Hitt tells us "...in the October 1999 issue of the journal Urology, the three partners at the Boston clinic broke down the four basic kinds of female sexual dysfunction that either are or will soon be treatable." (1999:39). Although in the case of women's sexual dysfunction there is more talk of the mental components, they are still disregarded, and the idea is that the physical supercedes any mental issue that would be involved, unless in some extreme circumstance. Even the language of the preceding quote is interesting to me and supports the whole idea of medical sway, that even if they can't treat it YET, it is identified and will be treatable soon.

Key to the excitement of women's bodies as new terrain, is the idea that women are "undiscovered" and that the thrill is from finding the treatments and pathways of female anatomy. One of the doctors from Hitt's article talks about her experience learning urology and how very little was known about women's bodies in that realm. She was thrilled to be coming in to work, even with a newborn infant to take care of at home, because she had something to pursue in the realm of medical discovery. Hitt describes the whole event in very curious terms, and as a reader I was left with the impression of one who is not sure whether to be disgusted or deeply engaged. That same impression which is much like a passerby watching the carnage of an extreme wreck.

The medicalization of sexual dysfunction is taken by the public, and many Medical Doctors as well, as a very good move, and as an improvement on current conditions, however this is not necessarily the full truth. There are many drawbacks and dangers inherent in disregarding the other aspects of sexual dysfunction. One drawback is that the medical use of surgery and drugs can become a panacea, a cure-all for something that has much deeper roots. It is almost as if we have moved to a process of treating the symptoms of what appear, and not probing deeper into the true cause of the issue. That is not to say that this is the issue in every case, but that it could be an overwhelming majority of them, and we never look deeper to find out. Another aspect is that we are taking objectification even further, no longer are people seen as individuals, but merely the component parts that make up the individual. A man is reduced to his penis and how well it functions for full penetration of a vagina, and a woman is reduced to a vagina and how well it responds to that penetration. This is also indicative of the heterosexist ideology of the medical world and the idea that all genitalia is built for a one way fit, that must be maintained at all costs. The biggest danger however, to me, is the oversight of mental issues at stake. By saying that the medical side of a problem is inherently what we need to focus on, and that physical treatment supercedes mental, we set ourselves up for larger problems. Communication and rapport break down, and all of the internal issues get disregarded and that can be dangerous in many instances. It becomes dangerous because a person who is experiencing depression, for example and has a side effect of a sexual dysfunction, will not be treated for that depression. The depressed person gets the sexual dysfunction treated and then sent on their merry way, leaving the depression to grow and possibly overwhelm them to the point that they take their own life and possibly someone else's. This is an extreme example, but it gets to the heart of the problem, many issues have multiple aspects or causes, and to treat only one is negligible. The danger comes in when that negligence results in an unforseen consequence of the issue never being addressed, but the symptoms being taken away so that there is no longer an indication of a problem.

The medicalization of sexual dysfunction has been growing and seems to have become entrenched in our basic societal norms. This does not mean that it is something that is very good for us as a society or even that we are aware of the consequences, and we need to step back and examine the issue in many different ways before accepting it as truth. Sexual dysfunction has become a sideshow for everyone to disregard and have "fixed", it is a humorous and entertaining affair that has become entrenched in the mainstream rather than an issue of discussion between the parties involved. With the introduction of magic sex drugs and amazing surgeries, we have become increasingly more disconnected from our bodies and are looking at sexual dysfunction as separate from our selves, and as a disembodied "other" that has happened to us. This needs to be re-evaluated, because it is dangerous and ignores many other vital aspects of our lives.

Here we are in 2008 and willing to accept a mulititude of other side effects in order to have a quick fix enabling sex to be on par with the rest of our instant gratification lifestyle.Commercials have shortened erectile dysfunction to a catch phrase of ED. and have a variety of pills on the market allowing the penis to be at the beck and call of the man using them, as well as the pills to "enhance that certain part" meaning genetics need no longer apply. Take a pill and have your equipment not only respond at your demand, but it will be the exact size you and your mate choose to make it.

Perhaps we have desensitized ourselves to our humanity and to our interconnection as people. Ignoring our mental and emotional connections in order to bring about a more iron control of ourselves and our environments, we no longer pay attention to the signals nature has implanted within us as failsafes and safety features. I ask myself if this is good for us as a society, as a species? Are we condemning ourselves to an uncertain future in which we take things too far. I don't have the answer, but I am thinking and willing to address and contemplate the question.

References:

Hitt, Jack 1999 "The Search for the Female Viagra and other Tales From the Second Sexual Revolution". The New York Times Magazine. Feb 20.