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In his historical look at normalcy, Columbia University English professor Lennard Davis discusses how the concept of “normal” has shifted from meaning average-recognizing and incorporating anomaly-to meaning ideal-eradicating anomaly.w Recall the Seinfeld episode where we find George Costanza trying desperately to describe “shrinkage.” After a swim, George is in the process of changing his clothes when a female friend catches sight of him naked. Worried that his penis size will be underestimated, George explains how the cold water impacts the male body, causing the genitals to retreat “like a frightened turtle.” He feels “short changed” as he explains, “That was not me.” George represents a version of masculinity terrified of being uncovered, of being assessed at less than capacity. Susan Bordo, author of The Male Body, maintains that the nonerect penis suggests a delicacy-”a sleepy sweetness”-that renders it a physiological anomaly in its ability to occupy both sides of the hardness-softness continuum. “It’s not just soft,” Bordo reminds us, “it’s really soft.”16 Why is it in this limp conditionthis soft (not hard) state-that so many men feel vulnerable? Even when the “studliest” characters from our cultural imaginary can be summoned-Boogie Nights’ Dirk Diggler springs to attention-we are still talking about penises that are languishing in detumescence most of the time. As a culture, why do we deny the penis its usual (normal) structure?

Viagra is prescribed to remedy a perceived aberration-namely, the unresponsive penis.P Hardness-whether we’re talking about the penis or the personality-has been described by sociobiologist Lionel Tiger as the essence of masculinity; the ability to become hard is thus a mark of masculiniry.’? So it seems that the nonerect penis creates two separate but related concerns for the performance of masculinity: it is not at its capacity and, regarding impotence specifically, it is not under control. These two concerns-capacity and control-are directly tied to notions of American masculiniry?

Historically, theories of sexuality have used dichotomies as a way to define normalcy. Psychoanalytic theorist Jacqueline Rose, however, has reminded t,ls of how dangerous it is to generalize “male” and “female” when discussing sexuality. 21 Despite advances in our understanding of sexuality over the last forty years, the medical discourse of sexuality has continued to do exactly what Rose warned against by (1) defining physiology in terms of functional ~nd dsyfunctional; (2) suggesting and producing correctives-like Viagra-that fail to take into account sexual variations and possibilities; and (3) maintaining a Cartesian separation of mind and body. Viagra, marketed as a tool to correct a supposed physiological dysfunction, is yet another example of how masculinism defines and controls what is normal.

In the ‘discourse of normalcy, Sophie Freud differentiates among three definitions of “normal”. From a statistical perspective, the norm is what is average or !typical-the normal in this regard is often viewed positively but with a suggestion of mediocrity. Another usage designates normal as ideal; the example of consummate good health (mental or physical) gives normal an above-average, aspirational, or potential quality. This definition becomes crucial in a study of how sexual health is assessed. The third definition attests to community standards of behavior. Here, normal is understood as that which is acceptable and commonplace-”He was a quiet neighbor. You know, normal.” She contends that this third definition of normal is especially likely to reflect culturally specific conventions. With regard to sexuality, Freud gives the examples of homosexuality, masturbation, and oral sex as behaviors that, at one time or another, were viewed as psychologically abnormal and implicated in a host of societal ills.

To Sophie Freud’s definitions of normal, psychologist Leonore Tiefer adds two more: the subjective and the clinical.s- The subjective defines normal from a. personal perspective: if I view myself as normal and you are like me, then )\OU are normal, too. Her definition of clinical normalcy shares aspects of both the statistical and the aspirational. In the clinical view of normalcy, if something demonstrates the capacity to exist, then it should exist. It is from thde fictions of normalcy, suggests sociologist Erving Goffman, that we “impute a wide range of imperfections. “Whether or not we believe human sexuality is biologically “natural” or the result of socially constructed “scripted behavior,” masculinity and sexual health are social performances enacted daily, with implications for both society’s expectations and individual sense-making.

Tiefer maintains that medical authorities-including physicians, health-care administrators, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companiesprovide the dominant ideology of sexuality. Her 1995 website, Sex Is Not a Natural Act, examines the power dynamics driving the “biological bedrock”-the overriding tendency to privilege anatomical and physiological

domains in the discourse of human sexuality research and, more specifically,

sexual health.

Until relatively recently, according to Tiefer, sexual norms came from religious authorities eager to maintain moral boundaries. With regard to

women’s desire, Tiefer maintains that the audeo-Christian tradition dominant in Western society has, to some extent, endorsed the “denill of fleshly interests,” while for adolescent boys in particular, a high degree: of interest and enjoyment in sex-that is, heterosexual sex-is required for our culture’s

approved performance of teenage masculinity. Now, owing to the statistical data collected in the past century by the likes of William Kraft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia J ohnson, and Shere Hite, the American public turns to “experts” for their definitions of sexual normalcy. With regard to sexual health, the biomedical model (drawing on presentations of anatomy and physiology as universal and innate) and the statistical “evidence” (establishing the means and modes of shual variation) do not take into account the individual experiences of pleasure, fantasy, and sexual diversity.

This double dose of “hard” science, with the full endorsement of healthcare’s political economy, has resulted in the unquestioned authority with which the medical profession delimits, diagnoses, and doctors sexual dysfunction. What has happened with Viagra is that the very industry that produces a treatment also defines the condition it is meant to treat. Iri this sense, the medicalized discourse on sexual health is performative in Judith Butler’s sense of the term, for it produces as an effect the very subject it n’ames

Here I will introduce performance theory as a lens through which Viagra and related aspects of masculine identity-both individual and collectivecan be fully examined. As an academic keyword, “performance” .includes as much as it excludes. Feminist performance theorist Jill Dolan writes, “Performance happens all around us, if you look at it that way.”