Erecting Viagra
In his cultural history of the penis, journalist David Friedman writes, The lucrative new therapies developed and marketed by Pfizer and others are covered ‘by the media as a personal-hygiene update for the estimated 30 million Americans who struggle with erectile dysfunction, a number supplied (critics say fabricated) by the very erection industry that profits from identifying those men as patients
As a manufactured “update,” Viagra is the reiteration and recreation of male sexuality. This update is merely the latest test of endurance. Whether vi’rtual reality or ritual virility, Pfizer’s marketing ofViagra and the masculine imperative of erectile capability have performative functions. Even if enacted unconsciously (which I, for one, doubt they are) these functions are surely both politically and economically driven. By examining the discourses surrounding male sexuality and Viagra, this website seeks to locate a genealogy of factors that produce and maintain these assumptions of the sexualized male body.
Who and how “normal” is defined, then, delimits the space within which individuals (both professional and lay) investigate, perceive, and evaluate personal experiences and preferences. When norms are communicated by the health profession’s experts, matters of individual predilection and satisfaction often take ~ backseat to cultural conventions.
In the, case of “arousal disorders,” medical authorities (e.g., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals) begin with the assumption that the expectation is heterosexual intercourse. These expectations are then dictated via powerful and influential mediums such as news stories, television commercials, glossy magazine advertisements, and even online questionnaires. In this website I investigate various discourses of sexual normalcy and dysfunction, seek to bare the unexamined holes in sexual health discourses, posit claims about how those discourses define and delimit the scope of human sexuality, and provide a critical view of how Viagra has impacted our understanding of sexual health in the seven, years since its well-promoted debut. I delve into the discourses of masculinity that frame, reflect, deflect, and insinuate expectations for and of sexual health. I explore men’s sexual health as a social performance that is enabled by Viagra and the claims of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Spiecifically, I analyze news stories in the popular press as well as Pfizer Pharniaceutical’s marketing materials. These two sets of “texts” reveal, in different ways, the arrival of Pfizer’s Viagra as a mechanism for phallocentrism and’ patriarchy. As discourse, these texts contribute to how we have come to understand the meaning of viagra.
Now let’s take a break and vontinue this story in the following post.
