The "No-Sex" Class and "Whoopie Pills"
Anthony McCarthy of Echidne of the Snakes perhaps inadvertently shines a light on a classic "no-sex" class assumption.
You get used to filtering out commercials during the evening news but once in a while one breaks through your defenses. At the tail end of a Levitra commercial Sunday they included sudden deafness as a reported side effect. Sudden deafness now joins the list of announced effects of taking whoopie pills...
...the most interesting question is how far geezers, themselves, are willing to go to achieve rock hard erections into their late senescence. Would they accept having their head fall off, one wonders? Would they miss it? I’ve got to listen more closely tonight to hear if death is a reported side effect of aphro-geeziacs, by name or not. The answer may have already been reported.
A bit of desk clearing though. "Geezers?" "Late senescence?" "Aphro-geeziacs?" Sheesh, ageism much? Also, you don't have to be geriatric to have problems with erections. Prostate cancer survivors, diabetics, men with heart disease, and men with untreated (and sometimes treated) depression experience it long before they're "senescent," and sometimes even before their hair thins or grays. But I digress...
So! I've mentioned elsewhere that I think it's unfortunate that medication like Viagra is assumed to exclusively benefit men, or that contraceptive pills exclusively benefit women. McCarthy's post reminded me of those strongly-gendered assumptions about the two medications and then, with his "whoopie pills" characterization, gave it a nice nudge forward. Check it out!
- Language of erection pills: frivolously facilitate (men's) sexual enjoyment, i.e. "whoopie." Because, you know, inside the "no-sex" class paradigm only heterosexual men enjoy sex. Their heterosexual partners merely endure it.
- Language of contraceptive pills: virtuously prevent (women's) pregnancies. Because, you know, inside the "no-sex" class paradigm women's interest in sex begins and ends at pregnancy.
But are women always and only interested in contraception only so they won't get pregnant while passively lying back and thinking of England? And are men really always and only interested in erections for own pleasure? Sure, sometimes (and for those sometimes thank goodness for modern sensibilities about divorce.) But always? Only? The dominant paradigm says so. Why support it?
As I said in that previous post, for most heterosexuals both contraception (especially earlier in life) and erection medication (especially later in life) are as much for *couples* as for individuals.
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Quick question about Viagra and similar drugs: It looks like there really are a lot of unpleasant side effects and it sounds like they're not all that rare either. So are they really consumed as recreationally as pop culture seems to think they are?
If you are on a lot of medication, what's one more.
The side effects of quite a few of drugs are just as bad as Viagra and do include death.
There are "john" cultures who spend their salad days on the blue pill while visiting every Nevada Brothel on the menu.
These old men actually have medicine chests full of viagra, cialis, and levitra; some guys just want to leave this world with a smile on their face.
Unfortunately, the painful permanent erection erases that smile in the last hours of agonizing death.
[Hi Gourmet Swinger. Talk about irony. I finally have a post where it's appropriate to mention those medications and... my spam filter locked you out. Go figure! But yeah, because of those side effects I still suspect that a *lot* of people try it only once and that the people who keep using it tend to do so when they really need it and not just for fun. Thanks! --fl]
My boyfriend is involved in the gay porn industry, and he's told me that a lot of male porn stars will use Viagra because it allows them to quickly get and maintain erections for an entire shoot. It makes sense - in that case, an erection lasting more than X hours (I think it's four?) may not necessarily be a bad thing.
[Actually yeah, given how much frustration has been heaped on erection sustainability in porn production I can see how the pressure to use Viagra instead of "fluffers" or patience would be pretty intense. Oh, and by the way I'm not saying Viagra's bad (what's wrong with "whoopie" anyway) and if you *don't* get side-effects it might be fun... and, as your partner says, useful in certain kinds of work. Thanks, Zula! --fl]