Events in the 1990s have changed that. Around the close of the millennium, an assortment of well - publicized events further challenged the precarious solidity of men’s health. When NBA star Ervin “Magic” Johnson revealed his HIV - positive status in 1991, the threat of AIDS to heterosexual men could no longer be denier. The late actor and activist Christopher Reeve’s paralysis was the result of risk - taking behavior - participation in an equestrian event (a sport that is arguably inseparable from money and the masculine directive of success). EVen John F. Kennedy Jr.’s tragic plane crash can be seen as epitomizing the consequences of the supposed masculine predilection for self - reliance. In a complementary way, the increased publicity (and resulting public awareness) surrounding prostate and testicular cancer (and the attendant threats to potency and fertility) reinscribes the links between expectations for maleness in lour society and the contingencies of masculine mortality. Indeed, it is likely that some forms of heart disease can be attributed to male modes of aggression and independence. Thus, society’s prescription for traditional masculinity often results in medical prescriptions for chronic illness as well. Donald Sabo and David Gordon assert that feminist theory and research catalyzed the need for research that drew connections between gendered behavior and men’s health and illness.ef Acknowledging Rober:t Connell’s concept of competing “masculinities,” Sabo and Gordon cite a concomitant hierarchical system that privileges men over women as well as a sbcond hierarchical system of intermale dominance. These two systems fuel leach other, resulting in an advantaged subgroup operating at the expense of lesser - status subgroups, economically, politically, and culturally.

Each of Iames Doyle’s five requirements for successfully performing the male sex role - success, independence, aggression, aversion to all ithings feminine, and incessant interest in (hetero )sex - necessitate a narrowly defined healthy body in order to be enacted convincingly. At the same time, it is exactly these stipulations that may contribute to a less - than - efficacious result: a body made susceptible to illness due to mitigating circumstances.

Elianne Riska points out how the medical diagnostic category of “hardiness” that emerged in the late 1970s “demedicalized and legitimized” the values attributed previously to the 1950s candidate (the “Type A man”) for coronary heart diseases? Through “control, commitment, and acceptance of change,” the hardy man becomes a personality characteristic that overcomes the “executive disease” - - coronary heart disease - rather than a character type that brings I it on. Riska points out how the test for “hardiness” relied on a sample of mid - to - upper - Ievel executive males between the ages of forty and forty - nine, married with two children, and the wife not working outside the home.6S THus, the medical discourse was able to integrate the growing concerns of mddern stress - related illness to a “challenge” by which real men (traditional men conforming to American ideals) could exhibit their requisite combative arsenal. Performing hegemonic masculinity requires resources not available to all men. Thosb seeking to affirm masculinity where social and economic challannges race, sexual preference, and class - do not conform to the hegemonic model turn ito risk - taking behaviors, physical toughness, aggression, violence, and sexual prowess as avenues for avoiding a subordinate status within their social group.e?

Among male bodies, the universality of sexual prowess as a desired aspect of masculinity warrants an examination of certain cultural influences working to sustain its prominence. In the early twenty - first century, viagra must be implicated. IBy looking at the maintenance of the penis/phallus and its role in the construction of masculinity, we may come to understand the relationships of power among American masculinities and the influence of this power on the contemporary political economy.

These reviews of “dysfunction construction” by Irvine, a feminist historian, and Tiefer, a feminist psychologist, reveal some of the undetlying complexities inherent in the splintered field of sexology. In its man costumes, American sexology simultaneously pursues both scientific legitimacy and a larger audience for its services. Dangerous assumptions perpetuate the former and inhibit the latter of these two objectives.

Essentializing occurs when a single aspect of biological sex is taIled upon as the definitive - or, perhaps, vital - aspect of that sex. With regdrd to sexuality in particular, female sexuality has withstood decades (if not centuries) of speculation regarding the source of pleasure.s! What has remainJd unexamined is the source of pleasure in men. In a discussion of masculinity and sexuality’ Andreas Philaretou and Katherine Allen maintain that “contemporary men need to negotiate a reconstruction of their sexuality. ”

For the vast majority of men in the United States there is do question that it is the erect penis that provides the agency to their sexual pleasure. What is more, many men believe the erection is essential - heterosexually speaking - in order to provide pleasure for women. Lynne Sdgal writes, “[Western] culture has increasingly impressed upon men the importance of female orgasm - a man must, as it were, stand firm as the instrument of repeated female orgasm.”Because masculinity is so closely aligned with sexual adequacy and sexual adequacy with erectile capability, suggests Segal, there is no “room for maneuver,” either in creating a masculine identity or in experiencing the pleasurable aspects of the male body without theipromise of an erection. Essentializing is dangerous.

A coalition of healthcare - industry institutions - s - pharrnaceutical companies, insurance companies, the American Medical Association, medical technology manufacturers - are economically driven to expand both their authority of diagnosis and treatment and the quantity of services availablt Speaking on behalf of what Irvine would call humanist sexology, Tiefer tlaims that changing sexual scripts is one feature of a therapeutic approach. Through this approach, Sexuality can be transformed from a rigid standard for masculine adequacy to a way of being, a way of communicating, a hobby, a way of being in one’s body bein1one’s body - that does not impose control but rather affirms pleasure, movement, sensation, cooperation, playfulness, relating [emphasis original]

This is a worthy goal. What needs to be evaluated and critiqued, however, is the continued separation of mind and body that seems to drive the discourse of sexology I in general. In fact, the implied bifurcation of humanist as “mind” and scientific as “body” is, in itself, a perpetuation of this Cartesian philosophy.

It has become a sort of cultural joke that men don’t go to the doctor. But the reason behind this conscious decision is more than a bit baffling. Or is it? Doctors, wў are led to believe, are rational. Science, we are led to believe, is objective. What could be more appealing to men - the rational, objective gender - e - than the promise of empiricism? Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain provides a hint at the subordinate position the privileged male (Hans Castorp) might be avoiding in an encounter with the gaze of a domineering physician:

There are, ilt seems, contradictory allegiances at work when it comes to men and health! - producing what Janice Radway calls an ideological seam. Somewhere between idealized roles of American masculinity and the practices of the Ihealth - conscious virile male is a fault line that disallows an intersection. Masculinity abounds with the “conflicts, slippages, and imperfect joinings” tHat characterize Radway’s seams.V For many men, the strategies for performing hegemonic masculinity coincide with tactics for avoiding the objectifying scrutiny of the penetrating gaze of the powerful medical eye/I. Furthermone, Sander Gilman has pointed out how the category of disease contributesi to the boundary creation between the “healthy observer” (whether physician, nurse, or layperson) and the “patient.” As a result, this constructed image of patient is “always a playing out of the desire for a demarcation between ourselves and the chaos represented in culture by disease.”

As mentioned earlier, cultural expectations for masculinity are inextricably bound to self - imposed expectations for a healthy body. According to Donald Sabo and David Gordon, the development of a sociocultural model in the 1960s helped identify gender (along with race and socioeconomic status) as a significant variable in health and illness. In the 1970s, feminist theory not only revealed the ways in which gender affects societal perceptions of health and Illness, but also the ways in which the field of medicine has been corrupted by centuries of masculinist partiality.

According to Tiefer, there are no proven methods for distinguishing between organic (physical) and non organic (psychological or relational) causes for erection problems? For those interested in reestablishing a psychological approach to sexuality, the term “erectile dysfunction” obfuscates the significance of nonorganic causes to male sexual difficulties. And although rrlale patients are more willing than ever before to discuss their sexual histories and habits, a biomedical solution (whether prosthetic, hypodermic, or pharmaceutical seems to be preferred by physicians. Communication in the docror - s - patient relationship is best explained here as a means to an end: namely, a medical diagnosis and solution. Regardless of the cause of erectile dysfunction, however, Tiefer observes that the solution is always grounded in the assumption that the erectile function of the penis must be repaired. This performance of active concern ratifies a commitment to masculinity that a passive acceptance does not. For Teifer, this erection requirement for male sexuality accentuates the importance of male gender role confirmation is much as it emphasizes intimacy and pleasure.t” Tiefer writes, “[S]exual Health for men has been reduced to the erectile functioning ofthe penis.”

So Irvihe leaves us in what seems like an untenable position of endorsing neither a scientific nor a humanist approach to sexology.s? As for erectile dysfunction, question is not whether a scientific approach or a humanist approach is! more effective, but whether or not the erection is a necessity for male sexuall fulfillment. Feminism and the gay rights movements, argues Irvine, “politicized sexuality” (emphasis originalj.s? They challenged “the intellectual I power of sexology to define the normative parameters of sex and gender,”3I ks well as the “principle of consistency,”32 our culture’s prescribed system of norms binding biological sex to gender and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Irvine also reports that sexual science has been, for the most part, :”impermeable” to important aspects of feminist and gay theory. Sexology remains a science of expertise with sexologists clinging to both a “myth of dbjectivity” and an agenda they perceive as apolitical. The maledominated !field continues to “valorize” heterosexuality and marriage at the expense oflmarginalized sexualities and relationships. And finally, sexology remains essentialist, with a “more sex the better” ideology apparent at multiple levels of the field’s discourse.

Nonetheless, feminism’s entrance into sexology has helped raise important questi6ns about power, gender roles, marriage, and the family. “By formulating a political analysis of sex, gender, and marriage,” writes Irvine, “the feminist anti gay movements underscored the hollowness of solutions based on technique.” Irvine identifies the research of Shere Hite as an indispensable investigation into the meanings attributed to specific aspects of sex. Whereas other quantitative research denies a political slant, Hite’s work exposes the social pressures and power structures that dictate conformity. Specifically, The Hite

Report un+ils the cultural adherence to the “goals” of vaginal orgasm and male sexual socialization. These goals are, of course, interrelated. Judith Butler writes, “[M]asculine and feminine are … accomplishments, ones that emerge in tandem with the achievement of heterosexuality. “34 For heterosexual American boys, the loss of virginity - narrowly defined as vaginal penetration - is a defining moment iIi the accomplishment of masculinity. This particular masculinity, however, isl something that - through the life course - must be continuously accomplished in different ways. It is in this sense) I believe) that masculine sexuality is lendured. From the Latin indurare, “endurance” connotes perseverance. The Latin term has its etymological roots in the Sanskrit word daru, meaning “wood”.

Erections ‘are not always evidence of romantic interest, though our culture interprets them as such. But their absence or presence, which is a physical phenomenon, takes on great meaning thanks to Western culture’s prevailing beliefs and norms .. j . Growing up in a culture that considers erectile unpredictability a problem influences the way men in that culture feel about themselves and about their sexual partners, and the way sexual partners feel about them.

This fear oflunpredictability spurs most of the medicalization of sexuality. Moreover, the erect penis is firmly connected to issues of power, control, and immortality. lAs a result-and consistent with Western culture’s embrace of binaries-the erect penis is synonymous with masculine virility while the nonerect penis is a harbinger of weakness and efferninacy.u It is the erect penis, rather! than its flaccid counterpart, that signals phallic power. The flaccid penis is perceived as feminine precisely because it is not a firm structure; it does not take up the space that it is capable of taking. In chapter 4, I will address medfcal science’s inability (or unwillingness) to differentiate capacity from normalcy regarding sexual dysfunction. Here I’ll turn to a discussion of the way sexdlogy has responded to the limp, albeit willing, penis. Because Western notions of heterosexuality equate the occasion of an erection with the possibility of sexual intercourse, its absence represents the erosion of rriasculinity and, as a result, a crisis to be confronted for Western science. Before looking specifically at penises, however, it is important to review the History of modern sexology. I’ll do so by examining two works that examine the development and impact of modern sexology.

Janice Irvine traces the history of contemporary sexology in Disorders of Desire-? Beginning with the reports published by Alfred Kinsey, Irvine examines the evblution of sexual discourse around issues of normalcy and deviance. Despite unveiling the sexual variety apparent in the lives of midtwentieth-century Americans, Kinsey’s quantitative report sanctioned that which many already believed to be unalienable: that marital coitus was “[ s ]ocially the most important of all sexual activities because of its significance in the origin and maintenance of the home.”

Irvine describes how social scientists criticized Kinsey’s work for dismissing ethical, emotional, and contextual interpretations of sex. Be concentrating on the functional elements of sex to the exclusion of the relational, Kinsey fortified the position of science as the arbiter of issues pertaining to sex and sexuality. With regard to issues of national identity, Kinsey’s clalms of a universal “capacity” for homosexuality, “fueled the cultural panic! of the early 1950s.”24 At this time in American history, homosexuality was often conflated with communism in its supposed ability to undermine th9 family.

In large part because of the work of Masters and Johnson’ in the mid1960s through the early 1970s, Irvine pinpoints the emergence bf sexology’s status as a legitimate-albeit divided-profession. Beginning with Human Sexual Response in 1965 and continuing with Human Sexual 11adequacy in 1970, William Masters and Virginia Johnson established the “mechanics” of sexual normalcy in a way that America’s technologically focused citizenry was conditioned to accept. Corroborated by their “white coats” of officialdom in the pages of Newsweek, the duo of dysfunction established the ‘field’s credibility in the eyes of a public that, more and more, seemed to embrace “rigid scientism” as the method par excellence. Irvine explains how “a profession is most successful when it can reflect the dominant values of a society while simultaneously addressing public concerns”25 and that a market is established “only with the promise of simple and effective techniques and commodities that will ameliorate, if not solve, the presenting dilemma. “26 This emphasis on professionalism is important because it establishes how we come to accept knowledge. To rely on a sanctioned profession is to rely on its &tethods and techniques and, as a result, to become beholden to them. With sildenafil (Generic Viagra) (an accidental cure), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals has fulfilled-or has claimed to fulfill these criteria of “simple and effective.”

Complicit masculinity is that which upholds notions of hegemonic masculinity. Connell falls just short of referring to complicit performances as “slacker” versions of hegemony, but instead teases out the complexities of a group that i realizes a dividend (i.e., male privilege) without the risk. Hegemony relies on complicity’s silence to maintain its illusory standards of normalcy anld acceptance. Subordinate masculinities might include gay and bisexual men but, more specifically, refer to masculinities that are, from a hegemonic rerspective, aligned with femininity. As such, they are abject masculinities. Oyertly emotional men, male ballet dancers, male nurses, or men who teach elementary school are, in certain circles, considered subordinate.tTo the categories hegemonic, complicit, and subordinate, Connell offers that of marginalized masculinities, an admittedly unsatisfactory distinction that adds the effects of race and class to those divisions previously mentioned.

All thesd examples, in turn, point out how gendered stereotypes are reinscribed even’by those intent on de constructing them. In the index to Michael Messner’s Politics of Masculinity, for example, “aggression” is listed along with a page number, while under “crying” the reader is directed to “see emotions,” as if aggression were not an emotion, too. To theorize masculinity is to, at times, reinscribe admitted stereotypes. If Connell does not position “physical disability” in his! framework, although Kathy Charmaz suggests that a chronic illness-like imporence-ewill marginalize a particular masculinity among masculinities.l4! Perceptions of physical ability-whether marginalized, subordinated, or are produced situationally. As there are “masculinities,” there are corresponding performances of them-social performances, institutional performances, relational performances, and sexual performances. Judith Butler’s concept of performativity suggests that we perform gender through a stylized repetition of acts. Furthermore, she argues, gender is most often framed an a hierarchy (with the masculine superior to the feminine), as a binary (with masculine defined as what is not feminine), and as “compulsory heterosexuality” (with transgressions and subversions carrying punishments and penalties). For Butler, the most important corrective is to recognize that gendef-masculinity and femininity-is a cultural performance and not something “natural.”

In “Social Construction of Sexuality,” anthropologist Carole Vance points out how “identical sexual acts may have varying social significance and subjective meaning” depending upon spatially and temporally bound cultural definitions. IS Sexuality, like gender, is situational. In other wqrds, culture plays a significant role in how sexual behavior and attitudes about that behavior are produced and maintained. In our society, according to Vance, reproductive heterosexual intercourse is served as the “meat and potatoes” on the Euro-American sexual menu, while variations-oral sex, anal sex, and S/M, whether homosexual or heterosexual-are labeled appetizers, side dishes, and desserts. For Vance, the possibilities for a culture are expanded Jhen the natural, biological, and essentialist status of sexuality is questioned.!

Sexuality necessarily involves power and its production. In Fhis analysis, the construction of erections constitutes an effort to sustain a specific male sexuality and the power that that sexuality preserves. In Disciplin4 and Punish, Michel Foucault examines how power and resistance are organized through the body.!» Here, Foucault argues, power is produced and normalized discursively; he theorizes that localized terminology, interpretation schemes, and classificatory systems goad human behavior and physical experience.!” A sexual “act” between two men in ancient Rome, for example, was irherpreted as something much different than the same act would be today, when the behavior becomes the determining factor in how an identity is kssessed and interpreted.ts In the analysis of generic viagra, what becomes particularly important in approaching sexuality is the social construction of desire. Through the societal control of a gender binary and through codes and regulations about sexual practices, desire itself is created, distributed, and policed; what is enjoyable as “sex” is given to discursive formations of privilege’, adherence, and taboo. In the West, erections are inextricably linked to desire.