How Did We Get Here?
From the beginning, Viagra was a joke. You must have heard them. Viagra has been a big boon to stand-up comedians. Did you hear about the guy who took Viagra and got it stuck in his throat? He got a stiff neck. New Viagra eye drops make you look hard. In nursing homes, Viagra keeps male patients from rolling out of bed. Did you hear about the first death from an overdose of Viagra? A man took twelve pills and his wife died. Viagra is now being compared to Disneyland—a one-hour wait for a two-minute ride. Most of us are familiar with these one-liners. In 1998, they were delivered by our favorite talk show hosts and comedians. They were repeated by our friends, our relatives, and even our doctors. And they circulated over e-mail for years, it seemed. In our puritanical culture, the availability of a new erection pill and the social ramifications of this were, shall we say, slightly uncomfortable to talk about. But the idea of men of all ages taking pills and having erections as a result was easy to laugh about. And so we did. Because just like the news of Clinton’s affair months earlier, the existence of such a pill seemed both ludicrous and deeply serious, both enabling and frightening. Unlike news of Clinton’s affair, the Viagra phenomenon “penetrated” people’s daily lives in bedrooms and boardrooms. Viagra humor was one way to cope with the newness and awkwardness of Viagra in our lives, and all that went with it—including acknowledgment of erectile difficulties, awareness of medical risk, the idea of seniors as sexual beings, and the acceptance of sex for pleasure’s sake.
Actually, whether we felt like it or not, by 1998 Americans had already begun to transition into a new era in sex, medicine, and technological innovation. Numerous social changes at the end of the twentieth century paved the way for the emergence of .1 product like Viagra. These changes made it possible for many of us to see ourselves and our sex lives as “dysfunctional.” And they began the chain reaction that has resulted in industries and institutions dedicated to what we now call “sexual medicine” and “male enhancement.”
How did we get here? I believe that Viagra’s emergence in the late twentieth century can be distilled down to five shifting sets of social circumstances: medical expansion, scientific and technological innovation, pharmaceutical deregulation and expansion, cultural and demographic shifts in gender and aging, and increasing scientific and popular attention to sexuality and sexual dissatisfaction. Together the factors made the Viagra phenomenon possible
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