The Rise of Viagra How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America by Meika Loe

Author:Meika Loe [Loe, Meika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sachbuch
ISBN: 0814752004
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2003-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

The “Steve Problem”

Like Oprah and her audiences, most practitioners want to know, Why do women lack interest in sex? For some, the answer is not in the body but in the relationship, partner, or lack of stimulus. In her 2001 presidential address at the Boston Forum, psychiatrist Sandra Leiblum anticipated future presentations about hormone deficiency when she showed the audience a cartoon depicting one woman telling her friend, “I was on hormone replacement for two years before I realized that what I really needed was Steve replacement.” Leiblum summed up this cartoon, commenting generally that “many of us know that a Steve replacement may work better than hormone replacement,” which set off laughter in the room, seeming to strike a chord.

Leiblum went on to say that while “lack of desire [and] sexual response” may be considered “distressing” by medical professionals, behaviorists are finding that “women don’t want to respond, even if they are capable of responding.” Thus the most recent “elusive” female sexual problem is “sexual disinterest.” For Leiblum, this might be called the “Steve problem,” a problem that can be solved not by a pill but by sex therapy or “Steve replacement.” Countering the medical and pharmacological platform, Leiblum concluded that “the perfect aphrodisiac for women cannot be bottled”; thus she represents a minority contingency of grandmasters who reject the organic construction of women’s sexual problems.77

Following Leiblum’s address, the “Steve Problem” was invoked several times. As FDA Medical Officer Jean Fourcroy said in her talk, “As my mother used to say, there’s no such thing as a frigid woman, just an incompetent man. Some of us just need a new coupling perhaps.”78 Dr. Ellen Laan took these ideas one step further. Citing evidence that external factors were most influential in women’s sexual problems, she insisted that “the problem” could not be located in the body. Laan disputed the assumed organic nature of female sexual dysfunctions, citing recent clinical research results that showed “no evidence for organic etiology” and “low prevalence of sexual dysfunction in women.” Laan warned that exaggerated claims of organicity and FSD should be “considered in the context of the development of new medications for FSAD…. In order to be profitable, such a drug should be indicated for a specific disease, preferably a disease that is highly prevalent, with a clear somatic component.” Laan’s suggestion that profit goals were influencing the understanding of women’s sexual problems as somatic, rather than as social or cultural, seems on target.

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