A woman who doesn’t want sex (even if she is sick)
is mad according to the pharmaceutical company Sprout. The FDA agree.
I couldn’t quite believe my ears last week when I
heard that the FDA has approved this female libido pill called Addyi. It was
turned down plenty before because it didn’t work (a minor glitch). Plus it had (and still has) unpleasant side
effects. But bless em – in the face of Cancer, Diabetes, Malaria and
antibiotics that no longer work yada yada yada - good ol’ Sprout
Pharmaceuticals persevered with their anti-party-pooper drug for those demented
women who don’t always want sex.
But if that isn’t crazy enough, socially scary,
controlling and misogynistic – what about the legal implications? It’s weird
that America, of all places, hasn’t fried that one.
This pill for women, unlike Viagra for men, does not
increase blood flow to the genitals. Addyi chemically alters the woman’s brain.
Let me run that by you again - it makes a woman who doesn’t want sex think she does. So Viagra works by
enabling men who want sex, but are physically incapable, to have it. The newly
approved female version cures women
who don’t want sex. Could there be any manifestation that better illustrates
the backward steps we’ve taken in attitudes to women in this world?
And other drugs companies are working on more instant take-at-the-moment drugs for women that won’t – unlike Addyi – require daily
consumption and abstention from alcohol. Yay. Thank heavens the pharmaceuticals
industry have their priorities right.
One radio article I heard had a woman fronting the
new drug. I presume for the same reason that 50 Shades of Grey was given to a woman to direct – to make the
misogynistic crap more palatable.
My question is, if the sex drive is courtesy of
Sprout pharma rather than the woman – where does that leave the thorny old
issue of consent? Perhaps in a situation where a partner has been pressured
into taking the drug.
The so called ‘dysfunction’ – even in America where
dysfunction is trendy – purportedly affects about 8% of women in a very limited
age range in a survey carried out by the drug company (so basically hardly
anyone). You can only conclude this is a pill for partners to give their gals if
the gals no longer fancy them. Though the pharmaceutical company set to make
big bucks from the sale of this new wonder drug have funded ‘campaign’ groups
to push this as some sort of feminist or equality issue – paralleling Addyi
with male sexual dysfunction drugs. What can you say...
In the UK we are still reeling from recent stories
of gangs of men in parts of the country grooming young girls for sex with
impunity – for years. I don’t need to go
into the even darker uses this drug could be put to.
I can see why, in this SWAM led world when clearly there’s
no shortage of blokes copulating, we got Viagra. (If you don’t know what a SWAM
is scroll back three blogs to no148). But this new pill is some kind of off-the-scale
craziness. It’s sick – in the real sense of the word. It’s beyond Stepford Wives (the cool 1975 version). Below
is a list of some of the reasons given why these strange women may not be up
for it;
Following surgery
Suffering from diabetes / cancer / arthritis
Suffering depression or stress
Or
Having previously been sexually abused.
Now – I may be being a bit of a weirdy killjoy here
but looking at that list I think these are all plausible sensible reasons why a
woman may not want to do sex and might instead be better off with a cup of tea,
a biscuit and a cuddle. For society to be telling her that despite any of the
above she should be feeling the urge and if not - here’s a pill - is bonkers
and creepy and nasty.
Imagine if you broke your leg and someone said – never
mind – for a while you may not feel like going
for a jog but here’s a pill to make you think
you want to.
In this world where young girls are increasingly easily
preyed on by older men, trafficked, pressured by the internet to think they
should be sexually active earlier and longer and basically always sexually available,
this is just another nail in the coffin of sanity and self respect.
With my old lawyer head on I can even envisage a
situation where, under the influence of this prescription drug, a woman’s
consent at the time of intercourse could be queried. What are these nutters
thinking of? The USA is famously litigious so I await with curiosity the first
legal case for what I will term for the purpose of this blog Consensual Rape courtesy of Sprout and
the FDA.