London - Freud spent 30 years studying the female psyche yet still couldn’t come up with an answer to the eternal question: “What does a woman want?”
(My husband, however, says it’s “never what the man is offering”.)
The medical-industrial establishment, meanwhile, has decided that the answer is: more chemically induced sex!
Big Pharma has being trying for years to plug a gap in the market, which is this: despite the ubiquity of porn, the mass registration of 37 million adults worldwide to a website called Ashley Madison that facilitates adultery, and hook-up apps like Tinder, plenty of women are nonetheless still not feeling jiggy in the slightest, thanks.
A recent report published by a right-wing think-tank decided men had twice the sex-drive of women, leading to a “sexual deficit” that forced them willy-nilly into the arms of prostitutes, and went on to say that the oldest profession should therefore be legalised.
Well. Let’s look at the facts: according to statistics, about 30 percent of women say they have no urge to have sex.
Only one in ten of that 30 percent say this is a problem (they are classified as suffering from hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD).
But a love potion to lift the female mojo up to male levels has been the holy grail of companies for years.
A medical solution (if there is one) to this crisis (again, if this is one) could be worth a mint to the manufacturers.
So a company called Sprout has developed a pill called Addyi – instantly dubbed “pink Viagra” – for ladies who don’t fancy it much even if their other half has made a superhuman effort not to leave his wet towel on the bed AND thrown his pants at the washing basket.
It's been tested on 5 000 women with HSDD and has been approved by the US Food and Drink Administration for use in America.
Do we say yes yes yes to this? Or do we… oh God, I do so hate to be negative.
Obviously I haven’t tried Addyi as it’s not availablehere yet nor obviously do I need it, but the first thing to say is it’s nothing like Viagra. Viagra works on the male genitals. Addyi works on the female brain. The active ingredient, flibanserin, pumps up the amount of two neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and dopamine, into the cerebral cortex, in theory increasing lust. It’s another selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor, like Prozac. Viagra is a hydraulic. Addyi is more like an antidepressant-cum-aphrodisiac.
It has to be taken daily, and cannot be taken with alcohol (so drunk sex is off), and there are other drawbacks, too. In trials, between just eight percent and 13 percent had any improved response (only 0.5 more “sexually satisfying events” per month compared to those taking the placebo).
Listen. I do hope that despite the inconclusive trials, and the various unpleasant side effects (read the leaflet), Addyi helps lots of women get their freak back. But I’m doubtful.
How can we effectively treat something that doesn’t exist, such as a lack of sexual desire? Furthermore, female sexual desire is reactive. It’s affected by everything, basically. It doesn’t exist on its own like hunger, to be sated by eating.
And there ain’t a whole lot you can do about it, except the old tricks, just like the family doctors used to order, such as: don’t wait till you’re “in the mood”, just heave the old canoe in the water and when you both start paddling you find the water’s not so bad after all.
Women don’t want sex for as many reasons as men want it as often as possible. But rather than look at that complex web of issues behind the persistent lack of women’s desire – from the big stuff like female sexual mutilation and rape culture and porn to the smaller stuff like sheer boredom, depression, lack of chemistry, feeling cross about the housework – Addyi pretends to offer a ta-da! solution to the “problem” instead.
Which is treating the effect rather than the cause. Plus, now this pill exists, and if it does seem to work, I foresee a further side effect: there will no longer be an excuse for not being hot and horny at all times.
Pink Viagra is not the answer to what women want. It’s the answer to what men want.
Mail On Sunday