Take The Pink Pill And Believe Whatever You Want To Believe

The "Female Viagra" is in the headlines. That's what the media is calling the first drug to increase women's sexual desire, which I'm sure the company's marketing department just loves. I've seen several stories on the drug, one of them just ten minutes ago, and I don't remember the drug's actual name.  I just know that the pill is pink, in contrast with Viagra's equally stereotypical blue.

Addyi (I looked it up) is controversial because it's struggled to get approval, and required a PR campaign by the manufacturer playing on the perceived unfairness of the huge number of drugs available for men's erectile dysfunction, to the complete lack of drugs for women.

I can't speak to the issue of whether it should be approved, but the thing that has bugged me about this story is that it is quite simply not the female Viagra. Viagra is a drug for men who want to have sex but find it physically difficult. This drug is for women who (presumably) are physically able, but don't want to.  It's a depressing statement about our attitudes towards sexuality that we confuse two things that are so different; it's as though we just file both ideas under this vague category of "sex stuff" and don't examine them further.

As such, it brings up a difficult ethical question. I'm not aware of any other drug that makes people want something. See, there is a small but significant group of people who consider themselves asexual, because they experience little or no sexual desire. And they seem to be reasonably happy, and bristle at the idea that they need to be "cured."

However, a person with no libido may still want companionship, and it appears that among humans, sex is a key part of that. Further, if you've lost your desire while in a relationship, that will cause tension. And that's the biggest practical argument I've seen for this drug: women in a marriage who are worried that if they don't provide sex, then their partner may go elsewhere for it. I can understand that predicament, but it makes the PR campaign take on an ugly tone: the claim by the ads was that it was unfair that men have their sex drugs, but not women. Yet, scratch the surface and you find that the main beneficiaries of the new drug are primarily the men married to the women taking it.