have you even considered the possibility that some women (gay or straight, as Shatterface rightly point out) might, just might find it beneficial?

No, I just shot from the hip. Laurie, too. Feminists are thoughtless and impulsive like that. It comes from over-reacting the whole damn time.

Is it possible that you are over reacting ……… just slightly? You seem to present your opinions in such hyperbolic terms that it becomes very hard to distinguish what IS actually important

Do you know, nobody’s ever said that to me before?

Is it possible that you are over reacting ……… just slightly?
You seem to present your opinions in such hyperbolic terms that it becomes very hard to distinguish what IS actually important, and what should merit no more than a few bland sentences at beginning of the BNF.

I know very little about this drug but as other posters mention, have you even considered the possibility that some women (gay or straight, as Shatterface rightly point out) might, just might find it beneficial?

“A research scientist who unmasked herself as the blogging call girl Belle de Jour has admitted that she misses the satisfaction of ‘doing a job well’ since giving up prostitution.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6933348.ece

So rare for a right wing twit to tell the truth these days.

Still, it is nice when they admit their beliefs. Which of course is why you come on here spouting the very economic policies that benefit the greedy bastards you love so much.

And as Tim points out this ‘explanation’ explains everything, even opposite outcomes: it’s worse than useless.

This is puritanical stuff. What exactly is wrong with taking a drug which enhances either pleasure or desire for pleasure? I take drugs which enhance my clubbing experience (and most of those aren’t given the safety tests they’d get from Big Pharma). Boo hoo, poor me.

And who the hell says these only work on heterosexual women anyway? If anything, my lesbian friends are keener on experimentation than my straight friends.

Glad I didn’t entirely fail dictionary 101 there.

“They could be greedy bastards and misogynist fucks.”

Hurrah for greedy bastards say I…..but it does entirely escape me how increasing the number of orgasms in the world is misogyny. Even if it is purely, as I claim, a side product of pure greed.

The serendipity of the finding pleases me for Viagra was of course found when men reported interesting side effects from an angina drug being tested (and it wasn’t very good at dealing with angina).

*snort* Who’s being naive now?

They spent a couple hundred million designing a dud drug, and now they have to find a market to push it to to recoup their losses. Serendipity had nothing to do with it – it’s fuck-up damage control.

But I ask again – how do the commercial aspect and the overmedicalisation of female bodies/patriarchal angle cancel each other out? It’s not all either/or with neat little ingle causes in life, you know. They could be greedy bastards and misogynist fucks. It does happen.

Now granted, horniness can lead to pleasure; if you feel horny you are more likely to turn to your husband or your Rampant Rabbit for attention and hence your chances of achieving orgasm are increased.

But feminists – both Laurie and I among them – are skeptical about the fact that female pleasure is the focus of attention from the drug designers as much as female availability and willingness to engage in sex are. ”

So much nonsense in a few short paragraphs.

The drug designers couldn’t give a shit about female pleasure, female libido or female availability. They’re interested in money.

You know, this profit thing that drives the capitalist dynamic? They’d have been just as happy to find a drug that you take every day that puts two inches on a woman’s bust, two inches on a prick (thus making me 6 ft 2 inches tall, just to get that joke in first), keeps you looking 35 until you’re 85 or guaranteeing that you’ll never get cancer of any form at all. For the drug company it’s “can we get people to take one of these every day?”, little else.

To be sceptical about the drug being designed around orgasms or availability you don’t need to be a feminist. Just naive about the economic system you inhabit.

Further, there were no drug designers looking at anything at all to do with female orgasm, libido or availability in this case. The drug was designed as an anti-depressant. It didn’t work very well as such but the women in the test group taking it did report that they were having more satisfying sex more often while taking it. Thus a second round of tests to check out this effect of the drug:

“Women who took a daily 100mg dose of the drug, called flibanserin, reported having satisfying sex more often than those who took a placebo. Before the trial, subjects reported an average of 2.8 satsifying sexual events per month. Those who took daily flibanserin saw this rise to 4.5 times a month, compared with a rise to 3.7 times a month for those taking placebo.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/16/female-viagra-sexual-desire-libido

The serendipity of the finding pleases me for Viagra was of course found when men reported interesting side effects from an angina drug being tested (and it wasn’t very good at dealing with angina).

But the way that I’ve read these pieces (and at this point of course I could be wrong) is that the drug absolutely works by increasing the liklihood of orgasm in any specific sexual encounter. The effect on the libido is a secondary effect as, well, I think that this is at least logical, sex which leads to a satisfactory orgasm is likely to be in greater demand than sex which does not do so.

The argument that relationships are important for women is, in fact, justification for Chris Grayling’s view of how he would like the world to be.

I did address that point in the footnote, you know:

“[1] Not the only one, of course. Self confidence, awareness of one’s own body, dispensing with shame and a lot of other factors are important for a woman to have an enjoyable sex life. But if men want to help, then there are worse things they can learn to do than give foot massages. Or great head.”

I will add though, for absolute clarity, that for women who are in relationships the quality of those relationships is very important for a good and satisfying sex life.

You both seem to have misspelled ‘people’

Spellcheck your own self, please. Men get their fair share of shit from the media and the advertising industry, but I was originally referring to very specific cultural messages about female inadequacy, especially in the realm of sexuality; “feminine hygene” products, Brazillian waxes and labioplasty were high in my mind, because they’d been brought up by Kate Belgrave as somethig we should effortlessly shrug off. These things are targeted at women, not men. To then turn around and say that it was I who claimed women were dirty, stupid etc. is quite simply despicable.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Is+Viagra+enough%3F+broadening+the+conceptual+lens+in+sex+therapy+with+…-a0153360120

http://www.springerlink.com/content/b2227687187331g6/

But I don’t really know what you mean by “this resistance”. Laurie and Liberal Conspiracy aren’t exactly the Murdoch press. The mainstream reporting has been overwhelmingly positive.

No, of course not, but that’s not what was said.

You argued that good relationships are an important precondition for good sex

The argument that relationships are important for women is, in fact, justification for Chris Grayling’s view of how he would like the world to be.

Not for a moment did I suggest that women are “flawed, dirty, guilty, inferior, weak, demanding, foolish, frivolous, stupid, ugly and irrational”, but that they are constantly bombarded with cultural messages that try to sell them product on the basis that they are those things.

You both seem to have misspelled ‘people’

Are women so ‘flawed, dirty, guilty, inferior, weak, demanding, foolish, frivolous, stupid, ugly and irrational’ that they are unable to resist the machiavellian activities of a few German scientists?

Oh, never mind. You’re arguing in such despicably bad faith as to make the whole enterprise soul-witheringly pointless. Not for a moment did I suggest that women are “flawed, dirty, guilty, inferior, weak, demanding, foolish, frivolous, stupid, ugly and irrational”, but that they are constantly bombarded with cultural messages that try to sell them product on the basis that they are those things. This was a more than usually distasteful word-twisting trick to have played, even for the internet. Ugh.

“skeptical about the fact that female pleasure is notthe focus of attention from the drug designers as much as female availability and willingness to engage in sex are. ”

Apologies.

As far as I can see, she is saying that, for political reasons, women who find it difficult to achieve orgasm should not be allowed to take chemical compounds that might help (bad news this for the white wine industry).

I don’t think you quite understand how the drug works, or what it is designed to combat.

This drug will not help women reach orgasm more easily, or make their existing sex lives better. It is designed to enhance their libido – how much they want to have sex. Put simply, it increases horniness, not pleasure.

Now granted, horniness can lead to pleasure; if you feel horny you are more likely to turn to your husband or your Rampant Rabbit for attention and hence your chances of achieving orgasm are increased.

But feminists – both Laurie and I among them – are skeptical about the fact that female pleasure is the focus of attention from the drug designers as much as female availability and willingness to engage in sex are.

Additionally, there is a fairly large body of evidence that indicates that women experience a drop in libido/desire when they are stressed, overworked, resentful about carrying a disproportionate burden in the household/childcaring, feel insecure, experience lowered levels of trust and intimacy with their partners etc.

Women’s lack of self confidence (amply bolstered by a gleeful advertising industry), the fact that they still routinely do more work in the home, are paid less, bombarded with “I balme the mother” rhetoric from the tabloid press, and so on and so forth, could really do with being addressed at the root. It’s not unreasonable for feminists to be suspicious when the pharma industry instead throws (expensive) drugs at the symptoms.

That treating the symptoms also happens to allow men to get laid more without making their partners genuinely happier and more content may not be on the order of an out-and-out evil conspiracy, but it’s certainly in line with patriarchy’s attitude to women as a second-rate servant class (where the services, in this particular case, are sexual).

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