The-Penis.com
Thoughts about the penis (1)

First off, the medical profession uses somewhat dubious evidence to explain away the emotional and interpersonal causes of erectile dysfunction.

And once you have started from the proposition that sex is no more than nerve sensitivity, muscle relaxation, increased intra-corporal pressure, and changes in blood flow, you soon arrive at the obvious conclusion that getting an erection is equivalent to sexual desire.

You may also come to think that getting an erection is a controllable process in which science can, and should, involve itself - after all, are we men not entitled to be erect whenever we want to be? Well, maybe.

But if sex is a process which has deep interpersonal significance, and comes from the heart, rather than the balls, then erections are only an outcome of a relationship.

And when an erection fails to appear, it is often the relationship which lies at the root of the problem.

To medicalize this issue and say that it can always be cured with drugs, separates the erection from the relationship, and to some extent objectifies the woman, who in some way becomes a sex object for the man's pleasure. (Though she too may avoid examining the relationship issues which determine the hardness or softness of the man's penis.)

Tiefer thinks Masters and Johnson, even though they spoke of intercourse as a matter of vasocongestion (blood engorgement of erectile tissue) and involuntary muscle contractions (myotonia), understood that the patient in cases of sexual-dysfunction was the couple.

How times have changed! Now, alas, the patient is the penis. One such dysfunction is anorgasmia.

So where does this leave women?

Many women really like harder and longer-lasting erections, and might therefore appear to have little to complain about when a man takes Viagra!

But chemically induced erections do not promote any discussion of relationship issues, and - worse - men don't have to take responsibility for their erections (or lack of them).

In fact, the erection becomes a combined enterprise, a joint venture between a man, his doctor, and his Viagra.

Could it be that because urologists are mostly men, who understand that men don't want to discuss relationships, they are complicit in offering Viagra to a man who can then accept that his erection problem isn't his fault?

He has a vascular problem in his penis, you see, and that can be fixed.

This medical view of erectile dysfunction certainly misses something. Maybe it helps a man feel like a man, but it does not let him explore his feelings, his talent for sex, his skills and his deficiencies in relationships. Only sex therapy can do that.

But is Tieffer's radical position correct, or even justified?

Between 1987 and 1989, the Massachusetts Male Aging Study provided medical checkups for over a thousand men aged between forty and seventy. This was a comprehensive study and involved psychological test as well as physical ones.

A self-administered sexual questionnaire was the basis of findings about the men's erectile potency. As you might guess, the MMAS concluded that most erectile dysfunction was vascular in origin, and that it was much more common than thought, affecting five percent of men at age 40 and fifteen percent of men at age 70. (

I think later evidence suggests these figures have increased recently, possibly due to better reporting and more openness.)

Strangely, the MMAS also led researchers to conclude that a majority of men over forty years of age have some form of impotence.

This is obviously an ideal base from which to promote drugs for the impotent man, yet careful study of the MMAS has led other, more skeptical, researchers to suggest that the results of the questionnaire were predetermined by the questions, one of which was "How satisfied are you with your sex life?"

In effect, if you answered this question with any answer other than totally satisfied, you were deemed to have minimal erectile dysfunction. As Tiefer observes, a rock-hard penis isn't even necessary for good sex, so this is a strange position to take.

There's some peculiar background to this, though: Tiefer was hired by Dr Melman, a urologist in Montefiore Medical Center, New York, to screen his erectile dysfunction patients.

Unlike Tiefer, Dr Melman says, very clearly, and very firmly, that men want and need an erection for good sex: it's part of their identity, part of their masculinity, part of who they are. Both they - and their wives - like the cure that Viagra offers.

Melman says that while he agrees there are men with relationship issues, and while it's true that enabling them to have an erection does not cure those relationship issues, he still has his doubts about psychosexual therapy.

He's tried and failed to get data about treatment success rates from various sexual therapists, and he still has no objective proof that such therapy actually works in getting men back their erections.

Men want results - they want an erection - and they want it fast. That's what Viagra does, and it makes it easy for doctors to satisfy that need. Does it matter? Well, maybe yes, maybe no.

It's not really the medicalizing of male sexuality in general and erectile failure in particular that's the problem, in my view, for few people discuss their relationship in any meaningful way, with or without erections.

For me, the issue is more about the medicalization of the erection, the removal of responsibility from men for their own sexual health.

Pfizer - who, as you may well know, from the TV advertising they promote, make Viagra - have produced a questionnaire. This is their Male Sexual Health Inventory, which only has five questions. If a man scores less than 22 out of 25, the suggestion is made that he sees his doctor, where he no doubt puts pressure on the doctor to issue a prescription for Viagra.

However, as must be obvious, there is a major difference between erectile dysfunction, which is a real problem, and a mere sense of sexual dissatisfaction because your erection is not always as firm as it might be.

Where does this leave the observation that there's a lack of evidence to back-up the claims of psychosexual therapists that ED is mostly psychologically caused?

Psychiatrist John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, wrote an essay entitled "Man and His Penis", subtitled with the question: "A Relationship Under Threat?"

He was worried by the ignorance and avoidance of emotional and mental aspects of impotence, both the causes of it and the effects of it: he has spoken of vein grafting (revascularization), penile implants (inflatable silicone implants) and drug treatments having an overwhelming and obscuring effect on the problem.

He observed that the essential foundation (my words) of a man's sexuality rested on his relationship with his penis.

For example, it's certainly true that how a man sees his penis (i.e. as being large or small) often bears no relationship to its physical size: it is indeed all in the mind.

And think how an erection can suggest sexual possibility when no such possibility exists. And another thing: the penis may totally refuse to support its owner in some sexual adventures, as if it were commenting on the rights and wrongs of what is going on.

All of this certainly suggests that erectile dysfunction is not just a physical process.

An erect penis - and a flaccid penis - both tell a story about a man and his sexual motives.

That's why I like to claim "the penis never lies". It tells the truth, whether the man to whom it belongs wants to hear this or not.

Bancroft ruefully concluded that he had come to understand the importance of the relationship between a man and his penis, albeit at a time when developments in medical care seem to be rejecting it.

Eleven years later, Bancroft commented that he wasn't quite as worried as he once was, even though many urologists still focus on the penis and appear not to think of the man attached to it.

But suppose that the medical and drug industry, as well as the urologists, who together created an industry around the male erection, do have more insight into the relationship between a man and his sexual organs than the therapists have understood?

The penis is a complex but well-understood organic part of the body, and mankind can now alter how it functions with Viagra - and the simple truth is that most men like it that way.

And if they like Viagra, they will undoubtedly find even greater affection for Cialis, which is a once-a-day pill that will get your cock erect on demand - a fact which literally changes the life of men with erection problems.

It's easy to see that a man who loses his potency may feel like he has lost a part of his mind, part of his identity even; for he can no longer hold his erect penis in his hand, nor can he fuck with it when it refuses to become erect - which most likely means it will not ejaculate his semen either, the fluid that creates life.

These are powerful symbols of masculinity, and so erection problems are a vital issue for men. And consider this: men are rarely seen as masculine men solely on the basis of their ability to provide, their ability to build a home, their prowess in hand-to-hand combat, or by the fact that they can dig a well anymore.

These were once the things that marked out a man, in the eyes of society and his mate, yet nowadays technology and machines of one kind or another have made much of a man's traditional work, and therefore the sources from which he drew much of his identity, unavailable to him.

Does this not mean that symbols of masculinity such as an erect penis are more important than ever in a man's fight to identify his masculinity?

I know when I experienced erectile dysfunction, I felt that my life as a man was somehow "over", erectile dysfunction having take away those things I valued most: my self-respect, sexual ability, sexual intimacy, and my feeling of male power and presence in the world.

So yes, I believe we men certainly see our masculinity as revolving around our penises.

This penis-centered approach to life may be something innate, or it may be something learned, but which? If it is learned, it presumably can be unlearned. In one view, a male-centered script is written by the wider culture and reinforced by most males' first sexual act.

Masturbation, according to this theory, proclaims a boy's independence (from women?), and centers male sexual desire in the penis, which then imbues the penis with a central role in the definition of masculinity - so much so that a man's capacity to become erect is one of the most, if not the most, important and significant signs of masculinity and male power.

With such a powerful impetus to put the penis at the center of the concept of masculinity, it's no surprise that this organ has been subject to psychoanalysis, political analysis, and nowadays a creeping process of "medicalization" by what has been called "the erection industry"; each type of analysis can be seen as an attempt to make some intellectual and emotional sense of the over-powering, extraordinary relationship between man and his penis.

Of course Freud had a major impact on society's perception of the penis, but what we term the medicalization of the penis may have an even greater impact.

But just what does this mean? In essence, it refers to the way in which the penis has become an addendum to other industries - the medical industry and the drugs industry in particular.

When urologists and drugs become a man's first port of call when his erection fails, then he is in the grip of those two industries, and the relationship between him and his penis has been changed.

To some extent he is no longer in complete control of his own dick....he has given away some of his power to other men, and some to organizations and corporations far more powerful than he is.

The medicalized penis is only about twenty years old, and the time for which Viagra has been available is even less than that.

And while science has unquestionably helped men with complete impotence or erectile dysfunction, the long-term consequences of PDE-5 inhibitors on the cellular chemistry of the penis have yet to be established.

For example, is it not possible that exposure to these compounds will make the body produce abnormal levels of PDE-5?

We have no way of knowing what the effect of that would be on a man's own body chemistry, nor indeed of the possible impact on his sexual behavior.

In essence, a man can now hold his penis, erect or not, in his hand and he knows what relationship they have. If it is flaccid, and he wants it to be erect, then when he sees a doctor or when he takes the chemical products of the erection industry, he retains control of his penis.

We have not always had this power, and we should perhaps be grateful for it: we have, in effect, the ability to override the statements that the penis can make for us about our sexual desires or wishes, and impose our own will on it.

Continued here