Feminist Peace Network

But Honey, the doctor said I had to read it…seems that for those of us who have been wondering what on earth HuffPo is up to with their slew of boobs in your face news substitutes, now we know–they are offering aging males a substitute treatment for the drug industry’s latest  fad disease, Low Testosterone Ailment (which of course can be very real,  but suddenly becomes much more of an urgent medical condition when there is an expensive drug to treat it).

According to Newsweek, researchers have found that a dose of pornography works about as well as drugs,

Such findings, along with work that shows family life to be a drain on testosterone levels, prompted Rutgers University sex researcher Helen Fisher to advise this month that males in the “captivity situation”-her term for married with kids-”go on the Internet and look at porn” as a kind of hormone-replacement therapy. “[Porn] drives up dopamine levels, which drives up your testosterone,” she tells NEWSWEEK, while kissing your wife or hugging your kids drives it down.

Might ruin your family life, but hey you can get it up?  Objectifying  women (or men) as a medical treatment?  Will insurance companies now be asked to cover the cost of Playboy?  Will there be a  deductible?  And will the women in those pics now be paid as much  as doctors?  If porn wasn’t such a serious problem, it would be funny, but it isn’t.

I asked Jennifer Drew,  whose extensive research and commentary  on the subject of pornography has been used by BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio Ulster  and published by numerous publications including  FWord, Off Our Backs and  this blog, for her take on the concept of porn as medical therapy:

Three different research findings supposedly prove pornography is healthy for men to consume because it ensures their testosterone levels remain high, ensures maintenance of muscle tone, no weight gain and counteracts male aging.   Sex researcher Helen Fisher claims men in ‘captivity situations’ should regularly consume pornography.  ‘Captivity situations’ is Fisher’s definition of married men with children.  Fisher claims married men who express affection to their female partners and children experience testosterone loss whereas consumption of pornography increases their testosterone levels.

Claiming male monkeys become aroused when they view ‘sexually active (female) monkeys’ (the Yerkes Center for Primate Research at Emory University) deliberately puts a human behaviour interpretation on animal mating behaviors.  I had an image of a line of female monkeys all preening themselves and acting ‘coy’ as male monkeys stroll past them.  Female monkeys do not say to themselves ‘today I’m  going to turn myself in to a male monkey’s sex object in order to attract the male gaze’ sic!    Anne Fausto-Sterling quotes research which proves it is commonly female monkeys not male monkeys who decide when and with which particular monkey they will mate with.  Female monkeys unlike female/male humans only engage in reproductive mating behaviour during certain times of the year.  But this fact is conveniently overlooked.

Will Low T supersede men’s obsession with viewing pornography?  I doubt it but many men will certainly buy Low T whilst continuing to consume pornography.  Does it matter that claims pornography is healthy for men, whilst simultaneously ignoring the causitive links between pornography and endemic male sexual violence against women and children.  Yes it does because male consumption of pornography is not ‘healthy’ but instills and naturalizes male belief  women are dehumanized sexualized objects, who enjoy and desire any form of eroticized male sexual violence committed against them.

Are men as a group just mechanical masturbatory obsessed machines?   Porn and the pharmaceutical industries claim it is so but this too, is a neat trick of hand because masculinity is always subject to change given our culture is not static but constantly changing and evolving.  But central is the belief  men’s well-being and health supersedes women’s and children’s right to full human dignity and respect.

Or to put it another way – porn and the pharmaceutical industries earn huge profits by tapping into dominant definitions of male sexuality wherein men are supposedly ‘hardwired’ to sexually objectify women and obsessed with automatic erections on demand, because high levels of testosterone in men is the key to manhood.  No need to examine how patriarchal culture has a huge influence on how men are supposed to behave and react, since men alone are the definition of human status.  Women however, are pathologized because they are defective creatures whose bodies need to be constantly monitored and subjected to a bio-medical diagnosis.  Convenient is it not that pharmaceutical companies are able to provide the necessary (sic) medication to remedy women’s innate fallibility.   Another sleight of hand because whilst pharmaceutical drugs supposedly ‘fix men’ it is low levels of testosterone or lack of erections on demand – not men’s bodies as a whole which is in need of fixing!

Reducing men to testosterone fueled machines who satiate themselves with pornography, Low T and of course Viagra conveniently ignores testosterone is not a hormone which acts independently from human behavior, but rather reacts to human behavior as Anne Fausto-Sterling proves in her book Myths of Gender.  Blaming women and children for supposedly causing loss of male testosterone, promotes the myth men are supposedly independent, rational and subjective beings who define their manhood by whether or not they are able to have erections on demand and able to maintain a constant need for sexual gratification.

This thought occurs–here in the U.S. we are in the middle of a huge debate about how to fund health care.  And yet we are willing to spend billions for pornography and treating low testosterone with a fancy new and no doubt expensive drug…perhaps if we taxed the porn…just thinking out loud…