If you could take a drug to become aroused — not just to facilitate the hydraulics of arousal, as Viagra and other vascular sex aids do, but to actually make you horny — would you?
I ask because MSNBC is reporting today that New Jersey-based Palatin Technologies says it is developing an aid that does just that. Bremolanotide, as the wonder potion is currently known, “stimulates the brain, rather than the genitals,” or so the company says. The drug, which is a fast-acting inhalant rather than a pill, seems to work on men and women, but it’s presented as being primarily for women, as a counterpart to Viagra et al. and as a potential cure for so-called female sexual dysfunction.
Page Rockwell raises some interesting questions related to this drug and America’s screwed up attitudes about female sexuality. They’re below the fold.
…the drug could hardly come at a weirder time for women’s health and sexuality in America. The country can’t agree on such apparent no-brainers as access to emergency contraception and vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases; how will we cope with a female mojo maker? Will women have to be diagnosed as dysfunctional to get it? (Hello, hysteria.) Will it be covered by insurance? Will it be available to teenage girls? What happens when 1 million doofy teenage boys get the brilliant idea to spray girls in the face with it? (Answer: Given how inhalants work, probably nothing, but this seems like just the kind of “Saved by the Bell”-type scenario that the religious right would freak out about.) Or when Tommy swaps Susie’s albuterol inhaler with a Bremolanotide inhaler right before volleyball practice?
Rockwell’s probably right, the religious conservatives are going to freak out over this drug. They’re also going to buy it by the case.
I keep picturing myself on one side of the room and my husband on the other….eyeing each other with hostility bordering on hatred as men and women can no longer honestly value and honestly care about each other anymore. Everything has become one big WEDGIE! He pops a pill while I crust him off for about 15 minutes, then I grab my inhaler and puff. We run toward each other and “crash” in the middle of the room and have wild prison sex taking turns being the perpetrator.
and hopefully his health insurance will cover it all…
take an hour. Not that I would know.
What does it mean to crust someone off? Sounds like fun.
or stare at them with a sneer on your lips. I think my friends and I had too much therapy when we were younger because we used to call it “floating someone a crusty” since people are free to snatch onto that crusty and respond or they can just ignore you.
in the 50’s there was a term, “squaring off” that was kind of like that. Big Cheshire smile, comb the greased hair. I guess you had to be there. Saw it in a few movies when I was a kid.
You’re just too much MT!!! When I read this post, I was thinking about all of the outrageous things I could write about how my fundamentalist family might respond to this news – and decided it was just too crazy to even write about. And there you go – fearless as usual.
And if I could hi-jack for just a moment, as I write, Ariana Huffington is speaking on cspan2 about women becoming fearless. In case you’re interested, she’s on a panel with Frank Rick, Pat Buchanan and Andrew Sullivan…mowing the lawn will have to wait for this one.
it makes me…well you know.
Someone else wanted to know what a crusty was… but I want to ask what ‘prison sex’ might be ?
And what happens when someone slips one of these pills in a woman’s drink or in the meal he’s made. Interesting issue.
With a little luck one of the side effects (which would make sense in the “benign” use) would be a reduced level of inhibition…
Which means she’d have much less reluctance to pick up the nearest large blunt instrument (or, for that matter, reasonably sharp one) and “explain” a few things about the Body-English translation of “no.”
It’s even legal. She’s defending herself against rape.
Let’s face it: if you’re trying to have some form of carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent — heck, without her enthusiastic participation — really the LAST thing you want is for her to feel particularly uninhibited and impulsive, all things considered.
I tried to click through the link to read the whole article and see what it actually does to you, but the link doesn’t work.
“enthusiastic participation” was what I was wondering about. If a woman has sex with a man that she wouldn’t normally let within 10 feet of her just because he slipped her a pill that made her horny, is that consent?
I guess it depends on HOW horny this pill makes her. Just a little bit horny but she still knows what she’s doing? She could either pick up the nearest blunt object and “explain” herself or she could have sex — her choice. That’s probably not a problem. But how “enthusiastic” does the pill make her? So horny she can’t think straight and has sex with the next sleazebucket that presents himself — who, amazingly enough, is the one that slipped her the pill? More problematic.
link should be fixed, but i’d follow the MSNBC link for more info about the drug.
That’s a question I wouldn’t have any answer, or even opinion, on, to tell the truth.
I’m one of the tiny fraction of the human race who finds sex vastly overrated and celibacy much more congenial, so that does color my perception of such issues. I can’t even wrap my head around the concept of being so horny that I couldn’t think straight and would be enthusiastic about, or even accepting of, sex with someone I didn’t care for. It goes without saying that I’ve never actually been there; I’m not sure I’m capable of it. I’ve always considered that to be a thing invented by bad fiction writers and guys of dubious character hoping for a sympathetic or at least hung jury.
But I’ll take your word for it that such a state of mind/body/whatever might actually exist in the real world, and you’re right… that would open up a huge list of problems.
But it does make sense that this kind of drug would be the next focus after Viagra. When rich old guys suddenly find themselves ABLE to screw again, there very shortly develops a dearth of people WILLING to be screwed — (sounds like the Bush Administration, doesn’t it?)
If you’re establishment, it’s Better Living Through Chemistry. If you’re poor, minority, or liberal, it’s 20-life without parole.
Well, I’m not speaking from experience and I’m not sure I’m capable of it either.
I suppose that, like Viagra, this is meant to treat an actual condition that some women may have. It just seems ripe for abuse, like Viagra.
Wonderful. Just what we need — as if we’re not sufficiently obsessive.
Well, leave it to American ingenuity to fabricate a defecit & then pump it for all it’s worth.
Sang Little Feat in Old Folks’ Boogie.
That’s all I need, to get hornier when there is no one there…
It’s as if you cannot be trusted with your own passions or needs. Pop one pill to get it on with the wife. Pop another so that the same woman can get over her frigidity and lack of interest. The real question is, will she take that pill against her will or wishes…because she feels that something truly is missing that won’t be found in one drug-induced bout?
Isn’t sex supposed to be something that’s enjoyed, that you try out new pleasurable ways to make your partner feel real good, that it’s the icing on the cake of your relationships?
We in trouble. I say, we Americans are in big trouble relationship-wise, sex-wise. Woody Allen’s orgone machine is only a year away, I swear.
Label me a moron, but I’m just not feeling the angst over this one.
I haven’t hit menopause yet, but I always understood that sometimes after that occurence and in other cases (like post hysterctomy) women have libido problems. Like it or not the relgious right have wives and they might even have sex (collective gasp)on occasion. Is it possible they’ll keep their traps shut?
OK, granted, they’re not going to like the idea that sexually active single women could get a hold of this, but I’m not sure I anticipate the level of hysteria you guys are predicting.
But that just me. Hmm, suddenly I’m feeling a little warm. I think the pharmaceutical companies could make a bundle from concentrating homemade Italian wine (you know, the kind you can buy at the Italian Festival)into a convenient tablet. That’s a horny pill I can really get behind.
I haven’t hit menopause yet, but I always understood that sometimes after that occurence and in other cases (like post hysterctomy) women have libido problems.
There is a lessening of libidinal urges. This isn’t actually a ‘problem’. I mean one is still multi-orgasmic and, given the right conditions, very enthusiastic.
Some of my upper middle class friends are taking hormone treatments (testosterone) in order to return to the insane excesses of 20 but I’ve rather enjoyed the natural changes and the mental clarity which results from this particular shift in the hormonal vicissitudes.
I think that a good many women experience difficulty managing the tendency towards weight gain post menopause and then, if they do gain 30 or 40 lbs feel unattractive and, well, if we feel unattractive we don’t generally feel sexual or at least I don’t. I’m pretty sure a pill isn’t going to fix that.
I’m very uncomfortable with the notion of a pill to turn desire on but, then, I’m a luddite when it comes to the whole arena of sex enhancements from breast implants to hair dye and lipstick.
I’m likewise utterly unconvinced that such a pill would make otherwise unattractive men momentarily attractive. For instance, I know that no amount of any drug would cause me to willingly have sex with, say, Bob Casey or Jerry Falwell.