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It is worth noting that not one of the fifty - two news stories I includes a report of a gay man or gay couple being treated for erectile dysfunction. The “wife” is the default partner when the relational dynamics of erectile dysfunction are described. And while she might be frustrated by her] husband’s erectile difficulties, she is patient and “stands by her man.” These Icharacterizations come through in discourse both by ED sufferers and bYlthe physicians and therapists who treat them. In addition, “she” is also portrayed as more likely to initiate talk about bedroom frustrations and is the lobligatory driving force in the decision to seek professional help about sexual difficulties.
A required component of the male sex role is independence. Men are supposed to be self - reliant and confident, never admitting to a lacR. In a New York Times article a man recalls, “[My wife] wanted me to sex a doctor because I no longer had erections. ” Meanwhile, he is less than toncerned, busying himself with his golf game and ignoring the relational fallout. “To tell the truth,” he confesses, “I was more concerned about my putting than playing around. “Another article in the Times illustrates another kind of aloofness. A man who has had erectile dysfunction (the result of testicular cancer) since the beginning of his marriage confides, “One thing that amazed me when we finally opened the lines of communication was that my sexual performance was not satisfactory for her. “62 In the same article, another man suggests that ED “isn’t an easy topic to deal with” because “it goes to the heart of masculinity. ”
Independence, heterosexuality, and penetrative sexual activity are dominant themes in these online testimonials. Altogether, they signal the motif of status as an important consideration for the men portrayed in these news stories. What is more, men maintain both status and the mind/body dichotomy by utilizing metaphors to describe their bodies.
Because virility is viewed as an integral part of what it means to be masculine, a loss in virility is often considered a loss in masculinity: “I feel less than a man,” comments the subject of a Newsweek article.e - Uncertainty and real or imagined deficiency of one’s virility generates an “othering” of the fallen phallus. It is not the man who is lacking but his member. This transfer is carried out through the use of mechanistic metaphors, for example, the title of a 1997 Newsweek article by Geoffrey Cowley: “Rebuilding the Male Machine.” In its perceived failure, the penis goes from erect and performing phallus to an object as useless as “a flat tire”65 or stopped - up “plumbing,”66 or as revealing as “a chink in their armor. “67 Likewise, the solution or recovery is viewed “as insurance,”68 “a full tank,”69 or a “revolution”
The men using these metaphors take their cues from medicine. Dr. Irwin Goldstein is one urologist and researcher who sees the process of erections as a mechanical one. Profiled in Jack Hitt’s February 2000 New York Times Magazine feature story about the medicalization of sexuality, Goldstein works with Drs. Jennifer and Laura Berman at Boston University’s Sexual Health Clinic. This is the team that treated Bob Dole. Goldstein remarks: Not to discount psychological aspects … but at a certain point all sex is mechanical. The man needs a sufficient axial rigidity so his penis can penetrate through labia, and he has to sustain that in order to have sex. This is a mechanical structure, and mechanical structures follow scientific principles …. I am an engineer … and I can apply the principles of hydraulics to these problems. I can utilize medical strategies to assess, diagnose and manipulate things that are not so straightforward in psychiatry.”
