Where will the little people come from?

Here in the US, we live in an age of enhanced male sexual performance. The ads are constant for the two most popular drugs - Viagra and Levitra. Current athletes and beat down execs seem to favor Viagra (at least that is who is in the ads), and ex-athletes seem to favor Levitra (at least that is who is in the ads - it lets you throw a football straight as far as I can tell. On tonight's news there was a hint that Viagra may enhance women's fertility. Why go for half the market if you can get the whole population? So if men taking Viagra can get interested and sustain an erection, and women can get pregnant - or can they? Fertility issues have been growing in both the US and UK for decades. Fertility clinics are everywhere and there has been a concern about women's (primarily White women's) declining ability to conceive. There has alos been an in the news out of the news concern with men's fertility - which is different than sustaining an erection.

Both the BBC and Independent have articles in their Monday 1/5/04 editions about a recent study released by the Aberdeen Fertility Centre in the UK. [BBC - Fresh fears over men's fertility and Independent - Sperm counts down by a third, study shows]

The study which has been underway since 1989 shows a significant decline in male sperm counts. However, while there has been a 1/3 decrease in the sperm counts in Europe, other studies have indicated that globally sperm counts are estimated to have dropped by 50% (Independent article).

The article in the Independent speculates a number of external causes may be at play: "Drug use, alcohol, smoking and obesity are among the factors most frequently blamed. The effects of the environment, including the presence of pesticides, chemicals and radioactive material, have also been linked to decreases in fertility."

If we look at the environmental factors (and we should) then alarm bells should be ringing off the wall. We already know that psuedo-estrogens contained in plastics are dramatically impacting the fertility (and ability to reach sexual maturity) for reptiles and some birds. If there is a 50% decrease in male sperm counts globally that is and will impact reproduction, but that is globally, and envrionmental contamination is also global. In fact, in terms of safety standards and toxic controls, the least developed nations are the most damaged. I must add here that this is not by choice of those nations or pupoulations - it is an effect of rich country imperialism and global corporatization.

While human activity may be decreasing human fertility a contributing factor may be Mother Earth saying that the plague of the two leg big brains may be out of control. Just a thought.

I do think that it is tremendously ironic that while the sexual performance rage sweeps the US that the productivity of the resulting sexual activity seems to be declining rather dramatically. It is also ironic that as Christian Fundamentalism seems to have grown in the US that this trend is occuring. I am not positing a causal link here - just irony. Basic Christian principle is that sex is for procreation. The expansion of male sexual performance enhancing drugs for recreational sexual activity (meaning non-reproductive oriented sexual activity), at the same time that "fruits" of those activities declines could start a sex for procreation only movement - don't you think?

Of course this only thing gets even murkier when one of the fast growing groups impacted by HIV infection is in people over 65. Apparently, Viagra is causing a burst of sexual activity in the retired population in the US. Whoops- more non-reproductive sexuality.

I know this seems like a strange little path I am on here, but there are levels of meaning that I am trying to tease out of these seemingly loosely related issues. Here is the final, and perhaps the most conceptually important. We have heard the mantra that "sex sells" and now we have companies selling sexual potency, but only if "potency" is not fertility. This is a change in concept, and not a subtle one. It places a man's "manhood" clearly in the realm of sexual performance - not in fertility, and not in being a father, or a provider. It clearly raises the role of women's sexuality to meet men's drug-based sexual insatiability. In short, it reinforces, and redefines in a whole new way that it is men's sex act that makes a man a man - even if that can't happen without drugs. Therefore, men's sexuality gets defined pharmaceutically and apparently few have noticed the shift.

So what do you think? Is this better living through chemisty? Or is there a desperation here that as fertility declines that chemically induced sexuality is considered so desirable?

Posted by rowan at January 4, 2004 8:11 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |