THE MEDICALIZATION OF IMPOTENCE

Abstract

Today, phallocentrism is perpetuated by a flourishing medical construction that focuses exclusively on penile erections as the essence of men's sexual function and satisfaction. This article describes how this medicalization is promoted by urologists, medical industries, mass media, and various entrepreneurs. Many men and women provide a ready audience for this construction because of masculine ideology and gender socialization. While there may be some advantages to this construction, there are major disadvantages to men in terms of the inevitable failure of the promised perfectible erection and the perpetuation of a falsely universalized and biologized vision of sexual experience. Any sexual interests of women in other than phallocentric sexual scripting are denied.