Tag Archives: feminine

Jun3

Eros Is Essential

Posted on by
Standard

(Warning: possible trigger words, possibly NSFW ideas. Please don’t read if you may be negatively affected.  Please don’t bother to comment negatively if you are offended by discussions of female sexuality.  But do feel free to share your own response if you do read with maturity and emotion.  This is a safe place to explore ideas and to share feelings; such circles are often where healing starts. )

http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2013/05/29/scientists-fear-female-libido-booster-too-effective/

  “More than one adviser to the industry told me that companies worried about the prospect that their study results would be too strong, that the F.D.A. would reject an application out of concern that a chemical (Lybrido,a ‘female Viagra’) would lead to female excesses, crazed binges of infidelity, societal splintering,” Bergner writes.”   

But no such concerns were expressed for chemicals which enhance male sexuality, despite the existing prevalence of male-driven pornography, male rape culture, and abuse?

  The fear of female sensuality, of the erotic female power, seems to drive a double standard that holds us in twisted roles:  guardians of sexuality without the strength to enforce the arbitrary rules, protectors of our purity for the sake of both our own and our males’ honour, the ‘nice girls’ who say no (but whose no is taken for coyness), the women who say yes (but whose yes becomes a way to label or shame them as sluts), the madonna/whores who must hold together marriages and society, whose hemlines or visible faces are believed to provoke uncontrollable male lust, but who have no control over to whom they will be wedded…

The very title of this article reveals the underlying emotions at play:  ‘fear’.   And the following phrases are just as telling.  ‘too effective’, ‘worry’, ‘too well’, ‘lust drug’, ‘nympho’… the writer of this precis has not tempered her satirical tone.

 However, the original journalist (http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/behind-the-cover-story-daniel-bergner-on-the-female-viagra/)  Daniel Bergner perceptively concludes:  “It’s about women’s personal longing to revive desire within relationships. For themselves. Eros is essential to who they are, to who we all are.”