by MzNicky
Every now and then you come across a news report that’s just so heartbreaking, so unremittingly lamentable, that you have to stop reading for a moment, close your eyes, and take a deep, shuddering breath before you can continue.
I saw just such a story in the Washington Post yesterday. After double-checking the source to make sure it wasn’t really from the Onion, I forced myself to read all about the crushing "epidemic" currently sweeping the nation’s college campuses: Erectile Dysfunction (ED).
That’s right. It seems there’s a pandemic of limp-dicked frat rats.
I know that by now you are rending your garments and wailing, "Why, oh why? What could possibly be at the, er, root of this catastrophe?" And yet, you knew the answer, didn't you?, before you even knew there was a question. No, it’s not the binge drinking, the pot, ecstasy, or meth; it's not the antidepressants or the smoking, or even the sitting for hours on end stuffing the face with Chee-tos® while surfing for porn or pounding the X-Box instead of bench-pressing and hoops-shooting—although the WaPo writer dutifully mentions in passing these possible explanations for this plague of undergraduate impotence. No! It is, of course, the damned oversexed college-aged women who, through their misguided ideas about sexual entitlement, are creating this oppressive sucking vortex of tragically unspent seed!
“Young women are now as likely as young men ... to initiate sex, taking away from males the age-old, erotic power of the chase,” we are told. Further, notes the writer, quoting one of the several medical experts required to give a news story its putative credibility, “One can argue that a young woman speaking her mind is a sign of equality. ‘That's a good thing,’ says Sawyer, father of four daughters. ‘But for some guys, it has come at a price. It's turned into ED in men you normally wouldn't think would have ED.’” There. Happy now, you emasculating little loudmouthed bitches?
By the way, note that we no longer refer to chronic penile flaccidity as “impotence.” As the writer earnestly explains, “No physician or therapist would think of using the word impotence because its literal meaning -- lack of power -- is precisely the possibility their clients fear the most.” Nevermind that “ED” isn’t even a medical condition.
As Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise points out:
[B]ig pharma has invested heavily in convincing doctors and consumers that ED is a serious health problem that needs to be treated. A lot of what they say is absolutely true and important. Chronic performance problems can be a warning sign of heart disease, diabetes, and other serious problems. ... [Viagra® manufacturer] Pfizer’s one-two punch is to argue that either ED is itself a disease, or that it’s a sign of a disease. Albeit, it's frequently a disease defined exclusively by the patient's subjective dissatisfaction, but the bottom line is that aggressive medical management is indicated!
But let’s set aside the cynical notion that a media outlet would pimp a pharmaceutical company’s attempts to create a new market by lending credence to a nonexistent clinical condition, which of course we know never happens, and get back to the tragedy at hand. Interwoven into the sad tales of each of the luckless young dudes the writer managed to dig up and portray in this story to give it the requisite “human face” is the same subtextual insinuation: It’s all women’s fault.
Adam, for example, “hooked up with a sophomore -- at her urging. The girl really wanted to make a go of it with him. ... she had offered to be his 'friend with benefits,' and he had agreed. In his mind, that decision was a no-brainer. But on this night, their first in bed, his body was telling him something else. She used every trick she knew, with no success. Adam panicked. 'I've had no problem with this before,' he thought. ‘What if this gets out? What if she tells her girlfriends? My reputation will be ruined.’"
Oh NO! And to think—anxiety over potential reputation-ruining is what girls, not guys, should be worried about! Right? Whatever is happening to the youth of America!
Another would-be stud was “20 years old, good-looking ... He said he could never get to the relationship because when he went out with a woman, she wanted to have sex almost immediately. He never got comfortable enough to tell them he had a problem, so he stopped dating." Another perfectly good specimen shot down in his prime by hordes of voracious female sex fiends. And that’s just not right, dammit! Because "'When the tools work, there's nothing like it,' says Devin Jones, a sophomore at Maryland, who read several how-to books about sex before going all the way with his first girlfriend. ‘When she got an orgasm, I felt like the man,’ he says in an interview, pounding his fists on his chest.” That’s right. He actually pounded his chest with his fists. Because his tool worked, like it’s supposed to.
Still another tale of woe concerns a George Washington University manly man who is “tall and good-looking with dark hair and gray-green eyes, [a] member of a fraternity so bad and so much fun that university officials refuse to sanction it.” (Wow! Beat that, you non-Animal House losers! Sorry; bad choice of words No offense, Big Guy.) In furtherance of his erstwhile fuckability, we are told that “he works at a bank and has a job lined up after school -- a fact that the ambitious women at GW love.” (Of course they do! That’s what “ambitious women” do—seek out future six-figure-earners and then rob them of their manly essences!) “He has charmed probably two dozen girls away from bars and into his bed over four years at school, all consenting partners, he says.” (Police records were apparently unavailable.) A litany of disappointing “hookup” failures follows, during which the studly dude's revolving door of receptacles all expressed such frustration and impatience that, "Not surprisingly, system shutdown ensued.”
And so on, and so on, one heart-rending example of this "epidemic" after another. Of course, this being a story in a a majorly respectable content-providing newspaper, there’s “balance,” because the writer includes some equal-opportunity blaming via a chick quote: "'I know lots of girls for whom nothing is off limits,' says Helen Czapary, a junior at the University of Maryland. ‘The pressure on the guys is a huge deal.’” Ha ha! And you thought by “balance,” I meant there’d be something along the lines of what these succubus coeds might have to say about the situation! As if whatever pathetic opinions college sluts might offer to excuse their effeminizing behavior is even relevant! Look, nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake here, because “...sexual performance is still, in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality.”
Oh. My. God. Will someone please wake me, not to mention the Washington Post, when that long, slow walk is finally done? I’ll be over there in the corner, curled up in a comatose fetal ball. Oh, sorry. Make that fetal “hollow sphere.” Wouldn’t want to create any more euphemistic pressure on the erectilely dysfunctional; sounds like they’ve already got their hands full.
Gender Sex Emasculation Erectile Dysfunction Feminism Misogyny Patriarchy Masculinity War on Women
posted by egalia for MzNicky
