Best side effect ever:
A drug that failed tests as an antidepressant is being hailed as “Viagra for women” after surprising but not unpleasant side effects. In three separate trials, the drug flibanserin did wonders for women’s flagging sex drive despite doing nothing to lift mood. The accidental discovery is akin to Viagra’s—it was originally designed as a heart medicine but failed.
And forgive me if I disagree with “some doctors”:
Some doctors are sceptical about the need for pills to boost female sex drive. For some, reduced sexual interest or response may be “normal”, says Professor Irwin Nazareth or University College London.
Some sex-advice columnists regard the collapse of the female libido in many LTRs to be a huge problem. Letters from boyfriends/husbands and girlfriends/wives whose marriages are on the rocks due to the seemingly inexplicable cratering of the wife’s desire for sex—inexplicable because nothing is “wrong,” i.e. he’s not being a bastard, there are no kids or the kids aren’t toddlers anymore—comprise a huge chunk of the mail around here. Reduced sex drive may be normal but it can also be disastrous—particularly for someone who demands a monogamous commitment from her partner. Want monogamy? You gotta make with the sex. No desire for sex or experiencing a “normal” reduction in sexual interest? Eventually you’re going to get cheated on. Many girlfriends/wives—and some boyfriends/husbands—go through the motions and put out just enough to avoid getting cheated on or just enough to be able to claim the moral high-ground after years of passionless, just-going-through-the-motions sex drives a partner to cheat.
A pill that can restore female libido—for the husband or for some other dude—and make sex a pleasure again will be welcomed by those who value monogamy so highly that they’re willing medicate themselves to ensure it.
UPDATE: I’m afraid to go look in the comments thread—I’m having computer issues (to put it mildly) and wasn’t quite done with this post when it went up and wasn’t able to get back on for an hour after posting to add to it. Oy. Anyway, back to the BBC’s report: some doctors point out that the drug won’t cure “underlying issues,” that the drug won’t “fix a broken relationship or help with looking after the kids or cleaning the house.” For sure: if your partner doesn’t want to fuck you because you’re an asshole or because your partner is completely exhausted and her exhaustion is frosted with resentment because you’re no help whatsoever, no pill is going to make her wanna fuck your ass. She may take the pill and then go fuck someone she isn’t furious with, perhaps, but she’s not going to medicate herself on your account.
And if this was a pill that restored a man’s sex drive or enabled a male to perform we wouldn’t even be debating its merits. We’d be stocking the shelves already and making sure it was covered by Medicare.
FUCK Those doctors. Erectile disfunction is “normal” in older men too but no one’s saying it’s a bad idea for them to take a pill to get hard. My sex drive diminished almost completely IN MY 20s. While I have a man who was really great about it, it depressed the shit out of me. Then I went on Wellbutrin to help me quit smoking and found one of the side effects to be I WANT TO FUCK AGAIN. I haven’t been happier in years.
@1 – thank you. I could not have said it better.
Seriously, WTF?! Women deserve a healthy sex drive, too.
I feel most fortunate not to suffer from the problem, and I want all my sisters to have healthy sex drives, too.
It doesn’t help elevate mood; so it leaves women depressed AND horny.
I’d like to know the sex of the doctors who thought that female libido wasn’t important…
I’m gonna guess they didn’t have vaginas themselves.
Sexist bastards.
i think the problem with the idea of a cure-all pill for low libido in women is that it tends to pathologize something that an enormous number of women go through.
Are we trying to send the message that, by some estimates, half of the female population are dysfunctional/sick??
While I’m sure a pill like this can help some women, I think it is important to understand women’s libido as a reflection not of ill-health/good health, function/dysfunction, but of a life out of balance–something wrong in a relationship or work, or not enough time to have desire/experience pleasure, etc…
Totes! Bring it on! Not that we need more pills, but fuck yeah!
Another ‘Right On’ @1. Those doctors are developing drugs to combat the ‘normal’ degeneration of just being alive. They thwart ‘normal’ everyday, and they’re gonna get squicky when they discover something that increases female sexuality.
Morons.
If they had this stuff 10 years ago, my ex-wife probably wouldn’t be “ex.”
Some Republican moves to ban the government paying for it in 5…4…3…
Women have sex drive problems in long-term relationships and you think that the men should try some nonmonogamy? Maybe it would make more sense for the women to switch it up every couple of years, since women are apparently the ones who go from horndog to utter disinterest in the same relationship.
@7: How many women can have the luxury of taking the time and massive effort to fix their work-life balance, relationship, time schedule, just to want sex?
Hell, why can men just take a pill so they can have sex, but for some reason I have to overhaul my entire life? If a pill means women have more options — emphasis on *options* — isn’t that a good thing?
This will be great if it’s true.
Just what we need – more pills for everyday life. We’re just starting to see the effects of messing around with hormone levels with external chemicals, so rather than study that scene a bit, we’ll just dope up even more.
Wouldn’t want to try mental health therapy, diet & exercise to get that “special feeling” again. No, not when a vastly under-researched drug is available!
Dan, seriously? Hormonal fluctuations that women deal with in various stages throughout our entire lives often contribute to fluctuations in libido. Am I mistaken, or are you saying that we must “let” our partners seek action elsewhere if we choose not to opt into Big Pharma as a remedy for weakened libido?
Bet you anything insurance companies won’t cover it…
I fully expect straight porn to reach new heights.
I’m with @7. A pill to “fix” the “problem” with low female libidos is a bandaid for a symptom, not the underlying issue. Making women more horny does nothing to fix that.
Goes to show how idiotic those all ‘knowing’ and often cited college professors can be sometimes.
@7: I agree with you that a low libido is often the result of other issues and we should look to those before we seek medication. However, in my case and for many others, everything can be great (as pretty much every other area of my life is) and we still just aren’t into it. Or our brains are but the body just won’t catch up. Feeling this way again has made me happier and far from feeling like a medicated version of myself, I feel like the real me again.
Low sex drive ruined my marriage. I wanted to have sex, just not with her. Do we have a pill for that yet?
#19, what do you think Viagara is? It’s a bandaid for men that don’t want to fix their obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. If they get healthy, they won’t need it, how is this different?
@19, you could say the same for a lot of things we do and consume.
Caffeine for instance.
@13–My point isn’t to say that some women won’t benefit from something like this, but rather to say that often when women in heterosexual relationships experience low libido they are positioned as “abnormal” or “unhealthy,” particularly when men experience low libido to a much lesser extent (and when they do–they just need a pill to help them ‘get it up’).
I completely disagree with the notion that a female viagra-equivalent will somehow restore gender equality in the bedroom. The idea that women have to “fix” themselves somehow to remain in a monogomous relationship is unfair.
Women should not have to bear the brunt of changing their lifestyles and men should be aware that it isn’t something that can be solved quickly with a pill. Men, in open, caring, long-term relationships are just as responsible for solving this problem as the women in those relationships.
@23 It’s not any different.
@24 Yup.
Women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex.
(/sarcasm)
Don’t forget your queer sisters in this one….it’s not just straight dudes who would want their gfs/wives to restore a flagging sex drive….
@19: What about anti-depressants?
In a similar to way how depression — something that could be attributed solely to a chemical imbalance, but also to a series of general difficulties — can be treated with therapy, diet, and exercise as well as medication, is it possible that many women may use this pill as only one aid in an arsenal of tools to boost their libido? It’s hard enough to have to *try* to want sex, but to have be confronting and fixing all the other major problems in your life at the same time?
@ 25, and when there are no other problems? No issues to resolve?
I know some people will just hop right on this drug without working out underlying problems first, but there are those women for whom there are no problems to work out. Are you for a drug in that case?
WANT.
I wonder if it can counterbalance the effects of birth control (which obviously gets rid of ovulation, a big driver of female sex drive).
@16 first time reader? Dan has always argued that the dissatisfied party(ies) in sexless relationships have a right to go elsewhere.
@ 25 “The idea that women have to “fix” themselves somehow to remain in a monogomous relationship is unfair.”
It’s not, because the same goes for men. In fact, because women having low libidos is so much more culturally acceptable, they are probably under less pressure to “fix” themselves than men suffering from the same problem.
My husband has an almost non-existent libido, and I have a pretty insatiable sex drive. I’ve been telling him we need to “fix” his issue for a long time now.
If a man or woman has a low sex drive and it is harming their monogamous relationship (sex being a very important part of a long-term relationship for the majority of people) then they ought to fix it.
I remember a Savage Love one time with a analogy about buying a cow and refusing to milk it. To steal that example, the cow doesn’t have a problem because it needs to be milked. The farmer has a problem because he doesn’t want to milk his cow.
Whoops. Rather, “because he/she doesn’t want to milk his cow.”
I gotta stop projecting =P
*cough* …his/her.
Ah, damn it all I’m going back to my work now.
I’v refused antidepressants for years, although they do help my moderate to severe depression (linked to PMS, etc), because they devastate my sex drive. (on birth control constantly sad/irritable and never horny)
I’d rather cope with monthly ups and downs then just be flat all the time.
what I’m saying is that sometimes hormones/ neurotransmitters have a lot to do with wether a woman is horny or not, and asking her to fix her whole, life, asking her husband to be perfect, her job to be perfect, expecting her to know what perfect is, is a pretty tall order.
Sometimes you just want to be horny.
@16: Your partner has a right to some kind of regular sex.
There are a lot of ways for you to deal with that as a couple, of which “elsewhere” is only one; however, expecting them to just give up on sex indefinitely because you have is not a realistic or fair one.
If someone said that they expected their partner to not eat whenever they weren’t hungry, we’d call that stupid, cruel, and unreasonable, but somehow culturally we have a blind spot about sex.
@29 But we’re not talking about a hormonal imbalance, we’re talking about women who don’t want to have sex because their libido hasn’t been nurtured or their body is going through a natural cycle.
I don’t want to have sex because I worked hard all day, I’m exhausted, my partner has been busy doing his own thing, and I just did the dishes and laundry right before bed. Not wanting to have sex when his dick does isn’t a “cratered sex drive,” it’s because the time hasn’t been put into it to make it work.
Also, as someone who has taken many medications in her life, modifying your behavior and environment has far better outcomes then drugging yourself to oblivion. It’s hard as fuck to say “we need to MENTALLY stimulate me to make me want sex” and to do the work involved, but that’s what is involved in real honest relationships.
@30: I think one other problem here is some are imagining “underlying issues” to be something that you could fix if you only tried.
So if I work long hours and I’m tired when I get home, is my boss is going to give me time off or grant me a more flexible schedule so I can fuck? If I already work long hours, where am I going to find the time to regularly exercise enough to want sex? If I’m depressed because of my shitty job, I’ll quit it and find a new job just so I can want sex?
Sometimes there are problems in our lives that we can’t really change. And we just have to deal however we can.
What about the women whose lack of sex drive just makes them feel even worse? Yeah, some women might actually want sex, and no, they aren’t necessarily loathing themselves because of big sexist pharma-companies. Sometimes, treating the symptom can help.
Okay, I know we’re having a serious and productive discussion here, but is anyone else getting horny?
Maybe the solution is just talking more about sex! While at work! at 10:40am!
@38: “@29 But we’re not talking about a hormonal imbalance, we’re talking about women who don’t want to have sex because their libido hasn’t been nurtured or their body is going through a natural cycle.”
As I mentioned, depression isn’t only a hormonal imbalance. Sometimes you’re *depressed* because you have a shitty life. Yes, you need to recognize your life is the cause, but helping alleviate the depressive feeling itself is already something of a burden off many people’s shoulders and gives them the boost they need to deal with their troubles.
Fuck natural cycles. A lot of women don’t take the pill because no, it isn’t right for them, but it’s also made a lot of women much happier — and yeah, regardless of whatever men and medicine tell them.
Sometimes that natural cycle is exactly what makes some women feel like crap. If taking that away and letting them feel more like a *person* is what medication might do, I’m all for it.
“Also, as someone who has taken many medications in her life, modifying your behavior and environment has far better outcomes then drugging yourself to oblivion. It’s hard as fuck to say ‘we need to MENTALLY stimulate me to make me want sex’ and to do the work involved, but that’s what is involved in real honest relationships.”
You’re making two big assumptions here.
First, you’re assuming people can’t manage their own bodies. Yeah, a lot of them can’t. But a lot of us can. Even that fact is irrelevant — who is anyone to tell me if choosing a medication is “drugging myself into oblivion”?
Second, you’re also assuming that people will abuse this pill as a be-all, end-all solution. Who’s to say that people can’t use this pill and still do work involved in “real, honest relationships”? If a woman *wants* sex — and if she’s taking a pill, she wants it, for any host of reasons — but needs a pill to get the physical feeling, isn’t it still an “honest” libido?
@25
No one is saying women have to do anything they don’t want to do. If you are happy not fucking your husband, more power to you.
At the same time, if your husband is miserable at the loss of his sex life and seeks action elsewhere, more power to him.
You’ve got a problem? Don’t worry, we’ve got a pill for that! And the good news is there shouldn’t be too may side effects from the dozen other “life enhancing”(tm) pills you are on!
Out of context: Maybe some doctors are cautious about this, because some doctors are not completely corrupted by the drug reps and their prescription pad kick-backs. Be careful what you wish for little birds, least you revisit more fen-phen fun.
Why shouldn’t a low lobido be seen as something that women may want to fix? After all, it’s not seen as strange that women willwant to fix their boobs, faces, thighs and eyelashes with medical intervention.
Sometimes readjusting the neurochemistry is the correct solution.
This is another example of women being seen as natural and pure beings, with cycles and stages and so on, and so to suggest that there are times when those cycles are off or those stages less than wonderful is called demeaning and partiachical. Physical attraction must reamin constant despite body changes over time, emotional investment must reamain constant despite changes in focus to children or job, etc.
If this pill helps couples dedicated to monogamy remain happily monogamous it’s doing good work.
@25: “My point isn’t to say that some women won’t benefit from something like this, but rather to say that often when women in heterosexual relationships experience low libido they are positioned as ‘abnormal’ or ‘unhealthy,’ particularly when men experience low libido to a much lesser extent (and when they do–they just need a pill to help them ‘get it up’).”
Viagra exists precisely because men with low libidos are thought of as “abnormal” or “unhealthy.” Why would they create medicine for something they thought was quite all right?
If men get the option of quick-fix pill, and this is apparently in their advantage, then why not women? I’m asking that.
I’m just wondering why choice is so bad here. Nobody here is saying women MUST take this pill, but giving them to the choice to do it if they want it.
My position is that I think that women can educate themselves and make choices for themselves. Just because I decide to take medication doesn’t mean I’m being manipulated or oppressed — or maybe I am, but I don’t care. That’s a choice that needs to be respected as much as that of a woman who choose to abstain from this.
Also, there’s a need to remember that mental desire and physical desire are not inextricably linked in every case. (Which is funny, because I thought that was one of the major ongoing controversies when it comes to female sexuality.)
One of the ideas under review here are women who do genuinely desire sex, but it isn’t translating physically. A pill like Viagra would provide that physical boost. That’s all it is. It doesn’t make women into self-loathing sex-zombies (well, I guess it *could*, but not necessarily).
Reverse example: Viagra can give a man a hard-on, but it doesn’t mean he wants sex.
@25: *Everyone* has to “fix” themselves or make some changes and sacrifices in their behavior to remain in a monogamous relationship.
If it’s reasonable to say that someone needs to do their share of housework they wouldn’t normally care about, or have/raise kids they might not want, or go to movies they might not personally care about, or care for pets they might not prefer to have, or eat foods that aren’t their favorite, or spend time with their in-laws, etc. etc. etc. as part of the price of admission for their monogamous relationship, why is so unreasonable to put ‘find a way to make sure your partner is satisfied, even if you aren’t naturally interested’ in the same bin?
It isn’t? That’s news to me.
LOL UNDERSEXED.
LOL ANGRY.
LOL PILLS.
NONE OF THIS IS FUNNY.
BETTER YOKES NEEDED. ONES FOR MULES. OR COWS. OR BUFFALO. BIG BEEG YOKES.
@1 Wellbutrin doesn’t just do that for women either. I was on it to quit smoking, same as you, and before I started taking it I was really concerned about the diminished libido many people report while taking anti-depressants. I needn’t have worried.