In news that had over half the male populace and probably a substantial number of the female populace agog with excitement, the US FDA announced that it had approved the sale of the first ever prescription drug, Addyi, to treat women suffering from a lack of sexual desire.
Yes, there are side effects, they mentioned upfront. There are risks of fainting if combined with some other drugs or alcohol. There’s a lot more about the side effects up there on the Internet, enough to make you wonder that if you do take it and pass out in a spell of dizziness, does that count as it upping the libido to dizzying levels.
Having said that, the drug acts on brain chemicals similar to the way anti-depressant drugs do. In fact, before it was segued off into a libido enhancer for women, it was being developed as an anti-depressant. Levels of dopamine are upped when one takes the drug and serotonin lowered. These are brain chemicals, which have to do with appetite and satiation respectively. This prescription drug has been approved for women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Or as I have been known to call it, “Damn it, let me sleep or you’re dead meat.”
As any woman knows, and we don’t need to take an online test to tell us this, female sexual desire is a delicate thing that tight rope walks the high space between the skyscrapers of self esteem and feeling desired, never mind the medical factors. So many tiny little things could push it gently between the shoulder blades and off the rope into the careening morass of a lack of libido. The causes could range from the physical to the emotional. Work stress, relationship issues with one’s partner, home stress, the stress of caring for a young child or an elderly chronically ill person, body issues especially after having a baby not to mention, fear of conceiving if contraception is not available, perceived body issues, the lack of sleep, and so many more issues which are not directly connected with the dampening of desire. Then there are medical issues, certain medical conditions like anaemia, diabetes, thyroid disorders, endometriosis and fibroids which can all affect a woman’s desire. Add to this, medications like birth control pills, anti depressants and blood pressure medications which could have an effect on a woman’s desire. In a nutshell, women’s libido is complicated, and merely popping a pill might not just solve it.
In the man, though, Viagra deals with erectile dysfunction which is a physiological issue, it works by helping a man get an erection if he is sexually aroused and can be taken before, well, the action begins. Addyi works on the brain chemistry of the woman and needs to be taken every day. And of course, there is counselling and therapy that can also help a woman who has low libido, if medical causes have been ruled out.
All these are points me not being a medical person have no authority to comment upon and would be better opined on by a doctor. All I can say is medical causes apart, the first thing women need to do is to reclaim their libido. With pride.
How many women think about their libido as something that is an integral part of their self? A straw poll would tell you that most women go through phases of absolutely zero libido and think of it as something to be lived with and hopefully emerged through, like the storm Murakami spoke about which one goes through and emerges a changed person. A lack of libido isn’t something we speak about easily. We rarely discuss with anyone, except perhaps few trusted friends, and frankly, how many of us women will go to our gynaecologists and say, “… and while we are talking about the flora and fauna down there, can you write down something to make me more, err, keen to get some action?” Nope. We keep zipped. We consider it unseemly to talk about female desire, and let’s face it, how many women expect a limb-numbing, jaw-dropping, body-quivering orgasm during every act of intercourse? More often than not, an orgasm is a gamble. It either happens or it doesn’t.
Even the precursor to libido, desire, is something we are hesitant to acknowledge. How many of us are comfortable with desire, with that stomach churning state of being that makes one forget sanity and restraint and do wild, crazy things that one would have never thought oneself to be capable of? How many of us are comfortable with demanding sex from our partners, after they’re done and spent? After all, how did that line go, a nymphomaniac is a woman who wants sex one more time than a man does. And god knows, we’ve grown up hearing enough labels we need to tip toe around to avoid being slapped with them on our foreheads. The censorious self talk in one’s head is the greatest libido dampener we could deal with. Good women don’t have a libido, we were told. We grew up with the dystopian mythified cultural polarities of the virgin and the whore and struggled to find a comfortable midway to place ourselves. Not to mention the broken records that keep playing on in our heads about good girls not wanting it, of needing to be pure and virginal as driven snow, never mind the slush of repressed desires addling our senses, long after we’re old enough to know better and ignore them for what they’re worth.
Medical causes apart, stress apart, female libido is a delicate butterfly. There are so many causes, some of which one would never correlate to libido, which could bruise its wings. And as most of us do know, the greatest libido enhancer is being desired. When you are wanted, there is nothing more arousing than that knowledge. And as research has found, female desire is as powerful, as base and animalistic as male desire, and all the social restrictions on it have been put there down the ages to ensure it doesn’t get unleashed. All we need to do is to reclaim it for our own. Stake ownership of it. Make no apologies for it. And that will be half the battle won.
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