A reply to “What really lies behind the desire for a ‘female Viagra’” (25/06/10)

I was reading Vernon’s discussion (“What really lies behind the desire for a ‘female Viagra’”) with great interest when my aunt rang up.  She had just returned from a 10 day writing retreat where she and her fellow classmates discussed their progress, their ideas and most of all, their writing.  She was upset, clearly, because some of her fellow students described her writing as ‘angry’.  Not introspective, not thoughtful: angry.  I have since been reflecting on what it means to be angry.


When I see the oily, sullied hands on the front page of this edition (25/06/10) I am angry.  When I read about pharmaceutical companies trying to give me a pill version of great sex, I am angry.  But I think what confounds me is the same thing that bothers my aunt.  No one wants to be called ‘angry’.  No one wants to be sexually frustrated either, but there might be a pill for that.  Anger implies rage.  Anger implies a lack of common sense.  Not to mention the stereotype of being a hysterical, angry, bitter woman.  Would it be better to be called ‘outraged’?  I think so.

So when I read that a woman describes herself as “not normal” and “diseased”, I am outraged and I am outraged for the same reason that the oily hands on the cover outrage me.  How did it get this far?  When did we voluntarily give up so much control over life to private, for profit interests?  Not only have we relinquished any modicum of control over the welfare of our environment but now too we surrender our own orgasm? 

Yes, I drive a car and fly in an aeroplane.  I use plastic containers and ‘green’ bags.  Yes, I am alive today but for the grace of modern technology and petrochemicals. But that is not where my outrage is directed.  What I fail to grasp is how we lay idly by while big companies slowly chip away at our human ability to care for ourselves, and yes, even to pleasure ourselves.  Is it not in our technological grasp to put solar panels on roofs and power our own homes?  Can we not pass along the seeds we sew in order that others too may grow food? Can we not communicate with our sexual partners and point out, ‘Yup, you got it.  That’s the spot’.

In my home country of Canada people are outraged and that outrage is spilling onto the streets of the G20 host city.  Are they frenetic greenies?  Anarchists? Communists?  Or my favourite catch-all, ‘anti-globalisation protesters’? Sure, some are.  But I think beyond these labels and stereotypes that do more to confound real debate and stymie progress; there is legitimate outrage.  Do we continue to allow private interests dictate the terms of which we live life?  Do we allow 43% of women to be fitted with the diagnostic label of Female Sexual Dysfunction in order to give some perverse incentive into further research? Do we let ‘big oil’ dump this precious resource in the Niger Delta but not in the Gulf of Mexico? The problems we face as a global community affect us all in some way or another but do many of us feel like we have any say in the matter?  Well, I think I do.  I wrote this letter.  When I finally have a down payment on a house, I’ll save up for solar panels.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll go buy that dolphin shaped vibrator I’ve heard so much about.