thirteen - Questioning the sexy oldie: masculinity, age and sexuality in the Viagra era

Summary

Once one has seen the norms of female ageing reshaped by hormone replacement therapy, or the norms of ageing male sexuality reshaped by Viagra, the ‘normal’ process of growing old seems only one possibility in a field of choices, at least for those in the wealthy West. (Rose, 2001: 16)

Introduction

This chapter explores the intersections of gender, sexuality and ageing in the Viagra era, by investigating expert medical discourses and the social representations of men's sexual health problems. I will focus on the transformation of the social representation and cultural norms concerning ageing at the intersection of two cultural phenomena, which are analytically distinct but empirically intertwined: the ‘positive ageing’ imperative and the advent of sexuopharmaceuticals such as Viagra and its competitors. At the crossroads of these two phenomena we find a shift from ‘asexual old age’ or the ‘sexually retired’ ideal type to the new ‘sexy oldie’ (Gott, 2005) or ‘sexy senior’ ideal (Marshall, 2010).

Drawing on data from a recent mixed-method qualitative research project carried out in Italy, I will analyse how medical experts, dealing with their ageing male patients’ sexual problems, both adopt and question currently available narratives of ageing, gender and sexuality. Following Johnson et al. (2016), I adopt the science and technology studies (STS) notion of enrolment, which provides a fruitful analytical tool to reconstruct how different roles are given to various actants involved in discourses defining age-related male sexual dysfunctions and their cures. More specifically, I will investigate how doctors, being called on and woven into a medical and pharmaceutical discursive framework, contribute to define new sexual techno-social subjectivities, like the ‘forever functional’ ageing man (Marshall and Katz, 2002). Physicians use various discursive strategies to construct a multifaceted profile of ‘legitimate’ patients by referring to cultural representations of gender and ageing according to their specific medical knowledge and to the marketing discourses about sexuopharmaceuticals. In so doing, the medical experts are embedded in a network that includes other human actors (that is, potential patients and their partners) as well as non-human actants (such as sexuopharmaceuticals). Within a pharmaceutical imagination (Marshall, 2010), medical experts are therefore enrolled in taking up a proactive role, supporting and promoting their ageing male patients in monitoring their own sexual health, but also in an authoritative position of defining the boundaries of legitimate medical problems and solutions.