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32 J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare 85 (2005)
Viagara: Medical Technology Constructing Aging Masculinity

handle is hein.journals/jrlsasw32 and id is 85 raw text is: Viagra: Medical Technology Constructing Aging Masculinity GREGORY GROSS The College of St. Rose ROBERT BLUNDO University of North Carolina at Wilmington Medicalization and commodification of the body through technology in the form of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs is reinforcing the cultural expectations that ageing men are required to age well to maintain youthful masculinity. Ageing well is explored as it relates the construction of masculinity, sexuality and ageing men's bodies. Key words: aging, masculinity, men, bodies, sexuality, cultural expecta- tions Old age is full of death and full of life. It is a tolerable achievement and it is a disaster. It transcends desire and it taunts it. It is long enough and far from long enough. Ronald Blythe, 1979, p. 29 [The male organ has been a seen as many things over the course of history], both noble and coarse. The penis was an icon of creativity; it was the link between the human and the sacred, an agent of bodily and spiritual ecstasy that hinted of communion with the eternal. Yet it was also a weapon against women, children, and weaker men. It was a force of nature, revered for its potency, yet just as amoral. It tied man to the cosmic energy that covered the fields each year with new herds and corps--and just as often destroyed them. The organ's animal urgency didn't trouble the ancients. Didn't the gods combine the human and savage in their own amours? All these complexities and contradictions, the very unpredictability of life itself, were embodied by one body part above all in antiquity-the penis. David Friedman (2001) Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, March, 2005, Volume XXXII, Number 1

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