International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities
APHRODISIACS
Aphrodisiacs are most commonly understood as substances which cause or increase sexual desire. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report on Aphrodisiacs (1996) concludes that there is no proof that any substance has an effect on human sexual desire. However, as Peter Taberner’s (1985) exhaustive study, Aphrodisiacs, indicates, the myths are stronger than the science. Etymologically, the name derives from Aphrodite, the Greek counterpart of Venus. Aphrodite was born from the sea, which contributes to the folklore surrounding the arousal-inducing powers of many types of seafood. Several items, most notably mandrake root, rhinoceros horn and ginseng (whose name literally means ‘man root’) have gained their reputations solely on the basis of the ‘law of similarity’: that is, shapes which may resemble a penis. Similarly, the penises of animals—for example, the tiger for its ability to copulate several times per hour and the elephant, rhinoceros and bear for sheer size—purportedly imbue male consumers with an incumbent potency.
Exotic, luxurious and unfamiliar foods have been attributed with aphrodisiacal powers through myth, mistranslation and misunderstanding. The Oxford English Dictionary records references as early as 1753 to tomatoes as ‘love apples’. For example, this mistranslation of the French for ‘Moorish apple’ finds its into James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses, along with the more familiar oysters. Passionfruit’s name is often taken to refer to its extraordinary powers and not its more pristine origin as having been discovered on the Christian holy day, Passion Sunday. Perhaps the most infamous and persistent aphrodisiac is so-called ‘Spanish Fly’, which was described by Hippocrates as a remedy for several conditions. The substance is produced by crushing dried blister beetles. The males of the species secrete cantharidin and give it to the females as part of the mating ritual. However, it is a poison which does in fact cause severe urinary tract swelling and only 10 mg is a fatal dose. Nevertheless, in Roman times Emperor Nero’s wife allegedly laced the food of her guests with the powder. In 1772 the notorious Marquis de Sade gave aniseed sweets laced with cantharidin to some prostitutes, hoping to make them lusty, but instead it poisoned them.
The facts and the fictions about aphrodisiacs invoke several simultaneous and often contradictory masculinist discourses, including the millennia-old nature—culture debate. Perhaps the most pernicious among these is the perceived difference between treatments for males and females, both in the type of treatment and in the motivation for it. Underlying the predominance of aphrodisiacs and performance enhancers is the assumption of both perpetual feminine receptivity and several versions of a phallic inferiority complex. This point is underscored by the development of the Cybersuit by Internet pornography retailer Vivid Video. The neoprene suits cover the body entirely and have carefully placed stimulators—thirty-six for the female, only twenty-seven for the male—for simulated copulation. The French film Thomas in Love (2000) portrays a comic but dystopic view of one man’s dependence on technology for his pleasure.
Significantly, the FDA differentiates between sexual performance and sexual appetite: that is, between erectile dysfunction and sexual arousal disorder. Contemporary performanceenhancing drugs are sought as correctives for either erectile dysfunction (formerly impotence) and/or sexual arousal disorder. Recently, several drugs—most famously Viagra, but also Cialis, Levitra and PT-141—have been introduced to correct erectile dysfunction by relaxing smooth muscle tissue and dilating the major artery in the penis. In popular discourses, these drugs are de facto aphrodisiacs since their primary function is that of helping men achieve and maintain an erection. The difference lies in the bases of the two maladies: sexual arousal disorder is catalogued in the DSM-IV; erectile dysfunction is not. Thus, sexual arousal disorder reinscribes the feminisation of mental illness and the medicalisation of femininity, as well as the myths of frigidity and/or the hysterical woman, while associating masculinity with the practice of medicine and of science. The emphasis on phallic performance underscores the perpetuation of phallocentrism in popular discourses and the continued privileging of penetrative sexual acts over other forms of intercourse.
Similarly, the Western, scientific approach serves as another site for the feminisation and infantilisation of Asian cultures while simultaneously exnominating the imbrication of sex (and sexuality) with prevailing politics, especially with respect to China. In these discourses, the West is superior morally, politically and evolutionarily. Asian cultures, like women, are characterised as more attuned to nature and more likely to subscribe to superstitions, as Elferink (2000) describes in his research into Aztec and Inca aphrodisiacal practices. The ultimate triumph occurs in the tendency to punish nations which traffic in the parts of endangered animals through economic sanctions, often with North America’s Indigenous peoples stereotypically portrayed as providers of poached animal parts. Not only is the (white) Westerner again rescuing primitive peoples, but in the revised discourse the technological modulation of the sexual urge mirrors the supposed dispassionate masculine reserve of late capitalism and its ideological foundations.
This is the complete article, containing 809 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
