At least for men, and that’s who counts, right? Right?
At least, that’s what the SMH’s article today about the cure for prostate cancer causing impotence would have you believe.
Even if that were the case, there are so many things wrong with that concept. It implies that sex is necessary for men – and that maybe a life without sex wouldn’t be worth living (for a man). This disappears the experience of asexual men, men who are celibate but not asexual, men who cannot physically have the kind of sex the article is implicitly talking about (including many trans men and some men with disabilities), and probably others I’m not thinking about off the top of my head. In other words, the article has a clear implicit definition of “man” as “someone with a penis which works in the usual way, and who likes to use it for penetrative sex”.
The article also implies that this dilemma would only be a problem for men, which makes women invisible as sexual beings (or entirely).
The statement also appears to centre penetrative sex (and probably PIV at that) as “real sex” – everything else is, presumably, “not sex”.
And probably more. I’m writing this on the fly.
All of that would be so if the man who is the subject of the article, couldn’t actually have sex (as implicitly defined). However, here’s what he has to say about the matter (it’s in the second para of the article, so they really have no excuse for their scare-tactics in the first para):
”It’s as much a change mentally as it is physically,” said the 46-year-old married engineer. ”The nerves were preserved but the sexual function is not straightforward. The libido is different and the orgasm process is different. …”
He’s certainly not saying he can’t have sex at all – he’s not even saying he can’t have penetrative PIV sex (that’s not clear). It’s just going to be different.
Finally, if it actually came down to a choice between “sex” and “life”, I suspect that the enormous majority of people (funnily enough, I include the category “men” in the category “people”) would choose “life”. Suggesting otherwise is irresponsible and ridiculous. I would have thought that the SMH was above such a tabloid tactic.
Apparently not.
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