Translated from GegenStandpunkt 2-98

“Viagra”:

An erection aid for bourgeois self-confidence

1. A pharmaceutical company does what it always does and seeks a best seller on the helping & healing market. A lot of research is done to find a drug that fights an ailment. But even more so that, if possible, it brings out a preparation that beats the competitors on the market; that’s better, because it has more effect and/or fewer or different side effects. Ideally, it even leads to a “spectacular breakthrough”. Then a monopoly has been won, usually worldwide, and the always “incredibly high development costs” have paid off. As this research goes on, it sometimes even achieves a breakthrough on a frontline in the fight for health that it didn’t even have in mind. For example, the search was on for a drug to treat heart disease. They already had the active ingredient that promised success – and when they checked the other effects that always go hand in hand with the intended one, they discovered an astonishing phenomenon: where the stuff was supposed to work, it worked much less than where they didn’t expect it to work at all. And so the researchers were surprised to discover that the chemical that was supposed to give the heart a little help, helps the body’s most popular corpus cavernosum, of all things, to function in an almost unbelievable way.

2. However, heart-healthy people with a permanent hard-on were not included in the original research assignment. But insofar as the latter is apparently well achieved with the use of the discovered chemical cudgel, the undesired side effect is anything but uninteresting. The desired main effect of the research, namely to secure a profitable business, can also be achieved if the accidental discovery is turned into a business item, and in this particular case the senior management did not have to calculate for very long. Diabetics, paraplegics, and otherwise impotent people were sure to be customers, but this is basically peanuts. In view of the importance of the penis in real life, it couldn’t be the case that only a small number of physically ill people are suffering from its functional deficits. It’s very likely that the number of people for whom help is now available is much larger. Maybe the widespread disease which can be cured is not quite so well known, and that would of course be huge, in terms of healing, but even more so in terms of the market.

3. So under the name “Viagra,” the stuff goes on the market in the USA, comes to be known in this country – and all the pluralistic opinion-forming media, as well as a “run on international pharmacies,” reveals with one fell swoop where until now bourgeois humanity has been suffering in silence. As it turns out, mainly men, but of course also women, have huge problems that nobody really knew about. With their “sexual performance” namely, by which they mean the fact that their flesh is simply much too weak for the forces that their will for sexual self-realization incessantly mobilizes. Much more often than they would like, they do not physically succeed in convincingly staging the self-image which has solidified in their minds as a guarantee of success in the competition for recognition with the “opposite sex” and, above that, obviously as the main item of their self-satisfaction. Their bragging about easily satisfying all the performance principles that apply – even and especially – in the area of pleasure; their calculation of impressing, through the corresponding performance, a partner who has also taken to functionalizing their mucous membranes into a lever for the recognition of the rest of their worthy personality: these and so many other demands are made by the citizens on their sexuality that the very tool which it crucially hinges on doesn’t enlarge sufficiently. As a lever for increasing their self-confidence, the schlong is not quite as suitable as they would like it to be and this, one learns, actually matters a great deal to a lot of citizens. Because wherever self-esteem has to be arrived at via a potent “performance,” the reverse of course also applies, and the ego is then a little crushed if the impression on which so much depends does not come about. And the last straw of the misfortune: Not even the gym can help here; manhood can’t be replaced by muscle power. A pill that cures a defect that is in their heads but they only notice between their legs is just the help they need. It promises them that they will always and everywhere be endowed for the future and at long last also be incessantly “fit for fun,” wherever the same gap always yawns between claim and realization.

4. The pharmaceutical company’s supply thus rather suddenly generates the demand that promises “Viagra” the prospect of being a “blockbuster” in the healthcare sector. A big step forward has been taken in the effort to free citizens from the psychological burden of really always only being able to embarrass themselves with their self-image after all. With the promised manhood, everyone can now gain the confidence to dispel “fears of failure” through convincing practical counter-evidence: So sex finally becomes truly fun. Nothing stands in the way of a lucrative business with the alleviation of suffering, but unfortunately the real suffering of the people does not always coincide with the state’s standards in matters of widespread disease: This time “our health care system” is not financing the Pfizer company’s bonanza. For organically caused impotents, the substance is available on prescription, perhaps; if it is cheaper than the mechanical aids they are legally entitled to. But in all other cases, for those who find their basic organic equipment insufficiently potent only because of the standards they apply for successful self-realization in this area, the health care authorities at once see an attack on their cash register: “Federal Health Minister Seehofer has spoken out against the general dispensing of potency-enhancing drugs on prescription. One can’t have compulsory insurance ‘for every problem’...” (SZ, 5.19) So the fear is that effective and regular care for the mental health of the bourgeois ego will again be reserved only for those who can afford it. On the other hand, 30 deutschmarks is not much for the promised use value of a finally really convincing genital performance. The state’s budget tightening will therefore ultimately have its healing effects on the people and also in this case direct the expenditures that are simply necessary for health into the pockets of the company to which the wellness is owed.

PS “The potency drug V. has, according to experts, many more side effects than previously thought... effects on the field of vision... already led to blindness in animal experiments.” (SZ, 5/22) Don’t worry, it's completely natural. With a big mouth to show off, a giant tail to make an impression, but with only barely adequate eyesight: that’s how Mother Nature has already equipped the crocodile. It’s a well-known fact that even at 100 years of age, the crocodile still puts on an incredible performance. Even under water.

PPS. It is also reported that there have already been deaths in the motherland of meritocracy after taking “Viagra.” But this is also quite natural. Where would the pharmaceutical industry be if it waited for the investigation and, possibly, suppression of side effects and interactions with other cardiac drugs before it started amortizing the research costs? A note in the package insert has to suffice – it doesn’t hurt sales much and saves aggrieved customers from attempting to sue for damages.