More than 200 women's health researchers, practitioners and activists
from Canada and the US convened in Montreal in July as part of the 2nd
New View Campaign Conference to discuss female sexual health.
Leonore Tiefer, author of the "New View Campaign," and key organizer
for the conference held at Le Nouvel Hotel, invited guest speakers to address
the concept of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the general over-medicalization
of women's sexual lives. Subtitled, "Profits vs. pleasures" the
conference speakers and participants were also invited to critique pharmaceutical
involvement in the construction of these increasing new disorders for women.
At issue in particular is the oft-cited statistic that female sexual dysfunction
affects a whopping 43% of the female population over age 18; this statistic
was generated by pharmaceutical company research, based on a dodgy survey of
only 1500 women who were declared to have FSD if they have ever been lacking
in sexual desire for a two month period. No social or emotional causes for
their answers were examined, but instead, a physiological diagnosis of 'sexual
dysfunction' was declared.
Now, pharmaceutical firms are competing to come up with a "Viagra for
women" as the ideal quick fix. The problem is, as Tiefer, who is also
an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine,
says "women's sexual problems differ from men's in basic ways which are
not being examined or addressed."
"Women need economic and relationship safety, comprehensive sex education
and reproductive health services, not phony diagnoses and poorly researched 'lifestyle
drugs'," says Tiefer.
Pharmaceutical research is also presuming, as she puts it, “a false
notion of sexual equivalency between men and women.” In other words,
there can be no such thing as a female Viagra. Pharmaceutical companies that
have been testing their proposed 'pink Viagra' solutions with repeated
poor results, are finding out that she's right. Proctor and Gamble's
Instrinsa testosterone patch for women was recently rejected for approval by
the FDA (2004).
The calibre of the speakers at the conference couldn't be better, including
a plenary addresses by Barbara Ehrenreich, US author and political essayist,
speaking on the decades of faulty advice provided to women by so-called medical "experts";
Jean Kilbourne, feminist and author, best known for her work on deceptive and
manipulative advertisements targeting women; New Zealand researcher, Annie
Potts, on the resulting conflicts in senior couples from Viagra use by men;
and Barbara Huberman, Director of Education at Advocates for Youth, a US-based
non-governmental organization, who told, with chilling detail, the regression
of sex education in many US schools, and the increasing presence of abstinence-only
sex "education."
What was missing was any specific Canadian-content. Scattered amongst the
many fine panelists were a few quality Canadian researchers, but in all, it
was largely an American conference prepared for an American audience. “You
wouldn't know we were even in Québec right now – no mention
has been made of the Québec or Canadian context,” said one disgruntled
local attendee, who added that, nevertheless, the conference was "illuminating – my
feminist energies are recharged."
The conference was organized in Montreal primarily to prepare for, and attempt
to preempt the much larger, and pharmaceutically-funded 17th World Congress
of Sexology, also held in Montreal the week following the New View conference,
with many of the participants from New View attending both meetings.
For more information on the New View Campaign, including their Manifesto,
a detailed report of the conference and complete synopsis of each panel, visit,
www.fsd-alert.org
