Questioning the sexy oldie: masculinity, age and sexuality in the Viagra era

Abstract

The chapter explores the intersections of gender, sexuality and ageing in the Viagra era, by investigating medical expert discourses and social representations of men’s sexual health problems (Gott, 2005; Marshall, 2010). By adopting the STS notion of enrolment (Johnson, Sjoberg and Asberg, 2016), the analysis will show how medical experts are called on and woven into a medical and pharmaceutical discursive framework, and how they contribute to define new sexual techno-social subjectivities, like the “forever functional” ageing man (Marshall and Katz 2002). Physicians use discursive strategies, making reference to cultural representations on gender and ageing, more specific medical knowledge as well as to marketing discourses about sexuopharmaceuticals, to support and promote their ageing male patients in monitoring their sexual health, but also an authoritative position in defining the boundaries of legitimate medical problems and solutions. The analysis shows how medical experts thereby reproduce, renegotiate and question what they perceive as a “respectable sexuality” (Bertone and Ferrero Camoletto 2009) and a “mature masculinity” (Wentzell 2013)..