Ever since Queen Victoria died, men have been trying to tame the female orgasm. As long ago as 1913 Alfred Adler published his conclusion that 80 per cent of women were sexually non-responsive. In those days they would have been called frigid; these days we say they suffer from female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

Generations of sex manuals have endeavoured to teach husbands to reduce their wives to gibbering ecstasy, to no avail. In 1975 Kinsey reckoned that 75 per cent of women did not often reach orgasm through conventional intercourse. The Holy Grail of sexual chivalry was the multiple orgasm; the only good orgasm was the vaginal orgasm, which turned out to be more like the snark, because nobody could prove it existed. Men were urged to make love more creatively, varying positions and using instruments, pornography, roleplay and various pharmaceutical products, from Spanish Fly to yohimbine, to heighten women’s arousal. A woman’s orgasm came to be more eagerly sought by a lover than his own. The harder men tried, the more pressure women felt to produce the requisite moans so they could both get some sleep. Faking it became a necessary part of sexual etiquette.

Part of the sexologists’ problem in quantifying female sexual response is that they were looking for the same intense, short-lived and localised orgasm as could be observed in men. We now know that the clitoris is not a magic button but the summit of a dense network of neural pathways linking it to the organs. We know better than to belittle the clitoral orgasm, but we also know that the point of travelling is not necessarily to arrive. In love-making sleeping in each other’s arms is at least as important as the orgasm, especially if it is to be followed in short order by detumescence, back-turning and snoring. As the late Peggy Lee unforgettably sang, “Is that all there is, my friends? Let’s keep dancing.”

Failure to be excited is only to be expected if what is on offer is unexciting. No sex rather than bad sex should be an option, but in the post-millennial world the unresponsive woman is dysfunctional and will be treated. Her lack of genuine passion will be corrected by charging her up with synthetic passion, otherwise known as Viagra. Her duty is not only to have the sex she doesn’t really want, but to enjoy it.

The principal publicists for FSD, and Viagra as the treatment for it, have been Drs Laura and Jennifer R. Berman, directors of the UCLA Female Sexual Medicine Centre which has reported on a Viagra trial. It is also running trials of lasofoxiphene and alprostadil as treatments for “female sexual arousal disorder”, which with “hypoactive sexual desire disorder”, “sexual aversion disorder”, “female orgasmic disorder”, and “sexual pain disorders” makes up the spectrum of FSD.

The focus of much of this work is the postmenopausal woman, who is already assumed to be suffering from one deficiency disease that is to be treated with oestrogen. Oestrogen facilitates intercourse by improving lubrication, but does not replace lost libido. Something else had to be found and women have been ordered to find it in the bathroom cupboard.

When boys sneer at a girl who won’t join in sex games on the back seat of the school bus, and call her frigid, it hurts; she wonders whether her revulsion means that something might be wrong with her. A woman who begins to dislike the sex on offer within an adult relationship, which may well be lukewarm and mechanical, and is told that the problem is hers and that it is called FSD, is being manipulated in the same way. The difference is that this pseudo-medical concern is presented to her as pro-feminist, caring, empowering, and all that jazz. Co-option of feminist rhetoric has been a problem ever since a cigarette was sold to women who had “come a long way baby”. The sanctimonious claptrap that will be used to sell Viagra to women will argue that sexual satisfaction is a human right that Pfizer is nobly concerned to restore to women, as it has to the men who are already providing the company with a billion dollars of profit every year.

As women’s orgastic potency is adversely affected by insecurity, knowledge that the man in one’s life has to take Viagra to get it up will hardly enhance female sexual response. A loving husband might also be abashed to discover that his wife is yelping beneath him not because his penis is a joy to her but because she took a pill or is using an electronic implant. How different is taking Viagra from popping amyl nitrate or snorting cocaine to enhance sexual response? The only difference between Viagra and Suregasm or Nymphomax or Zestra is that Viagra works, but the evidence is scantier and softer than it has any right to be, given Pfizer’s massive resources.

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