Power sticks ...

Among the non-pathological conditions that get medicalized and for which interventions are invented and applied is erectile "dysfunction."  Erectile "dysfunction," except in the case of injury, is a normal senescent result of aging, often accelerated by lifestyle choices and conditions, such as smoking and and drinking alcohol and diabetes.  Not all men feel their lives are over if they cannot continue to have a robust erection, but many do, and they know all about the little blue pill that, on television commercials, will make them joyfully bounce out of their bedrooms and into the world.  All is right, the ad implies, in your manly ability to conquer the world if you have a worthy erection before setting out. 

I do not prescribe Viagra, or its brother Cialis.  If a man asks me for that prescription, I offer to refer him to a urologist, so he can be assessed for organic factors, if there is an underlying cause for his declining performance.

Previously I had tried to discuss with such men that waning penile prowess is natural, and that sexuality is broader than jackhammer penetration, that a couple can have satisfying intimacy in many ways that do not rely on penetration and that, in fact, navigating this can actually enhance intimacy.  Never once has this conversation been of interest to any man, so I gave up on this approach, realizing that for these men, erection is not about sexuality but about power.  I have maintained the informative part of my discussion with them that decreasing erectile function may be resulting from other health factors, and then I announce I will send them to a specialist, who will assess them.  I could do this assessment, but in the end, if all is normal, I will not given the prescription they seek, so I remove myself from the equation and send them on.  The referral option is also a test of sorts, to see how serious they are about their request as a health issue.  They usually agree to the referral, such is their want of the pill, but not without some griping for the ordeal they are reluctant to undergo, which is telling, I believe.

I am not professionally obligated to give patients what they want but I am professionally obligated to offer them access to what they want, if it is part of common medical practice.

Why do I not simply give the prescription?  Because there are already too many erections in the world, too many erections that are used to objectify women, too many as an endpoint to porn, too many that are in the service of rape in all its manifestations, and I have absolutely no way of knowing how any particular man will make use of his erections.  I refuse to risk abetting.

Though erections and abortions are not equivalent by any means, compare the ease of access to Viagra (everywhere, except from me, and often covered by drug plans) with the ease of access to abortions.

In Canada, it is thought we are legally and socially ahead on abortion access, but only in word:

Abortion has been legally unrestricted in Canada since 1988. Under the Canada Health Act, a federal piece of legislation that mandates how health care services should be provided for Canadian citizens, abortion is defined as a medically necessary procedure. This means it should be paid for by provincial health care, regardless of which province or territory a woman resides in, or whether she receives an abortion in a clinic or a hospital. Abortion, like any other necessary medical procedure, should be equally available to all women regardless of where they live in Canada.

However, this is not the case: provinces differ in many ways in regard to abortion. For example, some provinces have very few hospitals and clinics that provide abortions, or refuse to pay for abortions that take place outside a hospital.

It isn't, in word, much different in the US, but the vigor with which various states obstruct a woman's access to abortion can be astonishing:

Moments after the supreme court struck down a law threatening to close half the abortion clinics in Texas, a banner appeared outside the Austin headquarters of the lead plaintiff, Whole Woman’s Health. “We won!” the sign boasted in big block letters. “Our clinics stay open.”  Only this clinic did not.

The building, a low-slung facility just off the highway, is a symbol of how profoundly anti-abortion activists have reshaped abortion access in the US, even as they reel from a setback in the supreme court of historical proportions.

Until two years ago, this building was an abortion clinic. Then a new law – one of the nation’s harshest – required all Texas abortion facilities to meet expensive, hospital-like building standards, compelling all providers to have patient admitting privileges with a nearby hospital. The clinic was unable to satisfy either regulation and forced to close in July 2014.

Monday saw the supreme court strike down these requirements as unconstitutional. The decision emphasized the lack of medical evidence showing that such laws make abortion, a simple outpatient procedure, safer.

But Amy Hagstrom-Miller, the Whole Woman’s Health CEO and founder, is not sure if the former clinic in Austin, which Whole Woman’s Health and local reproductive rights groups use as an office suite, can ever again serve as an abortion clinic.

Abortion providers in Canada and the US alike have and continue to risk their lives in their efforts to provide access to abortion for women.  There is no threat to the life of a provider who gives a prescription for Viagra.

Again, access to erectile "dysfunction" medications and to abortion are not equivalent issues, but it does make plain the underlying political reality:  that men view it as their right to decide about both a man's erectile function and a woman's ability to abort the result of his erectile function.  Erectile function is about power; abortion is about a woman's autonomy to seek physical remedy for men's power.  Until there is at least an equality of access to abortion, there should be restrictions, if not an outright ban, on access to erectile enhancing aids for men who are medicalizing their senescing sense of power.  At the very least, erectile "dysfunction" as it pertains to power should not be legitimized as a medical condition.

What does this have to do with transgenderism, the theme of this blog?  These issues are all the same: male power over women.  Most of the men who believe they are women do not undergo a penectomy.  Women do not have penises.  If these men truly believe they are women, why are they hanging onto, in all senses, their power sticks?