Low sexual desire is not a disease. Stop FDA approval of Flibanserin.

[MosesWilhelm]

Being the dork I am...

I feel like this is the Xeno Cure for the mutation gene from Xmen.

Its the same argument.

[Everytime I think I create]

The New View Campaign has created a petition that they're encouraging people to sign:

Please go to Change.org and look for the Low Sexual Desire petition and sign it and circulate it to others. ASAP, please. We will take these petitions to the June 18 Flibanserin hearing.

This is a matter that I think people in the asexual community should be VERY concerned about, and I strongly encorage people to sign the petition. If this drug is approved, expect massive "educational" campaigns telling people just how distressing not being interested in sex is.

The text of the petition:

This is a petition to advocate against FDA approval for Flibanserin, a so-called ‘female Viagra’ recently produced by the drug company Boehringer Ingelheim. It is extremely important that the FDA does not approve Flibanserin, because this new drug:

1. offers only TRIVIAL benefits to women's sexual lives, as shown in the company's clinical trials.

2. might have serious ADVERSE EFFECTS when marketed to a large population.

3. comes with an AGGRESSIVE MARKETING campaign to convince women that sexuality is located in the brain, and that low sexual desire suggests chemical imbalances in the brain.

4. contributes to UNDERMINING and CONCEALING social and cultural issues that lead to women's problems with sexual desire.

5. tends to pathologize normal sexual diversity and therefore NARROWS the ‘cultural ideal’ around female sexuality.

6. represents a classic case of the pursuit of PROFIT rather than women's sexual pleasure and scientific knowledge.

We will take this petition to the upcoming FDA hearing on Flibanserin on June 18th, 2010 as part of our grass-roots campaign of sex scholars, practitioners, and activists. We will be face-to-face with the experts and allies of Boehringer Ingelheim, a global corporation that we believe has engaged in practices of "disease-mongering" with regards to women's sexuality.

Please sign the petition and support our campaign for diverse sexualities.

For more information, check out the following posts:

Meet Your New Experimental Sex Drug: Flibanserin by Cory Silverberg

One pill makes your libido larger at Neuroskeptic

New trials of female sexual dysfunction drug (Flibanserin) will be reported this week by Petra Boyton.

I've blogged about it my blog and the blog Shades of Gray (from whom I got the link) also encourages people to sign the petition.

[Everytime I think I create]

I once worked with a guy who asked me my take on homosexuality. He wanted to take up politics in college. He said that his opinion was that we are all culturally brought up a certain way and that we have preferences (and that is all). He was very interested in others' ideas. I think that there are contributing factors, however I do believe that we just have our preferences. The thing that concerns me about this drug is that it makes no sense to say that a sexless life hinders our health. Why do they promote birth control and say that not having periods does not effect our health? Birth control plays with blood pressure and has many side effects and causes many problems. I do believe that getting menopause and trying to control our periods does have a big effect on how healthy we are. That does not stop systematic drug and pharmaceutical companies though. They are willing to do anything for a buck. Some things are very good- like drugs that can help a brain bleed. But they will stop at nothing for things that are total nonsense. And even for someone who wants to improve their sex life, they could try natural remedies, romantic innovative ideas, and research the drugs to see how safe they may be. But advertising these products the way that they do is just being lazy and not going and getting another job that does not include bad sales. Oh yeah, it seems like all the jobs these days seem to be high sales. It just seems like a tought situation.

[Dubravka]

I once worked with a guy who asked me my take on homosexuality. He wanted to take up politics in college. He said that his opinion was that we are all culturally brought up a certain way and that we have preferences (and that is all). He was very interested in others' ideas. I think that there are contributing factors, however I do believe that we just have our preferences. The thing that concerns me about this drug is that it makes no sense to say that a sexless life hinders our health. Why do they promote birth control and say that not having periods does not effect our health? Birth control plays with blood pressure and has many side effects and causes many problems. I do believe that getting menopause and trying to control our periods does have a big effect on how healthy we are. That does not stop systematic drug and pharmaceutical companies though. They are willing to do anything for a buck. Some things are very good- like drugs that can help a brain bleed. But they will stop at nothing for things that are total nonsense. And even for someone who wants to improve their sex life, they could try natural remedies, romantic innovative ideas, and research the drugs to see how safe they may be. But advertising these products the way that they do is just being lazy and not going and getting another job that does not include bad sales. Oh yeah, it seems like all the jobs these days seem to be high sales. It just seems like a tought situation.

First of all, sexual orientation is not a choice--it's hardwired in the brain. People are born gay, straight, bi or asexual. It is in no way a "preference," and I've only ever heard it called that by conservative whackjobs who think gay people are "choosing" to live a sinful lifestyle and therefore deserve to be discriminated against.

Secondly, your rant against birth control is the biggest load of BS I've heard in quite a while. Apart from birth control finally giving women the choice to control their own damn fertility and not spend their lives as baby-breeding machines, there are many women who suffer from extremely heavy, painful periods that can be alleviated by using birth control to regulate their cycle or skip it altogether. For women who are not trying to conceive, periods serve absolutely no important biological function and are often the source of considerable pain and inconvenience. Not having a period is not unhealthy. What is unhealthy is having cramps that feel like you're being turned inside out and bleeding to the point where you develop anemia from severe blood loss. Unless you think women who have sex should be in a state of near-constant pregnancy and women with painful periods should just suck it up and deal because "OMG you should totally embrace bleeding through your crotch for a week each month because otherwise you're not a Real Woman and are denying the secret goddess powers that come from having a uterus," I would think twice before coming out with such ignorant claims.

Sorry, I know this was off-topic, but I felt it had to be addressed. I agree with everything that Mandrewliter and The Gray Lady have said so far.

[Sally]

Everytime, you can reply to a comment by hitting the reply button at the bottom of the same comment. You don't have to do two separate posts.

[Gatto]

Some things are very good- like drugs that can help a brain bleed.

Huh?

[P is for...]

Some things are very good- like drugs that can help a brain bleed.

Huh?

i think perhaps Everytime meant drugs that can help stop a brain aneurysm or something to that effect. at least, that's what i came up with after pondering for a moment. it does sound odd phrased that way.

[prettyeyes]

Secondly, your rant against birth control is the biggest load of BS I've heard in quite a while. Apart from birth control finally giving women the choice to control their own damn fertility and not spend their lives as baby-breeding machines, there are many women who suffer from extremely heavy, painful periods that can be alleviated by using birth control to regulate their cycle or skip it altogether. For women who are not trying to conceive, periods serve absolutely no important biological function and are often the source of considerable pain and inconvenience. Not having a period is not unhealthy. What is unhealthy is having cramps that feel like you're being turned inside out and bleeding to the point where you develop anemia from severe blood loss. Unless you think women who have sex should be in a state of near-constant pregnancy and women with painful periods should just suck it up and deal because "OMG you should totally embrace bleeding through your crotch for a week each month because otherwise you're not a Real Woman and are denying the secret goddess powers that come from having a uterus," I would think twice before coming out with such ignorant claims.

Sorry, I know this was off-topic, but I felt it had to be addressed. I agree with everything that Mandrewliter and The Gray Lady have said so far.

Oh god, this. My mother is always telling me how horrible for my body it is but she doesn't seem to realize that having pain like you're being slowly disemboweled every month can't possibly be health either. Until someone has had reason to be on it and been helped they just do not understand.

[MosesWilhelm]

I see birth control to monitor periods is just like taking tyenol for chronic headaches. Or at least basically. Nothing wrong with it. People sometimes forget that pain is your body going "WTF STOP DOING THIS"

[boudica]

I agree with the petition, and have signed it, it is all of our responsibility, ace or not, to try to make the world a better place. Neo-liberalist arguments that people are free to make their own decisions completely ignore the systemic problems that limit our freedom. We all live in social institutions, all of which are racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, etc. To say that this is another form of tyranny over women is exactly correct, not because anyone is attacking men in particular, but saying that our social institutions are sexist and they oppress women, this is an inescapable fact.

The talk about banning sex to decrease sexual assault is interesting, but incorrect. Sexual assault is a crime motivated by power and control, not sex. That's like saying someone hitting someone with a frying pan is a culinary crime. Sex is used as a weapon, not as a motivation. To focus the argument against sexual assault on men's uncontrollable sexual urges misplaces the correct emphasis, which is on the construction of violent masculinity. To end sexual assault, you would need to ban violent masculinity and systems of power and control that keep women in social positions of constraint and vulnerability.

Also to say that the drug should be approved or rejected because of its efficacy and risk/benefit ratio assumes that the FDA is a benign, impartial government entity, which it's not. They most definitely do have a political agenda, so whether or not Flibanserin will be "forced" on you, it still comes with political costs, many of which will be detrimental to the discursive production and material embodiment of women's sexuality and sexual desire as medicalized and pathologized.

~m

[Sally]

Also to say that the drug should be approved or rejected because of its efficacy and risk/benefit ratio assumes that the FDA is a benign, impartial government entity, which it's not. They most definitely do have a political agenda, so whether or not Flibanserin will be "forced" on you, it still comes with political costs, many of which will be detrimental to the discursive production and material embodiment of women's sexuality and sexual desire as medicalized and pathologized.

~m

I don't think anyone was saying that the FDA SHOULD follow those rules, but the fact is that is their only reason for existence: to assess efficacy and safety and license drugs based on those two issues. Of course they're political; we found that out during the previous administration, and it seems the new administrator appointed by Obama does not have the same "license everything that can make money" attitude. However, they still can't say "don't license that because maybe that's not a real disorder and it might pathologize XYZ, etc." They don't have the legal ability or the funding to get into long determinations of that sort of thing. That discussion has to occur within the medical community, not a regulatory agency.

[boudica]

But you cannot extricate the two: regulatory agency and the medical community, they are mutually constitutive.

~m

[boudica]

I see birth control to monitor periods is just like taking tyenol for chronic headaches. Or at least basically. Nothing wrong with it. People sometimes forget that pain is your body going "WTF STOP DOING THIS"

and people have been using birth control for thousands of years. Fli is different in this way: if it ain't broke then don't fix it.

[boudica]

The authors of it were successful in preventing the first HSDD med from getting FDA approval.

Which one was that? Intrinsa?

~m

PS sorry for so many posts I keep thinking of stuff to say after I already posted something :(

[Gho St Ory Qwan]

At this point I don't think that we should look at this ethically. As a group we are still infantile, with respect to power or influence, if something like this drug we're to reach the open market, with the type of pushing new psycho-pharmaceuticals receive, we'd be smothered by it in the social consciousness. We would all of a sudden be further back from any goal than we ever were.

Our goal should be to argue for asexualilty as a valid orientation, not that people distressed by their low libido shouldn't get help.

We need to be selfish for a little bit and concentrate on self preservation, even if it is a inconvenience to the population at large

If we went down this route then, frankly, we would deserve to be shunned by the population at large.

Exactly. I think some asexuals are hypersensitive to possible critisism and view anything on lack of sexual interesting as refering to us. I think the saying 'the world doesn't revolve around you' might be appropriate?

This IS a problem for some people. Not us, but we won't be force fed it. I think its good they are getting a female viagra out there, because I have read posts here of miserable people who do not like to be asexual and I wonder if they really are or if they just have a disorder.

You need to remember that lack of interest of sex or low libido is never called a disorder unless it causes significant distress. These are the ones offered, not forced, treatment.

[Sally]

But you cannot extricate the two: regulatory agency and the medical community, they are mutually constitutive.

~m

The FDA director is appointed by the President, and it's usually the case that a new President appoints a new FDA director. Because the FDA is affected by political (and sometimes religious, as was the case during the previous administration) viewpoints, it's not primarily driven by the medical community or consumer attitudes. Unfortunately.

[boudica]

yes, but you're not taking into account how politics and medicine are discursively entrenched in one another, medicine is inherently political. The medical community does not and cannot exist (unless we lived in some kind of utopia) outside of politics. The FDA director may be appointed by the President of the US and not the President of the American Medical Association, but that doesn't make a difference. What I'm talking about is the discursive institutions that produce us as subjects. What is at stake here is sexual subjectivity, not neo-liberal political freedom, and for that we need a critical theoretical understanding of how subjects are produced. Discourse is not some immaterial esoteric thing that has no material consequences. On the contrary, it dictates the very possibilities for living our lives certain ways at any given moment. You cannot do or think or say anything that you do not have a language for. And language extends beyond actual words so that we are all taught how to interpret the world a certain way depending on the discourses in which we are situated. And the FDA certainly is guided by medical discourse regardless of whether they are a "political" entity or not, so they are interpreting, judging, and implementing medical policy based on the language that they have to interpret the information given to them. It is unproductive to argue that somehow the approval of Flibanserin has no political consequences, or that somehow it is not a political issue, but rather a medical issue, because the two are inextricable, mutually constitutive discursive institutions that produce us as sexual subjects.

Sexuality and sexual politics and medical politics can never be discursively extricated from one another. They intersect to produce the kinds of sexual and medical and medico-sexual freedoms we have or don't have. Any kind of analysis of anything medical must take into account the discursive institutions that produce us all as subjects. It is not like we are subjects independent of social institutions who are capable of agency or resistance outside of discourse.

Read "Docile Bodies," "The Means of Correct Training," and "Panopticism" from the book "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault and you'll understand what I'm talking about and why your argument is unproductive because it takes away focus from what we should be talking about, which is how institutions operate to produce and constrain sexual subjectivity.

~m

[Prismatangle]

yes, but you're not taking into account how politics and medicine are discursively entrenched in one another, medicine is inherently political. The medical community does not and cannot exist (unless we lived in some kind of utopia) outside of politics. The FDA director may be appointed by the President of the US and not the President of the American Medical Association, but that doesn't make a difference. What I'm talking about is the discursive institutions that produce us as subjects. What is at stake here is sexual subjectivity, not neo-liberal political freedom, and for that we need a critical theoretical understanding of how subjects are produced. Discourse is not some immaterial esoteric thing that has no material consequences. On the contrary, it dictates the very possibilities for living our lives certain ways at any given moment. You cannot do or think or say anything that you do not have a language for. And language extends beyond actual words so that we are all taught how to interpret the world a certain way depending on the discourses in which we are situated. And the FDA certainly is guided by medical discourse regardless of whether they are a "political" entity or not, so they are interpreting, judging, and implementing medical policy based on the language that they have to interpret the information given to them. It is unproductive to argue that somehow the approval of Flibanserin has no political consequences, or that somehow it is not a political issue, but rather a medical issue, because the two are inextricable, mutually constitutive discursive institutions that produce us as sexual subjects.

Sexuality and sexual politics and medical politics can never be discursively extricated from one another. They intersect to produce the kinds of sexual and medical and medico-sexual freedoms we have or don't have. Any kind of analysis of anything medical must take into account the discursive institutions that produce us all as subjects. It is not like we are subjects independent of social institutions who are capable of agency or resistance outside of discourse.

Read "Docile Bodies," "The Means of Correct Training," and "Panopticism" from the book "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault and you'll understand what I'm talking about and why your argument is unproductive because it takes away focus from what we should be talking about, which is how institutions operate to produce and constrain sexual subjectivity.

~m

I totally take your point and I think it's good to point out... However, I wouldn't make the assumption that anyone who reads Foucault would necessarily understand it. Foucault is pretty... intense. :P For that reason I tend to avoid talking about it in non-academic settings like AVEN.

[Sally]

yes, but you're not taking into account how politics and medicine are discursively entrenched in one another, medicine is inherently political. The medical community does not and cannot exist (unless we lived in some kind of utopia) outside of politics. The FDA director may be appointed by the President of the US and not the President of the American Medical Association, but that doesn't make a difference. What I'm talking about is the discursive institutions that produce us as subjects. What is at stake here is sexual subjectivity, not neo-liberal political freedom, and for that we need a critical theoretical understanding of how subjects are produced. Discourse is not some immaterial esoteric thing that has no material consequences. On the contrary, it dictates the very possibilities for living our lives certain ways at any given moment. You cannot do or think or say anything that you do not have a language for. And language extends beyond actual words so that we are all taught how to interpret the world a certain way depending on the discourses in which we are situated. And the FDA certainly is guided by medical discourse regardless of whether they are a "political" entity or not, so they are interpreting, judging, and implementing medical policy based on the language that they have to interpret the information given to them. It is unproductive to argue that somehow the approval of Flibanserin has no political consequences, or that somehow it is not a political issue, but rather a medical issue, because the two are inextricable, mutually constitutive discursive institutions that produce us as sexual subjects.

Sexuality and sexual politics and medical politics can never be discursively extricated from one another. They intersect to produce the kinds of sexual and medical and medico-sexual freedoms we have or don't have. Any kind of analysis of anything medical must take into account the discursive institutions that produce us all as subjects. It is not like we are subjects independent of social institutions who are capable of agency or resistance outside of discourse.

Read "Docile Bodies," "The Means of Correct Training," and "Panopticism" from the book "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault and you'll understand what I'm talking about and why your argument is unproductive because it takes away focus from what we should be talking about, which is how institutions operate to produce and constrain sexual subjectivity.

~m

I totally take your point and I think it's good to point out... However, I wouldn't make the assumption that anyone who reads Foucault would necessarily understand it. Foucault is pretty... intense. :P For that reason I tend to avoid talking about it in non-academic settings like AVEN.

I'm pretty certain that neither the officials at the FDA nor the general medical community has read Foucault.

[boudica]

it doesn't matter if they have or not, and I do believe that popular discourse can include poststructuralist theory. to say that non-academic people cannot understand Foucault is elitist I think.

plus it doesn't do any good to not talk about something. the more you talk about something, the more you learn, the better informed you are, to not bring something up because you think someone won't understand it does them a disservice.

that's like saying you're not going to explain asexuality to your sexual friends because they wouldn't get it. Well they might or might not that's up to them to decide, not you.

~m

[Prismatangle]

it doesn't matter if they have or not, and I do believe that popular discourse can include poststructuralist theory. to say that non-academic people cannot understand Foucault is elitist I think.

plus it doesn't do any good to not talk about something. the more you talk about something, the more you learn, the better informed you are, to not bring something up because you think someone won't understand it does them a disservice.

that's like saying you're not going to explain asexuality to your sexual friends because they wouldn't get it. Well they might or might not that's up to them to decide, not you.

~m

I didn't say that non-academic people can't understand Foucault. Of course they can. However, I know people who are academic who have struggled with Foucault. I work from the assumption that the vast majority of people just don't want to read it, because it takes a lot of work. So while it's something that's worth bringing up, it's not a discussion I would assume most people would be interested in having. Academic types are more likely to be interested in it than others.

And... you know, people DO decide not to discuss asexuality with sexual friends because they assume that others wouldn't get it. It's a hassle and a huge effort to undertake to educate others about asexuality, and some people do decide that it's not worth the emotional risk that despite their best efforts, people would not listen or not understand anyway. What you said implies that that choice is stupid or otherwise wrong. But I think it's just as good, if not in some situations wiser, than the choice to attempt to educate others about asexuality. Nobody is under any obligation to educate others, and some people really just don't want to hear it anyway (speaking from bitter experience, here).

This is veering too far off-topic, but it was something I thought should be addressed.

[boudica]

I apologize, I didn't mean to bring up something with negative emotional connotations. I experience reactions of hostility and confusion a lot of times as well. But this is the asexual visibility and education network, so I assume that many people here are interested in educating others about asexuality. Such an educational project doesn't necessarily have to entail personal disclosure, and I would agree that sometimes it is safer to keep that information private. It is certainly possible that one can talk about asexuality without making it about identity politics.

Perhaps I am biased because I am an educator by profession, and I understand how exhausting it can be to try to make people understand something foreign to them. I totally know what you mean, though, when you say that some people just don't want to hear it. But I guess I just believe it is my job, and my obligation, to make the world a better place so I believe strongly in education to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other kinds of oppressive power structures perpetuated by ignorance. But of course no one is obligated to endeavor in such pedagogical projects.

As for non-academic people not being interested in Foucault, I have the opposite feeling. Every non-academic friend I explain biopolitics to says that it's really interesting and wants to know more about it. So I talk about it when I feel it's useful, and I do believe for the purposes of critically engaging with the Flibanserin petition, that a poststructuralist theoretical analysis is indispensable. The goals of the petition don't make sense without it, which I sense from a lot of people who are arguing against signing it.

The main point I was trying to bring up is that I think it's unproductive to focus a critique of sexual dsyfunction on the individual level, as many people in this thread are doing. Rather, we should bring the focus back to the systemic and institutional issues surrounding sexual dysfunction, and in particular women's sexual dysfunction, because I believe that is more productive, and that's why I support the petition.

~m

[Sally]

it doesn't matter if they have or not, and I do believe that popular discourse can include poststructuralist theory. to say that non-academic people cannot understand Foucault is elitist I think.

plus it doesn't do any good to not talk about something. the more you talk about something, the more you learn, the better informed you are, to not bring something up because you think someone won't understand it does them a disservice.

that's like saying you're not going to explain asexuality to your sexual friends because they wouldn't get it. Well they might or might not that's up to them to decide, not you.

~m

But it DOES matter. It matters that poststructuralist theory may be interesting to those you personally talk with but really has nothing to do with what the FDA does or doesn't do. Appropriateness of arena matters. Educational theories and practice are fine in the right arenas. Petitions to the FDA are not the right arena. That is not necessarily because FDA officials or the medical community don't understand such theories but because they are not academic theoreticians; that is not their job. My saying this isn't a matter of hostility to what you've said or the fact that you are an educator. I'm simply trying to talk about reality. The reality is that not everyone in every situation wants to engage in a theoretical discussion of Foucault or anything else, and you really can't make anyone wish to. Everyone has the right to not be interested in listening, including the FDA and doctors, without being it being taken that they are incapable of understanding.

[boudica]

I understand, sorry for ruffling so many feathers.

~m

edit: I feel like I have to clarify what I was trying to say.

I wasn't saying that the FDA should read Foucault, I never made that claim. But I think an understanding of biopolitics illuminates the necessity of the Flibanserin petition. I am focusing on the critique of the petition being made, not on the FDA.

I never said that the FDA has to understand biopolitics, but that is precisely why we need the petition: because the more the FDA knows how their approval will effect women's sexuality, the more likely they are to take into account their role as a social institution that produces and constrains women's sexual subjectivity in meaningful ways.

I wasn't saying the FDA should be interested in Foucault, but that when talking about the petition and whether or not it should be signed, whether or not it's a waste of time, the context of biopolitics, to me at least, gives the petition a lot of validity, and for me it makes sense to sign it in this light. When you take into account how social institutions (like the FDA, like the medical community, like the drug companies, etc.) operate to produce and constrain our level sexual freedom (biopolitics) then it makes sense. And that's all I was trying to say.

I hope what I'm trying to get across here is clear... I feel like it's being misconstrued a million different ways.

I also support the New View Campaign, authors of the petition. More info here: http://www.newviewcampaign.org/

[Gatto]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Lord Happy Toast]

The authors of it were successful in preventing the first HSDD med from getting FDA approval.

Which one was that? Intrinsa?

~m

PS sorry for so many posts I keep thinking of stuff to say after I already posted something :(

Yes, I was referring to Intrinsa, where the situation was quite similar in may ways--very small effect size, unknown long term effects of the drug, risk of possible side-effects, all combined with worries about social and political consequences.

I don't think I really want to wade too much into the issues of post-structuralism except to point out that critical theory appeals to some much more than others. There are some, including some who are rather socially/historically/politically minded in their thinking about things, who aren't all that into it. For that reason, I think it is important to make sure that not all of our arguments are geared in that direction.

[Lord Happy Toast]

Sorry for the double post, but I feel compelled to respond to this:

You cannot do or think or say anything that you do not have a language for. And language extends beyond actual words so that we are all taught how to interpret the world a certain way depending on the discourses in which we are situated.

I know that such comments are repeated so often in certain quarters that they become dogma--the kind of thing that if enough people say it enough times, then it must be true. As a linguist, I would like to point out that it's nonsense. In fact, you acknowledge this in your second sentence. To make the first sentence defensible, you have to extend "language" beyond "language" to entire worldviews and how people conceive the world, etc. Of course, this renders your point utterly vacuous--it amounts to saying that people cannot do or think things outside of how they do and think things. (Actually, I'm not sure if that would be vacuous or still utterly false. People say, think, and do things that haven't said thought or done before all the time.)

Limiting "language" to "language" in any sensible sense of the term, it's clear that the claim is utterly false. It's a pretty common experience to have some experience or feeling that it's difficult to put into words or that you don't know how to express. We have all sorts of concepts for which we have no words--if this weren't the case, we would never make up new words. And we would never need words like "thingy" that can be modified to create all sorts of ad-hoc categories/terms.

I'm curious how you would account for having a sense of ineffability.

Language is inherently creative--we regularly create new terms, new discourses, new ways of describing and talking about things precisely because of the utter ordinariness of having experiences for which we have no previous language.

[boudica]

right, I totally agree with your acknowledgment that we do feel certain ways that we don't have words for. What i was trying to say about language extending beyond language (meaning words) was more about discourse than language, so that discourse encompasses multiple ways of conceptualizing something. But I was just trying to summarize a dense theoretical framework of how discourse shapes our lives so totally and completely that it is often invisible - we don't even recognize, let alone consciously think about how we're trained to think in certain ways and view the world in certain ways, and when discourses are invisible, it becomes impossible to think outside that discourse until it is made visible.

For example, America has a ubiquitous neo-liberalist discourse, which is what I was critiquing earlier, that centers "freedom" on the level of the "individual," "rational" subject, and ignores systemic and institutional factors that constrain and/or produce freedom. People think and say things like we have no right to interfere in someone's ability to get "help" for sexual dysfunction because ultimately it is up to their free and independent "choice." Choice is only seen to be constrained when there are overt significations of "coercion," e.g. threatening someone with psychological or physical harm if they don't do something. Without realizing that one's thoughts are the product of neo-liberalist discourse, one assumes they are right, that this is simply "common sense," the most logical way to operate, and consequently dismisses other alternative ways of thinking because they "don't make sense." When this discourse becomes visible, though, it is obvious why such logic is problematic.

I guess what I was really trying to say is that it's not impossible to think outside of discourse, but that when a particular discourse become naturalized, ubiquitous, it becomes invisible, making it difficult to think outside of this discourse because it is assumed to be "common sense," or "objective," when in reality, what is "common sense" should be seen as socially constructed, and influenced by hegemonic discourses.

I was trying to avoid so much detail by condensing it into a simple sentence to illuminate why most people's arguments against the Flibanserin petition, which I fully support because it is engaged in an anti-neoliberal project by attempting to subvert hegemonic discourses and institutions governing women's sexuality, are unproductive. It's not necessarily that they are right or wrong, but I was trying to say there are other ways of looking at this issue that make sense.

~m

[Gatto]

I think the way people think determines what they say, rather than what they say determining what they think. It seems like you are proposing something like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which I just don't buy at all.

[Gatto]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Goldstein-t.html?pagewanted=all