Wellbeing pharmacy and the Global Better Sex Survey

1. Wellbeing pharmacy and the Global Better Sex Survey Mark Davis Health Living and Citizenship Roundtable Meeting, Monash Prato Campus, 25-26 June 2009

2. Overview • Introduce Pfizer’s sex surveys and how these address ‘satisfaction’ • Put Pfizer’s surveys in context of previous surveys • Reflect on unorthodox uses of Viagra • Consider tensions in Pfizer’s use of sexual satisfaction

3. Pfizer’s surveys: GSSAB • Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors • “. . . subjective sexual well-being” (Laumman et al 2006: 146) • During the past 12 months, how physically pleasurable did you find your relationship with your partner to be? • During the past 12 months, how emotionally satisfying did you find your relationship with your partner to be?

4. Pfizer’s surveys: GBSS • Global Better Sex Survey, 2005/6 • ‘The GBSS was commissioned to quantify levels of sexual satisfaction whilst gaining a unique insight into the unmet sexual needs and aspirations of couples throughout the world.’ cornerstone-msc.net/GBSS1/gbss_survey.htm • http://www.menshealth.com.my/ed_11.htm • www.viagra.com

5. National sex surveys • Kinsey, US, 1948 and 1953 • ‘Little Kinsey’, late 1940s, UK, (Stanley, 1995) • Hite Reports, 1976 & 1981 • National Survey of Family Growth, US, 6 surveys between 1973 to 2002/3 • National Health and Social Life Survey, US, 1992 • National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, UK, 1990/91 & 2000 • Sex in Australia, 2000/1

6. Features of Pfizer’s sex surveys • ‘Not biased like Kinsey’ • Justify themselves through public health (sexual satisfaction) • Use random survey methods to ensure credibility • Satisfaction (genital sex) • Privatised

7. To summarise: • The Pfizer surveys show what private capital can do when the state cannot act: • creative use of method • traverse the globe, effortlessly and trouble free • provide unprecedented information • Appear to have opened up questions of satisfaction in novel ways BUT • Implicitly and explicitly join satisfaction with Viagra (and therefore privilege sex as penetration)

8. Viagra cultures • Self-prescibers (Fox and Ward, 2006) • Poly-drug users (Fisher et al, 2006) and gay men (Mansergh, 2006) • What can a Viagra body do? (Potts, 2004)

9. Wellbeing pharmacy • Pfizer’s sex surveys: • Eclectic mix of scientific credibility, sexual subjectivity and private consumption • Render satisfaction calculable, purified, globalised • Help establish Viagra orthodoxy and chase out alterities • Sexual wellbeing in a pill • Attractive, necessary and banal • Is this really better sex?

10. References • Fisher, D., Malow, R., Rosenberg, R., Reynolds, G., Farerell, N. and Jaffe, A. (2006), 'Recreational Viagra use and sexual risk among drug abusing men', American Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2, 2, 107-114. • Fox, N. and Ward, K. (2006) 'Health identities: from expert patient to resisting consumer', health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 10, 4, 461-479. • Laumman et al 2006, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 35, 2: 146. • Mansergh, G., Shouse, R., Marks, G., Guzman, R., Rader, M., Buchbinder, S. and Colfax, G. (2006), 'Methamphetamine and sildenafil (Viagra) use are linked to unprotected receptive and insertive anal sex, respectively, in a sample of men who have sex with men', Sexually Transmitted Infections, 82, 131-134. • Potts, A. (2004), 'Deleuze on Viagra (Or, What can a 'Viagra-body' do?)', Body & Society, 10, 1, 17-36. • Reumann, M. (2005), American sexual character: Sex, gender and national identity in the Kinsey Reports, (Berkeley: University of California Press). • Stanley, L. (1995) Sex surveyed 1949-1994: From Mass-Observation's 'Little Kinsey' to the National Survey and the Hite Reports (London: Taylor & Francis)