5 Facts You Probably Don’t Know About the New “Female Viagra”
Recently the media has been getting hot and bothered about the release of a new so-called female Viagra pill. The drug, called Flibanserin, was recently approved by the FDA and should hit the markets later this summer.
Your knee-jerk reaction to this new medical advancement is probably something like: “Whoo hoo! Equality for all! Get it, girls!” but on closer inspection, this daily drug may not be the answer we were looking for. Here are a few things you should think about before sharing news of the pill on your FB wall.
1. It’s not the same as (male) Viagra: Male Viagra works to cure erectile dysfunction. This pill (of course it’s pink) is meant for women who lack sexual desire. As sex columnist Dan Savage describes it in his most recent podcast, “female Viagra is to make women horny… [male] Viagra is used to make men operable. Flibanserin is meant to trigger dopamine, the happy chemical in your brain and can be used by women who have medically low sex drive.”
2. It has major side effects: A New York Times article on the subject mentions that the drug can have some serious side effects such as low blood pressure and fainting — side effects that could lead to accidental injury, which has never helped anyone’s libido in the first place.
3. It’s not a cure-all: The handy article goes on to say that the women who took the pill in trials had only a slight improvement in sexual desire compared with the women who took a placebo pill.
4. You can’t drink EVER: The other drawbacks to this pill is that you cannot use it while using birth control pills or while drinking alcohol, meaning that if you take this drug for sex-related reasons, you have to swear off those things for the rest of your life. That might be more of a drag than not getting laid to begin with.
5. Better things may be on the way: The point could be made that even if this initial drug had limitations, it could open the door for more research and better drugs to come out in the future, right? Wrong. Dan Savage says that that argument implies the drug already doesn’t work, which is the equivalent of saying “take this shitty drug until a better one comes out.” Ugh.
In short, this isn’t the pill women deserve and it’s not the one they need. For now, we’ll stick to the original female Viagra: Ryan Gosling in a chunky knit sweater.
Would you use Flibanserin? If not, what would you use instead? Tell us in the comments
(h/t The New York Times)
