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Male sexuality, medicalization, and the marketing of Cialis and Levitra

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Abstract

New treatments for male impotence have proliferated since Viagra’s popular emergence on the market in 1998. Two such therapies recently received FDA approval for prescription use: Cialis and Levitra. This paper examines the marketing campaigns for Viagra’s competitors and asks whether these treatments offer a different discourse on impotence. Using advertising and promotional materials, the study focuses on the major discursive themes related to the promotion of these drugs. The study finds that while the marketing campaigns for Cialis and Levitra employ most of medicine’s traditional discourses on impotence, they emphasize several additional discursive strategies to help promote these drugs in the competitive impotence treatment market. The author suggests that these promotional themes have important implications for the medical project of constructing the “sexually functional” male body. In conclusion, the author argues that these new drugs and the discourses they circulate introduce new standards for sexual functioning and medicalize areas of male sexuality not previously seen as requiring medical repair.

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Wienke, C. Male sexuality, medicalization, and the marketing of Cialis and Levitra. Sex Cult 9, 29–57 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-005-1001-1

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