How to Think More About Sex (The School of Life)

ii. Impotence

I.

It is generally easier to admit to having spent time in prison than to having suffered from impotence. There are few greater sources of shame for a man, or of feelings of rejection for his partner. It is a physical failure with moral connotations, flouting norms of decency and masculinity and seeming at once to rebuke the partner’s personality and physical appearance. The tragedies that afflict the human race are many, but seldom are they as intense as those that strike in a bedroom after a couple have repeatedly tried and failed to secure the erection of the male. At such moments, suicide may no longer seem a remote or unreasonable possibility.

The real problem with impotence is less the actual loss of pleasure involved (which can be compensated for easily enough through masturbation) than the blow dealt to the self-esteem of both parties. Impotence is deemed a catastrophe because of an understanding of what flaccidity means.

Yet the argument that will be ventured here is that we are grievously mistaken in our methods of interpretation, for if we were to assess the matter more fairly, we would feel not only unembarrassed by occasions of psychologically created impotence, but perhaps even proud of them.

2.

We should start by sketching the broad outlines of a topic that deserves one day to be written up in the form of a serious scholarly monograph: the history of impotence.

Let us propose, though we have little concrete empirical evidence for the claim, that at the dawn of its existence mankind was rarely bothered by impotence. The early hominids who lived in clammy darkness in the caves of central France, or amid enervating heat in the straw huts of the Rift Valley, may have had a hard time finding food, evading dangerous animals, sewing underpants and communicating with faraway relatives, but having sex was a simple matter for them, because the one question that almost certainly never ran through the minds of male hunters as they lifted themselves up on their hirsute limbs was whether their partners were going to be in the mood that night – or whether they might instead feel revolted or bored by the sight of a penis, or just keen to spend a quiet evening tending to the fire. Reason and kindness had not yet intruded on the free flow of animal impulses – nor, in the West, would they do so convincingly for many millennia to come, until the influences of classical philosophy and Judeo–Christian ethics at last percolated through the general population in the centuries after the death of Christ. Impotence had its origins in the increase in empathy attendant on the promotion of the Golden Rule (‘Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you’); it was the strangely troublesome fruit of our new inclination to wonder what another might be feeling and then to identify with his or her potential objections to our invasive or unsatisfactory demands.

Accordingly, all but the least self-aware among us will sometimes be struck by how distasteful our desire for sex can seem to someone else, how contrary to reason it can appear, how peculiar and physically off-putting our flesh may be and how unwanted our caresses – and therefore how careful we ought to be in going about the business of seduction. The greater our power of imagination, the more acute and amplified will be our apprehension about giving offence – to the extent that even when sex is a legitimate possibility, our doubts may prove impossible to cast aside, with fatal consequences, if we are male, for our ability to maintain an erection. It is civilization itself, with its faith in human rights, its respect for kindness and its moral sophistication, which has unwittingly generated an inestimable increase in occasions of sexual fiasco. An advanced capacity for love and tenderness can ironically render us too sensitive to try to pester anyone else into having sex with us.

Civilization has surely brought with it virtues of enormous benefit to relationships between the genders, among them gentleness and tact, a spirit of equality and a greater fairness in the apportioning of domestic chores. We may have to admit, however, that it has also made it harder for us – or for men, at least – to have sex. We now know that we must never insist, never roughly thrust forward our needs and never regard another person as a mere instrument for our own use or pleasure.

Well-meaning though our hesitancy and embarrassment may be, and though based on the kindest of impulses, they risk cheating us of certain promising opportunities. Now and then we may cross paths with individuals who are not appalled by our longing for urgent and forceful sexual congress, and who see nothing disgusting in even the farthest erotic extremes. Yet these candidates may still require us to make the first move, perhaps because while they happen to want sex, they also need someone else to remind them of the fact. Their minds may be so busy with rational matters and daily distractions that only outside intervention can succeed in reacquainting them with their libidinous selves. If the deadlock of shyness is ever to be broken, one party must overcome the fear of displeasing the other and take a chance, gambling that in the end, perhaps after an interval of confusion and reluctance, sex will disclose its manifold attractions.

In its initial manoeuvres, therefore, the most loving, well intentioned and empathetic sex can sometimes look an awful lot like complete indifference to what someone else feels or wants.

3.

Impotence is at base, then, a symptom of respect, a fear of causing displeasure through the imposition of our own desires or the inability to satisfy our partner’s needs. The popularity of pharmaceuticals designed to combat erectile dysfunction signals the collective longing of modern men for a reliable mechanism by which to override our subtle, delicate, civilized worry that we will disappoint or upset others.

A better and drug-free approach might consist in a public campaign to promote to both genders – perhaps via a series of billboards and full-page ads in glossy magazines – the notion that what is often termed ‘nerves’ in a man, far from being a problem, is in fact an asset that should be sought out and valued as evidence of an evolved type of kindness. The fear of being disgusting, absurd or a disappointment to someone else is a first sign of morality. Impotence is an achievement of the ethical imagination – so much so that in the future, we men might learn to act out episodes of the condition as a way of signalling our depth of spirit, just as today we furtively swallow Viagra tablets in the bathroom to prove the extent of our manliness.