Sexual Apathy in America

Is American sexual apathy a medical condition or the result of an “anxious, overachieving, white upper middle class?” The New York Times ruminates on the prospect of female Viagra. “The real culprit, originating in the 19th century, is bourgeois propriety,” argues Camille Paglia. “As respectability became the central middle-class value, censorship and repression became the norm.” Today, sexual apathy is being medicalized, but it’s no use, says Paglia: “Pharmaceutical companies will never find the holy grail of a female Viagra — not in this culture driven and drained by middle-class values. Inhibitions are stubbornly internal. And lust is too fiery to be left to the pharmacist.