Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:57:19.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Italians (should) do it better? Medicalisation and the disempowering of intimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto  and
Chiara Bertone
Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto*
Affiliation:
Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
Chiara Bertone
Affiliation:
University of East Piedmont, Italy
*
∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed new processes of visibilisation of adult heterosexual men's sexuality in the public arena in Italy, culminating in discussions on sexual scandals. The authors explore here one of these processes: the current mediatisation of a medicalised male sexuality, which appears as a more socially legitimate and scientifically grounded new discourse on masculinity. By analysing recent social campaigns on male sexual health, it will be shown how, far from opening spaces for a de-naturalisation of male sexuality and masculinity, this form of visibility through medicalisation actually works by re-naturalising male sexuality, and thereby restoring virility, through reference to highly gendered respectability and predatory sexual scripts and the disempowering of intimacy as a new sexual script promoting a situational and more symmetric understanding of gender.

Keywords

medicalisationsexual healthheterosexualitymasculinitysexual scriptsvirilism
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 17 , Issue 4: Special Issue: The politics of sexuality in contemporary Italy , November 2012 , pp. 433 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barbagli, M., Dalla Zuanna, G. and Garelli, F. 2010. La sessualità degli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Bellassai, S. 2006. La legge del desiderio. Il progetto Merlin e l'Italia degli anni Cinquanta. Rome: Carocci.Google Scholar
Bellassai, S. 2011. L'invenzione della virilità. Politica e immaginario maschile nell'Italia contemporanea. Rome: Carocci.Google Scholar
Benadusi, L. 2005. Il nemico dell'uomo nuovo. L'omosessualità nell'esperimento totalitario fascista. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Bertone, C. 2010. Sessualità maschili e femminili, tra convergenze e nuove asimmetrie. In La sessualità degli italiani, eds. Barbagli, M., Dalla Zuanna, G. and Garelli, F., 207–34. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Bertone, C. and Ferrero Camoletto, R. 2009. Beyond the sex machine? Sexual practices and masculinity in adult men's heterosexual accounts. Journal of Gender Studies 18, no. 4:369–86.Google Scholar
Bertone, C. and Ferrero Camoletto, R. 2011. Bringing masculinity into the picture: Understanding the gendered dimensions of (hetero)sexuality in Italy. Annales 21, no. 1:125–36.Google Scholar
Bevere, F., Calogero, A.E., Colao, A., Fabbri, A., Foresta, C., Gandini, L., Jannini, E.A., Lenzi, A., Maggi, M., Oleari, F., Palumbo, F., Rizzotto, A. and Simonetti, G. 2012. Criteri di appropriatezza strutturale, tecnologica e clinica nella prevenzione, diagnosi e cura delle patologie andrologiche. Quaderni del Ministero della Salute, no. 13.Google Scholar
Bolla, L. and Cardini, F. 1999. Carne in scatola. La rappresentazione del corpo nella televisione italiana. Rome: RAI/VQPT.Google Scholar
Boni, F. 2004. Men's help. Sociologia dei periodici maschili. Rome: Meltemi.Google Scholar
Boni, F. 2008. Il superleader. Fenomenologia mediatica di Silvio Berlusconi. Rome: Meltemi.Google Scholar
Bordo, S. 1999. The male body: A new look at men in public and in private. Città: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.Google Scholar
Boulé, J.-P. 2001. Viagra, heroic masculinity and France. French Cultural Studies 12, no. 35:207–26.Google Scholar
Carpiano, R.M. 2001. Passive medicalization: The case of viagra and erectile dysfunction. Sociological Spectrum 21:441–50.Google Scholar
Conrad, P. 2007. The medicalization of society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Duncombe, J. and Marsden, D. 1996. Who's orgasm is this anyway? ‘Sex work’ in long-term relationships. In Sexual cultures, eds. Weeks, J. and Holland, J., 220–38. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ferrero Camoletto, R. and Bertone, C. 2010. Coming to be a man: Pleasure in the construction of Italian men's (hetero)sexuality. Italian Studies 65, no. 2:235–50.Google Scholar
Flood, M. 2008. Men, sex, and homosociality: How bonds between men shape their sexual relations with women. Men and Masculinities 10, no. 3:339–59.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1990. History of sexuality: The will to knowledge. London: Penguin Books (Orig. pub. 1976).Google Scholar
Gagnon, J.H. and Simon, W. 1973. Sexual conduct. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Giami, A. 2008. Two facets of the medicalization of sexuality in the late 20th century: AIDS & Viagra. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening 45, no. 6:671–73.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1993. The transformation of intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gott, M. 2005. Sexuality, sexual health and ageing. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Jamieson, L. 1998. Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Katz, S. and Marshall, B.L. 2004. Is the functional ‘normal’? Aging, sexuality and the bio-marking of successful living. History of the Human Sciences 17, no. 1:53–75.Google Scholar
Jackson, S. and Scott, S. 2010. Theorizing sexuality. Milton Keynes: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Kempner, J. 2006. Uncovering the man in medicine: Lessons learned from a case study of cluster headache. Gender & Society, 20, no. 5:632–56.Google Scholar
Loe, M. 2001. Fixing broken masculinity: Viagra as a technology for the production of gender and sexuality. Sexuality & Culture 5, no. 3:97–125.Google Scholar
Loe, M. 2004. The rise of Viagra: How the little blue pill changed sex in America. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Loe, M. 2006. The Viagra blues: Embracing or resisting the Viagra body. In Medicalised masculinities, eds. Rosenfeld, D. and Faircloth, C.A., 21–44. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Mamo, L. and Fishman, J.R. 2001. Potency in all the right places: Viagra as a technology of the gendered body. Body & Society 7, no. 4:13–35.Google Scholar
Marshall, B.L. and Katz, S. 2002. Forever functional: Sexual fitness and the ageing male body. Body and Society 8, no. 4:43–70.Google Scholar
Mianiti, M. 2009. La vita Viagra. Uomini, pillole, sesso e relazioni. Rome: DeriveApprodi.Google Scholar
Mosse, G.L. 1985. Nationalism and sexuality: Respectability and abnormal sexuality in modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig.Google Scholar
Plummer, K. 2005. Male sexualities. In Handbook on studies on men and masculinities, eds. Kimmel, M.S., Hearn, J. and Connell, R.W., 178–95. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Potts, A. 2000. The essence of hard on: Hegemonic masculinity and the cultural construction of erectile dysfunction. Men and Masculinities 3, no. 1:85–103.Google Scholar
Potts, A., Gavey, N., Grace, V.M. and Vares, T. 2003. The downside of Viagra: Women's experiences and concerns. Sociology of Health & Illness 25, no. 7:697–719.Google Scholar
Potts, A., Grace, V.M., Gavey, N. and Vares, T. 2004. ‘Viagra stories’: Challenging ‘erectile dysfunction’. Social Science & Medicine 59:489–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Riska, E. 2004. Masculinity and men's health: Coronary heart disease in medical and public discourse. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Ross, C. 2010. Critical approaches to gender and sexuality in Italian culture and society. Italian Studies 65, no. 2:164–77.Google Scholar
Simon, W. and Gagnon, J.H. 1986. Sexual scripts: Permanence and change. Archives of Sexual Behavior 15, no. 2:97–120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spackman, B. 1996. Fascist virilities: Rhetorics, ideology and social fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tiefer, L. 1994. The medicalization of impotence: Normalising phallocentrism. Gender & Society 8, no. 3:363–77.Google Scholar
Weeks, J. 1985. Sexuality and its discontents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wienke, C. 2005. Male sexuality, medicalization, and the marketing of Cialis and Levitra. Sexuality & Culture 9, no. 4:29–57.Google Scholar
Wienke, C. 2006. Sex the natural way: The marketing of Cialis and Levitra. In Medicalised masculinities, eds. Rosenfeld, D. and Faircloth, C.A., 45–64. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar