Men’s Feminist Identification and Reported Use of Prescription Erectile Dysfunction Medication

ABSTRACT

We analyzed data from the 2018 Sex in Canada survey (n = 1,015 cisgender men) to examine the association between feminist identification and reported use of prescription ED medication (EDM) during men’s last sexual encounter. Feminist-identified men were substantially more likely to report EDM use than non-feminist men, even after controlling for alcohol use before sex, erection difficulties, sexual arousal, sexual health, mental health, and physical health. One explanation is that feminist men may use EDM to bolster their masculinity when it is otherwise threatened by their identification as feminist. Another is that non-feminist men may be less likely to use prescription EDM because they view accessing healthcare services as a threat to their masculinity. It is also possible that feminist men are more likely to use EDM because they wish to maintain an erection to better please their partner. Lastly, feminist men may be more honest about EDM use than non-feminist men, even though rates are similar. Regardless of the exact reason, therapists can use these results to tailor sexual health messages to clients based on feminist identification. Future work could employ qualitative methods to understand why feminist men report higher rates of EDM use than non-feminist men.

Acknowledgments

The Sex in Canada survey was made possible thanks to Debby Herbenick from the Indiana University School of Public Health, whose National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior formed the basis of our survey questionnaire.

Availability of Data and Code

Replication data and code for the Sex in Canada survey analyses are available at the following webpage: https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dataverse/fetner.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Ethics Approval

Ethics approval for the Sex in Canada research project was obtained from McMaster University, Certificate #2017–113. The Sex in Canada survey obtained informed consent from all participants.

Financial Interests

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Notes

¹ https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/erectile-dysfunction/symptoms-causes/syc-20355776.

² See Diefendorf (2015) for how this relationship differs among unmarried evangelical men.

³ Given that understandings of ED differ by cultural context, not all older men feel that ED is a problem: some working-class urban Mexican men, for instance, accept decreased erectile abilities and refocus on emotional connection to loved ones (Wentzell, 2013). Similarly, both EDM and traditional Chinese medicine are popular among Chinese men because many view them as addressing different but overlapping needs related to ED (Zhang, 2007; see also Agunbiade & Ayotunde, 2012, for related findings among the Yoruba people).

⁴ The term “visible minority” is an official term the Canadian government uses to describe “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (this term is contained within the Employment Equity Act and is often used in government documents, including Census publications).

⁵ Prairie provinces included Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Atlantic provinces included New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. No Yukon residents were in the analytic sample. Three respondents resided in the Northwest Territory or Nunavut, and they were coded with the Prairie provinces.

⁶ Because the relationship between reported EDM use and feminist identification may differ among heterosexual men and among sexual minority men, we ran robustness tests that analyzed only heterosexual men. Results were substantively identical to main analyses that included sexual minority men. See Supplementary Tables 5, 6, and 7.

Additional information

Funding

The Sex in Canada research project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Grant #435-2017-0369, Tina Fetner (PI), Michelle Dion and Melanie Heath (co-I).