‘Manopause’: sexual response changes as a threat to ageing manhood

Abstract

When men root manhood in sexual performance, their inability to get and maintain an erection (i.e. erectile dysfunction) may pose a threat to ageing men’s ability to enact masculinity. Using data from the 2015–2016 National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) – a nationally representative survey of the USA – this study finds that age and erectile dysfunction interact: men who report ‘trouble getting or maintaining an erection’ have a higher odds of reporting anxiety before sex. However, this effect gradually declines as the sample of men with erectile dysfunction ages (from ages 49 to 95). Additionally, men who do not report erectile dysfunction have the same odds of sex-anxiety throughout the sample, regardless of their age. The change in sexual performance may cause distress for men, as they feel unable to maintain their dominant masculinity in old age. While previous studies have shown that age and gender interact to affect men’s sexual health in mid-life and later-life, this study adds to the feminist gerontology literature by providing indirect evidence that changes in sexual response may become gradually less anxiety-inducing, and thereby, less threatening for men as they age.

Keywords:

• Ageing manhood
• erectile dysfunction
• masculinity
• sexual health
• sex anxiety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 To note, the NSHAP sampled African American and Hispanic populations at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups.

2 While I was unable to analyse men’s own perceptions of their gender enactment directly (i.e. doing masculinity), I tested for men’s likelihood of sex-anxiety compared to that of women. Using simple logistic regression (n = 2,292) and an adjusted Wald test, I found that there were significant differences between men and women’s likelihood of experiencing anxiety before sex, with men having a 2.374 higher odds of reporting sex-anxiety than women. Using the adjusted Wald statistic of 45.42 (p <.001), I infer that men’s sex anxieties are distinct from those of women. See Table S1 in online supplemental materials.

3 Odds ratios of this size should be evaluated with caution. Testing the model specification by running the post-command ‘linktest’ for Model 3 showed that the model was sufficient as the coefficient for_hat was significant (p <.001) and the coefficient for _hatsq was not significant (p > .05). However, due to the large odds ratio (OR: 232.026), standard error (SE: 265.448) and confidence interval (CI: 24.589 to 2189.462), these findings for erectile dysfunction outside of the interaction term should be taken with caution. See Table S2 in online supplemental materials.

4 Marginal estimates for Figure 1 were created in Stata 15.1 using the post-command, ‘margins, at(age=(50(5)95) no_erect=(0 1))’ and ‘marginsplot’.

Additional information

Funding

The author reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.