Intimate tablets: digital advocacy and post-feminist pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Since the enormous commercial success of Viagra, launched by Pfizer in 1998, large pharmaceutical conglomerates have sought to produce an analogous drug for women with low sexual desire. On August 18 2015, Sprout Pharmaceuticals obtained approval from the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) for flibanserin, now marketed as Addyi. In the lead-up to the approval of Addyi, campaigns supporting the production of the drug were deployed through an extensive use of social and digital media platforms including Facebook and Twitter, which mobilised discourses of post-feminism to reconfigure narratives of intimacy to lobby the FDA. The lobbying for the approval of the tablet represents a unique instance of consumers reproducing discourses of medicalisation in order to demand gender equality. It strategically combines feminist rhetoric and digital media platforms to disseminate and coordinate such demands. The rhetoric of post-feminism constitutes both a reproduction of discourses of medicalisation and a challenge to medical orthodoxy. The success of the campaigns exemplifies a turn in the pharmaceutical industry where potential consumers are also producers of medical products, no longer passive but active agents in the commodification of pharmaceutical intimacy and the management of sexual desire.

Keywords:

• Addyi
• media
• pharmaceuticals
• post-feminism
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. The FDA required Addyi suppliers to abide by a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS). This required health care providers and pharmacists to watch an online presentation on the drug and then complete a test. Before providing Addyi, pharmacists have to review the side effects and warnings with customers, who also sign a consent form (see Nicole Gray 2016).

2. The ETS group also included the Canadian firm Acerus Pharmaceuticals (previously known as Trimel), a company that produces Natesto, “the first and only nasal testosterone replacement therapy” for men with low levels of testosterone. The company is also currently testing Tefina a “low-dose nasal testosterone gel treatment in development for female orgasmic disorder” (Acerus Pharmaceutical Corporation 2015).

3. The so-called “astroturf” phenomenon is not limited to female sexual dysfunction and Addyi (see Cassels and Moynihan 2005).

4. Thunderclap is a “crowdspeaking” platform that sets goals in terms of how many people are “reached” by a cause (see Hilary Wardle 2014).

5. Other examples of such representations include ETS using the images of Anna Kendrick and Emma Watson, tweeting the photo of Sprout pharmaceuticals management team, all white women, and using images of white couples in bed (see various examples, Even the Score 2015a). On pharmaceuticals, medicine, and racial difference, see Lester D. Friedman (2004); Jonathan Xavier Inda (2014).

6. The fifth edition of the Academic Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders most recently changed Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder to Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (see Jacinthe Flore 2016).

7. The website for Addyi now notes that the drug can be used by non-heterosexual women as well: “Addyi ... is a prescription medicine ... no matter the type of sexual activity, the situation, or the sexual partner” (Addyi 2016b).

8. Critical comments along those lines on the ETS Facebook page include “[y]eah, too bad it’s ineffective, at best, and harmful, at worst. A great Victory…,” “[a]n antidepressant with horrible side effects masquerading as a sex drug. Teach your pattern [sic] to value women’s sexuality,” “FDA approving a medication like Flibanserin, which affects the human brain’s serotonin, levels is playing with fire,” and “[i]t just boils down to pharmaceutical companies making money.”

9. Storify was created in 2011 and allows users to curate timelines in the form of “stories” using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram: “Storify’s users (who range from individuals to major news organizations) can relatively easily construct a story drawing on multiple sources, and incorporating audio-visual material” (see Tony Harcup 2014, 289).

10. Truvada is a pre-exposure prophylaxis that is used to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1. It has been approved by the FDA in 2012 as the first drug to prevent HIV infection (Diane S. Aschenbrenner 2012).