What Would Happen in a World Without Viagra?

Is it a nightmare beyond imagining…or a new frontier for male sexuality?

Photo by Diego Lozano on Unsplash

“Eighty year old bros can impregnate. Eighty year old women ain’t getting pregnant.”

I laughed when I saw this comment on one of my TikTok videos. Wow, do some men love to brag about how much power they believe resides in the almighty cock. It’s like a gun that never runs out of bullets, whereas poor, pathetic women dry up like a forgotten bouquet of roses.

I don’t usually take the time to respond to misogynistic propaganda like this, but I couldn’t help myself. There’s a teaching moment here.

So I shared my thoughts, pointing out the logical fallacy that’s glaringly apparent to anyone who cares to follow this statement through. “Eighty year old bros” can only impregnate pre-menopausal women, which means women about 40 to 60 years younger. And I hate to break it to all the “bros” out there of any age, but I don’t know a whole lot of women in their twenties, thirties, and forties lining up to get nailed by an octogenarian.

Then there’s the small detail of declining fertility in men that happens after the age of 35 — just like in women. But of course, we like to pretend that that never happens. We never talk about sperm motility slowing with age, or the increased chances of birth defects that are caused by “geriatric” sperm cells.

And let’s not forget the frequency with which men experience erectile dysfunction. At 70, a man has a 70% chance of experiencing ED, so getting it up at 80 is presumably going to be even (forgive me) harder.

There’s no shame in this — we all get old. But this patriarchal ideal of the potent, dominant male whose sexual functions never dwindle with time is absolutely ridiculous.

My response ended up being my most-viewed TikTok video to date and it has almost 600 comments as I write this. I’m not surprised. Women are tired of men making flexes like this. Women are tired of men deifying their own body parts. Women are tired of being force-fed this old story that we are sexually disposable…and men are not.

“We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the little blue pill didn’t exist,” one woman…