Ep 44: Women's Viagra and Sexual Desire
SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA: And a demi straight girl (that’s me, Kayla.)
SARAH: Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: Women’s Viagra.
BOTH: — Sounds fake, but okay.
*Intro music*
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod.
KAYLA: Haaa.
SARAH: Hello. Before we go into this week’s pod, I’ve been told by Kayla to tell you – I don’t know why she can’t –
KAYLA: I mean, I can say it. I never said that you had to.
SARAH: Do it, because I kind of forgot what it was. I forgot what it was, tell them.
KAYLA: Okay. First of all, dumb. We are almost a whole year old. Woohoo.
SARAH: It’s like a child.
KAYLA: On July 31st, it will be a year since our first episode came out.
SARAH: Mm-hmm. That’s exciting.
KAYLA: So yeah, I don’t know, any thoughts on that, Sarah?
SARAH: If this podcast were a human being –
KAYLA: Okay, this is not really what I was asking.
SARAH: It’s still a little bit younger than I would prefer as a human being. Some people might consider it cute, it might – Can one-year-olds walk?
KAYLA: I don’t remember.
SARAH: I think they can walk really poorly.
KAYLA: Okay, I was more asking for – I know this is hard for you, but some emotions?
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: Some thoughts on it being a year old?
SARAH: She’s elderly now. In podcast years, I feel like she is elderly. (laughs)
KAYLA: Okay, so are you going to, are we –
SARAH: It’s been an okay time. Mm-kay, what was the next thing?
KAYLA: Well, I was going to say some nice things, but I guess we can just skip that.
SARAH: Kayla, we’ve been through this. I said nice things to you today, and that’s my whole quota for the whole month.
KAYLA: I’m not trying to say nice things about you, I was just going to say –
SARAH: Oh no, that was my nice things quota for the whole month, for every nice thing.
KAYLA: (sighs)
SARAH: (laughs)
KAYLA: Anyway (pause) because we’re a year old, me and Sarah are trying to be slightly more serious about the podcast, which you probably can’t tell because we still sound like a mess.
SARAH: You say that as if we’re not extremely serious.
KAYLA: I don’t want to talk to you anymore, I’m not talking to you anymore.
SARAH: This is going to be a pretty boring podcast. (laughs)
KAYLA: Aren’t they all? Anyway, point being, we recently put out a survey to our listeners to hear from you guys what you’ve been liking, and things about you because tbh, we’re trying to see if anyone will sponsor us and give us money dollars –
SARAH: Hell yeah.
KAYLA: And it would help if we knew about you. And also, to the people who already have, thank you and your feedback has been very nice and cute and we know our audio sucks, I’m sorry.
SARAH: I was literally about to say our audio sucks, we know, we’re trying to work on that.
KAYLA: We are actually trying to work on it. If you want to help us work on it, you can become a patron and give us money anyway
SARAH: Oooh.
KAYLA: So there will be a link down below to our new website, and on that website you can find a link to the survey, it’ll pop right up and be there and say, this is our survey.
SARAH: Wait, how am I supposed to say the website at the end if Kayla, you haven’t even told me what the website is?
KAYLA: I sent you the website.
SARAH: No, you didn’t.
KAYLA: You’ve seen it.
SARAH: I’ve seen a picture of it you took with your phone.
KAYLA: I haven’t sent you the actual thing?
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: Okay, please hold.
SARAH: Okay, anyway. Anything else we want to say on that topic? Take our thing. Give us feedback.
KAYLA: Yeah. Sarah has now seen the website, if you were curious. She just looked at it.
SARAH: I’ve now looked at it.
KAYLA: Great. Very professional, as you can see, we’re doing great on this goal.
SARAH: We’re trying. Anyway, now that we’ve done that, this week’s episode is – Okay, so this week’s episode was prompted by a video I saw about a month ago I would say, on Facebook, and we’ll link that video too. It was one of those NowThis videos or whatever, where it’s just like –
KAYLA: It was, I think it was NowThis Her, or something.
SARAH: It’s NowThis Her.
KAYLA: Boo.
SARAH: Basically, it was talking about this pill called Addyi, however you pronounce that.
KAYLA: A-dee. A-die.
SARAH: That is a pill for women’s “sexual dysfunction” –
KAYLA: Libido.
SARAH: Yeah, “sexual desire” or whatever, they’ve used all these terms to talk about it. Basically, this video was talking about the drug, it was talking about why this woman came up with it, talking about getting it FDA-approved, blah blah blah. I was watching it, and I was just like, hmm, interesting because there are some good things here, and there are some bad things here, and I was like, that would make a good podcast episode.
KAYLA: I just watched the video today, it was very interesting. But do we want to first explain what the drug is supposed to do?
SARAH: Yeah, we should. So basically, this is a drug that is supposed to help with your sexual desire, for women specifically.
KAYLA: Basically, there’s this disorder for women called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and apparently “millions of women suffer from it” and it makes you have a low libido, which is your sex drive, and high stress, so this drug is supposed to make your sex drive and libido higher, and that’s what it’s supposed to do.
SARAH: Some people have called it a female Viagra; it’s not. Misleading beginning of this podcast.
KAYLA: Ha ha, clickbait, gotcha.
SARAH: So this article, or this website is talking about the drug; this website is not really a fan of this drug but it says “Though Addyi has been dubbed the ‘female Viagra’ in some media reports, the two drugs are very different. Viagra helps men who already want to have sex but are not able to physiologically. Addyi changes brain chemistry in women to help them want to want to have sex. Viagra is taken on an as-needed basis to help increase blood flow to the penis. Addyi must be taken every day for an undetermined amount of time to be even minimally effective.”
KAYLA: Right, so when this video was talking about HSSD or hypoactive sexual desire disorder, they were talking about how this disorder has been known since the seventies, and they’ve done brain scans and it’s a chemical in women’s brains that makes their libido and sex drive lower, so this drug is basically changing brain chemistry, like any other psychoactive drug, like your Prozac or your ADHD medication.
[Whereas] Viagra, it’s [that] men still can get turned on, and actually complete sex, it’s just that enough blood won’t go to their penis, it’s literally just a blood situation.
SARAH: Yeah, their body just won’t do it right.
KAYLA: It’s not about sex drive at all.
SARAH: Right. So I’m looking at the website, and it’s basically talking about HSDD.
KAYLA: HSSD.
SARAH: This says HSDD.
KAYLA: Wait, it is HSDD (gasps) This video is wrong.
SARAH: Really.
KAYLA: There’s a typo in this video. They call it hypoactive sexual desire disorder, (HSSD). That’s wrong, it’s HSDD.
SARAH: That is wrong. But the website for this drug says if you have HSDD, you are unsatisfied. In the past, your desire for sex has decreased, your decreased desire for sex has persisted for six months or more, your decreased desire for sex is bothering you. And then it says “Not HSDD: HSDD is not a lack of desire for sex due to relationship issues, HSDD is not a lack of desire caused by a medical or mental health issue, HSDD is not a lack of desire for sex caused by a medication that you are taking”.
Okay, basically what that’s saying is it’s saying you might have this if you previously had sexual desire, and now you feel you don’t anymore.
KAYLA: Here’s my question though, so they’re saying that you don’t have this if you’re having a medical issue, a psychological issue, if you had trauma in the past. I am 99% sure that those events can change your brain chemistry, and if this is a psychoactive drug, couldn’t that cause HSDD? Because if you’re taking a medication that changes your brain chemistry to reduce your libido, it still changes – I don’t understand.
SARAH: Right, and also that is saying that you had to have had sexual desire in the past for this to be applicable to you, but that’s not what everyone says, from what I understand. Like the video that we just watched, obviously they’re not experts, but the NowThis videos get a lot of views, this video has 733,000 views, and so they need to be doing their research right, and what they said in the video was basically, if you just have too low a sexual desire, this woman is saying it’s biological, blah blah blah.
(10:00)
What the woman was saying was like, she was talking about how if there are issues with sex for men, it’s deemed as a physical issue and for women it’s deemed as there’s something wrong with you, you need to just read Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever. Which I think is a valid point, to think about double standards in terms of how we’re viewing sexual desire of men and women. But the way this video was talking about it was basically just being like, you should want to have a higher sex drive, and if you have a low sex drive or no sex drive, that’s wrong and you need medication to fix it.
KAYLA: Yeah, I think it’s – By the way, the woman in the video, her name is Cindy Eckert and she’s actually the one who developed the idea for the drug, and she’s the CEO of the company that sells the drug. I think it walks a really thin and vague line because it’s on the one hand, yeah we do want women to be satisfied in sex, and the stigma that oh, women don’t even like to have sex and it’s all about the man and it’s not even worth it to give a woman an orgasm, any of that. That is bad, and this kind of thing is bringing light to that, but then you’re also thinking what is this telling people that don’t have any sex drive?
SARAH: Right, and this woman, this Cindy Eckart woman, I think she had very good intentions, and I think she came into this with a very feminist mindset, because she was saying that she had this idea because she working at somewhere that produced Viagra, and she was like, why don’t we have –
KAYLA: And she also now, she sold the drug company and then the CEO was a man, and she was like, um hell no, so she took her company back and now has a different second company that gives money to female entrepreneurs to break the pink ceiling or something,
SARAH: And I think all that is great.
KAYLA: She has good intentions.
SARAH: Right, and so everyone in the comments is applauding this woman and being like, oh my God, this is great and at first, I was falling into that too, but then I was thinking more about what this drug is supposed to do, and why it does it, and I was like, hmm.
KAYLA: I think obviously this woman has good intentions and obviously this drug could be helpful for a lot of women, I’m not saying – I personally don’t currently know where I fall on my opinion of whether this drug should or shouldn’t be a thing.
SARAH: Same, I don’t know.
KAYLA: I don’t know right now, but I do think falling into the wrong hands, this drug could be bad for asexuals, because I know I’ve recently been reading a lot online about how asexual people go to their therapist or the doctor or the doctor, and they’ve never heard of asexuality before, so if you can imagine maybe someone that doesn’t know they’re asexual yet goes to their doctor and is like, I don’t have any sexual desire, and then their doctor not knowing and this person not knowing what asexuality is, gets prescribed this drug, and it’s like well now are we just correcting, “correcting” sexuality with drugs?
SARAH: Right, and then at that point you’re kind of asking a question of should we be “fixing” sexuality? Should we be trying to change sexuality? All of that stuff.
KAYLA: We got in this conversation a bit in our episode with our friend Miranda’s mom, and that’s why I think I’m struggling with this,because it is such a difficult conversation to have.
We even got feedback from that episode of people being like, I don’t know about this and it is hard to talk about the chemistry or the biology behind sexuality, or what is actually the driving force of sexuality within a person.
Because in my opinion, if you’re looking at people, everything about a person comes from somewhere biologically, do you know what I mean? Like, I struggle with depression and anxiety. Yes, trauma in my life – Trauma is like, okay, I’m fine, but things in my past have caused that but it’s also my brain chemistry.
So it’s like to me, and I’m of the opinion – This might be bad, and make people mad, but to me, I think sexuality might have a biological or a chemical backing that you could find by science and be like, oh look at this, asexual people have a lower amount of this hormone than straight people. But then you get into it, what if we one day do that that’s true, and then you start prescribing people drugs like this –
SARAH: Yeah, then it starts to be corrective.
KAYLA: So that everyone is straight.
SARAH: Right. And I agree with that, and I definitely agree with what you said earlier, this drug is just really walking a line, it’s really to me very questionable and a lot of people are like, oh my God, this is amazing, this is so fantastic, and that I think is also just really reflective of how invisible asexuality is in our culture.
Because on the website of the medication, on a couple other sites I’ve been on talking about sexual dysfunction and talking about the medication, not a single one of them has mentioned sexuality. Whether that’s asexuality or otherwise, not a single one has mentioned it. On the Addyi, I still don’t know how to say it, on that website, as I said before when it said not HSDD, it said the reasons that you might have a lack of desire for sex that makes you not have this disorder; relationship issues, medical or mental health issue, medication you’re taking, which is like, where does asexuality fall there?
KAYLA: Yeah, because that would totally be part of that.
SARAH: So basically, there’s that, that aspect of it. Again, I’m jumping back and forth between this thought a lot, but it’s just like, I don’t want to blame the people who made it because I think they had really good intentions –
KAYLA: Yeah, that’s what’s hard for me is, I don’t fully think this is a bad thing –
SARAH: Because I think we should be talking about women’s –
KAYLA: Yeah, women should be empowered to have sex but this is something I think about a lot is currently in feminism, where we’re at is women being empowered to have sex whenever and with whoever they want, and that’s great because it’s leaps and bounds than we were before, but that doesn’t include the acceptance of women who don’t want to have sex at all, because it’s like oh, we’re all free now, why don’t you want to have sex? It’s women’s liberation. And so this is going into that for me, it’s like well, I should be happy because it’s helping that, but then we’re still not making all the steps forward that I would like us to.
SARAH: Right, and also I looked up a couple of different sites that talk about sexual dysfunction. So for starters, it says some 43% of women and 31% of men report some degree of sexual dysfunction, which is a high number. It talks about a couple of different types, so there’s pain disorders where it hurts to have sex, orgasm disorders mean you can’t, arousal disorders meaning you’re unable to become physically aroused during sexual activity and it talks about those which, those are all perfectly valid. But then the other one they talk about, desire disorders which is just a lack of sexual desire or interest in sex and that, the word disorder used there, I don’t like it.
KAYLA: Yeah, that – Because the other ones, you’re right, feel perfectly valid to me. It’s people that want to have sex –
SARAH: But just have trouble physically achieving it.
KAYLA: Yeah, there’s something biologically, physically wrong. But desire to me is inherently more emotional and psychological.
SARAH: Right, and to call that a disorder is alarming to me. And so I think that is one of the issue with this drug is because this woman, what she’s saying, in women it’s a chemical – It almost seems like she’s saying, and I could just be interpreting this wrong, but if that’s how it’s coming off, there is an issue with that, even if that’s not what’s meant, which is it sounds like she’s saying that for men, it’s just an issue with the body not working, but for women it’s about your brain, and it’s about how your brain thinks of it and treats it.
(20:00)
Which isn’t even necessarily true, because looking at these websites talking about sexual dysfunction, there are just as many symptoms for women as for men that are inability to –
KAYLA: Yeah, they’re physical.
SARAH: Physical stuff, there are just as many for women. I mean, they’re different, but they’re just as numerous.
KAYLA: You know what’s interesting about that is this woman, what did they say her name was? Cindy?
SARAH: Cindy Eckert.
KAYLA: [She] said in the video promoting this drug, oh for men it’s always been inherently physical, but for women it’s psychological, go take a vacation, read a book. But she’s kind of making it –
SARAH: She’s making it psychological.
KAYLA: It’s still about that.
SARAH: Right. And so if this were a drug that were purely dealing with the sexual dysfunction issues in women of inability to achieve org – oh I can’t even read. (laughs) But inability to achieve orgasm, inadequate vaginal lubrication before and during intercourse –
KAYLA: Okay gross, ew.
SARAH: Yeah. Inability to relax the vaginal muscles enough to allow intercourse, which is wild. But those are actual symptoms of the body not allowing itself to have sex, and if the drug were dealing with that, I wouldn’t have any issue with it.
But I think it’s just the fact that it’s about changing your desire for sex, that’s the problem.
KAYLA: You know most – This is a very drastic comparison, and I don’t think, I don’t know, I think it’s pretty drastic but homosexuality used to be in the, oh shoot, what’s it called? The DSM?
SARAH: The DSM, yeah.
KAYLA: And that’s the psychological book and manual where all disorders are in, and so homosexuality used to be in that as a psychological disorder. That’s almost what this is kind of reminding me of, is that very drastic to say?
SARAH: I don’t think that’s drastic to say because even if it’s not meaning to, it’s considering a lack of sexual desire a disorder. And I do have a bit of an issue kind of with the idea with HSDD that you previously had a lot of sexual desire – [maybe not] a lot, you previously had sexual desire and now you have less, which I think in some cases is totally valid, because it was saying a lot of times it’s older women who are nearing menopause which, your body does weird things then, so that makes sense.
But I think in other scenarios, for a start sexuality is fluid and that could be what’s up. Also, if it is as it mentions, some sort of traumatic something that happens to you that makes you have some sort of aversion to sex, that sort of thing can cause a little bit of a chemical change in your brain and how you think of things, and so how much do we want to say this needs to be fixed, I guess?
KAYLA: Well that’s what I was just thinking, because what if a woman did have sexual desire, and then it declined, maybe because of a traumatic reason, maybe just because it did. If the woman wanted to get her sexual desire back, is it still bad for her to take that drug?
SARAH: I think it all comes down to the reason someone is taking the drug, because if someone has – If we’re sticking with the example of a traumatic event, if the person is, you know what, I’m ready to move on from this, I still have this aversion to sex but I don’t want to have this aversion to sex anymore, I want to just move forward, (pause) I –
KAYLA: Even that is hard –
SARAH: I was about to say –
KAYLA: Because your aversion to sex isn’t just – I want to make all of this very clear to everyone listening, a big disclaimer that we realize that it’s not as simple as brain chemistry, I think we’re making it sound like it is, but obviously for a traumatic event –
SARAH: There’s a lot that goes on.
KAYLA: Brain chemistry is part of it, but there’s also the psychology and feeling as a person of, you could completely fix your brain chemistry, “fix” your brain chemistry, but you might still have sex aversion just because you just have memories of it, it’s not – I just don’t want anyone to take what we’re saying and twist it, because I think we’re taking about it very simplistically, when it’s in fact not.
SARAH: And that’s the thing too, is that I think that’s part of the problem with the drug is the drug is taking it very simplistically.
KAYLA: Right.
SARAH: It’s saying this is a brain issue and it needs to be fixed so that you have sexual desire, and I know it’s a drug and a drug can’t be like, let me look at all of the things in your brain and let me pick out the ones – It can’t do that. But I think it’s important to think about this as a complex conglomeration of different reasons why someone might not have sexual desire, and you need to consider all of them and I think it really depends on the individual, because some people who previously had a sex aversion because of some traumatic event might be like, you know what, yeah, I really want this, and other people might be like, I don’t want a drug to undo – A drug can’t fix what happened to me, you know what I mean?
KAYLA: Right, and I think it really does depend on the person because for some people, it might have nothing to do with sexuality, not having this desire or having HSDD and for some people it might be their sexuality, their asexuality that’s the driving force behind this “disorder”.
Bodies are just so complex, when I was saying earlier I don’t know, maybe sexuality has something to do with chemicals, on the one hand, I do believe that that could be true, but I also know people are just so complex.
SARAH: Oh yeah, it’s all totally intertwined.
KAYLA: It’s not just chemistry that’s driving everything, every part of you intermixes to make you – Not to get really deep, but all the parts, your chemicals, your body, your soul if you believe in that, all intermix to make you what you are, and so to take it and be like, well it’s just brain chemistry and we’re going to fix it just by looking at this one part of your body is like, that is not – Maybe it is part of it, but even if it’s part of it, you can’t just take part of the whole and be like, well, we did it.
SARAH: Right, and I think that’s also part of the difference between that and Viagra which is Viagra, it doesn’t have anything to do with your motivation for having sex. It has everything to do with your body taking part in this thing that humans are like, it’s the number one thing humans are designed to do, is reproduce.
KAYLA: If I know correctly, Viagra is just like when you get old –
SARAH: Your dick stops working.
KAYLA: Your blood flow isn’t as good, because you’re old and your veins are stupid, and so it’s just like your blood can’t get there fast enough and a good enough amount. It’s literally just blood pressure, Viagra’s just like a blood pressure medicine, I think. I’m not a doctor, I could be extremely wrong. It has nothing to do with your – You know?
SARAH: Exactly, whereas this drug is trying to address a much, much more complex thing because it’s trying to address your motivation to have sex.
So I think it’s a little –
KAYLA: I just don’t like to think about these things.
SARAH: I think it’s a controversial drug, but not for the reasons –
KAYLA: Not for the reasons people think it is.
SARAH: Exactly. Because some people are saying, this article is saying what’s the controversy? So they’re saying there’s the argument that since men have medications to treat sexual dysfunction, this could level the playing field. This one’s saying – Others say that there are better ways to treat low sexual desire than with a pill, after all low libido can be caused by stress, lack of intimacy, previous sexual trauma or other underlying emotional problems that medication likely wouldn’t address (whispers) or asexuality.
“In some cases” this is a quote, “In some cases over the past few years, women were even told by their insurance companies that they needed to see a psychiatrist and not just a gynecologist or general practitioner before their prescription for Addyi would be covered.”
There’s also a lot of argument/discussion about how well it actually works –
KAYLA: Here’s my thing, I kind of agree with the psychologist piece, because if this is a drug designed to change your brain chemistry, shouldn’t a psychologist be prescribing it?
SARAH: Yeah, that’s valid. At first I was like, why do they – Because at first it made it seem like they need to be checked to see if they’re crazy or something –
KAYLA: It’s literally a psychoactive drug.
(30:00)
SARAH: Yeah, no that’s valid. That is valid because it’s not like – On one hand, the world we live in makes women jump through a lot of hoops to get what they need for their sexual health, a very good example is birth control. In the United States, you have to jump through a thousand hoops to get birth control, and so I get the criticism, but now that you say that, it’s like well, it is a –
KAYLA: That’s where this drug gets hard for me because anything fucking with your brain could be so bad.
SARAH: And also a gynecologist or a general practitioner, I don’t necessarily trust that your everyday gynecologist or general practitioner knows jack shit about sexuality, whereas a psychiatrist, if you’re seeing a psychiatrist who is –
KAYLA: There are psychologists who specialize in sexuality.
SARAH: Right, and who have a lot more experience with it. Not all of them do, which is also important to note, but I would say more of them have experience of sexuality than gynecologists do.
KAYLA: I’ve definitely seen ads, things about psychologists that’s like, this is a psychologist that specializes in sexuality, people that are not straight, and that’s part of the reason they’re struggling.
SARAH: Right, or they’re just like, hi I’m a safe space if you aren’t straight. I mean, a psychiatrist should be a safe space anyway, but you know, there are people in the world.
KAYLA: There sure are.
SARAH: So yeah, that’s a valid point but there’s also a lot of discussion about whether it actually works. This website seems pretty reputable, it’s called the National Women’s Health Network, it’s a .org so you know, trust those .orgs.
KAYLA: You know it’s good.
SARAH: So this is saying that it’s only been tested in a small subset of women – I don’t know when this was posted, so that would be relevant. Yeah, I don’t know when this article was posted, but it says the participants who enrolled in the initial clinical trials for Addyi were pre-menopausal, heterosexual and generally very healthy women. Most of them, more than 85% were white, more than 86% were non-Hispanic, and more than 85% were non-smokers. So whether that can be generalized to the public, question mark.
KAYLA: Yeah, clinical trials are real tricky. I wonder, the NowThis video also talked about the first time they did a clinical trial and submitted it to the FDA, the FDA denied them, and then they sued the FDA and were like, no. But I’m almost wondering now, so originally I was like, fuck the FDA, they were just being sexist, but now I’m wondering –
SARAH: Yeah, at first I was wondering that but now –
KAYLA: Were they just being sexist or were they just like, your clinical trial is ass.
SARAH: Because this website, it seems to be pro-choice, it seems to really take what they do seriously, and it’s all about women’s health. And they’re basically shitting on this drug. They’re saying some of the side effects can be pretty severe, it may interfere with other drugs including hormonal contraceptives –
KAYLA: I mean, anything fucking with your brain chemistry and hormones – I was on a hormonal birth control for a while and it sent me into a three-month anxiety attack that I had to go to hospital for. Sarah was there for that.
SARAH: That was a rough couple of months.
KAYLA: It was a bad couple of months, and it was just a birth control. Could you imagine what this could do to someone?
SARAH: Right, it was actually rejected by the FDA twice. For those of you, I realize we kind of assume you are American in this pod, so the FDA is the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. Basically, in terms of drugs they approve and be like yeah, this is safe.
KAYLA: You can sell this to the public. Basically to get it approved, you have to develop it and then put it through a series of clinical trials to be like look, in this group of people it was effective and it didn’t harm them, and it hurt them more than it harmed them, whatever, you’ve got to do all that.
SARAH: So this says it was actually rejected by the FDA twice, once in 2010 and once in 2013 because “it simply did not work consistently than placebo. Also the drug sponsor was unable Addyi’s minimal benefits outweighed its serious safety concerns”.
KAYLA: See there is the thing for me, I studied in a placebo lab last summer, and placebos can actually change your brain chemistry. The power of people believing things is so strong that even if you tell someone “I’m going to give you a placebo”, it will still work. You tell them hey, I’m going to give you a placebo but if you believe, it’ll work, they’ll be like okay, and then it does. That’s how powerful people’s brains are, so the fact that this might not even be more powerful than a placebo is just like, well what the hell?
SARAH: Right, and it also says “After adjusting for placebo, only about 10-12% of women in clinical trials benefited even minimally from taking Addyi. From this small subset of women, the minimal effects of taking Addyi seemed to be felt by about 8 weeks, which means you have to take it for 8 weeks to even find out if it works”.
KAYLA: That’s so long. That’s so long.
SARAH: Yeah, and also it has a lot of safety concerns in terms of side effects. So this also says “Addyi does not improve the ability to orgasm or the quality of sex, Addyi works by changing brain chemistry to affect desire of sex or libido in pre-menopausal women. It does not make it easier for women to achieve orgasm, nor does it make sex more enjoyable for either partner”.
KAYLA: Now I’m wondering what brain chemistry they’re changing, what hormone are they giving people?
SARAH: I don’t even know
KAYLA: I – Because – What?
SARAH: Yeah. And ultimately this website’s being, we need more information; people can’t make informed decisions about this drug yet.
KAYLA: The more I – At first, I was just like, the FDA’s being sexist and no one wants women to have good sex, and now I’m like, huh.
SARAH: I also felt that way, and now I’m like, I think the FDA might be right, and it could have been that they were presented with more evidence the third time around to make them approve it. It also could have to do with public pressure, because if a lot of people were saying oh, you’re sexist for rejecting this, if people were rallying behind it, and those people weren’t fully informed about everything with this drug, but were just mad, they could have felt pressure to okay it, which you shouldn’t do but it happens.
KAYLA: I was just looking up Addyi, for alcohol it says avoid, very serious interactions can occur. You know people aren’t going to avoid it.
SARAH: Oh yeah. Any medication that’s like, don’t use alcohol, they’re going to.
KAYLA: I’m not supposed to have alcohol with my medication, you bet your ass I had alcohol just today, bitch.
SARAH: Yeah. Also, the website has an option to, this is from an article about it, “consult with a medical professional over the phone and receive their prescription in the mail”.
Basically, they’re saying you can consult with our doctors, and we’ll give it to you.
KAYLA: We’ll give you a prescription.
SARAH: You don’t even need a prescription from your own –
KAYLA: Is that legal?
SARAH: I mean, I guess if it’s with a medical professional, yeah? But I’m not going to trust a medical professional who works for the drug [company].
KAYLA: Well yeah, they’re just paying –
SARAH: Because they’re going to want to give it to me, and they’re going to – I mean yeah, legally they have to tell you the risks, but they’re going to hedge it, they’re doing to be oh, it’s not that bad.
KAYLA: Okay, so I’m looking at a website sciencemag.org about how the drug actually works, and it’s talking about, it’s a lot of science-y things about receptors and whatever. It’s fine, I know about it, I’m a psychologist. But it’s basically like, okay, they’re going to make it so serotonin doesn’t get in your body as much, and dopamine and norepinephrine, which are the happy hormones that make you feel good, are going to increase, which sounds a lot like what an antidepressant does, so I’m like, what?
There’s also, they don’t even know what this one hormone really does yet, “The exact mechanism of these transient shifts in neurotransmitter levels, however, is still largely unknown.” So they’re basically taking your hormones and your neurons and making some of them fire slower and some faster so you get different levels, and they’re like okay, we did it. But no.
(40:00)
SARAH: I think this drug was really pushed because people viewed it as a female sexual liberation thing, and I appreciate that people are gunning for female sexual liberation. What I think is important to do is consider everything. I feel like a lot of times people, when they’re faced with something, whether it’s a drug or whether it’s a candidate for office or whatever –
KAYLA: Ooh, tea.
SARAH: Who appears to appeal to their beliefs, that’s great but I think you really need to make sure that it’s – Now that I’m talking about both people and drugs, it’s a little harder to come up with a sentence, but basically, you need to do your research. Don’t just blindly be like, this is so feminist, I’m going to love it.
KAYLA: And to be honest, Sarah and I do a lot of the research for the stuff we do on the fly while we’re recording, so that’s kind of why this podcast is such a mess because we set it up like an actual conversation. So me and Sarah were just researching those things, and during the episode I was like, I don’t know my opinion, and then I just did my research and I was like, I don’t like this. I can tell you right now my opinion has changed and I don’t like this. Solely for the reason that it’s not safe, medically.
SARAH: Right, I would say if it were a totally safe drug, I think my opinion would still be like, I don’t know.
KAYLA: I agree.
SARAH: But now that I know – Because before I had only researched what it did, but now that I’ve looked into why it was rejected by the FDA, I think this is very concerning.
KAYLA: And that’s the thing, from the outside, we were like, oh fuck the FDA and then you do your actual research and you’re like, well maybe fuck this drug.
SARAH: It’s like, maybe fuck the FDA too for other reasons –
KAYLA: Yeah, probably.
SARAH: But I just think people need to do their research and I think people need to – If there’s something that appears to be groundbreaking and appears to be really good and line up with your beliefs, but there are issues with it, I think you need to be open to criticizing it.
KAYLA: I think you could even say that to the developers of this drug on asexuality. If they had done their research on low sex desire or drive, don’t you think they would have found asexuality? Or did they, and they just left it out because – Okay, here’s a thing. Conspiracy theory: they did know about it and realized if they said that, that it would make asexuality seem like a disorder, so they just left it out so they didn’t sound like assholes.
SARAH: Thanks for the ace erasure, if that’s what happened.
KAYLA: Can’t you imagine that happening though?
SARAH: Oh yeah. Honestly, I think more likely they don’t know jack shit about asexuality, I really think that’s the most likely.
KAYLA: Well so bring it back to their then, they just didn’t do their research.
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: The moral of the story is just everyone do your fucking research, maybe.
SARAH: I agree.
KAYLA: This took a depressing turn. I was expecting to, I don’t know what I was expecting.
SARAH: I was also expecting to make more of a comparison to the treatment of male sexual desire in this podcast, or in this episode. But I feel like everyone –
KAYLA: We all know that.
SARAH: We get it, we get that –
KAYLA: We been knew that men’s sexual desire is more important than women’s.
SARAH: In the eyes of society.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Yeah, I just think this was created with good intentions, but I think it has a lot of issues that are medical, and also have to do with sexuality and also have to do with um, yep, sexuality. (laughs)
KAYLA: (laughs) Interesting.
SARAH: I’ve heard, not just from this but from other places about people who don’t have sexual desire being diagnosed with some kind of disorder, and it’s like, that is really questionable to me. And there’s a lot to say about asexuality existing as a disorder or whatever, which we’re going to go into in another episode, we just now decided. There’s too much –
KAYLA: We started researching, Sarah just did some research and we realized that this is a bigger issue than we’d ever thought about.
SARAH: I mean, I knew it was a big issue.
KAYLA: I don’t think – I personally, and this is bad, didn’t think about it much.
SARAH: I knew it was a big issue, but I also knew there wasn’t much information on it. But this essay, I found a very long I think it’s a college essay that’s very in-depth and I would like to read all of it.
KAYLA: So we’ll go into that more in another episode.
SARAH: At a later date, in a couple of episodes from now, probably.
KAYLA: Stay tuned.
SARAH: But basically, when you start talking about asexuality as a disorder, that gets super questionable. Do you have anything else to say on this topic? Sorry, we as usual jumped around a bit.
KAYLA: That’s one thing that’s probably never going to change, I’m sorry guys.
SARAH: I even did do some research beforehand, and I still discovered things as we were going, so sorry about it.
But yeah, TL;DR: it wasn’t ill-intended but people and the creators of the drug need to do more research.
KAYLA: Yep.
SARAH: Basically. So yeah, what’s our poll?
KAYLA: Oh wait, we have our beef of the week too.
SARAH: Oh my God, beef of the week.
KAYLA: Are we going to do it before the poll?
SARAH: No, we do the poll first, then we have beef of the week.
KAYLA: Okay, so what’s the poll?
SARAH: I don’t know. I asked you that question.
KAYLA: Would you take this drug?
SARAH: Everyone’s going to say no.
KAYLA: Okay, here’s the thing. If it didn’t have serious medical concerns, if it was a drug to increase your sexual desire, would you take it? I think that’s a sad question –
SARAH: I think maybe a better question would be if there weren’t so many safety concerns with this drug, do you think this drug is an okay thing to exist?
KAYLA: Like, morally? Okay.
SARAH: Considering all of it, considering how women’s sexual health and desire is always put below men’s, but also considering sexuality and considering all those things.
KAYLA: I would be very interested to hear that because medical issues aside, I still don’t know what my answer to that is.
SARAH: Same. So I won’t be voting.
KAYLA: Yeah, me either.
SARAH: You guys, please vote. Don’t be like us, come up with a decision. So that’ll be on our Twitter but before we get to all of our social media, it’s time for our beef of the week. That’s a new thing we’re doing, we didn’t do it last week because last week was prerecorded.
KAYLA: Oh, that’s true.
SARAH: My beef of the week is actually from a week ago, I pre-prepared this beef of the week.
KAYLA: Oh wow, okay.
SARAH: So I posted on Instagram @costiellie, I just took it off private. I posted on Instagram, I was at a pool and I was wearing a bathing suit and it wasn’t even that wild of an Instagram, I don’t have that much boobery, whatever. And it is by far the most liked picture on my Instagram, and I was just like y’all, did I really just have to whip out my boobs to be the most liked picture? That’s all, that’s my beef of the week. I appreciate that everyone liked it, don’t unlike it. I’m cute, I know.
KAYLA: I’m going to go unlike it.
SARAH: Don’t do it. But also, come on. Why is the world like this?
KAYLA: Come on guys.
SARAH: Come on (pause) but don’t unlike it, please. (laughs) It’s my best by I would say a solid 20 likes.
KAYLA: Dang, that’s not even small.
SARAH: No. I mean, if you have 10,000 followers, that’s pretty small but I have 550 followers, not even.
KAYLA: My beef of the week is that for some reason, when you become an adult, you’re not allowed to have emotions any more?
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: And I get that I’m an adult, and maybe I should be better at controlling them, I know that about myself. But why, now that I’m an adult that works, [do] my emotions need to be stifled?
SARAH: Solid question.
KAYLA: I know that doesn’t relate to anything.
SARAH: Yeah, my beef of the week did relate, but I can promise my beef of the week will not relate every week.
KAYLA: That’s my beef of the week. It’s like, I get I’m supposed to be a professional adult, but I also have feelings. Sorry? That’s all.
SARAH: Yay. So, it’s a weird transition but there’s no better place to put beef of the week.
KAYLA: We have a transition.
SARAH: What’s the transition?
KAYLA: You can find that poll and tell us your beef of the week –
SARAH: But do we want everyone’s beef of the week, Kayla?
KAYLA: Yes.
SARAH: Okay. You can find –
KAYLA: What do you mean, do we want their beef of the week? Yes, I want people to gossip at me, are you kidding me?
SARAH: (laughing) Actually, that’s valid.
KAYLA: What the hell? Yes. The fuck, Sarah?
SARAH: Wait, can I tell a quick story about our Twitter?
KAYLA: Sarah, this is like an hour long already.
SARAH: We’re cutting a fair chunk of it though. You’re welcome. But Kayla last week accidentally got us locked out of our Twitter account.
BOTH: (laugh)
SARAH: Because she was fucking with the birthday and accidentally said we were younger than 13.
KAYLA: I accidentally said we were a year old, tbh.
SARAH: (laughing) Amazing.
KAYLA: And then I had to send a picture of my driver’s license to Twitter to prove that I am an adult, so now Twitter has a picture of my driver’s license, which is neat.
SARAH: Anyway, if you want to see our Twitter, which is now operational, you can find that @soundsfakepod. You can also find us on – I almost said Instagram, we don’t have one of those. You can also find us on Tumblr, soundsfakepod.tumblr.com. You can email us, soundsfakepod@gmail.com, and we now have a website which has a really complicated URL.
KAYLA: So link down below.
SARAH: soundsfakepod.wixsite –
KAYLA: No, we don’t need to say it, don’t, it’ll just be there.
SARAH: It’s funny. Okay, but we have a website, the domain is annoying so just click on it.
KAYLA: Do I have money to buy us a custom domain? No. Do I think you should give me that money? Yes, if you have the funds.
SARAH: Yes, after we buy our microphones.
KAYLA: Oh God, so much to buy.
SARAH: (laughs) We also have a Patreon, if you want to give us money so we can buy microphones and then a domain. You can find us at patreon.com/soundsfakepod. Give us your money, we have some perks.
KAYLA: Good pitch, good pitch.
SARAH: Thank you. For our patrons, our $2 patrons are Sara Jones and Keith McBlaine. Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Drew Finney and Perry Fiero.
Our $10 patrons are Emma Fink, you can find her on YouTube at Emma T Fink by looking that one up, and we also have Tristan Call who would like to promote the DeviantArt and Tumblr page @rationallyparanoid.
Thanks for listening, don’t come at us, I know this was a controversial topic.
KAYLA: Yeah, I just want to put a last disclaimer –
SARAH: No one listens to this part, but that’s fine.
KAYLA: First of all – Well, if they’re mad, they might.
SARAH: (laughs)
KAYLA: First of all, if we did say anything problematic, do tell us. We want to be better.
SARAH: But be civil about it.
KAYLA: But also know that we were talking about things very simplistically –
SARAH: Because this is a podcast and not a 40-page research paper.
KAYLA: Which maybe I’ll write. No, I won’t. So, we know. But also if you do have something to say, we want to hear it. Just be nice, because I’m fragile.
SARAH: Kayla has emotions.
KAYLA: (laughs)
SARAH: Thank you for listening, and tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then, take good take – Oh no, what am I doing?
BOTH: (laugh)
SARAH: Can we keep that?
KAYLA: Yeah. Just take good care of your cows, fuck it, whatever. Bye.
SARAH: (laughing) Bye.