Film Analysis: Orgasm Inc.

Orgasm Inc

Orgasm Inc is a documentary film directed by Liz Canner about the search to develop a drug that will be like the female version of Viagra in order to treat a disease called female sexual dysfunction. Originally, Liz Canner was hired by a pharmaceutical company called Vivus to edit erotic movies. However, while working on the erotic films, she decided to create a documentary about how the pharmaceutical companies are trying to take advantage of female sexual dysfunction in the interest of billions of dollars. The documentary explores to see if there is a solid foundation to what the pharmaceutical industry says constitutes as a healthy female libido and whether drugs are a safe and smart alternative. It’s an inside look at the

medical industry and their marketing campaigns that are slowly changing the public’s views on health, sex, and illness.

Female sexual dysfunction or FSD is a persistent problem with sexual response, specifically in trying to obtain or maintain sexual arousal. This will lead to distress that will affect everyday life, including the possibility of straining your relationship with your partner. Many women will experience sexual dysfunction at some point in their lives, usually in the later stages of life. It can occur at any time or can occur in just certain sexual situations. Sexual dysfunction can occur due to a multitude of reasons like a complex interplay of emotions, experiences, and beliefs. Women are generally influenced by everyday life experiences such as aging, sense of body image, health in our relationships, stress, and past sexual encounters, including a history of sexual abuse. Any of these disruptions or thoughts can affect sexual desire, arousal or satisfaction and treatment will not usually occur without a slew of solutions. In order to accurately diagnose and treat sexual dysfunction it

is important for medical corporations and women to understand sexual health. Female sexual dysfunction is a contested illness due to the fact that many have questioned whether FSD can be cured through medicalization by a pill, spray, or patch. There has been little scientific evidence that the medications for female sexual dysfunction actually work. A large problem with the medicalization of FSD is that it is an oversimplification by the drug companies. Women’s sexual responses are connected more to intimacy and emotions than physical needs, thus obtaining an orgasm can be difficult for women without it being a illness or in need of medicalization. Pharmaceutical companies need to be looking at all the problems in a macro view in order to discover more realistic and evidence based treatments, rather than biological ones that have been founded on poor evidence.
Female sexual disorder is newly discovered medical disorder but FSD has been around for 100’s of years. However, in the past, women were less educated about sex and it was not seen as a medical disorder or that big of a deal. In the past, the lack of sexual education forced many women to not know any better and to sit in silence. However, a common medical diagnosis called female hysteria arose during the Victorian Era and was diagnosed to women with sexual problems. They would have an array of symptoms such as faintness, insomnia, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, and sexual desire. Doctors would cure hysteria by massaging a woman’s pelvis or using a vibrator resulting in a “hysterical paroxysm” or an orgasm. Vibrators were originally intended as medical instruments to provide a more reliable therapy to cure women from hysteria. Slowly, these cures for female hysteria became a large money maker for many doctors. Female hysteria is now looked back on as the female sexual dysfunction of the Victorian Era. The documentary also interviews people such as Carol Queen regarding female sexual dysfunction as the hysteria of this century. According to the documentary, sexual dysfunction was a term that came out in the late 1990s. When Viagra was released it was such a blockbuster drug for men that companies such as Pfizer began to think that there was also a large market in sexual dysfunction for women. Pharmaceutical companies and researchers began looking extensively for a quick solution after the Viagra pill came out. Pfizer and a number of other drug companies sponsored the first meeting on FSD.
These drug conglomerates are still the primary players in the development of FSD. Companies such as Proctor and Gamble, and Pfizer have been trying and are continuing to profit off of sexuality dysfunction. These groups are the most powerful and the most influential because they can spend money on all the necessary research and pay people to release bias information. For example, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association said that 43% of women suffer from sexual dysfunction, however, they had to run a correction because the author had financial ties to Pfizer and other drug companies. The documentary also mentions the Berman sisters who were paid off to go on television and tell women that Viagra would work for them as well. These women, Laura and Jennifer Berman, were the faces of female sexual dysfunction for a period of time. They would go on television and make public proclamations asserting the prevalence of FSD. Even though they would claim not to have any ties to these pharmaceutical companies, Orgasm Inc claims that drug companies would pay them as much as 75,000 per day for their media campaigns and appearances. Another reason that these companies are so powerful is that the United States is one of two countries that allows direct-to-consumer advertising. This means that these pharmaceutical companies can constantly advertise new medications to consumers without any tight constraints or boundaries.
Even though I do not consider female sexual disorder as an illness, I believe there could be many pros to medicalizing this disorder.

A major benefit is that this could lead to much more research being done in the field of female sexual disorder, and not just by pharmaceutical corporations whose only interest is to make money off a product. The documentary mentions that many women do suffer from this disorder and medicalizing it could be to their benefit and helpful. However, there still are social, relational, and psychological factors that affect FSD. In medicalizing this disorder it is important to look as this disorder in a macro viewpoint and not just look for a single pill or patch that will solve all the problems. My concern is that the large conglomerates will continue to release harmful pills or other devices to women and say that it will help with FSD. This will cause women who self- prescribe themselves as having this disorder to seek the solution, even with the possibility of the results being harmful. Many of these drugs that are currently under development can have horrific effects including breast cancer and cardiovascular problems. For example, the documentary mentions a testosterone patch by Proctor and Gamble designed to treat FSD called Intrinsa. They tried to release the patch for off label use, however it was was denied because there were harmful side effects, including women having to take a high dosage of estrogen pills in order to offset the

testosterone.
Overall, the film, Orgasm Inc, did an excellent job of explaining what female sexual dysfunction is and why it is a contested illness. The director, Liz Canner, did a excellent job in showing why we should be weary of these pharmaceutical industry because they can make claims about what a healthy female libido is and how they want you to solve those problems by expensive and sometimes dangerous medical treatments.