Natasha Singer writes in the Times that premature ejaculation (abbreviated PE, also a setting in which it would be especially embarrassing) is the new erectile dysfunction, a male sexual issue with a drug to match. In this case there are two drugs — a pill called Priligy, and an aerosol dudes are supposed to spray it on their dicks if they have trouble lasting more than a minute. Neither is approved in the U.S., yet. In a study, the spray increased penetration-to-ejaculation time to an average of 2.6 minutes — not a huge difference, but maybe enough to feel like an improvement for some men. Singer points out that "there is no doubt that some men are distressed about their inability to control their orgasms," and for those who are deeply dissatisfied with their sex lives, medication may provide some help. But the maker of the spray, Sciele Pharma, claims that one in three men have PE, and this may be exaggerated.

Dr. Wayne Hellstrom tells Singer that somewhere between 20% and 30% of men have PE at some point — but he doesn't say how many of these cases clear up on their own when, say, the guys hit nineteen or so. And psychiatry professor Leonore Tiefer says,

Rapid ejaculation as opposed to slow ejaculation is common, but there is slow and fast everything in the world: slow and fast walkers, slow and fast eaters, slow and fast breathers. When you tell someone they are a fast ejaculator, it makes it sound like there is a right time to ejaculate and, if you ejaculate before, it's a medical problem.

Tiefer's words highlight a contradiction in Sciele Pharma's marketing: if one in three men really has PE, couldn't it be considered a normal variation, rather than a disease? The question is even more apt in relation to menopause, which every woman who reaches middle age undergoes. Singer also wrote the Times menopause article, along with Duff Wilson, and the two writers note that before allegations about cancer risk tainted the drugs' reputation, hormonal treatments were marketed as an almost necessary response to menopause. They cite a commercial in which Lauren Hutton "runs down a beach and warns of the health risks of estrogen loss," saying, "My doctor said if you don't replace estrogen that you lose at menopause, your risk for certain age-related diseases could increase." Since the breast cancer connection was posited, estrogen for menopausal symptoms has been rebranded as "menopausal hormone therapy," rather than "hormone replacement therapy," downplaying the idea that hormones need to be "replaced." Yet hormone advocate Suzanne Somers (pictured) continues to prescribe hormones as "the juice of life," and menopause as a disorder requiring treatment — and she's not alone.

The pharmaceutical industry likely cares far more about money than about gender, and the diseasification of both PE and menopause show drug companies turn to both men and women when they want to make a buck. Their appeals, however, are different in character. Treatment for PE seems to imply that men are insufficiently virile if they can't last "long enough," and that they need help in aerosol form. Of course, jokes about premature evacuation are ancient, and Sciele Pharma didn't invent male performance anxiety. But they are capitalizing on it, by implying that the solution to fast ejaculation isn't a change in sexual practices (last time I checked, a dude's hands and tongue still work even after he comes), but a spray to make him just like every other guy. Or rather, just like the Ideal Male as defined by restrictive social norms and eagerly reinforced by profit-minded executives. The Ideal Female, by contrast, is forever young. Lauren Hutton may have talked about health in her commercial, but the anti-menopause forces have long focused on sexiness and femininity, which are apparently the exclusive province of women with dewy faces and equally dewy vaginas. The idea that bodies change as we get older, and that sex might change along with them — that it might include more lube, more oral, or more imagination — seems anathema to an industry with a big financial stake in promulgating a single, difficult-to-achieve standard.

Of course, menopausal hormone treatments provide real relief to some people — and premature ejaculation spray may as well. The problem comes when people feel that they should take drugs because their bodies are inadequate in some way. One of the healthiest things in our culture could do would be to accept variations in both the way we look and the way we fuck, whether these variations are inborn or arrive with age. But that acceptance might lead to a corresponding acceptance of aging itself, of wrinkles and fat and hair loss and, eventually, death. And were we to truly embrace senescence for what it is — a natural part of life — we might buy a lot less shit. Which, of course, would be bad for the many companies clamoring to bring our penises and vaginas up to code.

Sure, It's Treatable. But Is It A Disorder? [NYT]
Menopause, As Brought To You By Big Pharma [NYT]

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics has reported that more babies were born in that country 2008 than ever before. They also found that the trend of mothers giving birth later in life "seems to have stalled," and that there were slightly more newborn boys (51%) than girls. •  A 28-year-old German man has been found guilty of stabbing a pregnant Egyptian woman during a court hearing in Dresden. Al-Sherbini was going to testify against Alexander Wiens, who allegedly harassed her at work with taunts of "terrorist" and "Islamist" when Wiens attacked her in the courtroom. Wiens has been sentenced to life in prison. • Jewish activists are anticipating Obama's announcement of a special envoy to monitor anti-Semitism. Rumor has it that the candidate is female, with Chicago connections. • A Hungarian man convicted of using a camera to peep up women's skirts has been banned from filming in public for the next two years. Apparently, the women who he filmed were unaware and have not been informed of the violation. • Jaycee Dugard's family has brought in a publicist to help "clean up" the mess made by several greedy middlemen. Unfortunately, the family is still in looking for donations to help pay for everything from medical bills to food. •  A recent spate of suicides among housekeepers working in Lebanon has lead to a campaign for better conditions for the often overworked immigrant women. A recent survey found that more than one migrant domestic worker was dying in Lebanon each week, usually from either suicide or falling off a balcony in attempts to get away from an abusive employer. •  For the first time ever, the Mormon church has announced support for gay rights legislation in Salt Lake City. Although the Church is still against gay marriage, officials have come out in support of legislation that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment. • Cynthia Stewart, a 17-year-old junior at Tharptown High School in Alabama, is on her school's prom planning committee and personally raised $200 for the event. But when Stewart asked her principal if she could bring her girlfriend to the prom he said no and told her to take off a sticker that read "I am a lesbian," because, "You don't have that much freedom of speech at school." Her family appealed the decision to the school board, but it upheld the principal's decision. • The Tate Gallery has announced the appointment of Penelope Curtis as the new director for the museum in London. Other good news for women in art comes from Venice, where the Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima has been named director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. • Scottish widow Mona Webster, who died in August at the age of 96, loved opera and birds so she left most of her $16.6 million fortune to New York's Metropolitan Opera and the British charity Windfowl and Wetlands Trust. • Brits are some of the ugliest people in the world, according to the dating site BeautifulPeople.com. The site lets existing members rate applicants' attractiveness to decide if they should be let on the site and only one in 8 British men and three in 30 British women have been accepted. Swedish men have the most success, with 65 percent accepted, and Norwegian women were voted the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted. • People are criticizing Pittsburgh's recently unveiled Mister Rogers statue because they say the 11-foot tall, 7,000 pound statue looks nothing like him. Jimmy Kimmel said it makes "the nicest man in the world look like a mud monster." •

He says:

As my wife and I sat on the couch one night this past winter, reading and half-watching the inevitable HGTV, I started sweating hard and my face got so fevered and flushed that I felt as if I were peering into an oven.

I turned to Deb and said, "Man, I'm having a wicked hot flash." And she said, "Me, too." Then we laughed. You laugh a lot - unless your hormones are making you cry - when you're having menopause with your wife.

But Jennings discovered that the side effects of the loss of hormones were no laughing matter. In addition to intense hot flashes, he had intense food cravings, weight gain, headaches, fatigue and mood swings that he describes thusly:

The tears would usually pour down when I got ambushed by some old tune: "Sweet Baby James" and "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor, "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" by Carly Simon and, yes, "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore. Not only was I temporarily menopausal, but it appeared that I was also turning into a teenage girl from the early 1970s.

Jennings uses his experience to call on men to be more understanding of the mood swings of their partners, which he found himself unable to control.

But it's amusing that Jennings' trip into "womanhood," so to speak, was precipitated not by the addition of female sex hormones but by the subtraction of testosterone. In fact, it makes me wonder what adding estrogen and progesterone might have done to Jennings, or, more comically, what adding testosterone could do to me.

For instance, testosterone has been tested and is used in Europe to restore sex drive to post-menopausal women. Given my sex drive, that could get a bit... hard to handle, even if I had a long-term partner around. If testosterone does cause people to be more aggressive, well, I think I have published enough rants in my time to indicate that could get problematic. But if it would stop me from crying when I'm PMSing? Sign me up.

My Brief Life As A Woman [NY Times]

Related: Testosterone Patch May Kick-Start Sex Drive In Women [CNN]

Earlier: What Constitutes A Dry Spell?

• A 31-year-old Iranian, blind from an acid attack by a spurned suitor, is demanding that the judge follow the ancient tradition of "eye for an eye" punishment and blind her attacker. • Bollywood-style dance classes, which mix traditional Indian folk dances with hip-hop moves, are a growing trend in fitness. • Virgin has instituted a "kissing ban" at one of their U.K. train stations because they believe that kissing couples were delaying trains. The introduction of a "kissing zone" outside the station really saps all the romance out of a goodbye kiss. • European medicine watchdogs have concluded that the HPV vaccine Gardasil did not cause seizures and loss of consciousness in two Spanish girls who had just been vaccinated. • New research indicates that physical activity improves the quality of life in postmenopausal women. The study found that women reported better mental health even if they did not lose weight. • This month's E-Poll indicates that women are most likely to make an effort to watch daytime dramas, but they would really miss Judge Judy if her show were to be canceled. • A Valentine's Day Craigslist ad in Texas has been revealed as a prank. The ad, which offered sexual favors to men, showed a photo of a woman named "Jennifer" and promised that she would "moan like Shamu." • UMen, a Middle Eastern men's magazine, recently ran a feature titled "Reasons Why Women Can't Drive." The list of "reasons" included: women have dogs in the front seat (??), and women "lack the driving gene." • Paula Oliveira, the Brazilian woman who was allegedly attacked by Swiss skinheads, has confessed that the entire story was an elaborate lie, complete with self-mutilation. • Doctors hope that a new device, implanted under the skin near the collar bone, will help sufferers of chronic obsessive compulsive disorder by sending pulses of electricity to the brain. • A 20-year-old Kansas City woman was explaining that she no longer loved her ex-boyfriend, only to be interrupted by gunshots. She was unharmed, but police later found the bullet, shot by her ex-boyfriend, tangled in her weave. • China's economic slump has lead many professional Chinese women to seek jobs as maids and nannies. • This Friday will mark the first time women are allowed to compete in ski jumping in the Nordic skiing World Championship. Athletes hope that the Olympic committee will also open the sport to women. •

• Two year old Nigel Mutemagau is currently being held in a maximum security prison in Zimbabwe. He was abducted with his parents, and is now reportedly in solitary confinement. • Chico, a love-sick parrot, has been put on Prozac to combat her possessive obsession with her owner. • According to government health officials, STD rates are on the rise for the first time in years, with reported cases of chlamydia at an all time high. • In attempts to widen its audience beyond the bride-to-be demographic and capture the elusive currently-breastfeeding-women group, The Knot Inc. has purchased Breastfeeding.com. • A Chicago salon formerly named "Ossama's" has just changed its name to "Obama's." Click through for a pointless slide show featuring pictures of Osama bin Laden and the back of Obama's head. • New research has found that oestrogen hormone therapy, a treatment for symptoms of menopause, causes the female brain to shrink. • Companies in Britain are now offering their employees "Botox leave." Seriously? • In an incredibly tasteless move, an Austrian theater company has announced that they plan to stage a satiric soap opera about Joseph Fritzl, titled "Fritzl's Bed and Breakfast." • An anti-litter campaign is asking McDonald's to help deliver the anti-litter message at the point of sale. • Is chocolate keeping you up at night? Maybe, says the National Sleep Foundation. • In other candy news, the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar will now feature the warning "CONTAINS: MILK" on its label for those customers confused by the misleading name. • One in four women report having unprotected sex after running out of the Pill. • Lucy Newmann, 22, was out with her friends at a bar in Scotland when she was punched in the face in an alleged anti-England attack. • The wife of Richard Batista, the man who sued for the return of his kidney, has spoken out against Batista, calling him "hyper-suspicious" and insanely jealous. • In a depressingly ironic twist of fate, Alec Ahsoak, a 53-year-old sex offender, recently won $350,000 in a lottery sponsored by an advocacy group for sex abuse victims. •

According to the study, before adhering the patch to themselves, the post-menopausal women involved reported 2.5 satisfying sexual episodes a month. After use, women reported an extra 2.1 additional episodes, "a significant increase from the placebo group, which reported, on average, fewer than one extra episodes monthly," Reuters notes. And it's not just sex that improved with the patch: women reported better self-image, desire, orgasm and pleasure. So are there any downsides to this magical patch?

Well it is testosterone, so some of the women reported extra hair growth. However, Melbourne-based Dr. Susan Davis, who led the study, tells Reuters that the extra hair "doesn't seem to be an issue for the women. If it had been, you would have seen much greater withdrawals from the treatment groups." Another potential cause for concern is that breast cancer occurred in four of the 534 women who received the patch, while no women in the 277-person placebo group were diagnosed with the disease. Two of those women had tumors before using the patch, and in any study of that many older women it is likely that breast cancer will develop for some. Nevertheless, doctors are studying a possible link between extra testosterone and cancer.

But overall, both doctors and patients alike are excited about the prospect of a libido patch for ladies. Dr. Davis says she was overwhelmed by volunteers for her "Aphrodite" study, because older women are saying, "I'm too young to start feeling like this. I have a lot of years ahead in my relationship. This is important to me." And guess what? Intrinsa may be even more effective than the little blue pill: "Davis said that with drugs like Pfizer's Viagra, men typically get one extra satisfying episode per month. 'We found women get two. So it at least matches the benefits to men.'" Woohoo!

Testosterone Patches Boost Libido In Older Women [Reuters]

• A new study says that women are more stressed than men. We really don't have time to be reading and writing about studies like this because we totally have a big Powerpoint presentation to get and we are, like, about to pull our hair okay? Gawd! [Feminist.org]
  
• Dressing like a hooker for Halloween isn't just for adult women like us - now your kids can get in on the action. Feministing points out a costume website where there's a "Major Flirt" costume (filed under the "Occupation" category) for little girl. It's never too early to be a cock tease! [Feministing]
  
• Breast cancer survivors are among a huge percentage of women who start their own business, most of which are focused on helping fellow patients in need. [NY Times]

• Marie Curie's daughter, journalist Eve Curie Labouisse, has died at the age of 102. [NY Times]
• There's some controversy surrounding Oprah's recent show where she revealed she has hyperthyroidism. Apparently the expert she had on the show to discuss the condition offered up a bunch of wellness suggestions but never actually told women who thought they might have it to go see, you know, a doctor. Whatever. Why go see a shrink when you can just watch Dr. Phil? [Salon]
• Double suck. Your obesity risk increases after menopause. [Science Daily]
• All-girls boarding schools are on the decline in the UK, but administrators and students are still gung ho for single sex education. Lesbians! Kidding. Sorta. [The Independent]

• It's not looking too good for Republican folks in Washington. [Washington Post]

• But at least Jenna and Henry don't live in Iraq, where many women have been forced to sell their bodies in order to feed their kids. [CNN]
• And we know Jenna wants kids. Assuming she can have them. Let's hope she's not infertile. Because IVF could bring up some pretty big issues for her. [Salon]
• Also, we hope both she and Henry are prepared for the fact that they are not going to be having a ton of sex in the future. According to the Red Hot Mamas organization's Sex and Menopause Survey, over half of women report a decrease in sex drive during menopause, and 44% report suffering from vaginal atrophy—their vaginas just like, dry up and it hurts too much to have sex. Ugh. [Reuters]

• Italian women over the age of 40 are having more babies than similarly-aged women in any other western industrialized country. But the U.S. is not far behind! [Guardian]
  
• Speaking of wombs: A group of politicians in Ohio are pressing the state legislature to pass a bill that "would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers." [Feministing]
  
• A peace group is sponsoring a group of women in Afghanistan to train as boxers as symbols of women's independence and power, and as possible Olympic contenders. [BBC]
  
• Young women from China, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nepal and other countries who have been forced into sex slavery are not only highly likely to be infected with HIV but to spread the virus once they are freed and return home. [International Herald Tribune]

• Profit before health: Executives at pharmaceutical giant Wyeth are anxious to bypass the FDA's demand that the menopause drug Pristiq be tested further; they want it to be approved for treatment of depression. [MSNBC]
• Despite serious and incessant warnings over the fact that the acne drug Accutane causes severe birth defects, women continue to become pregnant while taking it. [MSNBC]
• One woman in the NY Times' obituaries section today: Norma Gabler, 84, who worked to rid Texas schools of content she considered "anti familiy, anti-American and anti-God". [NYTimes]

• Motorcycle manufacturers like Harley-Davidson are attempting to appeal more to potential female customers by designing riding gear with rhinestones (ugh), creating motorcycles that sit lower to the ground, and hosting the cock-rocket equivalent of Tupperware parties. [NYTimes]
  
• What to eat and what not to eat (shellfish, Brie, hotdogs, herbal tea and (duh, alcohol!) when pregnant. [NYTimes]
  
• Close, but no cigar: The FDA did not fully approve Wyeth's menopause drug Pristiq because of "staff scientists want more information about the treatment." [NYTimes]
  
• The FDA did, however, agree that Eli Lilly's osteoporosis drug Evista can also be marketed as lowering the risk of breast cancer. [WSJ]

• One woman in the NY Times obituary section today: Teresa Stitch Randall, 79, American operatic soprano who made her name abroad in the opera houses of Austria, France and Switzerland. [NYTimes]

• Women who smoke are more likely to go through early menopause; like, before the age of 45. [DailyMail]
  
• Eating disorders are not just for the young: There's a rise in women in their 30s, 40s, even 50s seeking treatment for diseases such as anorexia and bulimia. [USAToday]
  
• Coming soon to an airliner near you: A breast-milk "free for all"! [Salon]
  
• Placentas: Good for depression, good for hair? [Salon]
  
• The body-parts of some 3 dozen infant girls and aborted female fetuses were found in a well in India. Which is pretty much what you can expect from a society that in large part, doesn't value an entire gender. [The Guardian]

• Speaking of societies that don't value women: In Iran, husbands and fathers will be allowed into birthing rooms for the first time. Ever. [Guardian]
• A growing labor shortage in Japan is spurring employers to seek out female employees like never before. [WSJ]
• Survival rates for breast cancer are increasing to the point where some experts believe it shouldn't be labeled a 'killer' anymore. Let's not count our chickens before they're hatched, shall we? [Telegraph]