Aphrodisiac use: Is it to achieve sexual equality?
On a daily basis, almost all media outlets in Ghana advertise aphrodisiacs. Some of them have names that have sexual connotations.
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They come in different brands such as “Dragon” and “Recharger.” Apart from the electronic media, vans, either stationary or moving from one community to another, market them to customers. Furthermore, sales personnel move around or have stalls at market places or open places outside the market in order to sell aphrodisiacs.
The patronage is booming; it attests to the fact that indeed sex is a primary need just like water and food, according to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Unfortunately, the sources of some of these drugs are not known and it is not clear whether the Food and Drugs Authority has approved all of them to be safe enough for human consumption.
According to the 21st Century Dictionary, aphrodisiac is a food, drink or drug that is consumed in order to stimulate sexual desire. The term aphrodisiac came from a Greek word aphrodite, meaning the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and sexuality. So the big question is, do partners take aphrodisiacs in order to make their love great? Formerly, the use of aphrodisiac was limited to aged men to enable them to get erection. However, anecdotal evidence has shown that nowadays men of all ages are running after aphrodisiacs in order to enhance their sexual prowess. The main concern of this article is to identify why men of all ages use aphrodisiac as well as why it is no more reserved for older folks.
I have reason to believe that so far as sexual lives are concerned, men of all ages are unable to fulfil the sexual demands of their women; hence they have to fall on aphrodisiacs to achieve sexual equality like fundamental axiom of the ancient Roman law of the Emperor Justinian “render to each his own” or “what he deserved” (‘his’ in a gender-neutral sense).
To support this assertion, historical and legal records have shown that in the 1950s some British women took their men to court because the men could not fulfil their sexual desires, but “the courts were therefore only concerned with the fulfilment of supposedly natural instinct and not the issue of sexual satisfaction, at least where women were concerned” (Smart, 1984. p44) in her book titled: “The Ties that Bind: Law, Marriage and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations”. According to Gulf news (February 17, 2015), a woman filed for divorce against her husband in Dubai because she claimed that the man was not able to satisfy her sexual needs.
Indirect complaints from women
Although women in Ghana are not complaining publicly of sexual dissatisfaction, that may be due to cultural or religious reasons. The anecdotal evidence, again, has shown that women tacitly express it to their partners, for example, ‘Have you come already.’ This message is a clear signal to any man that he hardly satisfies his partner, therefore, there is the need to look for a ‘real man’, ‘lawyer’, ‘democracy’, ‘ power’, and ‘long journey’ as they popularly call aphrodisiac drugs, apart from their original or trade names.
The above terms or jargons have their contextual meanings as follows: real man - this means that normally a man must be able to satisfy his partner sexually but due to some reasons he cannot, so by taking the aphrodisiac, it will make him perform better; lawyer - the aphrodisiac is a sexual legal person to perform the act for you; democracy - this means both partners will equally satisfy each other as a result of the use of aphrodisiac; power - the man will have ability to satisfy his partner to the fullest, and finally, long journey - a study or studies have shown that the length of intercourse and erectile function play a much better role in female sexual pleasure, thus, the name “long journey.
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”These expressions portray that the quest for aphrodisiacs may be a reflection of notions of masculinity and/or how females construct a powerful man, purely on his sexual capacity or prowess. I think this is the reason why in our society women describe men who are sexually weak as powerless or to tease them by saying “the government has seized their guns”.
Effects
I am of the opinion that the persistent use of aphrodisiacs is likely to have health implications on users in the near future. This is because once upon a time, chloroquine used to be an effective anti-malarial drug but with time the malaria parasite became resistant to it. In the same vein, I believe that a time will come when these aphrodisiacs would no longer support men to achieve anything at all; and if it happens the society will be in trouble in terms of procreation. In order to forestall this, I would like to suggest that experts must intervene now to educate society at large about what goes into sexual satisfaction of women so that men of all ages can do away with the constant use of aphrodisiacs to satisfy their partners.
I further suggest health researchers should undertake scientific research to ascertain facts of high use of aphrodisiac drugs across all ages. Or in the near future some attention must be paid to substantive gender equality like sexual equality too alongside the formal one such as appointment of qualified females to executive positions and admission into our educational institutions.