ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the medicalization is promoted by urologists, medical industries, mass media, and various entrepreneurs. The first "World Meeting on Impotence" was held in 1984, and a major overview of the new field of "impotence" was coauthored by three urologists a few years later. An additional connection between medicalization and phallocentrism comes from classifications of mental disorders. The new men's movement to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no end in sight to the medicalization of men's sexuality or to the phallocentrism it perpetuates. Urologists began specializing in male sexual dysfunction in quest of new patients and research areas. Medical industries provide resources to create the cultural authority essential to medicalization. Men constitute a ready audience for the medicalization of sexuality because of male socialization and masculine ideology, both of which make erectile function central to masculine self-esteem.
