The drug has many names: flibanserin, Addyi, Ectris, Girosa or, colloquially, "pink Viagra." Whatever you want to call the long-in-the-making libido pill for women, it recently gained FDA approval despite "serious, serious safety concerns" and benefits that are "modest, maybe less than modest." But as a science-driven sex educator, I am less troubled by the risk of low blood pressure and fainting than I am by the drug maker's reinforcement of an outdated, scientifically invalid model of sexual desire.
The supposed problem that flibanserin helps women solve is an absence of spontaneous, out-of-nowhere desire. Here's how one participant in the flibanserin drug trials described her difficulty: "Once I started, it wasn't an issue.