Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

In these chapters, Roach shifts from cataloging curiosity-driven research to examining the long arc of attempts to repair, enhance, or visualize sexual function. Although the chapters span goat-gland grafts, hydraulic implants, and MRI studies of clitoral blood flow, Roach unifies them through a tonal and structural strategy that blends reporting with wry commentary. Her humor becomes a tool of calibration: broad and satirical when confronting historical spectacle, more restrained when describing invasive surgeries, and understated and empathetic when describing women undergoing diagnostic imaging. This progression gives the section coherence and reveals how sexual science evolved from quackery to clinical intervention to a deeper exploration of subjective experience.

Roach begins by framing the rejuvenation fads of the early 20th century as both cautionary tales and cultural artifacts. Her portrayal relies on a mock-heroic tone in exposing the era’s belief that surgical bravado could restore masculinity: “It seemed no ailment stood strong in the face of another man’s testis” (158). With this statement, Roach distills the extravagant claims of the period into a single ironic punch. The hyperbole is deliberate: Roach uses exaggeration to show how talk about glands and promises of rejuvenation fed into each other and helped sell the procedures. Likewise, she references Brinkley’s slogan, “‘A man is as old as his glands’” (162), to exemplify the persuasive compression of complex physiology into a marketable aphorism. By focusing on these slogans and spectacles, Roach suggests that much early “sex research” was closer to salesmanship than to careful science. This contrast sets up later chapters and thematically connects to The Cultural Politics of Sex Research, suggesting that authority depends as much on charisma and fear as on data.

As Roach transitions to modern erectile solutions, she retains this irony but narrows its scope, redirecting attention to how contemporary medicine packages sexual restoration as a commodity. Her description of the AMS prosthesis as “a high-profit item with a steady demand” (177) punctures the clinical neutrality often associated with urological interventions. The blunt phrase reveals the commercial side of a procedure that is often presented as purely medical and deeply personal.

However, Roach balances this scrutiny with attention to accuracy and correction. In referencing Irwin Goldstein’s remark, “‘If you can play the piano before the implant, you can play the piano after the implant” (179), Roach highlights how analogy can clarify misconceptions about physiological pathways: Implants restore rigidity, not desire or orgasm. These rhetorical moves underscore a central tension of the section: Sexual medicine advances through evidence-based refinement but remains susceptible to the same simplifications and promises that once fueled gland grafts. This contradiction thematically situates the prosthesis chapters within The Science Versus the Soul of Sexuality, showing that biology and aspiration intersect in unstable ways.

Roach’s on-the-ground reporting adds moments in which humor coexists with empathy rather than replacing it. Her presence in operating rooms and clinics forces her to modulate her tone, especially when observing the embodied consequences of surgical solutions. Her description of a prosthesis user who “won’t become erect, he’ll just suddenly be erect. His hydraulics have been swapped for an ON/OFF toggle” (182) uses a metaphor to describe the device’s practicality without diminishing the patient’s dignity. The language is playful, but its underlying purpose is explanatory: to show what is gained and what is altered when mechanics substitute for organic arousal. These scenes highlight the human stakes of interventions that medical literature often treats abstractly, illustrating the interpersonal ripple effects (partner dynamics, expectations, and adaptation) that accompany any attempt to restore sexual function.

Chapter 9 expands the book’s scope by reframing arousal through female anatomy and imaging, marking a shift from mechanical fixes to the more complex territory of lived experience. Roach uses MRI data not to flatten female arousal into a penile analogue but to reveal the insufficiency of such equivalence. Her observation that women’s clitorises “hold twice as much blood while they are watching porn than when they are watching, say, footage of a Space Shuttle launch” (194) blends levity with scientific clarity, emphasizing the reliability of physiological measurement while acknowledging the absurdity inherent in laboratory stimuli. A later conclusion that “Viagra did in fact increase blood volume in the nethers, but most women seemed not to notice it” (200) provides a structural counterpoint to earlier chapters: Objective vascular change does not ensure subjective arousal. Roach uses this gap to question male-centered drug models and to introduce another of the book’s themes, The Importance of Communication in Finding Mutual Pleasure, showing how context and emotion shape physiology in ways that resist simple medical fixes.

Throughout these chapters, Roach’s narrative structure reflects the field’s movement from spectacle to commercialization to nuanced inquiry. Her humor sharpens rather than softens her critiques, allowing her to navigate ethically complex material without trivializing it. By embedding herself at sites of intervention and measurement, she brings the experiential and relational stakes of sexual science into clearer view, emphasizing that understanding sexuality requires attending to bodies, technologies, histories, and the cultural stories that shape desire.