Men behaving badly.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged

In late August, major pharmaceutical companies began a full frontal publicity campaign for their new Viagra spin-offs. Apparently, men had been having a hard (or not-so-hard) time syncing their Viagra four-hour window of opportunity with their dating, which could last five or six hours. Barring traffic jams.

To ease this crushing time-management problem, one new Viagra variant lasts thirty-six hours. It's called Ciallis, which is Latin for "long weekend." Thirty-six hours? So much for Homeland Security. Get out that duct tape again.

In more unfortunate timing, the Gap people have just reintroduced their classic flat front chinos. Dockers will soon introduce pants with eight front pleats called Cockers. Sansibelts is thinking of unveiling Alta-Cockers.

Then came the news that male boomers are getting shot up with testosterone to stave off erectile dysfunction, loss of libido, and bouts of depression. The constellation of symptoms is known to some as andropause, the male version of menopause. Like early hormone replacement therapy for women, the bimonthly testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) for men has unknown long-range health effects. Nevertheless, nearly 1.3 million prescriptions were written in the first six months of 2003. Bring it on!

But such therapy may not be enough. Men seem to be facing a relentless loss of potency at a very basic genetic level. Biologists have determined that the Y chromosome has been shedding genes for some evolutionary time now. As a result, it is a fraction of the size of its partner, the X chromosome. Mother Nature has barred the Y chromosome from the standard genetic swap meet called recombination, otherwise the Y chromosome would sneak into the X, making everyone male. Hey, you can't blame the Old Splice Girl. "(All this was detailed in an article in The New York Times, post-Howell Raines, so it must be true.) Denied the benefits of recombining with the X, the helixical strand of Y has been forced to survive by making a hairpin turn and recombining with itself. The sentence in Nicholas Wade's "Science Times" article that jolted me more than my morning java was, "This narcissistic process ... seems to be what has saved men from extinction so far."

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