the subject of girls and sex, and is unable to masturbate, a fact he hides
from his mother — a sex therapist — played by Gillian Anderson.
Barge’s reluctance to use his own in-house expert changed with
Mojo. “I think she felt quite emotional when I told her,” he says. “She
was very happy I felt confident enough finally to confide.” Theirs is
a more open relationship these days. “I did have a user tell me he loved
the voice of the woman doing the masturbation tutorials,” Barge says.
“Which was my mother.” He reddens. “You should have seen the
sexual ornaments around my house growing up.”
Dr Barge herself is nothing but proud of her son’s achievements,
particularly for his bravery in the face of such a taboo topic. “We live in
a strange world, where one of the most prevalent and common
problems a man faces in his sexual life is also one that makes him feel
so isolated and alone,” she says. “Mojo is so acutely needed.”
As I speak to more of the in-house experts, common themes
emerge. There is a lack of robust sexual education in schools, as well as
a lack of information, and spread of disinformation, online. In their
eyes there is a huge deficit in available resources.
When you type “help with erectile dysfunction” into a search
engine, you find a host of confusing and contradictory results, all of
which are drowned out by endless adverts for Viagra. “What these
[pharmaceutical] campaigns do is to put young guys in a cycle of
dependency,” Gilbert says. “Viagra helps only with blood flow, it won’t
get to the root of the problem, which is so often psychological. So then
we get users saying they feel broken because ‘even Viagra didn’t
work’.” That can feel even worse than the initial shame.
A year-long membership of Mojo will set you back £4.17 a month.
One tablet of Viagra costs about £5. To the founders, popping a pill is
a misleadingly easy fix, and one that they feel strongly should not be
relied upon. Would it be like taking ibuprofen for chronic back pain
when you probably need to see a chiropractor? “Absolutely,” says
Barge. “The Viagra route — to me it just doesn’t feel right.”
Instead the site provides one-to-one counselling sessions, coaching
videos, mindful meditation and CBT focused around the issue. It also
instructs on various exercises to de-escalate the mental pressure usersare often putting on themselves. One encourages users to get
accustomed to their penis in — how to put this? — its resting state,
thus diminishing its power to cause stress or negative connotations.
The site also teaches Kegel exercises — yes, men, you too should
think about strengthening your pelvic floor. For some men, however,
a weakness in this area could have psychological as well as physical
roots. If the underlying cause of your ED is mental, you may be
suffering from a “seized pelvic floor”, for which a therapeutic
treatment would be recommended over a physical exercise, which
could on its own make the condition worse.
“How a person understands and relates to themselves and their
sexual difficulty is a core aspect of how they address it,” explains one
of Mojo’s resident experts, the
clinical psychologist Dr Roberta
Babb. “The mind has an
extraordinary and powerful
relationship with the body.
Psychological and emotional
barriers that contribute to the
occurrence of ED can include
anything from stress and tiredness to extremely low self-worth.”
Her Mojo colleague Silva Neves, a psychosexual and relationship
therapist, says there are two forms of ED: global (organic causes such
as Barge’s crushed blood vessels as well as other underlying health
issues) and situational. “If erection problems are ‘situational’, meaning
they happen only in certain situations and not others, it is most likely
psychological,” he says. “Typically these men will report erection
problems with a sexual partner but not masturbating on their own.
This indicates a problem with sexual anxiety, fearing they won’t begood enough lovers to their partner.” Global issues should be seen by
a GP or specialist, but situational issues require more therapeutic,
psychological assistance.
A way to tackle this, Neves suggests, is to make sex less “penis-
centered”. The leading man must become the understudy. “Learning
to be pleasure-centred rather than performance-focused is the key to
better erection,” he says. “Men should remember that many other
parts of their body can be used to give and receive pleasure.”O
ne of the site’s most significant services is its ability to
provide remote diagnosis — something that makes it
both pandemic-friendly and, crucially, man-friendly.
Many men are unaccustomed to discussing the
middle ground between physical and psychological
issues with a professional. “Men don’t speak to the
doctor about anything,” says Barge. “And we don’t speak to each other
or confide in one another the way women do. That leads to so many
problems beyond erectile dysfunction. Men can be totally consumed
by an issue like this. It makes them feel so alone.”
Many younger Mojo subscribers cite heightened anxieties caused
by the unrealistic expectations of freely available porn and what
Gilbert describes as the “disposable marketplace” of dating apps. “You
always feel like you’re in competition,” he says of online dating. “There
is this pressure that you are being compared with someone else.”
There are three pornography sites that get more global traffic than
either Amazon or Netflix. There is an entire course on Mojo dedicated
to it, described as a pioneering look at the links between porn and ED,
examining if a dependence on porn for erections is affecting
physiological dysfunction when it comes to real-life sex.
Sarah Calvert has seen in her own practice that this dependency
can go some way to explaining the surge of ED in recent years. “There
are two pathways to arousal, the brain and the body,” she says.
“Responding to one’s own sexual needs primarily through the brain
— online pornography, for example — can translate into erectile
dysfunction when having sex with a partner because the body can
become desensitised. Our sexual
arousal may become conditioned
to respond in a way that may not
translate well to non-digi sex.”
“But I don’t think we should
demonise porn,” Barge says. “It is only an issue if you have a really
unhealthy relationship with it.” It is rarely the sole cause of ED, “but
porn does create unrealistic expectations of who you should be having
sex with, what your body and penis should look like, how long you
should last and — of course — how instantly you can get it up.”
Users can share their experiences on the Mojo community forum,
many of them for the very first time. The age range is from 16 to 60.
“We had a user in his fifties who burst into tears during a coaching
session because we were the first people he had ever opened up to
about this,” Barge says. “That’s over 30 years of suffering in silence.
We also had a 19-year-old who hadn’t had an erection in two years
because of a bad break-up. Again, we were the very first people he had
ever told and now, thanks to talking about it and getting help, he is
having erections again. That really is the main message. It is really
powerful to talk about it.”
Barge is now a certified counsellor who runs sessions on the site, as
does Gilbert, who leaves our interview ten minutes early to “teach an
erection coaching session”.
“We’ve had some sniggers and the odd comment from our old
colleagues in the City,” says Barge. “A few ex-girlfriends have also
popped up to say a few cheeky things.” What is it like to date while
publicly discussing the success of your erections, I ask. While Gilbert
is in a long-term relationship, Barge was single until recently, and still
on dating apps when Mojo launched.
“Dating and telling someone that you run an erectile dysfunction
company was quite hilarious. I enjoyed it,” he grins. “Honestly, I think
a lot of girls are intrigued to see whether the product works” nFor more information, visit mojo.so50%
of men under the age of 50
are estimated to have suffered
from erectile dysfunction,
according to a 2019 study“A user said he loved the voice of the woman
doing the masturbation tutorials: my mother”
STAT SOURCE: KCL 2019
The Sunday Times Magazine • 33