Tom Matlack wonders what would happen if men were allowed to be open about their lust.
A guy I know, a wonderful husband, recently confided in me that he loves female breasts. His wife is quite beautiful, but mothering has “ruined her tits,” he told me. He made clear to me that he intended to continue his interest in the female form in what he considered the least damaging way he could figure out—porn and strip clubs—so as to prevent a melt-down in his marriage. “My wife would freak out if she knew,” he said, “but I don’t want to end up doing something stupid like having an affair with some teenager.”
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I was recently at a charity event for a children’s hospital. It’s one of the largest and most elaborate parties of the year, raising millions of dollars for sick kids. After the live auction and the philanthropic portion of the evening was over, the lights dimmed and out came a troupe of women dressed in black lingerie. It was some sort of performance of All That Jazz gone very wrong. The intent was to thank the male patrons for their generosity, but the women on boxes, in spotlights, grinding away, made the little old ladies in the crowd lose their dentures—and made everyone else incredibly uncomfortable.
I know more than one beautiful, happily married woman who has confided in me that she is obsessed with wanting to go into a strip club to see what really goes on. They women say they want to “de-mystify” the power of naked women in a room full of guys. Of those who have gone, most come home even more confused than when they left, noting that they just need to get a boob job and shave their entire bodies to be attractive to the opposite sex.
Meanwhile, porn and the sex trade are exploding in size and usage, driven by the apparently insatiable male appetite, while priests and politicians keep providing fodder for the latest sex scandal. Let’s not even get started with professional athletes.
But what is the connection between male goodness and male lust? It seems, to be good you have to control your lust into a very narrowly defined box. It’s a test that most men fail miserably, often with catastrophic results.
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It’s one of those truths about life that artists have used as their core device to draw us in for centuries: that which we deny about ourselves grows stronger in the shadows than it ever would in the light. In modern society, that is nowhere more true than sexuality.
We are animals, after all. Anyone who has witnessed the birth of their own child has to acknowledge the existence of forces that are far beyond anything that can be rationally explained. The miracle of reproduction is breathtaking in its complexity and magnificence. So, too, is the immediate instinct to cuddle and love that tiny little pink bundle of life. There’s nothing rational about it. The feeling is purely animal.
As a young adult, I used to joke with my friends, perhaps in twisted despair, about how we felt the need to hide our feelings of lust, while we were actually most similar to baboons whose sexual patterns are far from monogamous. But on a recent trip to Africa, I was fascinated to discover the wide variety of mating patterns among different species of animals in the Masai Mara. Sure, the dominant male lion has his way with whichever female he wants, but the female Hyena does the same with the males. Female elephants control the social order, with men left to wander on their own. The jackals pair off for life.
In each case, sexuality is not up for debate. Instinct has established a well-worn path for the survival of the species.
What the hell happened to humans on this score? Is the male lust instinct some legacy of animal nature that threatens to bring down civilization? Or is it just something we, collectively, are too afraid to look at directly and, thereby, we give it way more power than it deserves?
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I was at a 50th wedding anniversary party a few years ago and the toast given by one of the sons was a humorous recounting of “the power of the penis” and how the marriage had endured despite that power.
One of the good things about hitting middle age is that the testosterone level wanes just a little bit and, hopefully, takes the edge off the “power of the penis.” Yet, there are all these guys within spitting distance of old-man diapers who marry teenaged women out of some twisted mixture of a desire for youth and beauty. I’m not going to try to dissect why the women in these pairings agree to the trade, but the pattern is profoundly odd when you think about it for too long.
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if men were totally open about their lust? Would the sex trade still prosper? Would marriage change? Would our collective discomfort with gay marriage and lack of judgment of sexual exploitation in many forms shift?
Perhaps, the most vexing is the question: what would male lust itself, completely out in the open, really look like? Do we, as men, have a common animal ancestry that would come to the fore? Are we more like lions or jackals in our natural state? Are we all on the spectrum of bisexuality? Or is male lust a rainbow of colors, stifled by our discomfort with the male need for sexual encounter?
I have no answers. But I do think getting honest about male lust might go a long way toward righting some of the most persistent wrongs in our world.
Honest sex is a beautiful thing, perhaps the most treasured human experience possible. But too often, it gets twisted, tortured, and comes out in ways that destroy the object and the owner of that lust.
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image by kylelane66 / flickr
About Tom Matlack
To add a bit of levity to this discussion, I’d like to reference Flight of The Conchords “Boom”
“She’s so hot she makes me sexist.” Perhaps a truer statement was never said?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-sawvtJxDI&feature=player_embedded#!
I also found this to be lovely.
http://www.edenfantasys.com/sexis/body/colonization-sacred-breast-1027111/
A small note would be to clarify that humans are most closely related to Bonobos, whose societal structure is more dominated by female bonobos, and homosexual tendencies are the norm. Most females pair off into same sex couples, males couples are slightly less common.
http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2011-09/gallery-gay-animals?image=1
As with many of the topics on this site, I feel that if adults are respectful of each other and honest, they can openly talk about their lust with others. In my experience, people frequently bring it up in private conversation. Often they already have a partner, but still want me to be aware of their attraction.
I don’t want to quibble but humans are equally related to both chimps and bonobos. Our line split off from the common ancestor of both chimps and bonobos 5-7 million years ago. Chimps and bonobos split off from each other only about a million years ago when their population became geographically separated by the Congo River.
I vote for a rainbow of colors.
“It seems, to be good you have to control your lust into a very narrowly defined box.”
You sound like a fundamentalist there, but who defines what is good and what is men’s motivation to conform? It’s hardly a widespread social influence anymore, sex is plentiful and men are choosing to be free from the social constraints of marriage and fundamentalist opinion.
Nearly all men (and most women, I’d wager) walk the line between repressing and expressing their physical lust. This isn’t a fundamentalist attitude, it’s common sense. Most men over the age of 15 have long since learned that ogling a woman’s chest is a good way to get smacked upside the head. This has nothing to do with marriage customs and everything to do with social pressures.
This article is less about monogamy and more about the intersection of biology and social norms.
It’s socialization and it changes with time. The sexual revolution let the cat out of the bag a long time ago. Trying to manipulate the socialization back in time and calling it good is a fundamentalist attitude. Monogamy is a social norm, not a biological one.
Actually, that’s biologically untrue Bad Man. If we are going to be totally honest, humans (women AND men) are both programmed for monogamy AND for having multiple partners. Both biological practices serve a purpose. That’s why it comes down to what *you* choose. Monogamy isn’t just a social norm. It is infact also a biological one. But so is diversity in partners. You ultimately choose what is best for you.
Further, down below you mentioned how men shouldn’t feel ashamed for liking beautiful women. They shouldn’t, this is true. But no one said they should to begin with. I think men appreciating female beauty in a non-predatory respectful way is fantastic. I am also intelligent enough to realize that what is defined about female beauty through the media isn’t realistic or natural. So the issue isn’t that men shouldn’t find women beautiful. They should. It can be a wonderful thing. Especially as a woman. The issue is unrealistic expectations that get passed off as “natural” that are often placed on women in combination with abusing the idea of what is natural to exploit the other gender. Biologically, women look for providers. Men that are strong in health and money. But just becuase biologically it behoves women to find providers, doesn’t make it right when women exploit men for their money. Use them for this and then turn around and try to justify it on what is “natural”. The issue about how men and women treat each other runs deeper then that.
Dear Erin,
As is so common on this site, I think you’re making a common layman’s mistake, equating “pair-bonding” with “monogamy”. The two aren’t necessarily the same.
In many human cultures, people are pair-bonded but also, in fact, have other sexual partners. There’s tons of ethnographic evidence regarding this.
As for women being “biologically programmed” to look for men with money, that’s a rather odd claim, given that the human race has been biologically stable for at least 50,000 years and money has only existed for 10,000 or so.
It gets even odded when you realize that for most of humanity’s biological history, WOMEN were far more the providers than men. Even up to historical times, the “household” – or pair-bonded couple, their children and aggragated relatives – was an economic unit. It’s only in the capitalist period that we move towards an economic system were women became, for a brief historical period, economically marginalized.
I wish you biodeterminist folks would read a bit more history and ethnography before spouting these sorts of “biology is everything” theories to explain contemporary behaviors.
These biological arguments never get anyone anywhere because they’re literally impossible to prove scientifically – it’s all speculation. Furthermore, understanding why a behavior may or may not occur doesn’t do anything to justify it.
Thaddeus –
Next time can I get some french fries with that condescending attitude.
I’m not biologist or historian and I certainly don’t read every little piece of scientific data or historic dissertation that comes through, but I shouldn’t have to to have a worth while opinion. I do know that nature is about balance. Just because butterflies fly in my stomach when I see Ryan Gosling, doesn’t mean I don’t ultimately desire a committed monogamous relationship. Or that I would over-throw that for the fleeting butterfly stomach feeling.
Naturally, in different people, different chemicals are going to be stronger and pull them toward one status or the other. From my understanding, pair bonding can either mean a a monogamous relationships that lasts a life time or certainly can also mean just a secular stage of dating and mating and raising kids. Either way, it still points to chemicals and hormones that cause us to desire monogamy for a certain time period to a lifetime. That’s why it ultimately comes down to what choice you make. Obviously presenting the idea that people were “made” for monogamy is just as wrong as presenting the idea that people were “made” only to have multiple partners. Which was why I responded to Bad Man.
As for women, it’s not big secret that they historically have picked men on their ability to provide then their looks. (I’m really not saying anything new here.) Women certainly have been caretakers of the home, but they haven’t been money providers. You had mentioned “historical times” in regards to the function of a family unit or “household”. What historical times are you referring to? Because I am only familiar with historical times where men could own property, but women couldn’t. Where it was common for men to have mistresses, but it was not received as well for women to do the same. While a woman may have taken care of the home, I don’t think that’s an indicator of her economic “power”.
Either way, I am in agreement with what Lindsey pointed out that not even science has it all figured out and as articulately as she said, “understanding why a behavior may or may not occur doesn’t do anything to justify it.”
Dear Erin,
I’m sorry you find my attittude condescending. There’s no way to say “You’re wrong”, however, without sounding either a) aggressive or b) condescending on some level to at least some people. I try to avoid both extremes and I think I’ve done a pretty good job in my post to you above.
I agree that you have the right to an opinion. That right, however, doesn’t extend to having other people AGREE with your opinion. If I’m respondiong to your opinion, it means that I’m taking it seriously: if I thought you were a nutter, I wouldn’t bother. I’m responding in this case because you’re making a classically biodeterminist argument that many people believe and which I feel should be refuted.
The problems with biodeterminism are well known. My main beef with them, however, is that people tend to use a very poor knowledge of human biological history to cast whatever they personally feel as some sort of natural and predetermined response to the world. They cast their personal reactions, then, as the “normal” by which the rest of humanity is to be judged. Biodeterminism thus becomes a new method of excusing ethnocentrism.
If you want a monogamous relationship, that’s great and I think that you’re totally entitled to one. Many people feel exactly as you do. It’s when you reach into biology and pull out a lot of strange little bits and say “This shows that all normal human beings, everywhere, crave monogamy like I do because we evolved that way” that my fingertips begin to itch.
“Pair bonding” means setting up a stable child-rearing and householding nucleus with a single partner. That is, indeed, pretty solid human behavior across all cultures. Where you’re theory goes off the rails is when you mistake “pair bonding” for “monogamy”: having sex with only one single partner.
There are many, many cultures where pair-bonding is the norm and yet people routinely have sex with other partners, either on ceremonial occasions or as a matter of course. Pair-bonding does not thus mean monogamy.
By the way, AFAIK, we know of no chemicals or hormones that make you crave monogamy. Like all complex human behavior, that sort of craving is probably the result of an intense and complicated interaction between one’s biological make-up, one’s social environment and one’s personal history, with none of these three poles being fixed in stone. And, of course, there’s also the question of agency involved: you yourself determine, to a great extent, what you prefer.
Regarding women and their choices of men…
Historically, women didn’t pick men AT ALL, or hardly at all: women’s families picked their men for them. That’s pretty much how things worked for most people in most historical civilizations. Pre-civilized soceities also involved a lot of rules regarding who could bond with whom. The idea that people should be allowed to freely “pick” their mates is an artefact of extremely recent historical cultures and not an artefact of human biological evolution, as you seem to believe.
What I’m trying to say here is that for almost all of human written history (and probably long before), human bonding (what people usually gloss as marriage) was not a free market with Uga choosing Ugo because he was such a fine, providing specimen of a male: it was a complex social affair where women (and sometimes men) were swapped between social groups in order to reinforce ties of allegiance and exchange. When those swaps happened to coincide with women’s desires, then everyone was happy. When they didn’t, tough: she was stuck with a husband she didn’t like.
This sort of thing has been MASSIVELY documented by history, anthropology and ethnography.
Marriage among humans has probably never been a free market driven by individual desires. It’s not even that way now for most people.
“The problems with biodeterminism are well known. My main beef with them, however, is that people tend to use a very poor knowledge of human biological history to cast whatever they personally feel as some sort of natural and predetermined response to the world. They cast their personal reactions, then, as the “normal” by which the rest of humanity is to be judged.”
Yes, I agree that the biodeterminism argument is fraught with problems, whether or not the person making the argument has a sufficient grounding in biology or anthropology. Knowledge of biology and anthropology are certainly useful in charting human behavior and what has succeeded and what hasn’t – in other words, it’s a good indicator of our limitations though not necessarily of our ideals.
” Biodeterminism thus becomes a new method of excusing ethnocentrism.”
Actually it’s become a new method of “excusing” a LOT of things (ethnocentrism and cultural conditioning certainly being a big one), including “I can’t help cheating on my wife because men are hardwired to want lots of young attractive partners,” etc. Saying that all human beings are biologically predisposed to whatever one’s personal sexual preferences happen to be, is very likely to be wrong, and it doesn’t even particularly matter. History has shown that humans adapt their practices and tendences according to necessity and according to what’s socially acceptable at the time. Now that we all have more choices (at least in the developed world) economically and socially, the questions we ask ourselves should not be whether we are “wired” for anything but what our honest feelings about sexuality are and whether they’re empathetic or hurtful to our partners, whether they help to stabilize or destabilize society (i.e. create a healthy environment for children), etc.
No doubt, LF. I hear that “I can’t help cheating on my wife because men are hardwired to want lots of young attractive partners” shit from practically every monger that shows up in Rio [roll eyes].
I always respond with “OK, fair go: let’s assume it’s biology making you do this. If that’s the case, why do you need to pop viagra tabas as if they were vitamin C every day before hitting the zona? I mean, where’s that biological drive you’re on about THEN?”
I don’t buy the “stabilize/destabilize society” argument, though. We have no reasonable metrics for that sort of thing so, again, it generally ends up being “Let’s assume that my preferences mean a ‘stable’ society and let’s force everyone else to hew to those.”
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252872.php
We learned about this just last semester, and one of the ladies in my internship class did her summer research project assisting with the University of Georgia in Atlanta on this subject.
Basically, what they have found is that when a male is pair-bonded already, oxytocin encourages monogamous behaviour. Does it make men”crave” monogamy? No, that’s a stretch, but the relationship is there. Perhaps that is all AFAIK was referring to.
Note, for those hoping to use this as support for ‘monogamy is biologically programmed’ arguments, that oxytocin did not encourage monogamous behaviour in single males. A previously established pair-bond was required.
Erin,
Please show me the scientific evidence that proves humans are sexually monogamous creatures.
Erin,
Monogamy is as much of a choice as are heterosexuality or homosexuality.
If the latter is true, so is the former.
Sadly, the days and times we are living in Shouts to the entire world social Norm is undefinable anymore.The only guys that does not really wrestle with this issue of lusting after women were sexually abused by men and lust/crave dick more so than a set of titties. Just as sure as most of guys speak of our rape experiences, declaring that a female was the cause of them being traumatized by rape while at the same time wrestle like hell with the embarrassment of even speaking on the subject.. If the women matures biologically faster than we do, I start to wander who Really struggles the most with this issue of lust. In grade school i couldn’t tell the difference except the fact that I witnessed females wrestle with it more than we do.
And the more I wtch Law and Order, the first 48, NCIS and a few others, I’d rather just stick to dressing them up in my mind the as a Cheerleader/Majorrette and the men what he’d look like as Drummajor or attempt to picture him in Cowboy gear/ Western Wear.
It seems a shame that we still cannot educate men to the damage there is in seeing woman as sex objects,
We can not underestimate the the danger this outlook has for woman ,sexual slavery .trafficking of women and children , rape, also the break down in family life which equals breakdown in society.
So without change terrible suffering to so many people will continue .
All you men out there need to rethink and change you have a responsibility to do so.
.
I refuse to believe a fundamental fact about male biology is somehow ‘wrong,’ and in need of change. Too often the biological fact of attraction is politicized with this notion of ‘sexual objectification.’ There is nothing political about male sexual lust as such, any more than the act of ovulation is political.
Sexual objectification will only be a meaningful concept if it is made clear that what is decried is not the brute biological fact of arousal, but rather a deleterious ideology that makes some men unable to reconcile attraction with respect.
“I refuse to believe a fundamental fact about male biology is somehow ‘wrong,’ and in need of change. ”
I completely disagree. I don’t understand why people think that because something is “natural” that it’s “good”. Take violence, for example. I don’t think that there’s anyone who would disagree that it’s human nature to act violently (even little children hit, after all), but I never hear anyone going around complaining that this very nature is being suppressed because he can’t punch his boss in the face every time he feels like it. Humans aren’t animals – it’s up to us, not our hormones or impulses, to determine what is best for society.
Does it occur to you guys that something might not be neither good nor bad, but simply something that exists?
When something is “natural”, it’s very hard to change. Violence comes in many forms, after all, and whether or not we like it, I have yet to meet more than a handful of humans – men and women – who don’t engage in it.
“something might not be neither good nor bad, but simply something that exists”
I think if you browse the comments on here, you’d see that male lust can be pretty bad for women a lot of the time. To imply that it’s “neither good nor bad” really turns a blind eye to all of the hurt it can cause.
How about female lust?
* Almost 3% of men reported forced sex and 22% reported verbal coercion in a romantic relationship in the last year. Almost 2.3% of women reported forced sex and 25% reported verbal coercion. [From: Predictors of Sexual Coercion.]( http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdf)
* 95% of sexually abused youth in correctional facilities reported being abused by female staff. [From Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities, 2008-09](http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry09.pdf)
* Among inmates reporting staff sexual misconduct, ~ 65% reported a female aggressor. [From Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09](http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri0809.pdf)
* 50% of homeless youth reported being sexually abused by a female. [From It’s Not What You Think: Sexually Exploited Youth in British Columbia](http://www.nursing.ubc.ca/PDFs/ItsNotWhatYouThink.pdf)
From the report on inmates, here are a few highlights:
* Female inmates in prison (4.7%) or jail (3.1%) were more than twice as likely as male inmates in prison (1.9%) or jail (1.3%) to report experiencing inmate- on-inmate sexual victimization.
* Sexual activity with facility staff was reported by 2.9% of male prisoners and 2.1% of male jail inmates, compared to 2.1% of female prisoners and 1.5% of female jail inmates.
Yeah, and I think male lust is also quite enjoyed by a lot of women, too.
I would say that the problem isn’t “male lust”, but abuse of power. I wopuld say that the major reason people see this abuse of power is that it coems with a sexual tag. When it isn’t sexual, folks tend to ignore it.
I agree with you on this actually. However, I don’t think this is illogical. Well, it’s illogical to the extent that people shouldn’t ignore any abuse of power. But I don’t think it’s illogical or accidental that power abuse is seen as more especially egregious when it happens in one’s own home or body (where one is supposed to be able to find solace and intimacy) as opposed to in the workforce, on the battlefield, etc. where people expect to be abused and don’t expect any quarter.
Sexual abuse, in other words, is not only an abuse of power but a violation of the trust that is expected of a sexual partner.
I guess that naturalizes the belief that a sexual partner should be more trusted than other kinds of partners. Well I personally might agree with that, I see lots of examples in the historical and ethnographic record that indicate that said belief is pretty culturally contigent.
Also, I’m not sure about sexual violence being intimate and work violence NOT being intimate. Both involve pretty gross violations of one’s body.
I don’t think this belief is all that culturally contingent (and I got into that a little more in the other thread about prostitution). I think rather that some cultures have subjugated this idea more than others, out of brute necessity and/or the desire for power and control. Certainly I don’t think, anyway, that if you could plunk two people of any culture into a trusting sexual relationship they would deny its life affirming nature. But unfortunately most cultural constructs make it difficult for that to happen, even though sometimes it accidentally does anyway. People manage to fall in love in the most repressive of circumstances, and there are such stories in every culture.
I wasn’t saying either that work violence and particular the violence of war are NOT intimate. Yes, they involve gross violations of one’s body and soul, but again, people expect that. Unless there’s been some severe psychological damage/desensitization/compartmentalization (which unfortunately, there’s been a lot of in most cultures, in both men and women), the expectation of a sexual encounter is that it fosters positive intiimacy, trust and pair bonding, so using sex as a form of power abuse is worse than other kinds of power abuse.
The problem to my mind becomes “trusting sexual relationship”, which is a huge construct, the content of which is not at all objectively obvious to everyone, all around the world.
As a simple “ferinstance” of where this can lead, I suggest that you watch “How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman”, a Brazilian film (almost certainly available on Youtube). Here’s the wikilink to it:
http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/ How_Tasty_Was_My_Little_Frenchman
By that, I mean to say that intimacy has been used in a lot of strange ways in human history which belies the notion that there’s one, intercultural, form of “trusting sexual relationships” which everyone, everywhere just sort of naturally accesses through sex.
As for people expecting violence through work, again, this naturalizes capitalism, setting it as some sort of transhuman and transhistorical rule. I think you and me might expect that, yeah. I’m not so sure that everyone, everywhere does. Furthermore, some of the worst intimate damage I have suffered in my life has come through work, not sexual relationships.
To Thaddeus:
Yes, horny man have helped women. Women have gotten jewelry and dinners and $$$$ thanks to male lust.
When women are used and tossed aside, of course they’ll get mad. I’m not sure if its about abuse of power per se.
Most men weren’t even around when the sexual revolution happened so it’s really hard to blame them. We are biologically sexual creatures and men have nothing to be ashamed of.
it’s only natural for men to be attracted to beautiful women.
I really dont think most men mind. They dont see anything wrong with reducing women to parts. It’s the nature of the beast.
They are very, very different. I once told a man I only wanted him for his penis, and HE LOVED IT. Now try that with a woman you wont get very far most of the time. I think men like to be objectified themselves and dont understand why a woman wouldn’t like it.
I think women want to be valued for who they are on the inside, but men focus on the physical. It’s the nature of the beast, sorry.
I also think sometimes it takes men to have a daughter or two to see how bad they treat women.
Your mentality is exactly the point that this article is attempting to address, of allowing us men to better understand and be more honest about our sexuality without your shaming us and accusing us of thought crimes that must be suppressed.
Like some of the other posters on here, I find this post pretty disturbing.
I think that the problem isn’t necessarily with lust, but rather with the sense that that lust should always be indulged. A lot of men seem to feel entitled to get what they want. They want a certain thing, and if their wife can’t provide it, well they can just go out and pay for it! Because the idea that maybe you just have to accept people as a whole for what they are (good wives, good mother, people with saggy breasts, fun to talk to, etc.) doesn’t seem to ever be part of the equation. Men compartmentalize women so much (I like her butt, and her boobs, and her personality, and her in bed, and her for emotional support, etc.) that it seems unfathomable to them that, maybe, they should just do without something that is rather shallow in nature.
I don’t know many guys who worry about what will happen when they get a beer gut. When work is so busy that they can’t make it to the gym. Most men know that the women in their lives take them as a whole, and so the diminishing of one quality (ie your hairline) doesn’t matter much on the larger scale. Most women don’t expect to have sex in their 50′s that’s the same as it was in their 20′s. I just don’t know why men can’t do the same.
Newsflash – people age. That doesn’t mean that you can “supplement” your wife with strippers. Maybe that just means that you’re getting old, too, and you both have to learn to be content with each other. Maybe it’s the porn and strippers that are making you discontented with the real woman that you’re supposed to love?
I don’t see much porn, rarely strippers and never prostitutes or one night stands. I’ve loved all the women I’ve been with for monogamous relationships, some are still even friends.
Staying with one person for the rest of your life is foolish thinking considering the divorce rates. Considering the divorce rates, getting married is foolish thinking.
Or, it could be that the divorce rates are fueled by all of the entitlement and unrealistic expectations and lying and covering up of activities and compartmentalizing. Just a thought.
Women are more likely to initiate divorce. 70% are initiated by women; 90%(in some areas) when there are children involved. The most often cited reason is some variation of ‘I just don’t feel fulfilled’.
So is the divorce rate fuelled by all the entitlement and unrealistic expectations of women?
I think both men and women can be equally prone to unrealistic expectations. I also wonder how many women file for divorce because they KNOW their husband has lost interest (like the man in Tom ‘s first example) and, yes, that situation is pretty unfulfilling in a relationship. I commented earlier that I would not want to stay in a marriage if I knew that my husband was repelled by my aging or post-baby body (assuming I was doing my best to stay in shape, but the damage caused by pregnancy and breast feeding is hard to fix and there is not much that can be done about it, even surgery is not a perfect fix). I don’t think it’s unrealistic or frivolous to want my life partner to be excited about being with me and not feeling like he has to use porn or strippers to make up for my flaws.
@ Lindsay
“I don’t know many guys who worry about what will happen when they get a beer gut.”
Perhaps they simply don’t confide in you?
From the OP:
“I was at a 50th wedding anniversary party a few years ago and the toast given by one of the sons was a humorous recounting of “the power of the penis” and how the marriage had endured despite that power.”
Go back far enough and female sexuality was seen as corrosive to family and marriage. I wonder when the human race will do the next 180 in opinion.
“Perhaps they simply don’t confide in you? ”
That could be true, but I think that the worry that women have is present culturally. I’ve heard (both in the media and in my personal life) of a woman getting breast implants for a guy, but I’ve never heard of a man getting cosmetic surgery for his wife. If women were as focused visually on guys, one would assume that there’s be more porn made for women, more strip clubs for women, and more sexy guys in ads. All of these pale in comparison to how women’s sexuality is sold to me. In general, I just don’t see such widespread pressure in society that men need to be attractive or else their wives will divorce or cheat or seek out sexual gratification elsewhere. It’s no where near the same scale.
Female value tends to be about their looks, Male value tends to be about how he can provide. If you want to see the widespread pressure society puts on males just look at how much they’re pushed into earning a decent wage, how much monetary value seems to rule their life and how many women won’t date some broke “deadbeat” whereas plenty of men have and do date women with no cash.
Also the rate of eating disorders for males is sharply rising, there is a very LARGE insecurity of penile size and yes men get surgery for this. Plenty of women lust heavily over males who have resources, just like plenty of men lust over hot women. Society pushes these values on us, there could be a biological element but the jury is out on that. Either way, both genders suffer enormous insecurity and neither gets it better or worse, just different.
And overweight men are probably less likely to get sex, or relationships, than overweight women. Hell overweight women have a MUCH higher chance of getting intimacy than a male, so who is the shallow gender?
Beautiful post. I feel that male sexuality is something that males are either friends with or enemies with. (Is their lust serving them or are they serving their lust?) I especially like your quote: “that which we deny about ourselves grows stronger in the shadows than it ever would in the light.”
I agree.
I think one of the main reasons why lust can be so destructive, is because males don’t always know what to do with it. They get mixed, confusing signals from society: deny it or suffer from social stigma (which leads to excessive prudeness and only marrying respectable “Madonnas”), or indulge it and relieve yourself (which leads to rape and sex crimes and fornication with whores). Ha! Needless to say, both expressions of sexuality are unhealthy. Males need a happy medium where they can honestly look at their sex drives, acknowledge it, then proceed to control it by training it to heel. It’s called learning to be a MAN 101. The truth will set you free. See ya!
“Fornification with whores”…?
Some anti-prostitute prejudices in there, perhaps?
Sounds more like someone who just came here straight from Bible study or something equally pointless and mind-numbing.
Also, since when was rape ever caused by lust?
Yet another excellent point Thaddeus! Thank you!
Frankly, if male lust were curbed, or even defeated outright, then – I’ll have to hand it to the condescending feminists out there- things would change for the better.
Feminism, enabled by weak men hoping to stay in the ladies’ favor, would itself wither and die if enough men did their thinking between their ears instead of between their legs.
I had ignored this article until now. But, I see the commenting has been hot. The generalizations are hard to swallow.
” It’s a test that MOST MEN FAIL miserably, often with catastrophic results.”
Really? When did you have time to meet MOST MEN and get to know them well enough to make such a definitive statement about their sex lives? Come on. Let’s stay in touch with reality.
Men, there is nothing wrong with your lust or your sexuality. As long as it is safe, sane, and consensual and within the agreements of your relationship if you are in one, go for it. This idea that human lust is some sort of uncontrollable beast that will destroy human society comes mostly from religion and patriarchy. There is no original sin and there is nothing wrong with you. The women who are trying to repress your sexuality and shame you for it are really just projecting their fear of their own sexuality on to you. They’ve internalized the oppression they’ve been subjected to for thousands of years and now they’re trying to even the score by repressing your sexuality as well.
I mean, really, want to turn this world upside down? Let society be run by women who do not fear their own or anyone else’s sexuality or sexual pleasure. Once women stop fearing sexuality and start feeling empowered about their own pleasure, and start actively seeking it out, the whole world would change.
Here’s link that discusses it some: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxSF-Nicole-Daedone-Orgasm-Th;search:orgasm
i have to wonder how wonderful a husband a man can be if he feels that “His wife is quite beautiful, but mothering has “ruined her tits,” “. that mothering was caused in part by said “wonderful” husband, yet he feels entitled enough to say that she is somehow lesser now? where did he get this sense of entitlement? how much is he helping at home? has he gained any weight or lost some hair? how would his wife feel if she knew that he’d made such a comment?
Sorry, but anyone who says that motherhood “ruined” his wife’s tits has issues. The fact that she has tits is a good thing, how about that? I am sorry to say it like this, but some people could really take a page out of the African American relationship workbook (and not the one you see in dumb ass music videos either). Throughout life I have rarely, if ever hear black men talking about their women’s bodies like that, and black guys love a great figure as much as anyone – but what seems to constitute a ‘great’ figure varies according to age, size, and individuality. In that culture women of all walks of life have aesthetic value. In other words, a great pair of boobs varies, and the body parts of the woman you love are always great… because she’s your woman.
This is a really refreshing, powerful article, one of the best, most honest articles, with the least PC-filtered, feminist-approved muffler on it. Powerful stuff.
There was one line that frayed, though:
“One of the good things about hitting middle age is that the testosterone level wanes just a little bit and, hopefully, takes the edge off the “power of the penis.” ”
What a sad, self-defeating attitude. Healthy, athletic men who eat a hunter-gather diet can maintain high testosterone levels well into their 70′s & 80′s. Just ask Art De Vaney, a retired UCLA economist turned nutrition expert.
There’s no reason to hope that some external force will take the edge off your ‘penis power,’ and every reason to celebrate it.
Thanks for your post, but it would be nice if you didn’t knock feminism. That said, I also don’t think one’s testosterone level is necessarily caused by diet. It may be correlated, I don’t dispute that. Honestly I think genetics has a lot to do with it, and so for many men the decline might be inevitable.
It seems, to be good you have to control your lust into a very narrowly defined box.
We can not underestimate the the danger this outlook has for woman ,sexual slavery .trafficking of women and children , rape, also the break down in family life which equals breakdown in society.
So without change terrible suffering to so many people will continue .
All you men out there need to rethink and change you have a responsibility to do so.
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Sexual lust doesn’t cause rape…
And if you want to believe it does, why not apply that same thinking pattern towards women who were up to 20% of the perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Everyone needs to rethink life, and respect others, not JUST the men.
I wasn’t saying either that work violence and particular the violence of war are NOT intimate. Yes, they involve gross violations of one’s body and soul, but again, people expect that. Unless there’s been some severe psychological damage/desensitization/compartmentalization (which unfortunately, there’s been a lot of in most cultures, in both men and women), the expectation of a sexual encounter is that it fosters positive intiimacy, trust and pair bonding, so using sex as a form of power abuse is worse than other kinds of power abuse.
Read more at http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/is-male-lust-turning-us-inside-out/#LBiOuHoyzLQPpSlz.99