I posted this on FB the other day, and forgot to post it over here...
Sex Writers, Drooling Horndogs, and the Suspectability of Male Sexuality
As I said when I originally posted it:
Greta for the win, yet again. She writes like she's inside my brain, only coherent and eloquent. It's absolutely something I wish I found more often, a perspective I'd love to hear more frequently.
Three particularly good bits:
The very fact that sex is seen as a primarily male experience makes male sex writers, paradoxically, seem less serious. Our society sees sex as being about maleness: male desires, male insecurities, male satisfaction. Our culture is sexually obsessed with women, of course; but it’s sexually obsessed with women as - and I’m turning into a ’70s lesbian feminist as I write this - the objects of desire, rather than the subjects of it. Sex is seen as a male topic. But therefore, we all too often assume that we know what men think about sex, and how they feel about it. Male sexual desire is assumed to be simple: an animal urge to put a dick in a wet hole. With, occasionally, some variations in the way of orientation and paraphilias. And I think this makes it harder for male sex writers to be taken seriously. Anything they have to say on the subject is likely to be seen as suspect.
....
I, selfishly, want to read more of what men have to say about sex. I want to read more about the varieties of male sexuality, from people who are living it from the inside. I want to read more about the varieties of female sexuality, from people who are seeing it from the outside. I want to read more about how men feel about this “animal urge horndog” label they’ve gotten stuck with: to what extent they think it’s true, to what extent they think it isn’t, how the reality and the unreality of it weave together in their experience of their sexuality. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit most of the serious thought about it to one gender. And in addition to hearing what men, qua men, think about sex, I want to hear what individual men think about it: what Dan and David and Marty and Charlie and so on have to say. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit the voices who can talk about it seriously to the voices that are attached to vaginas.
....
I’ve lived my whole life dealing with the various and sundry ways that female sexuality gets demeaned, by being ignored or trivialized or assumed to not exist.
Thinking about this topic is making me realize the various and sundry ways that male sexuality gets demeaned . . . by the mirror image of that process. It’s making me realize that the amplification of male sexuality - the funhouse mirror that takes the image of a man and distorts it into a drooling tongue and a hard dick - has the effect of demeaning it as well.
And that sucks for all of us.
As I said when I originally posted it:
Greta for the win, yet again. She writes like she's inside my brain, only coherent and eloquent. It's absolutely something I wish I found more often, a perspective I'd love to hear more frequently.
Three particularly good bits:
The very fact that sex is seen as a primarily male experience makes male sex writers, paradoxically, seem less serious. Our society sees sex as being about maleness: male desires, male insecurities, male satisfaction. Our culture is sexually obsessed with women, of course; but it’s sexually obsessed with women as - and I’m turning into a ’70s lesbian feminist as I write this - the objects of desire, rather than the subjects of it. Sex is seen as a male topic. But therefore, we all too often assume that we know what men think about sex, and how they feel about it. Male sexual desire is assumed to be simple: an animal urge to put a dick in a wet hole. With, occasionally, some variations in the way of orientation and paraphilias. And I think this makes it harder for male sex writers to be taken seriously. Anything they have to say on the subject is likely to be seen as suspect.
....
I, selfishly, want to read more of what men have to say about sex. I want to read more about the varieties of male sexuality, from people who are living it from the inside. I want to read more about the varieties of female sexuality, from people who are seeing it from the outside. I want to read more about how men feel about this “animal urge horndog” label they’ve gotten stuck with: to what extent they think it’s true, to what extent they think it isn’t, how the reality and the unreality of it weave together in their experience of their sexuality. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit most of the serious thought about it to one gender. And in addition to hearing what men, qua men, think about sex, I want to hear what individual men think about it: what Dan and David and Marty and Charlie and so on have to say. Sex is too interesting and too important a topic to limit the voices who can talk about it seriously to the voices that are attached to vaginas.
....
I’ve lived my whole life dealing with the various and sundry ways that female sexuality gets demeaned, by being ignored or trivialized or assumed to not exist.
Thinking about this topic is making me realize the various and sundry ways that male sexuality gets demeaned . . . by the mirror image of that process. It’s making me realize that the amplification of male sexuality - the funhouse mirror that takes the image of a man and distorts it into a drooling tongue and a hard dick - has the effect of demeaning it as well.
And that sucks for all of us.