My Concerns About the Present State of Male Sexuality
The male side of the sexuality equation, and one that I plan on offering my own personal perspective on. Consider that a warning for those who’d rather not know more about me than they already do.
I think it’s impossible to start a discussion about male sexuality without prefacing it with the following:
1. I’m a woman. I cannot know the male experience, but I do my best to empathize with the stories and observations I witness and that have been volunteered to me. I expect some people will disagree with what I have to say, but if you do so, please don’t do it on the basis that I’m not a guy so I couldn’t know. I am happy to be proven wrong if the argument is persuasive, but that argument just isn’t. We cool?
2. Traditional notions of masculinity feed directly, and indirectly, into male sexuality. Traits that society deems acceptable for traditionally masculine men to have include strength, power, courage, confidence, independence, assertiveness/aggression, and, last but not least, lust. I know that this list is by no means exhaustive, but, just so you understand…
View original post 2,776 more words
Posted on December 9, 2014, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Winter in Derenemyn 
She brings up a lot of good points. What’s funny to me is that it’s not really anything I never heard or thought of before… it’s just that sometimes you have to hear these things in the right place at the right time for it to sink in. It kind of clears up what’s been troubling me about the “10 hour cat-calling video.”
I could watch the video and agree, yes… something doesn’t feel right. And as someone who has had their fair share of “harassment” (pretty sure every woman has), I can say that it can sometimes be annoying or even a little scary. But it’s hard for me to watch the video and pinpoint exactly what’s so wrong about it. First off, I’m going to discount the obviously-creepy guys who were following her and/or are overly persistent, and the ones who would call her a b*tch or whatever for not responding. For the other guys, however, what is it that makes me feel so uncomfortable? After all, they’re not being invasive, they’re not stopping her in her tracks… unless you want to count potentially interrupting her thoughts to be a violation of her presence or something. They’re just saying relatively innocuous things like, “Good morning, beautiful,” or, “Looking good, sweetheart.” And while I can see how it would make you uncomfortable because they’re being rather forward and overly familiar… they just continue on their way, and any threat you might have felt should pass quickly enough. So while such inconsequential (yet unwelcome) “greetings” can be a little unsettling, I don’t think they’re so bad to fall under the same criticism as the others:
(o) Men do this because they feel “entitled” to your attention.
(o) Men do this because their want to talk to you is more important than whatever you’re doing.
(o) Men do this to assert their power and dominance over what they believe to the “lesser gender.”
I read those criticisms and think, “Really?” … because that analysis sounds so unrealistically pessimistic to me. But reading her blog I think finally cleared it up for me (it might be obvious to guys, but not to me). Men don’t do this because they want to gloat their superiority; they do this because they’re taught that men are ‘supposed’ to be assertive and go after what they want. If men don’t voice their attraction, who will? The woman??? HA! Ya right! Women are taught to remain chaste and virginal, and men know this. So now they’re supposed to be able to tell when a woman is just playing hard-to-get, or when they mean, “No seriously, get the f*ck away from me.” And it’s so easy to get it wrong, because women are trained to turn men down easy for fear of invoking their rapey wrath! So is she throwing me a gentle rejection? Or is she just playing hard to get? Hmm…
I think this is why they call love a game: you win if you guess right. lol