The
Uncelebrated Beauty of Men's Sexuality
By Shere Hite
Many women say men can sometimes be very romantic, sexy
and lots of fun; that male sexuality, with its drive and swaggering
ability to make things happen, is worth praising. In the face of wretched
stereotypes about their own sexuality -- mechanical versions of the
erect-or-die belief; etc. -- men are managing to create some very
beautiful moments sexually. Yet many men in my research say they also
feel pressured to perform sexually, that they do not feel 'free' to
be who they are sexually most of the time. They are afraid that their
partner will laugh if they appear 'soft'.
Who are men sexually? My research with thousands of men reveals a
different picture of 'who men are sexually' that lurks just under
the surface of socially manicured statements and behaviors whose appearanaces
reflect a rigid ideological view of male sexual expression and behavior.
It seems to me that most sexual cliches and images present a distorted,
monolithic or one-sided image of men -- one that encourages men to
'be like that', no matter what they individually feel, or be called
'foolish' or 'girlie'.
Porno, for example, portrays men as almost always having pleasure
focused on erection and ejaculation, especially inside a woman, rarely
seeking eroticism for its own sake, never 'in love' or sexually active
in a non-focused way. It does not show men seeking full-length body
contact or needing to hold another person and be held, or to be penetrated
themselves in some way. Sexual exuberance, desire, elation, love-not-satisfied-by-orgasm,
fantasy -- these states are about something other than a biological
drive to reproduce the species, the 'male sex drive' that in pornography
is central to 'sex'.
Today, 'male sex drive' as a concept has taken on a sort of mystical
ring. During the late 20th century this term was used more and more
often, so that it became 'unquestionable truth', reality, and today
is assumed to be biological. But is it? In my view, most of the idea
of 'sex drive' is a fraudulent ideological category masquerading as
scientific fact; the existence of 'sex drive' is not a fact and has
never been proven.
What about the other sexual states that men experience? Are men as
singularly mechanical and aggressive 'by nature' as they are generally
depicted? Society has tried to insist that a real man should 'get
hard' at will, whenever 'appropriate', meaning in a private situation
with a reproductively-aged female, but in truth, the penis is a delicate
part of the male being, one that responds with exquisite sensitivity
to every nuance of emotion a man can feel. Erections come and go in
men, during sex and during sleep. Most men report that it is desire
they seek, not the mechanical means of orgasm or creating erection.
Desire and arousal are the pleasures that spread through the body;
orgasm, after all, can be attained alone during masturbation. Men,
like women, are not attracted to every 'right partner' they meet,
but only to some special individuals (because of a variety of factors,
thus proving that 'sex drive' is not simply a mechanical response).
The beauty of male sexuality is not so much about erection as all
the gestures and subtle meaningful body movements, including the ups
and downs of erection -- tumescence and non-tumescence, de-tumescence
and re-tumescence -- ways in which the body makes itself known or
'speaks¹. These movements represent a man's beauty and personality
and are very erotic. Pornography as we know it does not represent
that variety and diversity of expression, it simply pretends to be
'revolutionary' and 'avant-garde' by being 'shocking', passing itself
off as 'incredibly open' when compared to the old value system of
'prudery'. But it is not 'revolutionary'. Such images do not address
a more valuable and interesting view of 'who men are sexually'.
What is "male sexuality"? Why is it so closely identified
with erection and 'the act' of intercourse with reproductive-aged
women? The answer: centuries of enforcement of the idea of 'sex' in
men being 'simply an animalistic desire existing in order to cause
reproduction' (why does breathing exist? must the existence of sexuality
have a reason?) have left their mark. This ideology furthered the
belief that men should be in the harness of 'reproduction within marriage'
-- causing many men, still today, to revolt, believing that their
sexual selves can only be 'freely expressed' outside the family. (The
split in identity caused by this syllogism led to the body-mind dichotomy,
the focus of a school of philosophy in classical Greece that was later
taken up by Christianity.) The definition of sex, created to go with
our social order and family structure as it came to be defined about
3,000 years ago, has been focused on the reproductive act, to the
detriment of other activities, because we have evolved from a culture
that wanted to increase reproduction into one in which, now, most
of us use birth control.
Men¹s 'sexual nature' is very 'polymorphous-perverse², as
a New York Times Book Review characterized the picture of men that
emerges from The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (Suma de Letras). Men
in my research show a great diversity, as one man's statement about
masturbation shows: 'I have more or less two sex lives, one with my
wife and one with myself.' Men in my research say they enjoy masturbation
or having sex alone, because they can fantasize about whatever they
want and there is no pressure on them to perform for another person.
During masturbation, according to my research, men stimulate themselves
in many more places than they do when with a partner. There is much
more diversity, including anal stimulation; many men in my samples
express a hidden desire to be caressed and 'penetrated' -- possibly
by a finger -- anally, since just inside the anus in men (but not
in women) there is proximity to a gland that when stimulated causes
orgasm, so much so that most urologists stimulate men to ejaculation
during their examinations in this way. However, popular cliches about
male sexuality portray men as doing the 'penetrating', not being 'penetrated'
themselves.
Today, many men seem to be withdrawing from 'sex' in
various ways -- possibly a reaction in part to this rigid definition
of their sexuality. This withdrawal can take the form of claiming
'erectile dysfunction', 'religious purity' or spirituality, deferring
'commitment' or preferring non-standard 'kinky' sex. Is this a reaction
to the cliches that surround society's view of men, seen increasingly
through modern advertising as well as pornography? If men are told
they are 'cheap', their bodies mechanically obedient to 'lurid' stimulus
(akin to the response of Pavlov's dogs to a dinner bell), of course
the more sensitive men will react by withdrawing. It would be better
for any individual man to change outdated stereotypes of 'sex' than
to withdraw, however, since he is then bolstering the ancient dichotomies
that have caused a problem.
One of the ways that men are pressured to continue following the old
scripts is through much of pornography. Although pornography frequently
denigrates women - showing women beaten, black and blue, and so on
-- and liking it - it also denigrates men, cheapening and brutalizing
their sensibilities, destroying their possibility of personal sexual
discovery, implanting clichés such as 'a real man is the one
with the biggest, hardest erection', and so on, blocking their power
to express themselves with others. Increasing their connection of
sex with violence.
CUT? In my interpretation, sex and violence are not (as pornography
seems to imply) 'part of men's human nature', but become mixed togehter
psycho-sexually during the Oedipal stage of boys' development, at
the time when boys are emotionally leaving 'the mother' and simultaneously
becoming increasingly sexual -- due to our society's insistence that
boys not be 'sissies', and the barbaric puberty rituals and taunting
of boys that occur at that time. Pornography is above all propaganda
-- an ideological construct used to direct men toward a certain style
of reproductive sexual activity, a brainwashing device that tells
them the kind of attitude they should have towards sex [and women].
Men's sexuality has been and is being straitjacketed by an ideology
that decrees male sexuality is aggressive, penis/vagina oriented and
non-emotional (non-'sentimental') -- more or less a mechanical need
to release hormones and sperm.
Few men believe they are really like this. Men should not be afraid
to become less like the cliches fed to them about their sexuality,
and more like who they really are
