“Women are so complicated! They have nipples and breasts that sometimes they like having sucked or played with and sometimes they don’t. The clitoris is just fucking impossible to locate. Some of them get off on PIV, but a lot of them don’t, even though that’s supposed to be the biggest sex act. Some of them like and being submissive and have rape fantasies, but others don’t, and some are even tops. It’s weeeeird.”
“A man, on the other hand, just needs a hole and thirty seconds.”
Seriously, what is this fucking misandric shit?
Women are complicated sexually, sure. So are men. That is because people are complicated sexually! Sexual complication is not a gendered thing.
Where did we get this ridiculous idea that a man’s sexuality comes down to his cock?
Men masturbate in a lot of different ways. In fact, I personally have had to relearn how to give a handjob for each partner because of how different the sensations that each one likes are: hard or soft, fast or slow, lots of stimulation of the head or none at all, different hand positions, etc.
Fleshlights and other male masturbation toys come in a dizzying variety: bumps or rides, cavernous or squeezy, in the shape of mouths or anuses or vaginas or nothing at all. There’s even a male vibrator.
Some men like their balls to be lightly stroked. Other men like their balls to be gently squeezed. Still others don’t like ball stimulation at all. And a few brave souls whose nobility I salute like CBT.
Some men like it when you stick a finger up their ass. For other men, it is strictly verboten.
Some guys like it when you lick their taint or rub it with one knuckle; others will look at you with a very clear “buh?” expression on their faces.
Some men like it when you play with their nipples; others do not.
In my experience, every man (and possibly every woman, although my sample size is smaller there) has a small and unique part of their neck which, when licked or sucked, causes them to throw their head back and moan. This is never the same part for any two men, although the searching for it is half the fun.
Even “touch him on the penis!” is advice fraught with complication. For most men, in my experience and from the dudes I consulted for this post, the shaft of the penis is the least sensitive part, although the bottom is more sensitive than the top. The head of the penis is extremely sensitive; the corona may or may not be more sensitive. The frenulum, the part which connects the corona and the head, is extremely sensitive, although it may be removed in some circumcised men.
The preferred stimulation of each man may differ as well. One man may like light and soft flicks of the tongue along his frenulum during a blowjob, combined with a tight squeezing hand around the bottom half of the cock. Another man may enjoy a wet, sloppy blowjob, quick and hard, with drool dripping down his partner’s face. A third may like throat-fucking. A fourth may like any of the above, depending on his mood.
Sex positions! A man may like missionary in any of its infinite variations, or doggystyle, or woman-on-top in any of its infinite variations, or side-by-side sex, or sitting or kneeling or standing sex. A man may like his sex slow or fast, with a rhythm steady or erratic.
Some straight men love eating women out; others hate the taste; still others will do it for reciprocity purposes but don’t care for the act itself.
Some men are up for anal or bondage or lingerie or public sex. Other men are not.
And that’s not even getting into kink! There are, of course, male dominants and subs, masochists and sadists, and all manner of switches. Many fetishes, such as foot fetishes, are overwhelmingly possessed by men. And then one gets into the less common ones. I don’t know about you, but personally, I feel the gender that invented vore has some ‘splaining to do if they want to pass themselves off as the simple and explicable ones.
Sex, as my friend Dr. Mindbeam likes to say, is weird. And you really cannot go about assigning all the weirdness and the complication to one gender. Perhaps it is more difficult to make a woman come than a man (although personally, I think that if we as a culture defined ‘real’ sex as (a) ending when the woman came and (b) involving direct clitoral stimulation, suddenly it would be men who were having all the trouble). But men are clearly not simple, on/off switch ones.
How is this a gender egalitarian issue? Three reasons:
a) There are a lot more studies of, for instance, Why Women Have Sex than Why Men Have Sex. When’s the last time the New York Times has run a major story about male sexuality? Because we assume that male sexuality is already known, we’re not coming to a greater understanding of how it works (except, of course, when it’s “broken”).
b) There are a whole lot of women, including me when I was younger, who feel like failures when they can’t automatically get their male partner off, because men are simple and obvious and they just want a warm hole and, God, how awful must you be in bed? Which creates, for both genders,
c) A whole lot of shitty sex.
d) Sexuality is a major part of many, perhaps most, people’s identities. Erasing the complicatedness of male sexuality erases men’s lived experiences. In essence, it makes women human people with full and complex sexualities, and men… that guy with the erection.
Further reading:
http://shortbassist.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/im-more-than-my-cock/
aliarasthedaydreamer
Ami Angelwings
Hershele Ostropoler
Cheradenine
jlandrith
kaija24
2020
noahbrand
Cliff Pervocracy
ozymandias
Shora
sirgabe
figleaf
John Hawkins
No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
(although personally, I think that if we as a culture defined ‘real’ sex as (a) ending when the woman came and (b) involving direct clitoral stimulation, suddenly it would be men who were having all the trouble). But men are clearly not simple, on/off switch ones.
Exactly. It’s a tautology to say that men always orgasm during sex, if your definition of sex presupposes male orgasm.
“I feel the gender that invented vore has some ’splaining to do if they want to pass themselves off as the simple and explicable ones. ”
My favourite sentence from the internet today.
@ Aaron Armstrong
“Exactly. It’s a tautology to say that men always orgasm during sex, if your definition of sex presupposes male orgasm.”
And that’s assuming that the man orgasmed and didn’t fake it.
I’ve practiced non ejaculatory orgasm and sex to various extents in my life and I’ve found that women can be put off by it. Even if its explained, the idea that I must ejaculate in order to be satisfied or for her to have been good, is strong.
d) Sexuality is a major part of many, perhaps most, people’s identities. Erasing the complicatedness of male sexuality erases men’s lived experiences. In essence, it makes women human people with full and complex sexualities, and men… that guy with the erection.
I definitely agree with this sentiment against oversimplification, but I think that the real issue here is that by and large in American culture, sex is seen as something that women have to learn, but men just do, and there is a whole lot of really repugnant sexist shit on both sides that’s associated with that.
But this:
c) A whole lot of shitty sex.
is a pretty gigantic and undeniable problem, and extending the conversation to include men’s different tastes as well as women’s is a good way to attack it.
@ Rachel
“sex is seen as something that women have to learn, but men just do”
How so?
That image above is just fantastic.
But it’s not just about the lacking narrative of male sexual complexity, it’s also about the mystic elusiveness of female arousal from the male perspective. Best quote to make that point: Jeff Murdoch, a character in the BBC sitcom ‘Coupling’ –
‘Sex can be very stressful for men. You judge us on technique, sensitivity, stamina…we’re just happy if you’re naked…half naked…one breast…’
The corollary of the male simplicity narrative is the female complexity narrative. And it’s not like that’s taken entirely out of the blue. I’ve repeatedly asked people if they agree with the statement – “Bad sex is worse than no sex”. I’m pretty sure you can guess the gender pattern of the replies. Most men simply cannot imagine bad sex being worse than no sex – women can. So whatever it is that makes them think that way, that narrative is, to some degree, a complexity reduction machine. Probably, that complexity reduction isn’t a very good idea for men because of the point the image above makes, and it would be very helpful to allow women a less complex arousal narrative, so they don’t overrationalize their arousal.
Also, I think the performance narrative is important in this respect, too. It’s not that a hole and thirty seconds are sufficient for every man, it’s that they’re supposed to be sufficient. I very much enjoyed it when a woman I had met earlier that night ripped my shirt apart and in no unclear words told me to ‘fuck her, fuck her now’ while we were making out. But while I can enjoy making out in a bathroom of a club, I really wasn’t interested in having sex with her there (or that night, at all). When I told the story to a female friend in the gym the next day, she asked me “What kind of a man are you? That’s like every guy’s dream come true, and you walk away just like that?”
Sexual complexity for a guy reduces his perceived manliness in the eyes of most women. Just last night I heard it from another female friend: She said something like “my brain wants guys who’re interesting and whom I can talk to, but they’re usually feminised, metrosexuals, overrationalising and complex. And my body doesn’t want that, at all. So I usually end up in bed with guys who can’t spell but are able to behave like real men.” Guys who aren’t complex. Or at least pretend not to be.
Something Greta Christina wrote on this subject:
Sam: I wonder how much of the elusiveness of female arousal is a cultural construct– i.e., due to slut shaming, fear of rape or murder, women not being in touch with their own sexualities and bodies, the way “real sex” is defined in such a way that female pleasure is marginalized, men being initiators, etc.– and how much is biological reality that women tend to be less horny/more finicky than men. I’d hypothesize that both are factors.
I would agree that bad sex is better than no sex… I wonder if that’s a high sex drive/low sex drive thing, as opposed to a gender thing, and if men either tend to have higher sex drives, as a group, or are encouraged to have/enact having higher sex drives to appear more masculine…
Ozy,
I agree, both are factors, and I doubt we’ll ever be able to define which factor is important to what extent. Here’s my (more complete) assessment…
http://www.realadultsex.com/content/shorter-no-sex-class-paradigm#comment-17675
Only very few women would agree that bad sex is better than no sex, in my opinion. On the other hand, if you look at research like this
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/gender-differences-and-casual-sex-the-new-research/
it does suggest that only straight men are the outliers. And I *do* think that’s a direct consequence of a (generally) perceived scarcity that is not felt by gay women and men as well as heterosexual women. I also suppose that – depending on the definition, and that is key – most indicators and studies I’ve seen suggest that men do indeed appear to have a higher sex drive. But I doubt that difference can be sufficient explanation for the cultural and behaviroral differences we’re seeing.
The one obvious difference I see between straight men and the other groups is that straight men are the only one of these groups that disproportionately tends to initiate, which means they are disproportionately likely to be rejected /and/ they don’t know if someone has a crush on them if they don’t initiate for whatever reason (unattracted, afraid, whatever). That has to be hell on one’s sense of sexual abundance.
@ Sam
“I’ve repeatedly asked people if they agree with the statement – “Bad sex is worse than no sex”. I’m pretty sure you can guess the gender pattern of the replies.”
Maybe because sex is the only appropriate way for a man to get any of his intimacy needs met? Not to mention the average straight man seems to be expecting sex to satisfy the following things:
1. Provide for all intimacy needs.
2. Provide a sense of gender identity. Provide security in that sense of identity.
3. Provide a sense of connection to the human race.
4. Be the rationale why men ignore and dismiss their personal vunerabilities in order to maintain their gender identity.
5. Provide a sense of personal value.
6. Provide a point of comraderie and acceptance with other men.
If you reduced all the extraneous social-proof aspects out of the male sex drive I wonder if it really would be higher then the female. Further the amount of sheer pressure and emphasis placed on sex(with women) as the only appropriate outlet for all of a man’s personal needs inclines me to be amazed that it’s as *low* as it is at the end of the day. There are still guys who have a complex, rarified sexuality and say ‘no’, despite all this.
“When I told the story to a female friend in the gym the next day, she asked me “What kind of a man are you? That’s like every guy’s dream come true, and you walk away just like that?””
‘Every man’s dream come true?’ ‘What kind of a man are you?’ It’s stuff like this that really makes me nervous. Literally if there is this much pressure on men to say yes, how can any woman ever really know that a ‘yes’ from a man is extorted or not?
““my brain wants guys who’re interesting and whom I can talk to, but they’re usually feminised, metrosexuals, overrationalising and complex. And my body doesn’t want that, at all. So I usually end up in bed with guys who can’t spell but are able to behave like real men.””
I must be a statistical outlier because the more tempermental, unpredictable a man’s sex drive is, the more wild and undomesticated, the more attractive I find him.
If he’s controlled by sex–if it’s just stimulus-response for him like a trained monkey–it turns me off.
@ Ozy
“the way “real sex” is defined in such a way that female pleasure is marginalized”
I think “real sex” is defined to marginalize male pleasure, at least any that isn’t of the 30 seconds of PIV sex variety. And if you think about it, the amount of pressure put on men to view 30sPIV as their only appropriate outlet may be why there seems to be a differential between the pleasure men get and the pleasure women get from 30sPIV.
I’m totally stealing your comment for FC, typhonblue.
I don’t know, sometimes about posting here, since, I don’t know what it’s like to be a man… but I do know what it’s like to have been often treated as a man, and how a lot of that learning does create a few misconceptions about genitalia. Anyway, at the risk of acting like a modern day non-detransitioning Tiresias, here I go.
Vagina having people in the room picture this:
The walls of your sex invert, so that there’s a long, fleshy tube filled by something sort of like when your fingers sometimes swell if it’s been a long time since you had exercise or your feet swell… kind of uncomfortable, sometimes oddly kinda nice. Oh, and it’s topped by your clitoris. And yes, you often get wet the same way, though since so much blood is involved keeping that thing up, not as much.
Now imagine that your outer walls are holding two very sensitive… well… they’re kind of like ovaries. Yeah, I know, what intelligent designer would put ovaries on the outside but there we are… actually just like your outer walls, they’re not as taut as they usually are, which makes them oddly easier, if somewhat less intuitively located, for gentle teasing and even more aggressive rubbing, licking, you name it, in the middle of play.
There. That’s the big magical difference. It’s really not that big. The same raw materials and the same nerves are used to make what is, more or less, the same genitalia. Just one is an outie and one is an innie.
Oh, and for those of you who are curious, it’s not the genitals that cause orgasm differentiation, it’s the hormones.
Anyway, that’s enough too much information for now! 😀
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Oh, and @typhonblue Really it’s the testosterone. Take it from someone who suffered through that curse. It will make you *need* not want, but need sex multiple times a day, even when you’d rather be doing something else. I want sex about as much… but sometimes just, at the end of a day wonder if I’ve done anything in the last two or four days.
@ Valerie Keefe
Go back two hundred years and you start to get into the ‘all women are lustful’ meme big time. Go back 2000 years and it was expected that the sexual spark go from man to woman, in other words it was men who arroused women, not vice versa.
About the same time I think our ancient ansestors believed women couldn’t be raped because, you know, what strange sort of sexually grotesque tribades would ever say no to the holy schlong.
“Oh, and @typhonblue Really it’s the testosterone. ”
Really. Because my husband’s testosterone seems is just fine and he does not have the same arousal pattern expected of men.
Then again maybe he’s not a REAL MAN. (Or I’m not a REAL WOMAN.) Or we’re not REAL HUMANS.
@Ozymandias:
I’m glad to see you realize the implications of being in the initiator role all the time, which few women understand.
I was rejected five times in a row before ever going on my first date, and it was hell on my sense of sexual abundance (I didn’t have that sense at all). After studying pickup, I was able to turn this around, But even then, I would still often have streaks of several women rejecting me in a row. I’ve been rejected (and accepted) many times, more than a lot of guys I know who are less successful with women than I am. You know why? Because a lot of them don’t try very often… or they gave up, because it’s just too painful.
Heterosexual men are expected to initiate, but they are not made of stone. Being ignored by someone hurts. But being actively rejected by someone you made an advance on hurts even more. The expectation that men initiate and eat multiple rejections for every success is considered normal, but it’s actually a very harsh gauntlet for any human being to run.
Giving up is one coping strategy. Another strategy is to emotionally numb oneself to the consequences of rejection. If you feeling of sexual abundance and desirability, then you can shrug off any one rejection, but how can you develop those things in the first place without success?
Unfortunately, men numbing themselves to rejection often resort to toxic versions of traditional masculinity, and even in misogyny.
It’s always a good thing to recognize that there are other fish in the sea, and to avoid getting big crushes on people who aren’t reciprocating, yet it’s easy for these coping strategies to get taken too far. We see this a lot in pickup. Viewing women as interchangeable is a coping strategy. Avoiding romantic feelings for women (“one-itis”) until you’ve fucked them is another coping strategy. See everything as a “game” or “experiment” is another rational coping strategy to deal with the pain of rejection.
PUAs learn that it’s tough to invest feelings in any one particular woman prior to sex, because so many things can go wrong when they are making their initiatives. They never know which woman in their cellphone is going to respond to their advances.
One strategy that I use is to try to “freeze” feelings for someone until I know that my advances will be reciprocated. For instance, if I call/text someone, and they are taking a while to respond back, then I try to suspend my feelings for them, and not get resentful. Unfortunately, there are only so many times I an freeze and unfreeze feelings for any particular person.
Most of initiating actually isn’t that hard… once you know how. Certainly no harder than playing a musical instrument. But in my view, it’s about a Bachelor’s Degree worth of experience. Males who are extraverted, stereotypically masculine, good-looking, and/or lucky have a good chance of getting their BA during adolescence. Other men are not so lucky.
When sexually inexperienced men ask me for advice, I’m reluctant to tell them what’s probably the truth.
The truth is that the woman you have fallen for is probably just not that into you. If you show your interest, then she will reject you… but you should be glad, because attempting to initiate something with her will give you valuable experience with the next woman you go for.
And that next woman? She’s going to reject you, too. However, if you work hard on your social skills, style, accomplishments, and regularly go out to socialize then perhaps sometime in 3-6 months, a woman will give you her number. You’re making progress.
The truth is that this woman will flake on you when you try to set up a date. So will the next woman whose number you get. The woman after that will respond to your texts, and set up a date with you, but she will cancel at the last minute. She will slowly stop responding to your texts. You will develop a mini-phobia of calling women, because they flake on you; after waiting days with no response, you will wonder what was wrong with your message, or if she just wasn’t that into you in the first place. You will agonize about punctuation in your texts.
But don’t get too down on yourself; you’re making progress! If you are working hard enough on your attractiveness and socializing, then pretty soon you will meet a woman who agrees to a date (or “hanging out,” whatever you call it). At the end of the date, you will have an awkward hug with her. Does she want to kiss? You don’t want to make things awkward, so you don’t try.
Next you will meet a woman who you hit it off with. You and she kiss at a party and talk a lot. She gives you her number. You think it’s pretty clear that you and she are going to be dating, and you are excited by the idea of a relationship with her.
The truth is that there’s a good chance that she will flake you. She responds to your texts, but won’t commit to any plans. That’s probably because even though she was obviously attracted to you, she is interested in someone even more exciting. Hey congrats, buddy… you didn’t quite make the cut, but you were close. You’re making progress.
You have left the Hell of sexual invisibility and entered a Limbo where women are sometimes attracted to you, but don’t feel a sense of urgency about you and won’t make the effort to hang out with you over other guys or watching TV. This may not make you feel good about your sexuality. You’re a decently socially-skilled and stylish guy by now. What more do these women want? What are you missing? Should you have left that smiley face out of your text message?
It will take you probably another 4-7 dates where you fail to kiss the other person before you learn to kick yourself into trying. If you are lucky, one woman might be patient enough to keep with you, or they will give up and you have to flub things with several woman before you manage to kiss one. Even when someone is obviously into you on a date, it’s hard to initiate, because you have trouble believing that they desire your sexuality.
Finally, you are consistently getting numbers, and you can initiate a kiss on a date or at a party/club if someone obviously seems into you. You meet someone you have chemistry with and start going out. Maybe they even chase you, because you are now at a level of attractiveness where women will chase you more than once every 5-10 years.
The truth is probably that you just aren’t that into them. You’ve been working so hard to fit into women’s preferences that you’ve forgotten your own preferences. What you want, you can’t get, and what you can get, you don’t want. You’ve worked hard to be about to go out with someone; now it’s time to work to get together with the people you actually want. You’re making progress.
It’s taken you 6 months to 4 years to get to this point depending on where you started from and how fast you are learning. You have your BA equivalent in women. Maybe you’ve had some friends with benefits or relationships along the way, with loops of rejection and flaking in between. During this time, you’ve needed constant motivation and self-improvement. You’ve learned to purge, or at least repress, your feelings of doubt and insecurity. With enough sexual experience, you’ve slowly started to see yourself at sexually desirable.
Congrats, now you have as much sexual choice as some of the moderately cool guys in high school, and as much as women who are somewhat less good-looking, intelligent, and accomplished than you are.
You’ve built colossal walls against the pain of rejection. You’ve learned to freeze, thaw, slice and dice your emotions according to the demands of the initiator role. Now try to fall in love.
I’m reluctant to tell inexperienced men about the crucible they will need to go through to learn to initiate, the Bachelor’s degree that they need before women will consistently view them as viable mates (aside from relying on the lucky situation of women who just happen to be into them and make it obvious). But at least it’s better than being lonely, and the process can be enjoyable once you learn appropriate masculinity and stoicism… and when you take comfort in the fact that you’re making progress.
@ ballgame
Glad to write something that resonated with you.
*sigh* Always a commentator, never a contributor. 😛
Hugh, I don’t want to deny your experience, but I really don’t think you have the right to universalize it like that. You describe a very, very specific process and state that any sexually inexperienced man MUST necessarily go through that exact process. And dude, that simply isn’t factually so. What you’ve described in no way resembles, to pick one example, my journey from horny 18-year-old virginal geek to horny 34-year-old geek who uses Google calendar to avoid double-booking multiple women for the same day. (Yes, I’m not afraid to admit it in public: I’m 34.)
I urge you to consider the possibility that there are paths other than your own.
@typhonblue I forgot, of course, to mention, like anything affecting seven billion people, your mileage may vary. But despite being rather cognizant of my sex drive, despite getting the same exposure to erotica, and despite actually feeling more attractive and living with a girl who finds me more attractive, my sex drive has dropped.
I also know women who, once they get appropriate levels of estrogen are constantly horny… but yes, testosterone does, it’s not the only hormone that does, estrogen and progesterone do as well, but T is famous for it, does drive sexual desire. Testosterone blockers when used on men who want to reduce sex drive, do typically reduce sex drive.
Again, your mileage may vary, but the population differences are probably hormonal. I also get less involuntary erections. This doesn’t mean that I don’t find things arousing anymore, or that I am somehow trying to reify my gender role… it just sorta dropped off. And I’m not the only one. Good endocrinology is correlated, though, as I said with genitalia and gender, not universally correlated to sex drive.
@ Valerie Keefe
“Testosterone blockers when used on men who want to reduce sex drive, do typically reduce sex drive.”
How do disentangle the placebo effect? Or socialization.
A while back a study was posted on testosterone’s effect on behavior when given to women. Some women were given the testosterone, some a placebo; some were *told* they had been given testosterone.
They were all asked to play a game in which you get a certain amount of money but you have to give some of it to another person in a ‘deal’ which they can reject and if they do, nobody gets any money. The women given testosterone(unknowingly) were more fair; the women who were given none were less fair; and, apparently, the women who *thought* they got testosterone(but didn’t) were least fair of all.
Because they were playing to a social stereotype of what testosterone is supposed to do which was, in fact, the opposite of what it actually does.
Unless you do a similar controlled experiment on transexual women, you aren’t going to disentangle the effects of social expectation.
So I’m just coming home from an evening out with friends, one of which is N.. I told N. about the story I mentioned above –
“Also, I think the performance narrative is important in this respect, too. It’s not that a hole and thirty seconds are sufficient for every man, it’s that they’re supposed to be sufficient. I very much enjoyed it when a woman I had met earlier that night ripped my shirt apart and in no unclear words told me to ‘fuck her, fuck her now’ while we were making out. But while I can enjoy making out in a bathroom of a club, I really wasn’t interested in having sex with her there (or that night, at all).”
N. said –
you’re horrible. She must have felt terribly unattractive. She’s offering herself to you like that and you decline to take the offer, that’s the worst thing that could happen to a woman. You can’t ever do that!
I asked –
so basically, once I make out with her I have to have sex whenever a woman asks, but not the other way around? She can say no whenever, but I don’t?
To which she replied –
basically, yeah, that’s the difference between guys and girls. We play hard to get, you pursue, and once we offer ourselves, you don’t get to choose anymore. You cannot reject a woman who offers sex to you, what kind of a man are you?
Sometimes I’m really surprised by the women look at things. Btw, this is a 3/3 thing. One just understood that I would not have wanted to do it right there. There was no understanding whatsoever that I may want to have a bit more connection to her. In the minds of the women I talked to about this, she was willing, which meant I didn’t need to take care of her complex machinery, but I refused to switch myself on. And that was unmasculine to a degree they couldn’t fathom, apparently.
@Hugh Ristik bravo, well said old chap! Whilst I have to agree with @noahbrand that not every male follows the exact same path, much of your post I can relate to.
@Ozymandias, Hah! Nice! SMBC’s ‘Touch Him On The Penis’ sketch made it here. Well referenced.
@ Sam
“Sometimes I’m really surprised by the women look at things.”
It’s fear of the other. If they acknowledge that men have complexity then they have to acknowledge that there’s something there they don’t necessarily understand. That’s a frightening thought for a lot of women.
@ Sam
Either that or you’ve fallen into a nest of sociopathic rapists who honestly think that if a woman initiates a man looses his right not to consent.
Where is that on the rape apology scale? I mean it’s not even based on an action the _man_ takes–thus could theoretically avoid–for fuck’s sake. (Like putting on tight clothing or dancing provocatively.)
@Sam, Jesus H. Christ. N. is very much part of the problem. Thanks for the illustration of just how toxic these stereotypes can get in the wild.
ETA: The more I think about it, the more I think what she’s describing is just rooted in fear of romantic rejection. Rejection can be terrifying and unpleasant, for sure. Most of the most toxically misogynist MRAs out there relate origin stories about rejection, for example. But if a woman adheres as religiously as N. apparently does to a “men pursue” model, one could go a very long time without being rejected. Just ignored, which is a different fear and a different pain. I can see how, never having been rejected, she could consider it the worst possible thing. The downright appalling worldview she outlines follows logically from that.
Hugh: I understand it because I’m a woman and I’ve initiated every single relationship I have ever had and I can count the number of times I’ve been hit on by someone who isn’t twice my age or on the Internet on one finger. It’s difficult! “Getting hit on,” even getting hit on by drunk fiftysomethings, is way easier than hitting on people.
Sam: Women… think like that? And men still have sex with them? FACEPALM.
Noah, typhonblue,
as I said, it’s a 3/3 attitude so far, and I don’t think I want to increase the circle of people I know I’m telling the story to, even without telling names, to an actual “survey”, as I have already met “fuck me, fuck me now!”-girl again. Who knows maybe there will be a way for her to not be rejected after all, so my friends may meet her, too, at some point. On the second date we weren’t physical at all, by the way, we just got to know each other’s complex mental machinery better… she seemed to appreciate it.
Ozy,
“Sam: Women… think like that? And men still have sex with them? FACEPALM.”
well, maybe that’s sufficient confirmation of the men are/need to be simple hypothesis 😉
@Sam
“well, maybe that’s sufficient confirmation of the men are/need to be simple hypothesis”
In order to tolerate sleeping with someone who believes you have no right to withhold consent? I guess if you believe you can never expect any sort of sexual respect from your partners (at least not consistently) you would have to take shelter in the idea that you don’t actually want or need it.
typhonblue,
I’m pretty sure N. has never really thought about the implications of what she said. She wasn’t defending her moral philosophy, but the way the world has been explained to her – and the way in which the world made sense to her until our conversation. I’m sure that once she will honestly consider the consequences of what she said she’ll notice that it’s an untenable position. Maybe she’s thinking about it right now, who knows.
@ Sam
To be honest, I’m continually amazed by something.
The amount of sexual disrespect men are expected to absorb and the very, very, very few men who turn around and dish it out in return.
Men really are good.
And since I’m here on this blog, I’ll add…
Considering the social metanarrative that ostracizes men whenever they present anything but unconditional consent to sex, women who rape are still a small minority of all women. So obviously most women must be picking up on a boundary that should not be crossed.
@typhonblue Very good point that I should have incorporated earlier, but I’m not talking about a study on fairness or other ridiculous gendered stereotypes. Estrogen has had no effect on my willingness to go along to get along, nor would I expect it to. I’m talking about sex drive, where there is an actual chemical component. Morning wood does not happen as often to people with typical female hormonal profiles and penises, for example. It’s changed the way I climax: More diffuse, some disappointing and some great, and it’s changed my scent and texture. I don’t think it would affect my wanting sex, in fact, it hasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some placebo effect, but I would be very surprised if we just took some very gender fluid people and gave them oral hormones of varying configurations and told them all that it was just a sugar pill that we would see no effect on sex drive by steroidal component. Again, my capacity didn’t drop… hell, my desire didn’t drop… Just… it’s kind of like waking up and being less hungry but still having an appetite.
That said, that study, like the one you mentioned before, will probably never happen. It’d be an interesting thing to discuss. There are some cis-het relationships where the man has more mammary tissue than the woman in the relationships too. I’m just talking aggregates. A lot of the last fifty years has been trying to unravel what parts of sexual dimorphism are invented and which ones are inherent, if nothing else but on a population basis, and to what is that dimorphism linked. My basal metabolic rate, for example… is lower on estrogen than testosterone. But it does not follow then that girls don’t eat red meat because it is more calorific than a salad. And on a dietary note, since I rambled off into food stereotypes, as alcoholic beverages go, beer is one of the most phyto-estrogenic… But again, that’s apropos of nothing.
No mention of foreskin play? I guess the writer has no experience with intact men.
The author has fucked two intact men, thank you.
@Sam: you need some more evolved friends. N sounds like a basket case.
@doctormindbeam: I guess if misogyny only started in men who had been rejected multiple times, there’d be some truth to that.
Hm, that makes me wonder – is there any men who haven’t been rejected multiple times? I can think of two groups – those who’ve never tried (given up before trying or because of sexual orientation) – who I would think is a minority (albeit perhaps a large one) among men
and those who never gets rejected when they initiate (who I seriously doubt exists).
I don’t know whether DMB meant the only starting point of misogyny or one of the starting points of misogyny. I would certainly agree with the latter. Misogyny among straight women and gay men certainly disproves the former.
I myself belong in the group who never tried initiating – I found it too fraught with danger for both me (rejection) and the woman (I were never able to “read” with a for me high enough level of certainty whether my initiation would be wanted/accepted and all cautionary tales about women being sexually harassed had instilled me with the notion that any unwanted initiation were a de facto harassment). If anything this made me a misandrist because I almost despised men with what I considered lower standards than mine when it came to avoid making unwanted advances.
You know what, Hugh? I’m a woman, and my trajectory of awkward unwanted virginity to awkward dates that you think will lead to something and don’t to being chased by people you’re not that attracted to and sleeping with/dating them because you think they’re all you can get to actually going after what you want sexually/romantically and getting what you want some of the time sounds a lot like what you described. Women also have histories of rejection, and missed chances (i.e. if you had just made a move something would’ve happened, but you didn’t so it didn’t).
Though the “standard” model is men approaching, that’s not always how it happens in reality. Some men don’t make advances, because they’re shy or whatever, and women who want to become involved with them don’t get approached. And some women, even attractive women, just don’t get hit on/asked out/whatever. I’m an attractive woman, by objective/societal standards, and I almost never get hit on in public in any way. I think it’s something about my demeanor that just projects “go away” (even when I don’t mean to project that… Aspie here, that might be part of it). So for a couple of years between ending a relationship and discovering the wonders of OKCupid, I was facing some major sexual scarcity (and yes, rejection). It’s not just for straight men.
That said, I totally feel for you and other men who’ve been in this situation. I just really get pissed off by the “men who are awkward and have no social skills face rejection and sexual scarcity and women can never understand” narrative, because, you know, I’m a woman who is awkward and has no social skills and has had to learn how to find sexual partners, too.
@mythago: “only” is a false dichotomy. A lot of misogyny starts in guys who get rejected often; just look around Manboobz and see how many of the idiots he shows there complain about women rejecting them.
@noahbrand
noahbrand, my comment was addressed to the sorts of nerdy, introverted guys I know who ask my advice, and I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was universalizing it. It’s not just my experiences, but the aggregate of the experiences of guys I know, and hundreds of guys in the pickup community. So the whole thing isn’t going to be universal, but I think a lot of the themes may be common, and it seems that some other guys in the thread relate to them.
There are lots of other paths. For instance, some guys can immediately end up in a multi-year relationship that helps them build a sense of sexual worth. Other guys can end up in alternative subcultures like kink or poly where their qualities are valued by women, and they are treated like athletes get treated in mainstream cultures.
My comment applies more to men who are substantially inexperienced in mainstream masculine dating practices, and who attempt to learn them effectively.
If you have a chance to talk more about your path sometime, I’d be interested to hear it.
@DMB:
Exactly.
@Ozymandias:
Interesting. I feel the same way, now that I’m increasingly dating people who initiate with me. Once this happened, I’ve been having the following set of reactions:
1. Eww, most of the people hitting on me, I’m not attracted to.
2. Wow, this person is a bit of a jerk and needs to understand boundaries better.
3. Wait, this person really bungled that… I wish I just stop the action and teach them how to initiate right.
4. Hehehe, this is easy mode. I just look good, and show up.
It’s a very different set of challenges. Personally, I would rather deal with too many advances than too few. But other people may have different priorities.
As I was explaining to startledoctopus in the consent thread, sometimes you gotta make do with what’s around. 99% of women have attitudes that are more traditional than the women on this blog. Unless that 1% is willing to be very, very busy, men will often have to date women with traditional attitudes.
CH: It seems you overlooked the word few in Hugh’s comment:
My emphasis
I’ll be a bit mean and play the devil’s advocate and point out that having a relationship in the first place (even though it ended) and success on OKCupid put’s you league’s ahead of many of the men Hugh’s are talking about. Not to talk about those of those men who for various reasons don’t turn to PUA/Game.
@ch,
I am happy to hear that there are women like you and Ozymandias who can relate to some of the stuff in my comment.
I am aware that women experience romantic rejection. My hypothesis is that most people find rejection to be worse when they actively make an advance, which is more common for men. Furthermore, women having trouble finding partners seem to be judged less harshly than men having trouble finding partners.
How common do you think it is for women to make overt advances that are rebuffed, and get this sort of rejection from 3-5 people in a row between each time they have romantic success? I realize that women also experience missed chances, but if you fail to make a move, at least you’re not a wimp.
That’s true. However, it’s feasible for women to approach men in such groups, which is often how relationships start. These women will indeed have to learn the initiator role, but I suspect that initiating with shy nerdy men is an easier task than initiating with women, on average.
Ah, that explains a lot. If you feel that being an Aspie is related to certain dating difficulties, that would match my observations of Aspies I know. Aren’t there more Aspie men than women? It might seem that there are just more men than women experiencing the sort of challenges you describe.
Certainly sexual scarcity and rejection are not just for heterosexual men. My claim is that particular sorts of struggles are relatively more common in men, on average. For example, experiencing a direct advance being rejected is a more common experience for men.
(Other sorts of rejection might be more common for women. Perhaps women are more likely to be romantically rejected by people who desire them sexually. But that’s a whole different discussion that’s about more than sexual desirability.)
If you were able to get into a relationship in the first place, and solve your sexual scarcity with OkCupid, then you are doing a lot better than most of the Aspie males I’ve met. Note that women get more messages and better response rates on OkCupid than men.
I agree that some women can understand, which is why my comment carefully said that “few” women could understand. I very much acknowledge that there are women who face large degrees of sexual scarcity and rejection of their advances, and who need to initiate to get anywhere; I just suspect that there are less of these women than men.
I wonder, if you had been born as an Aspie male with the same percentile looks and intelligence, do you think that finding sexual partners would be (a) easier, (b) harder, (c) the same difficulty?
Hugh, I think, all other traits being equal, a man would be the same difficulty as me. First of all, that relationship I mentioned, that was the “people who you’re not actually attracted to make advances” part of your post. My self-esteem was so low that I thought this guy was all I could get, he pressured me to turn what I wanted to be just a FWB thing into an actual relationship, and we were together for 6 months before I broke it off. It was only after that (like 2 years after that) that I realized that I was attractive enough to get laid if I really tried, went online because meeting someone in person was just not working, and after corresponding with a whole bunch of guys who just weren’t for me, slept with and/or dated some that were.
And I’ve read that OKtrends post, and I agree that it’s probably easier for women to find a partner online than men, but at the same time, messages and response rates are not really a good indicator of that. I get a lot of messages, but probably around 30% are of the “hey im on my lunch break from work your hot wanna fuck” variety, which I don’t respond to for reasons that should be obvious. I do think that we need to work on a culture in which both genders can equally be the initiators and the initiated, because it’s unfair that the sting of rejection falls disproportionately on one and not the other (though, conversely, the unsafe feeling of constantly getting propositioned by creeps also falls disproportinately on one gender– I’d like both genders to equally feel rejection and creeped-outness, though of course preferably as little as possible of both those things). But I also don’t know really how either men or women can work to create that cultural change, though I do know that constantly complaining about how all women are bitches for rejecting men (or all men are creeps for propositoning women) works against rather than for that goal (not saying that you’re whining, just making a broad statement).
I guess I just get really skeptical about the whole “oh, awkward guys” narrative. I love awkward guys! When awkward guys approach me, I usually respond positively, unless they’re awkward and also creepy/sexist/whatever, which is usually pretty easy to tell. There are lots of awkward girls out there, too! And some of us are creepy, some of us are just shy, some of us have figured out what works for us in terms of finding partners, and some of us haven’t.
And your response as well as Tamen’s seem to indicate that you think I’m an outlier among women, that most women are not awkward and don’t have trouble getting guys and it’s only a few women who do have these problems. And I don’t really think I am an outlier– I think there are a lot of women like me. Hell, I know a lot of women like me. And it’s not really about looks– it’s more about demeanor, etc. I guess the thing in your post that really got me was your assertion that an awkward guy had to work for 6 months to four years to get as much sexual choice “as women who are somewhat less good-looking, intelligent, and accomplished than you are.” That’s not really the case, or rather, it’s much more complicated than that. I’m a woman who is fairly good looking, intelligent, and accomplished. I do have some trouble finding guys. Maybe less than some guys have, but probably more than some other guys have. And the issues, of course, are different for women, too. Online I do get a lot of advances, my problem in these cases isn’t the sting of rejection, it’s sorting out the guys who are actually going to be decent people (by which I mean less some stereotypical “oh I want commitment,” though committment is not something that I’m opposed to if I meet the right person; it’s more “this is a guy who I’m going to have good sex with, because he’s going to pay attention to my enjoyment of things as well as his”) from the selfish guys, who aren’t going to treat you as a person in or out of bed, and, yes, also from the likely rapists.
@Ch
Your experience isn’t contradiction what Hugh is saying; it’s directly in line with it.
“Online I do get a lot of advances, my problem in these cases isn’t the sting of rejection, it’s sorting out the guys who are actually going to be decent people (by which I mean less some stereotypical “oh I want commitment,” though committment is not something that I’m opposed to if I meet the right person; it’s more “this is a guy who I’m going to have good sex with, because he’s going to pay attention to my enjoyment of things as well as his”) from the selfish guys, who aren’t going to treat you as a person in or out of bed, and, yes, also from the likely rapists.”
You’re in a position to pick and choose who you’re responding to you. You are in a position of greater abundance then most men.
Most men take whatever they can get. Which is sort of scary when you think about it because lacking abundance means they are far less capable of weeding out the women who are sexists, rapists, abusive and selfish.
Hm… perhaps I should say ‘many’ rather then ‘most.’
“I wonder how much of the elusiveness of female arousal is a cultural construct– i.e., due to slut shaming, fear of rape or murder, women not being in touch with their own sexualities and bodies, the way “real sex” is defined in such a way that female pleasure is marginalized, men being initiators, etc.– and how much is biological reality that women tend to be less horny/more finicky than men. I’d hypothesize that both are factors.”
My experience with women is that arousal for them isn’t as difficult as culture tells us it is. Many of the women I know get aroused as easily and quickly as guys are supposed to.
The difference I’ve noticed between me and the women I know is that women tend to find distractions interfere with their ability to enjoy sex. Also, although women are able to get aroused as easily as me, they seem to have a better control (?) of their arousal. When I’m turned on, I want to have sex NOW, where women are able to be turned on and still look around and go “not here, not now,”
Although as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found it easier to be able to enjoy being horny without needing to have sex. Don’t know if its maturity or hormones, but I’m getting better at loving being turned on for it’s own sake as opposed to it being a necessary step on the way to orgasm.
@Everybody: I’m so freaking happy to read this comment thread! It’s like an actual dialogue! It’s got people in it saying things that other people are listening to, learning from, responding to, and being read by people who in turn learn something too. Plus some synthesis. And at worst honest mistakes or insufficient experience.
Wow! Just wow!
@Hugh & @Typhonblue’s lists of expected and unexpected behavior are just so dead on.
@Aaron Armstrong hit it out of the park in the first comment.
@Sam’s personal stories and observations provide great examples and more food for thought.
@Someone cited my two rules of desire as a source for many of the ridiculous misconceptions we’ve got about sex.
@Typhonblue correctly pointed out older beliefs that when it came to sex men were moral and chaste and women were amoral and desperate for… well, pregnancy actually since most people including the major medical community didn’t recognize women as having identifiable libidos but willing to go to any length necessary to get pregnant by any means and any man.
@Ozy’s original post was a masterpiece of grace, understanding, and perspective. And I’m just over the moon that finally somebody out there acknowledges that men aren’t automatic “if you’ve got a hole, I’ve got a pole” types. (Or the “evolutionary psychology” equivalent of “it’s a no-brainer why we men have orgasms so let’s make all kinds of questions we can ask girls about their pussies.”)
In fact there’s only one real problem…
@Ozy “although the bottom is more sensitive than the top”
You are so freaking wrong. It’s upper end that’s more sensitive than the bottom!
Ok, at least on me!
Um, which I guess proves your point about the folly of universalizing experience. :-)
Thank you for changing my life with this series. I hope this is up for if I have a son some day so that when he starts thinking sexually for the first time I can show him your blog series on penises and he can have what I never had growing up: a fundamental appreciation for the sexual organ God/Evolution/RandomChance gave him.
@ typhonblue:
“Go back two hundred years and you start to get into the ‘all women are lustful’ meme big time. Go back 2000 years and it was expected that the sexual spark go from man to woman, in other words it was men who arroused women, not vice versa.”
Generally speaking, go back N hundred years and you start to get into lots of previously widely held beliefs that we now know to be patently false.
For the longest time, I’ve been looking for an anti-men’s-oppression blog that isn’t filled with anti-feminist misogynists. I’ve read all the comments for this post and…whoop!
One of my professors, as a joke, had that picture as the last slide in a Powerpoint and it irked me how little he knew about male sexuality.
“I do think that we need to work on a culture in which both genders can equally be the initiators and the initiated, because it’s unfair that the sting of rejection falls disproportionately on one and not the other (though, conversely, the unsafe feeling of constantly getting propositioned by creeps also falls disproportinately on one gender– I’d like both genders to equally feel rejection and creeped-outness, though of course preferably as little as possible of both those things).”—ch
Oh, CH this, this, this. I have all the relationship I want, but I like to dance and my guy doesn’t, so I go with my female friends. Unlike my undergrad days, I do most of the initiating. I always feel a splash of pity when I see the look of relief on a guy’s face that I’ve taken the initiator role from resting on his shoulders. On the other side of the coin, since I’ve taken control of the situation from early on, it’s so much easier to just leave a guy in the middle of the dance floor when I realize that he isn’t going to stop groping me no matter where I place his hands
(although personally, I think that if we as a culture defined ‘real’ sex as (a) ending when the woman came and (b) involving direct clitoral stimulation, suddenly it would be men who were having all the trouble)
Preach it, mister.
–Juniper