The New Male Sexuality (15 page)

To make things even more complex, consider that erections can be produced by certain kinds of fear (while other kinds of fear can prevent erections). There have been a few reported cases of men being forced at the point of a knife or gun to have intercourse with one or more women. This isn’t the kind of rape we usually hear about, but the evidence is clear that
the male victims did get erect and were able to have intercourse. Erections are not only produced by positive, loving, or lusty feelings.

An erection means only that your penis is hard. Whether or not you
want
sex has to do with how you feel, how excited you are. Whether or not you
should
have sex has to do with your appraisal of the situation, what your head tells you
. You may have an erection and you may be wonderfully turned on, but if your head reminds you that the woman in question is your best friend’s or boss’s wife, or that you have no protection against disease or unwanted pregnancy, you may want to think carefully about what to do.

WHAT DOES LACK OF ERECTION MEAN?

Just as many people confuse erection with an interest in sex, they also confuse lack of erection with a lack of interest. Women are especially likely to make this error and to personalize it. If you don’t have an erection in a sexual situation, your partner may well assume that you’re not turned on to her or that she doesn’t know what to do to turn you on. It’s possible, of course, that she’s right. Maybe you’re not aroused by her at the moment or ever, or maybe she’s not doing what you’d like.

But most of the time lack of erection in a sexual situation means something else entirely. Let’s say you are sexually aroused; you want to have sex. But your penis doesn’t respond. Although this situation is enormously frustrating to men, and often their partners as well, there is always an answer. There is an obstacle preventing your arousal from translating into an erection. In some cases the barrier is obvious and simple. For example, perhaps you require a certain kind of stimulation to get hard and you’re not getting it. Maybe your partner doesn’t know that’s what you need, maybe she forgot, or maybe she’s upset and doesn’t want to supply it. Or maybe because you’ve had so much sex in the last day or so, your penis is simply too tired to get hard again. But usually the obstacle is something else.

Erection requires a whole constellation of things to be right. Your nervous and vascular systems have to be capable of responding properly, and your emotions have to be capable of aiding or at least not impeding the process. Anything, physical or emotional, that gets in the way of sufficient blood getting and staying in the penis can cause problems.

It used to be thought that erection problems were almost always due to
psychological factors. But we have learned in recent years that this isn’t the case. Many erection problems are caused by disease or drugs by themselves or in combination with emotional factors.

Any disease that interferes with blood getting to the penis, with blood being kept in the penis, or with the nervous system’s control over blood flow may cause erection problems. A number of medical conditions are known to affect the nervous system’s ability to control blood flow or the ability of blood to get into and stay in the penis. Hormonal imbalances, diabetes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and back problems, injuries to the pelvis, long-term cigarette smoking, and alcoholism are some of these conditions.

Just because you have hardening of the arteries or any of the other problems mentioned above does not necessarily mean that they are the cause of your erection problems. Such problems may also be caused by anxiety and other emotions. But it is important to determine what’s going on.

The penis can also be affected by anything taken into the body—for example, drugs you take for depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and many other conditions, as well as for recreation. In the Appendix I list a number of common drugs that can adversely affect sexual functioning.

Your ability to get and maintain erections can also be influenced by your emotions and the state of your relationship. Anxiety about whether you’ll get or maintain an erection is a common obstacle to getting erections. But other feelings also enter in. Anger, for instance, no matter who it’s directed at, can block your ability to get hard. So can the absence of a feeling, the lack of arousal. If you’re not turned on, perhaps because you’re highly anxious, because your mind is preoccupied with something else, or because you don’t like your partner or don’t find her attractive, this may be enough to prevent stimulation from translating into erection.

I hope it’s clear that not having an erection doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want sex. It just means that your penis is less stiff than you’d like.

THE PLEASURES OF THE SOFT PENIS

Penises do not have to be hard to produce pleasure. A soft penis has just as many nerve endings as a hard one and is therefore capable of generating good feelings. Whether it is exactly as enjoyable as an erect penis is difficult to say. Although the number of nerve endings doesn’t change, it’s possible that the engorgement of the hard penis with blood amplifies the
sensations. Some men say it’s more pleasurable to be stimulated with an erection, and some say it doesn’t make any difference. And it’s also possible to have an orgasm with a soft penis.

You already know how much pleasure can be gotten from the stimulation of a soft penis. Think about it for a minute. Have you ever started a sexual experience, alone or with a partner, without an erection? How did it feel as you or your partner stimulated your soft penis? Didn’t it feel good? And it probably didn’t feel as good as it could because you or you and your partner were focused on making it hard and were therefore anticipating what was to come rather than what was happening at the moment.

There are two reasons for taking more seriously the pleasure that can be yielded by a flaccid penis. One is that doing so takes some pressure off it to get hard. And the fewer demands put on a penis to behave in certain ways, the better it will function. The other reason is that it simply gives you more options. You can enjoy sex without an erection. And your partner will know she can give you pleasure without your having an erection.

It’s also possible to have intercourse with a soft penis. But be warned: This works only if both of you are comfortable with the soft penis, if you’re not going to get upset if it doesn’t get hard, if you’re willing to experiment with different positions, and if you can talk about what’s happening. It sometimes happens that once you start having intercourse, your penis will get harder. If that happens, it’s fine. And it’s also fine if it doesn’t.

A number of men have been surprised by my earlier statement that orgasm is possible without a full erection. Nonetheless, it’s true. Erection and orgasm are separate entities and not dependent on each other. Just as you can have an erection without an orgasm, so, too, you can have orgasm without erection.

THE PENIS THROUGH THE LIFE CYCLE

Like all parts of the body, the penis changes as it ages. The truly young penis—in babies and grade-school boys—is basically a sleeper. True, it gets hard during dreams and at other times, especially when stimulated, but it doesn’t do much otherwise except for resting and urinating.

The adolescent penis is another story altogether. It is rambunctious and rowdy; it gets hard frequently and at the most inappropriate times. The problem for many teenage boys is not getting it up but trying to keep it down. The writer Julius Lester recalls just how ubiquitous and embarrassing the adolescent penis can be:

God, how I envied girls.… Whatever it was on them, it didn’t dangle between their legs like an elephant’s trunk. No wonder boys talked about nothing but sex. That thing was always there. Every time we went to the john, there it was, twitching around like a fat little worm on a fishing hook. When we took baths, it floated in the water like a lazy fish and God forbid we should touch it! It sprang to life like lightning leaping from a cloud.… I was helpless. It was there, with a life and mind of its own, having no other function than to embarrass me.

The idea that penises are hard as steel comes from the adolescent penis. The adolescent penis seemingly wants to explode to orgasm every few minutes. It comes, and ten minutes later it’s hard again and wants to come again. And what orgasms these are. The force is explosive and the pressure is immense; large amounts of semen fly across the room. And if the owner doesn’t stimulate himself to orgasm, then it happens all by itself in wet dreams.

The adolescent penis is the penis at its ultimate power. From here on until the end of life, there is a gradual tapering off. Never again will it be so quick to get hard, so stiff; never again will the orgasms be so explosive and the need for them so insistent. There will also be a loss of independence over time. The adolescent penis needs little or nothing from the outside. It gets hard on its own, without needing physical or other kinds of stimulation. As it ages, it will require more stimulation of various sorts.

Although what I have described about the adolescent penis is typical, there are some that don’t fit this picture. Some teenage boys have illnesses or injuries that make erection difficult or impossible to get or maintain. And some have difficulties because of strong feelings such as anxiety, guilt, or disgust.

The penis in young adulthood, approximately twenty to thirty-five, is similar to the adolescent penis, but signs of mellowing may already be present. The frequency of masturbation tends to drop, and wet dreams may be less common. Some men in this age group notice that their penises are not as hard when erect as they once were and that they require direct stimulation to get hard.

As the penis enters midlife, say around ages forty to fifty, some changes are obvious. It may require physical stimulation, either from its owner or his partner, to get hard. It may not get as full or as firm as before. It is easier for it to lose its hardness and, once lost, the hardness may be more difficult to regain. Men often notice and worry about the angle of erection.
The erection that in younger years pointed up may now just stick straight out; the one that in previous times stuck straight out may now, though stiff, point slightly down. In most cases, these are just normal changes and nothing to get excited about. The need for orgasm is less pronounced. The force of the ejaculation is less, as is the amount ejaculated. Attending to the penis’s conditions becomes more important.

The changes continue as the penis reaches its sixth and seventh decades. Men frequently comment that it doesn’t get as hard as it used to. Physical and mental arousal are much more critical. Things that before usually produced erection—seeing one’s partner undressed, kissing and hugging, even watching X-rated movies—now may not do so. Penises at this age often take longer to ejaculate and they don’t need to ejaculate every time. Every second or third time is fine.

Ejaculation is much less powerful. Semen may seem to seep out instead of shooting out. And once a fifty-, sixty-, or seventy-year-old penis ejaculates, it may be days before it can get hard again.

Many men at this age decide they’re over the hill as far as sex goes, or that they need some help. Getting help is realistic for some, but for others all that’s needed is the understanding that just because something isn’t the way it was twenty, thirty, or forty years ago doesn’t mean you can’t use and enjoy it. A raging erection that points at the ceiling and that won’t quit is not necessary for good sex. After all, many men in their sixties enjoy walking, jogging, and dancing even though they can’t move as fast or as far as they did when they were thirty. The senior penis can still give and take pleasure, even though it’s not the same as it was decades ago.

As sex therapist Leslie Schover points out, some men do fine with their less-than-Herculean erections until confronted with a new situation: for example, sex with a new partner after a divorce or the death of a spouse. The same erection is now considered inadequate.

The changes I’ve described gradually continue until the end of life. Like the rest of physical functioning, the erection and ejaculatory processes become less efficient.
But the penis and the rest of the body
never
lose their capacity for pleasure
. There are men in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties who enjoy sex. As do their partners. According to many women I’ve spoken with, the owners of penises often develop qualities as they age that more than make up for the declining powers of their penises. These women say that older men are attractive sexually because they are more open to emotion and generally more loving, more patient, not as quick on the trigger, and often more sensuous.

The big problem for penises is that they’ve had a bad press. Perhaps it’s
more accurate to say that they’ve had a misguided press. The adolescent penis is the one that’s idealized and idolized in the popular media, and it’s also the first penis males have sexual experience with. Many men expect a penis of any age to act like the adolescent one.

In other areas we don’t have these outrageous expectations. When it’s old timers’ day in baseball, we don’t expect the stars of yesterday to hit and run and pitch the way they did before. And we don’t expect a forty-year-old man to run as fast as he did when he won the 100-meter race in the Olympics. But almost every man expects his penis to behave the way it did when he was seventeen or, just as bad, the way he wishes it had behaved when he was seventeen.

To the extent that we can get rid of these ridiculous expectations, accept the penis that we have, meet its needs, and like and enjoy it for what it is—to that extent we can give and receive erotic pleasure as much as we want and for as long as we want. And that, I suggest, is what it’s all about.

CHAPTER FIVE