The New Male Sexuality (3 page)

A NOTE ON MY USE OF WORDS

In some sense there is no such entity as “men” or “male sexuality.” There are only individual men and only the sexuality of individual men. But at times we need to generalize. In this book I make frequent use of qualifiers
such as
many, some, often
, and so on, but to do that in every sentence becomes boring. I ask for your understanding. Just because I say “Men do …” or “Men say …” I don’t mean to imply that every single man in the world does or says that thing. The same applies to generalizations about women.

When I talk about the other person, the one you’re relating to or having sex with, I use a number of terms synonymously:
partner, lover, spouse, wife
, and
mate
. Just because I use
wife
or
spouse
does not mean I think you are or should be married to her.

My examples and language reflect my own heterosexuality and that of the vast majority of men I have worked with. But much of the material and all of the techniques apply equally to bisexual and homosexual men. Gay readers, however, will have to translate some of my words into language more appropriate to their own situations.

TAKING GREATER CONTROL OF OUR LIVES

Although men often give the impression of being in control of their lives—that’s the impression they are supposed to convey—and although women often believe this impression and envy it, I have been surprised over the years by how many men feel exactly the opposite. In bed and out, they feel buffeted like leaves in a strong wind. They often aren’t getting what they want. They often feel powerless to affect the course of their work, their relationships, and even what happens in sex. One cause of sadness for me in the last three decades is that the great debates about taking charge of one’s life have been conducted almost entirely by and for women. They are the ones who’ve been working to redefine traditional concepts of gender and sexuality. I’m sad not about what women are doing—I think it’s great—but about the fact that more men haven’t been doing the same. It goes against our grain. We’re too busy performing to think about such issues, we don’t want to be seen as whiners and complainers, and we don’t want to admit to problems we don’t have ready answers for.

Nonetheless, we men have a lot to gain from taking greater control over our lives. We don’t have to be at the mercy of our genitals or hormones or the traditional sex roles we were brought up on. We don’t have to forgo the incredible joys and benefits of truly loving relationships. We don’t have to put up with boring, joyless, or dysfunctional sex. We can develop personal styles, relationships, and sexual patterns that more closely fit our own values, preferences, and interests, that more closely fit our human selves. For those who are willing to make the effort, that’s what this book is about.

CHAPTER ONE

The Making of
Anxious Performers

I hear girls had it rougher, but you couldn’t prove it by me. Growing up was the pits. Incredible pressures all the time, everywhere. Had to do well in school, had to do well in sports, had to maintain my manly image and couldn’t walk away from a fight, and later had to do well with girls and pretend I knew all about sex and was getting it regularly. I often wished the whole world would just go away and leave me alone. I don’t know what I would have done, but it couldn’t have been any worse.—
Man, 36

It took me half a century to realize that I’d been living a half life, that I had buried important feelings and parts of myself. I was a shit father and husband. Not abusive or anything like that, but I wasn’t even home most of the time. Aside from money and fixing things around the house, I didn’t contribute anything. Only when my grandson arrived did I make a shift. With him, I am a whole person. I can love him, cuddle him, listen to him, and really talk to him. Sounds funny, listening and talking to a four-year-old, but it’s true. His expression of emotion has allowed me to unblock my own feelings. I’m sad that my wife died before I could be a real partner to her. I’m sad that I didn’t give more to my own children and that I missed out on so much.—
Man, 54

Men in our culture walk a thin line. Like their fathers and grandfathers, they must be sure their behavior conforms to what is considered manly. It takes very little—maybe as little as one failure or one sign of weakness—to lose one’s place in the charmed circle of men and to be called “lady,” “woman,” or “pussy”—all signifying a non-man or less than a man. But if a man isn’t a man, what then is he? The answer most men seem to believe is: nothing at all.

The concern of being considered a non-man keeps men in a state of almost perpetual vigilance and anxiety. It also makes for a certain inflexibility. If the results of changing one’s behavior can be so dire as a loss of identity, one doesn’t take change lightly. There is nothing new about this situation for men; it has existed in Western societies for hundreds of years. What is new is that the traditional definition of masculinity has come under scrutiny and attack and that the messages men get have become quite confused. Men are still supposed to exhibit all the manly virtues, but now they should also be sensitive and emotionally expressive, attributes that used to be considered feminine. Being a man has become more difficult than ever before.

What follows is, in my mind, not a pretty story. It shows how we transform male babies into adult beings who are somewhat less than human, who are cut off from huge portions of themselves, the parts that have to do with caring, nurturing, and expressing, who must wear a suit of armor almost all day and night, and who in a very real sense are only pale reflections of who they might be. At least in the old days, they were heavily rewarded for succeeding at being who society wanted them to be. But in recent times, men have come under unrelenting criticism for being who they are trained to be and for not being who they were discouraged from being. The cry is heard on media talk shows, in countless books and articles, in therapy offices, and in bedrooms and kitchens throughout the land: “Why aren’t men more interested in relationships, why aren’t they softer, why don’t they express feelings, why aren’t they more interested in household chores and child care?” The questions are of course not really questions, but accusations.

But why should men be this way? Where did they learn to focus on relationships, to express emotion, to be interested in children? The answer is: nowhere at all.

MAKING THE MAN

By the age of three or so, boys and girls are aware that they are not just children—they are boy children or girl children, and these distinctions are extremely important. Later learning is always filtered through the lens of gender. Even such neutral-seeming activities as cooking, soccer, and math are influenced by these lenses. Very early on, the child has a notion that soccer and math are things boys are interested in, while cooking is for girls. These notions are easily modifiable at early ages—a boy whose father
takes pride in his culinary skills may well conclude that cooking is for males—but the point remains that everything is seen in terms of gender.

What a culture teaches its boys and girls is dependent on its images of men and women, what it wants these youngsters to grow up to be. Although in recent years we have been reevaluating what we want from men and women, the traditional definitions still exert a very strong pull. A number of researchers have found that a small number of characteristics comprise most of what we expect from our men: strength and self-reliance, success, no sissy stuff (in other words, don’t be like women), and sexual interest and prowess. Here’s a description from a Harold Robbins novel: “This was a strong man.… The earth moved before him when he walked, men loved and feared him, women trembled at the power in his loins, people sought his favors.” That may seem a bit outdated, but here’s how a recent Sidney Sheldon novel describes the hero: “He was like a force of nature, taking over everything in his path.” In a 1989 novel titled
Sophisticated Lady
, we read of the hero (who had, of course, a “tall, powerfully built body”): “Just standing there, he radiated a quiet kind of strength and authority.” He’s the modern version: less raucous, more sophisticated, but still strong, successful, independent.

Of course there are contrary images: weak men, passive men, and general bunglers like Dagwood Bumstead. But we know they aren’t what’s wanted, that their bungling is precisely what makes them funny. Real men don’t behave like this.

Little boys and little girls are certainly not the same—boys, for example, are on the average more active and aggressive—but they are more similar than adult men and women. Boys, like girls, are playful, warm, open, expressive, loving, vulnerable, and all the other things that make children so attractive. But when we look at adult men, we may wonder what happened to all these wonderful qualities. As adults, men display them to a far lesser degree, if at all. A lot of their best stuff has been trained out of them. In addition, some of their worst and most dangerous tendencies—toward aggressiveness and even violence—have been overdeveloped.

Although I emphasize the role of learning or socialization in the discussion that follows, I do not mean to imply there are no biological differences between the sexes. There certainly are.
Nature had different purposes in mind for males and females and programmed them accordingly. Nonetheless, the training given to boys and girls is strikingly different and has an important influence. While we may not be able totally to undo a genetic disposition, we can shape it to some extent. It is probably true, for instance, that males are genetically more aggressive than females, but how frequently
and in what ways aggressiveness is manifested are significantly influenced by societal messages boys and men get about it.

Little boys present a huge problem for all societies, because the societies don’t want men to be like these boys. The question is how to make these open, expressive boys who wear their vulnerabilities and fears on their sleeves into strong, decisive performers who will be able to do whatever the society deems manly. We may think it’s cute for a young boy to say, trembling, “I’m scared a monster is gonna get me,” but we don’t want a twenty-or thirty-year-old to act that way. Instead, we want him to deny his fear (“Monsters don’t scare
me
!”) and announce he’s going to kick some monster ass.

Training in masculinity begins as soon as the child is born and continues for the rest of his life. By the age of six or seven, important lessons have already taken hold. An image of this process comes from a scene in a recent novel about a shooting at an elementary school. There was the usual mass confusion, shots, and a dead body being carried out; in short, a trauma. How did the kids react? A
“little girl burst into tears. A chubby boy, five or six, cried. The boy next to him was older, maybe eight. Staring straight ahead and biting his lip, straining for macho.” Between the ages of five and eight, he has learned lessons about being male. He will not cry, maybe never again. Nor will he show fear or dependency or tenderness, and he may not even be able to ask for directions when he’s lost. He will lose his ability not only to show feelings, but also to experience and know them. He won’t understand why his girlfriend or wife just wants to cuddle, to hear his fears and express hers, simply to talk.

You can see the results of men’s training everywhere, and such examples serve to reinforce the training for all men who observe. One football-highlights TV show I saw in the fall of 1990 focused on New York Giants coach Bill Parcells, who coached his team that Sunday despite suffering from painful kidney stones. (The very fact of working while in great pain itself conveys a powerful message regarding what a man is.) As Parcells talked to reporters after the game, his discomfort was obvious. A reporter yelled out, “How do you feel, Bill?” Since it was apparent how he felt, all that was required was that he give a few words to his pain. But his response was this: “I’m going into the hospital tomorrow morning and I’ll probably be there a day or two.” Feelings? What’s that? The message that men watching the show will take away is as clear as the pain that Parcells felt but couldn’t put into words.