The New Male Sexuality (6 page)

The messages get through because of our basic insecurity about sex and our sensitivity to any information about it. Whether we are trying to learn anything or whether we are aware of having learned anything is irrelevant. Most men, I suspect, would deny that they are affected by all the positive references in jokes and novels to large penises and the denigrating references to small ones. I suggest, however, that these references do indeed have a cumulative effect and help explain why so many men feel their own penises are inadequate. Many of the things that we believe are natural, real, or “the way it is” are in fact absorbed in this way but, because of our insistence to the contrary, are resistant to change or even examination.

Because all the media portray essentially the same sexual messages, it’s virtually certain that all men and women will learn the same model of sex, although, to be sure, the messages are filtered through the different gender training males and females have undergone. What is picked up from one source is reinforced by the others. Even if you never read a book or saw a movie, you’d still learn the model. It pervades our culture. Our friends learned it (and you probably learned a lot from them), our parents learned it, and so did everyone else.

The sexual messages conveyed in our culture are the stuff of fantasy, of overheated imaginations run wild, and that’s why I call them collectively the fantasy model of sex. It is a model of total unreality about how bodies look and function, how people relate, and how they have sex. The main actors in this model are not actually people but sexual organs, especially the penis. These penises are not like anything real but instead are, according to historian Steven Marcus,
“magical instruments of infinite powers.” The men these penises are attached to are not exactly average, either. They are always well-built and muscular, even if they’re over sixty and even if they do nothing but shuffle papers all day. They are usually tall, with “strong, intelligent” faces; they “radiate power”; most are extremely successful at work; and sexual energy oozes from every pore.

The women in fantasyland are incredible, with beautiful faces, sensuous lips and hips, lustrous hair, slim bodies, full breasts always pointing outward
and upward, and long, shapely legs you wouldn’t believe. It might be thought that the combination of slimness and big breasts would create a problem of balance, but fear not—none of the women ever tips over. And these women are mainly young, meaning in their twenties or early thirties. The few older women we encounter, except for those who are someone’s mother, look half their age and could pass for college sophomores. For instance:
“She was a month away from her fortieth birthday and looked thirty, even on a bad morning.”

Regardless of age, these women have some interesting features. Barbara, in John Gardner’s
Secret Houses
, is, well, kind of perfect: “As she leaned over him, he noticed that her hair, like her breasts, stayed in perfect order.” It wouldn’t do to have any hairs or breasts flopping about. Her breasts are worth another few words. They “remained the same whichever way she turned. They did not even seem to flatten when she was on her back, as some girls’ did.” Ain’t life wonderful?

Another interesting feature of women in fantasyland is that they are seriously into sex. They go around with dripping panties, are ready for action at a moment’s notice, and can express their desires as some men have always done:
“That’s right, honey, eat me, hurt me, talk dirty to me, and fuck me. That’s all I want.” Unless they’re virgins, foreplay is not something they need much of. Orgasms, dozens of them, come quickly and easily to them.

Some women complain that this emphasis on perfect female forms is a male conspiracy, but the women created by female writers—for example, most of those who write romance novels—also tend to be young and physically perfect. The fantasy model is equally hard on men and women. The male bodies, organs, and performances are just as far out of reach for the ordinary man as the female bodies and performances are for the average woman.

Here’s a little passage from a Harold Robbins novel that sums up a lot of the action of the fantasy model. Try to keep in mind that this book is not only not pornographic by any of the usual definitions, but for decades has been available at many drugstores and supermarkets. Robbins is one of the best-selling authors of fiction in the world, and he along with other popular writers such as Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Mario Puzo, Sidney Sheldon, Erica Jong, Judith Krantz, and Jackie Collins—all of whose books have sold millions of copies and all of whom share some rather interesting ideas about sex—may be a far more influential sex educator than Masters and Johnson and Dr. Ruth.

The man in the story is a wealthy businessman and the woman is his
wife’s dressmaker, whom he has just met. He got aroused and asked her how much. She indicated she wanted to open a small shop, and he said, “You’ve got it.” With that for introduction and foreplay, we begin:

Gently her fingers opened his union suit and he sprang out at her like an angry lion from its cage. Carefully she … took him in both hands, one behind the other as if she were grasping a baseball bat. She stared at it in wonder.…

[After placing his hands under her armpits and lifting her in the air] he began to lower her on him. Her legs came up, circling his waist, as he began to enter her. Her breath caught in her throat. It was as if a giant of white hot steel were penetrating her. She began to moan as it opened her and climbed higher into her body, past her womb, past her stomach, under her heart, up into her throat. She was panting now, like a bitch in heat.…

[He then lifts her off him and throws her onto the bed.] Then he was posed over her.… His hands reached and grasped each of her heavy breasts as if he wanted to tear them from her body. She moaned in pain and writhed, her pelvis suddenly arching and thrusting toward him. Then he entered her again.

“My God,” she cried, “my God!” She began to climax almost before he was fully inside her. Then she couldn’t stop them, one coming rapidly after the other as he slammed into her with the force of the giant body press she had seen working in his factory. She became confused, the man and the machine they were one and the same and the strength was something she had never known before. And finally, when orgasm after orgasm had racked her body into a searing sheet of flame and she could bear no more, she cried out at him: “Take your pleasure … Quick, before I die!”

A roar came from deep inside his throat.… She felt the hot on-rushing gusher of his semen turning her insides into hot, flowing lava. She discovered herself climaxing again.

You may be wondering what’s wrong with this kind of material. Isn’t it more exciting and more fun to view, read about, and fantasize about perfectly built people and flawless performances than about real people? I admit it can be great fun to get away from the shortcomings and hassles of real life and imagine only perfection. That’s one of the main purposes of fantasy. But there is a problem. Because we don’t have any realistic models
or standards in sex, little idea of what is customary or even possible in the real world, we tend to measure ourselves against these fantasies. We often don’t remember that what we’re comparing ourselves to is for the most part unattainable by human beings. We usually aren’t even aware that we’re comparing ourselves to anything. We just know that we feel bad because our equipment and performances aren’t what we wish they were.

In a society that doesn’t give us realistic models of sexuality, where else would people go for standards? It’s rare, for example, to read of or see an average-looking couple having sex, so we end up feeling inadequate about our own and our partners’ bodies. It’s rare to read about or see a couple having the kind of sex that is possible in the real world, so we feel bad about our less-than-cataclysmic experiences. It’s rare to read of or see a couple discussing a sexual problem, so we learn that sex problems don’t or shouldn’t exist, and we fail to learn how to deal with them when they do occur.

We compare ourselves to what we’ve learned, and almost everyone feels that they’ve come out on the short end. No matter what kind of equipment you have, no matter what partner, no matter what you do, no matter what the results—none of it equals what you heard and read about. Good sex is always somewhere else with someone else.

The myths generate huge amounts of anxiety and bad feelings about ourselves and our partners. They help create sex problems and make resolving them difficult, they bring misery to relationships and individuals, and, in general, they make good sex hard to come by.

Virtually all of the men and women I’ve talked to over the years who say they have good relationships and good sex report that they had to unlearn or give up a number of harmful notions and replace them with ideas that were more realistic and constructive. The purpose of this chapter is to give you an opportunity to look at some of the main destructive myths men hold about connecting and sex.

MYTH 1: WE’RE LIBERATED FOLKS WHO ARE VERY COMFORTABLE WITH SEX

Beginning with the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, the idea has spread that we have overthrown and overcome the prudishness and inhibitions of our Victorian ancestors. Sexual pleasure is our birthright, and we don’t much care what our religions or churches or parents say about it. We’re going to do what we want with whom we want, and we’re
going to enjoy it. In other words, we are fairly calm about and accepting of sex. This view is now held by many people, especially men.

This belief is reinforced by media portrayals of erotica. Everyone in movies and books seems so comfortable with sex. No woman is concerned with her weight or the state of her breasts, thighs, or hips, or about her ability to lubricate and be orgasmic. No man is concerned about the size and hardness of his penis or his sexual endurance. No one questions his ability to provide a mind-blowing experience for himself and his partner. Everyone is comfortable with everything: vaginal, oral, and anal sex, sex with and without drugs, sex in public places, sex with several partners at the same time, and sex without protection against pregnancy and disease. In fact, people in fantasyland are usually so comfortable that it doesn’t make any difference whether the partners even know each other.

While I’m not saying that greater comfort with impersonal sex is a desirable goal, it certainly would be nice if we were more comfortable with our bodies, our sexual organs, and sexuality in general than we are now. But it seems quite clear that we have not quite reached nirvana yet. I have yet to meet a man or woman who I think is totally comfortable with sex, and that of course includes myself. We all seem to have hang-ups of one kind or another.

How else could it be in a society where parents are still very uncomfortable with their children’s playing doctor with the boy or girl next door and with, God forbid, their children’s masturbatory behavior? How else could it be in a society where even supposedly liberated parents still protect children from movies that show more or less explicit sexuality? We allow our children to see violence in all its ugly faces—the average fifteen-year-old has seen more bombings, shootings, and knifings on television than most soldiers see in actual combat—but we draw the line at erotic pleasure. What messages do you think get across? Kids aren’t stupid. They get the point: There’s something wrong with sex. As the children grow up, they also learn that sex is pleasurable. But if you scratch the surface you often find the earlier belief, that there’s something wrong with sex.

If we’re so accepting of sex, why is there so little decent sex education in this country? How come so few of us can talk about it with our partners? How come so many of us feel so bad and guilty about our own self-stimulation? And how come so many of us have trouble consistently and effectively using protection against disease and unwanted pregnancy?

In her book
Erotic Wars
, Lillian Rubin notes that although sex is now openly discussed and displayed, it’s a different matter in our private lives.
“There, sex still is relegated to a shadow existence, and silence is the rule. There, the old taboos still hold: sex is a private affair, something we don’t talk about, not with friends, often not even with lovers or mates.”

Believing that we are so liberated about sex leads to arrogance and narrow-mindedness. It makes it difficult to examine our own knowledge and attitudes, to see and appreciate our own ignorance and discomfort. And this makes it hard to change our behavior.

MYTH 2: A REAL MAN ISN’T INTO SISSY STUFF LIKE FEELINGS AND COMMUNICATING

In the last chapter we saw that men don’t have much practice discerning their feelings or talking about them. Women want to talk, men want to do.

Because men have trouble directly expressing feelings except for sexual ones, they tend to get sneaky. In one scene in the movie
Three Men and a Baby
, Tom Selleck asks his woman friend to spend the night, and the subject of feelings comes up. She says, “I thought sentiment made you uncomfortable.” His reply: “I can handle it, as long as it’s disguised as sex.”

A man in a research study spoke for a lot of men when he said, “What it really comes down to is that I guess I’m not very comfortable with expressing my emotions—I don’t think that many men are—but I am pretty comfortable with sex, so I just sort of let sex speak for me.” A woman in the same study [commented]: “Sex is his one and only way to be intimate. But how close can you get to someone who only communicates with his cock?”

Talking is important in sex. One reason it’s important is so that you can protect yourself. Sex has always been a risky activity, and these days the ante has been upped considerably. At the very least, you need to be able to say, “Wait a sec, I’ve got to put this rubber on.”

Of course, in fantasyland there is nothing to talk about. There are no STDs, and it goes without saying that no man in fantasyland has sexual questions, doubts, or problems. It’s all perfect and wonderful, just like in a fairy tale, which is exactly what it is.