Sex! We are all going to finish this summary with hurting ribs. Mwahahaha! (evil laugh)
The majority of our sexually active population fail to experience satisfying and fulfilling sex. It just clicked in my mind that in one of Paulo Cuelho’s books, he mentioned how sexually frustrated women were because they barely had orgasms during most of their sexual encounters.
Similarly astounding was how a significant number of women had not climaxed despite being sexually active until they thought that not having an orgasm was normal. Scary. The reading revolutionized my view of sex to being female orgasm centred.
There is a popular notion that in relationships, men are searching for sex whereas women are on a quest for love. It appears that men are obsessed with sex due to an underlying opinion that it will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, closer to their partner, with increased intimacy and pleasure.
Many a times, they are disappointed. Yet the disappointment mysteriously fuels their libido. The occurrence is like cigarette addiction, you get a nice high the first time you smoke then you spend the rest of your smoking years looking for that high, yet the failure to get it will not make you stop smoking.
Chew over this, granted that women have been taught through sexist (women are less able than men or negative referral of women’s body, behavior or feelings) indoctrination that going through a difficult sexual terrain will reward them with their heart’s desire, men have been trained to desire sex and more sex.
This sexist logic is accountable for convincing men that they can have connection and intimacy free from commitment, men could have their sexual needs met on command, discarding place and time as limitations. I will leave you to give a saying that is aligned to the belief.
Hooks brings out into the open how it came to her realisation that it was practically an impossibility to have a serious discussion about love, that public discussions about love are taboo. Contrarily, everybody talks about sex to lengths of talk shows because sex has been portrayed as natural in our patriarchal culture.
It becomes disturbing where most folks take it as gospel that we are biologically programmed to long for sex but grow sceptical that we are also made to love. Multitudes give credence to us being able to have sex in the absence of love; they believe that love and sex are concomitant. This explains why teenage girls get tricked into proving their love for their boyfriends with sex.
There is an overruling postulation that if men are sexually inactive, they will go insane. It serves as an excuse for male on male sexual violence in prisons. I am reminded of a documentary about a prison general of the numbers gangs that accepted on camera that he slept with men like they were women. They did it for their safety because denial meant they got killed or had to kill whomever he told them to.
The excuse expands to rape in all its forms, date, marital and by a stranger. Moreover, the excuse dismisses the rape of children when done by mild mannered men as a petty crime. Just this morning, I saw a screenshot taken from daily beast on a friend’s status, it displayed how the Vatican answered to an accusation of 1 000 kids abused by priests with ‘No Comment’.
What more for celebrities mired with sexually abusing children remaining as cultural icons? It should not be a surprise because almost all and sundry believes that any rape victim or survivor brought it upon themselves through their dress code or inviting actions.
Mass media lectures boys from a budding age that the world of sexual relations is comprised of a dominant and submissive party. Did you not just think of Fifty Shades of Grey, Darker and Freed? Tell me your safe word so I can leave you alone with questions.
Hooks brings forth evidence from an anthology titled Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Abuse. It is about men who have been victimized by stronger boys, brothers and peers.
I was appalled by Ed’s story, he shared how at the tender age of nine he was taught about sex and was giving his psychopath brother blowjobs at ten. Now I am angry at the brother. So much for thinking we would be laughing through this summary. How sick can people get? What should keep you awake at night is that the brother got married, with twisted notions that he had a right to have sex with anyone he desired, whether they wanted to or not. This should bring you up to speed about how rape and sexual abuse happens within a family. The very place that promises people safety.
The family can further be accidentally villainous to little boys through their mothers. The very people who should love and protect them, as per expectations, are the very people who instill sexual repression. Mothers react to the sight of a penis with dislike and do not know what to do with it. The failure to make the boy child understand that his penis is wonderfully special, the father’s inability to educate boys about their bodies culminate in lay approaches of child abuse where parents fear celebrating their boy child’s body as it may respond to playful physical closeness with an erection. The view of a small boy’s penis as a weapon implants rape culture psychology.
Sexual repression certainly fuels the lust of boys and men. Michael S. Kimmel sheds light on this in the essay Fuel for Fantasy: The Ideological Construction of Male List, he reveals that sexual repression creates the world in which males must engage constantly in sexual fantasy, eroticizing the nonsexual. In investigating the connection between sexual repression and sexism, he elaborates:
Sexual pleasure is rarely the goal in a sexual encounter, something far more pressing than simple pleasure is on the line, our sense of selves as men. Men’s sense of sexual scarcity and an almost compulsive need for sex to confirm manhood are interdependent, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of sexual deprivation and despair. And it infuriates men that women do what women were encouraged to do: saying no. Despair and rage are feelings men bring to sex, whether with women or other men. Sex for most men is thus, a way of self-solacing.
Hooks substantiated her point with words of wise and brave men. We will look into them before concluding.
Zukav and Francis maintain that the sex addict fears being inadequate and getting rejected, the strength of the fears, where there is denial for them, the stronger the obsession with sex.
Steve Bearman justifies this point in the essay Why Men Are So Obsessed with Sex, clarifying that “even if we do not engage compulsively in anonymous casual sex, pornography, masturbation, or fetishistic attempts to recover what has been forgotten, sex nevertheless takes on an addictive character.” Whether straight or gay, male sexuality assumes this addictive character.
Kimmel argues that male consumption of pornography is fed by the sexual lust males are taught to feel all the time and their rage that this lust cannot be satisfied:
Pornography can sexualize that rage, and it can make sex look like revenge… Many men are angry at women, but more profoundly, women are targets for displaced male rage at the failure of patriarchy to make good on its promise, especially endless sexual fulfilment.
Robert Jensen, in his bold and moving essay, Patriarchal Sex irons the message out. Characterising patriarchal sex, he writes: “Sex is fcking. In patriarchy, there is an imperative to f#ck – in rape and in normal sex, with strangers and girlfriends and wives and estranged wives and children. What matters in patriarchal sex is the male need to fck. When that need presents itself, sex occurs.”
Jensen makes a courageous analogy of the f word, he lays it out:
Attention to the meaning of the central male slang term for sexual intercourse – “f#ck”- is instructive. To f#ck a woman is to have sex with her… And when hurled as a simple insult (f*ck you) the… Remark is often a prelude to violence or a threat to violence… That we live in a world which people continue to use the same word for sex and violence, and then resist the notion that sex is routinely violent and claim to be outraged when sex becomes overly violent, is testament to the power of patriarchy. One might add that it is a supreme testament to patriarchy’s power that it can convince men and women to pretend that sexual violence satisfies.
Furthermore, contrary to popular imagination, rather than being antipatriarchal, homosexual predatory sex is the ultimate embodiment of the patriarchal ideal.
Jensen declared that ” gay or straight doesn’t much matter… F#cking is taken to be the thing that gay men do; some might even argue that if you aren’t fucking, you aren’t gay.”
In addition, patriarchal pornography is a space of shared masculinity for straight and gay men. The images gay men seek are male, but males positioned in the same way as the male and female bodies of straight pornography. Whether catering to gay or straight males, patriarchal pornography is fundamentally a reenactment of dominator culture in the realm of the sexual. Jensen testifies:
I am afraid of sex as sex is defined by the dominant culture, as practiced all around me, and projected onto magazine pages, billboards, and movie screens. I am afraid of sex because I am afraid of domination, cruelty, violence, and death. I am afraid of sex because sex has hurt me and hurt lots of people I know, and because I have hurt others with sex in the past. I know that there are people out there who have been hurt by sex in ways that are beyond words, who have experienced a depth of pain that I will never fully understand. And I know there are people who are dead because of sex. Yes, I am afraid of sex. How could I not be?
Are those celibacy bells ringing? After taking all the above in, one might even vow to never mount a woman again. From my point of view, as men, we have to heal our psychological and emotional wounds to bridge a path towards fulfilling sex. There are moments when an emotional talk preceded a sexual encounter, and the encounters were most fulfilling for me. What we are looking for in sex is wrapped in the scary emotional expression package.
To think we would be laughing through this one. I feel wounded. I feel embarrassed for not knowing what I know now sooner. Remorseful for my sexual sins. Knowing what you know now, what are you going to do?
I for one am willing to change. As I go to bed licking my wounds, I know that tomorrow, I will be a better man. Pain is part and parcel of growth, and frequently the only way the universe makes us do the right thing.
We will be continuing next week to look into what love has to do with work. The book of interest is The Will to Change by Bell Hooks.