Not Everyone Wants to Have Sex With Everyone
So there’s this guy. And he’s married. He has two or three kids, and a wife. For fun, let’s make the wife really beautiful. Her breasts are definitely big, and probably somehow perky. The kids are cute, and young, and they grin and whoop when they get a hit in tee-ball (which is every time, because it’s, you know, on a tee). The guy is everyman. At least, every financially stable man with a generously bosomed, beautiful wife and a couple adorable kids. He and his three best buds like to sit around and talk about how much they want to have sex with every woman they see. Well, 70% of the women they see. Sometimes 50%, on a bad day, when they visit their elderly mother in the nursing home. Or during the dead of winter, when there are those troublesome bulky coats. Who invented coats anyway? Definitely wasn’t a man. Anyway, the four guys tell each other in excruciating detail about all the women they want to have sex with, and exactly what kinds of sexual activities they’d like to engage in with each of these women. Sometimes they admit to wanting adolescent girls, too, but then they laugh a little uneasily and say, “Careful, man—Eighteen and up. You know the rules.”
I was going to write a different piece. Something about beauty, I think. But then I read an article in Elle by the guy I mentioned above. Who claims to be everyman. And I got really angry. The article was called They Like it That Way: Why Every Woman is Desirable. And I’m still really angry. But because of all the anger management sessions, I’m able to write without exclamation points, underlining, or all caps. I’m able to TOTALLY CONTROL my tone, and express myself! without!! getting irrationally worked up.
An article like this one pops up on the internet about seven-hundred times a second. And then there are the five billion comments in a similar vein accompanying three million posts. The posts are about absolutely anything. Sometimes antique teapots. Sometimes SeXXXy Beach Babe Bonanza 2005 Wet Thong Contest Results. The comments are always about how men are only about one thing. And, by extension, all men are very different from all women in this regard. Which is what makes it interesting that men are only about that one thing. If everyone in the world was only about that thing, then it wouldn’t stand out so much. It’d be completely boring. Like how everyone loves pizza. We all know that, and no one cares except for Domino’s. But because women are mostly thinking about their nails, paying the rent, and finding a man who will provide emotional security and help with the rent, men distinguish themselves by only thinking about having sex with women.
(source)
I have two major problems with this line of thought.
- Men do not share a giant, collective man-brain that causes them all to experience exactly the same desires and endow them all with the same impulse to lean out the window of the minivan and yell explicit things at the college student exiting the vegan bakeshop
- WOMEN ARE HORNY, TOO
OK, I lost control a little there. I’m sorry. I’m trying. But the battle against the battle of the sexes is intense. In the article, one of the author’s friends assumes that women aren’t even attracted to men in a physical way. They’re mostly looking for someone who looks like a “good provider.” The author is more charitable—he allows that women probably do fantasize. They just do it relatively infrequently.
I have never liked the “women should just be more like men, and then everyone will be equal” approach to problems of gender. It’s unclear exactly what “men” entails, and it seems like everyone’s imitating someone else, and not even the biological men have worked out what their manhood is all about. “More like men” often ends up meaning “pretend you don’t care about anything.” As far as I can tell, men definitely care about things, and I have purposefully pluralized “thing” there, because they show endless amounts of evidence that they have cried, been unable to stop thinking about only one person, and not noticed the teenaged girl in the tight Juicy Couture shirt.
But giving men a monopoly on desire is just as unfair as imagining that all men have the same desires. It’s rare for me to have a conversation with a female friend that doesn’t at some point touch on sex, and I don’t have many friends who haven’t bragged extensively about the hot guys they’ve slept with, flirted with, or dated. And when I say “hot,” I don’t mean “sturdy and with a good job.” There’s plenty of openness among women about how appealing lots and lots and lots of guys are. I was right there, in the throngs of women checking out the throngs of men walking by. And then I met Bear, and I was much more interested in checking him out than anyone else. I’ve definitely done my share of bragging about how hot he is, though. Really hot, by the way.
The man who wrote the article in Elle suggests that his wife, and women in general, would be shocked to discover just how much men are thinking about having sex with strangers. I would be shocked if women were shocked. Not because I believe that all men are actually thinking about having sex with strangers all day long. But because the claim that they are has been made so many times that it can’t possibly surprise anyone who is at all literate, has ever watched television (even on a computer) or has ever socialized with more than one or two other people. I would also be shocked if women didn’t think about having sex with strangers a lot more than the author expects.
Anyway, I’m angry. I want to know why it’s so important to so many people to keep alive this tired dichotomy between men and women. I want to know why we’re still not permitted to all feel lots of things. Lots of the same things, lots of different things. The anonymous Elle article author tries to make it sound so messy and simultaneously uniform—all the scandalous and yet normal desires that all the men have. But the real messiness is that everyone can experience all of that. Or none of it. Or a little at one point, and a lot at another point. And the only thing that’s predictable about gender is that men and women are a lot more human than they are either men or women. Which is the messiest and most mundane thing of all.
* * * *
Un-roast: Today I love the way I look when I look over my shoulder at myself in the mirror.
P.S. Who writes a giant anonymous letter to Elle about his sexual fantasies, anyway??
P.P.S. To be totally fair, who writes a blog post responding to it?? Oh well.
Kate on September 27th 2010 in Uncategorized
Dr. Murray Trillionaire responded on 27 Sep 2010 at 9:36 pm #
I started a no carb diet today and find myself terribly attracted to the chocolate raspberry cake on top even though we are complete strangers.
cyndie responded on 27 Sep 2010 at 10:02 pm #
I completely agree with you here, I get annoyed with the SAME THING.
My History Professor made a comment the other day about how women were brought to early america because men wanted to have sex with them. because all men want is sex, sex, sex. And I was like, waiiiit….first of all, what about the women? I LOVE SEX. Didn’t those women have a say in it? And second of all, I trust that my boyfriend doesn’t want to have sex with every hot chick he sees. He has self-control. Men aren’t animals. I know I don’t have the only decent man around!
Crystal responded on 27 Sep 2010 at 10:12 pm #
Totally agree with everything – keep on telling it like it is! I often consider writing angry letters to magazines but never quite get around to it.
Rachel responded on 27 Sep 2010 at 10:21 pm #
Why keep the dichotomy alive? Because if all men can’t help themselves then we can’t really blame them for hitting on/ harassing / raping women. Then it’s a woman’s responsibility not to inspire lust or give men any reason to think she’s interested. Simple patriarchy.
Wei-Wei responded on 27 Sep 2010 at 11:50 pm #
I actually don’t like fashion or “health” magazines. They say the same thing, over and over and over and over again. Frankly, it just annoys me.
AlisonM responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 6:33 am #
Man, I get so sick of people talking about sex all the time. It’s not the thought that men are constantly thinking about it — with me, or not with me, as the case was recently. It’s the fact that it’s held up as being so fundamental to who we are. It’s presented as being hard-wired, something we have no control over that bulldozes through our lives. Seriously, get a grip.
What I really like about this post though is that you see past the emotivism of sex — the very things that upsets me — and see this article for what it really is. Just another way of enforcing the me man, you woman stereotype.
I know guys like those described. They’re real. But so are the women who are like that too. I also know guys who want a family, and a lifelong partner. I know women who don’t ever want that. I’ve dated guys who wanted more sex than me, and vice versa. Like you say, why, in such a diverse world, where we accept that every relationship is different, do we assume that sex, with its complicated mix of emotional, physical and spiritual interpretations, is a uniform concept.
Though saying that, it kind serves you right for reading Elle 😉
Rob responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 7:26 am #
This was a great piece, thank you for writing this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like “less of a man” around my male friends because I don’t want to stick it in every female I see.
The problem, I think, is that men are allowed so few ways to relate to one another. It’s either sports or sex. Oh yes, occasionally sports cars and power tools, too. If we try to talk about anything more serious, it often makes the other man uncomfortable, almost as if we’re sliding into bed and spooning up behind him. “Feelins’? Hah, I don’t got nonna doze stupid tings! Feelins’ are for women and fags,” think men who have never felt comfortable with their own emotionality — and then they drink another beer and finish getting their drunk on so they can keep somehow “living” that way.
They’ve been raised to feel as though men should never cry, never express anything other than lust and anger (or both at the same time) and should definitely not, under any circumstances, get too close to another man unless it’s to punch him in the face. It’s very similar to the way women judge each other’s looks, and you might think, “Why are you, a fellow woman, helping society impose its unfair standards on me?” Well, men do the exact same thing to each other by policing each other’s adherence to the standards of masculinity. It’s a truly rare friendship (a “bromance” if you will) that even allows men to open up about the kinds of things women consider just slightly more personal than smalltalk.
So, when a man who feels deprived of real connection and understanding is suddenly with his “bros” or his “buds”, they achieve it through coarse sexual banter — basically getting a furtive high off their ability to relate to one another in one of the few topic areas that most men can feel totally, unimpeachably straight while talking about. It’s not like they’re really thinking those kinds of thoughts all the time when they’re alone or with their families — oh no, only part of the time! For the most part, it’s just when they’re around other men, and the conversation escalates into an orgy of desperate “bonding” as if they’ve just stumbled from a desert into a green oasis. And how they love their beer at those times, because it gets them in the mood.
It’s sad, really. Our society does truly beat the hell out of women psychologically, but men go through their own warping and twisting as they grow up. And whom does it serve? Only, I think, those who make money when people who can’t figure out how to be happy resort to wasting their lives chasing the legal high of material acquisition instead.
San D responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 9:14 am #
I just wish that the pharma companies would put the same amount of energy into making something to alleviate “hot flashes” as they have into Viagra. I’m just sayin’
Jewel of Toronto responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 12:32 pm #
Rob, great comment. You said it all.
Kate responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 3:49 pm #
@AlisonM
It was the first time I ever read Elle, if you can believe that. I swear!
Sandra Kumskov responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 5:42 pm #
Yep, the notion that men are hardwired to think about sex x hundred times a minute with any vaguely fertile female has been well entrenched in neuroscientific research, and somehow that makes it true and we just have to accept that’s the way it is ladies.
I wonder often what epigenetics has to say about that though – that our beliefs shape our bodies by changing our gene expression, so do male brains show all this sex-centre activity because that’s the way male brains really are wired, or are they wired that way because culturally it’s “normal” for men to think about sex all the time? Quite demeaning for men, that idea, imo.
Anyway, I found this article the other day and just looked up the link – really tosses some kitties into the pigeon pot 🙂 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1312395/Forget-Mars-Venus-cliches-Theres-difference-male-female-brains.html
Kate responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 7:01 pm #
@Sandra
Thank you for the link! Good stuff.
Stephanie responded on 28 Sep 2010 at 7:25 pm #
One thing that immediately pops into my mind, maybe because I’m reading this blog– men’s magazines are often about sex and the physical body, and women’s magazines are often about how to look good, and what is wrong with one’s (the reader’s) physical bodies.
For me– I can get why some writers would riff off of the idea that women don’t want sex– women don’t _talk_ or _write_ a lot about wanting sex.
I totally agree with your comments about the false dichotomies, and how easy and cheap it is for writers to write cheap, easy articles on them.
I wonder if you personally know women who spend more time thinking about sex, and feeling physically good, and giving and receiving physical pleasure, than they do thinking about their own insecurities, physical or otherwise. Because… Elle traffics in selling to our potential insecurities, and would not survive if they did not manufacture the unattainable. It seems clear to me (and unsurprising) that they would move from one nonsense precis (look how big your pores are!) to another (look how men think!!). Both are problematic and based on serious un-realities (un-realities that harm us, individually and in relationship), and they are related to one another (in delivering falsehoods to a female consumer.)
To me, working to think and feel like a full human, and not buying into what fashion magazines might require me (to believe or buy or otherwise) as a woman– this is what helps me break down the false dichotomies.
Erika @ Health and Happiness in LA responded on 29 Sep 2010 at 1:37 pm #
I read this article, too, and I totally agree with your reaction. I really appreciate Rob’s comment and I think he’s right on.
And do I ever fantasize about hot men I see out in public? You bet. And do I look for a “good provider”? Not a chance.
And I just read the link that Sandra posted and grr if you read all the way to the end… that guy makes me mad. There are many reasons why men are overrepresented in many careers that has nothing to do with brain size.
anon responded on 29 Sep 2010 at 6:54 pm #
What you say is basically true with a caveat: that as we age, men usually want sex more. It’s a hormonal thing. I was quite the sex kitten in my 20s and now I never think about it. My husband wants it every minute even as he suffers from having a hard time being able to. His desire is totally flattering and I love him so much but quite the discrepancy and my lack of hormones make it seem like too much. There are exceptions to this of course but frankly these days, after having raised kids and now approaching menopause, sleep is more important (gasp). I hope you never get here, b/c it’s tough when two people want sex with different frequency. But, it’s a fact of many peoples lives especially as things change with age (we were totally compatible when I was young–so it’s me that’s changed, and really my fault). Still, I think it’s fair to say that the magazine you read was targeting the young, and from that perspective, it’s full of sh*t.
Nicole responded on 30 Sep 2010 at 9:26 am #
Sure these articles are a dime a dozen, but thanks for the excellent rant – it doesn’t happen enough. These articles just come and go and people just assume that’s the way things are — I totally bought into them up to last year, even (I’m 23!).
And I completely agree with how you say ALL people, men and women both, are capable of wanting to sleep with a lot of people/strangers at one point, or none, or some, etc. Even though I’m in a committed relationship with a guy I adore and I rarely fantasize about others, I’m going through a phase where I keep fantasizing about my law professors :p This probably has more to do with the lack of time I’m getting to spend with my boyfriend, and the ridiculous amount of time I spend at school! Anyways, it’s normal and I don’t feel guilty and know that it probably happens to my boyfriend too sometimes. [shrug]
missblonde responded on 03 Oct 2010 at 10:51 pm #
I am so glad someone else is upset with these “chick” magazines!!! I’m not going to lie, in the beginning of my relationship with my boyfriend I was definitely the “horny” one. To the point where he was turning me down on my advances just because he wasn’t used to being so sexual all the time, he’s less experienced then me.
So of course I go off and read some article about “if your guy isn’t wanting sex from you hes getting it else where” story and it freaked me out! So I spoke with him about it and he told me I was more likely to stray then he was. So then I started thinking it was because I wasn’t attractive, which thinking back is absurd because this man all but stalked me to win me.
Now I realize that sometimes he’s thinking about sex 24/7 sometimes I am… and if we’re lucky, we both are 😀 I wish people would just get over the gender stereotypes, it makes relationships too complicated. Now I have learned my lesson, magazines and over-analyzing everything doesn’t help. Which should really be my mantra.
Mary responded on 04 Oct 2010 at 10:25 am #
Lol, I remember my aunt reading a book like this once and feeling really jealous. She was basically a jealous person and I picked that up along the line and have been trying to drop it ever since, I think sexuality and sexual thoughts are fleeting things in the brain of a normal individual.
Ok, so I hope I’m pretty anonymous cause I’m going to be totally honest with you…When I got a bit older, like, not twenty one and approaching my middle years, (I’m only thirty, but I decided I was wise when I reached that milestone, lol) Anyway, I started to go through this whole sexual revolution/peak thing, like some women do. And I am amazed at how much a woman can think about sex! I mean, I would say I am a lot like any man. I’m not a hussy, I don’t sleep with more than one partner, haven’t in ten years and don’t really want to. I just think about it. Some of the time it happens when I see a man is sexually attracted to me, and I am all hott for him, lol. (My husband is not in his sexual prime with me) And I never am like in live with or really that interested in these men. So, but I feel like a total pervert, there’s a woman issue!! And I probably sound like one, too, but since you are so honest and open, I wanted to make your point. You are right. Women and men can be very similar. It’s a personality thing.
That man who wrote that article was obviously really interested in his sexuality. He must get pleasure in nothing as much as his noodle! Which kind of makes him gross. And stupid. So…
Victoria responded on 05 Oct 2010 at 2:23 am #
There was recently a study done that I read about in Time magazine that stated that male and female babies are born with the exact same brains (save for one minimal difference, unfortunately I can’t remember what it was). This new research suggested that all of these assumptions we have made from tired scientific theory and subsequently firmly implanted in our society’s collective conscious are exactly that. So much of what we perceive as inherent biological difference is actually learned difference (neuroplasticity). This has always been my belief and I am sick to death of being told that as a woman, I should only be “X” or only expect “X” from the men in my life. I can imagine that for many of the men I know this must be a similar frustration.
Bob Keteyian responded on 14 Oct 2010 at 10:12 pm #
I’ve given communication workshops for years and discovered that the stereotypes about male/female differences in communication styles don’t hold water. Unfortunately, the media continues to reinforce these ideas, so that’s all people see, and therefore believe
anna and the ring responded on 15 Oct 2010 at 10:57 pm #
1. Please do not read the daily mail. It’s like reading the national enquirer!
2. Unfortunately sex sells, as does the awful tripe which elle and cosmo are full of. The problem is it starts so young. We are programmed to believe the dull stereotypes by cosmogirl or whatever. I can distinctly remember sitting down one day when I was 6 or 7 and thinking how rubbish it was to be a girl. Boys had all the fun, earnt more and were generally better. (Gosh it sounds like I was a morbid child!). Yet peer pressure was/is a powerful force and the herd follows. Sadly.
Indira responded on 01 Dec 2010 at 2:46 pm #
I read this Elle article as well and got so angry! I wondered if I was the only one with such a strong, disappointed reaction in what we (both women and men) find socially acceptable regarding sex. I began to solidify my doubts in men in general because I simply could not accept that all men are just like this. Thank you for writing and extrapolating on this topic that is highly debated in my head quite often, and raises concerns for all of my relationships. Why trust ANY guy if all men are like this? I’d rather die alone…I really appreciate Rob’s comment because it shows that not all men are truly this pathetic. I think you are right on about expelling this “tired dichotomy” from our society entirely. I can only wish that it will disappear but knowing there are writers who reject this backward way of thinking makes me feel a little better. 🙂 Thank you!!!