Seriously, it is very hard to use “identify” every time and I will not use imaginary pronouns in this article about the sexes. Males mean all who identify as males and females all who identify as females, irrelevant of their biological sex, gender or orientation. I can do this because asexual people have no influence in the subject, and unless you are asexual, you will participate in the role playing assumed by the mammalian sexuality of homo sapiens.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Males and Females are from Earth
The male attraction problem
I don’t think males are from Mars. Men are.
Obviously, beyond any debate, it is good to teach boys that no means no, and that girls are not sexual objects. It’s good to have little boys separated from the bad thinking that flawed their parents’ mentality on women.
But aren’t we missing anything? Aren’t we forgetting that boys are after all incipient homo sapiens males?
The patriarchy we live on is one huge sexual fantasy. It is how the male side of the species constructed an imaginary world, based on the constant pressure to hide their natural, instinctive sexuality.
What I am pointing is how little we discuss male sexuality, outside romantic and pathological perspectives. Alain de Botton says that everything sexy is revolting if it is with the wrong person. I think he is right, and, even more, this is the main reason we’re not open about our sex life, sex drive, sex wants and desires.
The thing is women have evolved what we called beauty, for one very specific reason. The problem is men have also evolved responses to beauty, for one very specific reason. In both cases the reason is sexual selection.
Yes, you look like a woman. You should not be forbidden your self expression in fashion because of your sex. But, just being fashionable and not caring about dress codes does not erase the effects you produce around you, just because we want to, as an emancipated society. We may want this, as we want many other things, but wanting does not replace DNA.
A male response to female beauty is very complex. I would say there is no part in a male that does not react. Should that count as masculinity?
- Female beauty can be breathtaking. Literally.
- Upon seeing female beauty, there is a sense of sweet, astringent taste that instantly floods a man’s mouth.
- Also, the sense of smell is instantly heightened and somewhat distorted because of the sweet taste perception.
- A general sense of comfort and stress relief is triggered involuntarily by having eye contact, or receiving a smile from a female.
- There basically is no part of the female body which is not sexually attractive to a male
Also there is the other problem:
- Biologic males have direct biologic consequences of barring their attraction to females: lower testosterone.
- Biologic males need to have a constant negative feedback loop to keep their attention away from sexual attraction
Not openly discussing generic male sexuality like domination, taking, control, but instead encouraging constant apathetic behavior, just for the sake of unisex sporting events, has no valid long term goal, in my opinion.
A child identifying as male, while growing up will go through the same clueless search for comprehending his sexuality. This muted search will yield a foam of repression, anger and violence, all combined with long strings of shame, crippling the life of the young male. It has been our past, and now we’re proudly decorating this past with the frosting of young boy sabotage. Maybe there is no war against boys, but there definitely it is a problem that we refuse to acknowledge that suggested doll play and non competitive games for young boys are not exactly scientific nor sound. We should strive to make an open space for exploration, not to simply reverse education to compensate for years of female oppression.
There should be great care taken not let conclusions from the nature vs nurture debate, which is about masculinity and femininity, bleed into sexuality. Sexuality has a biological conditioning set upon its subjects, and this conditioning is, in turn, interpreted socially.
The female selection problem
I don’t think that females are from Venus. Women are.
It is great that girls can choose to become engineers, it is great and good that girls can freely express themselves, without having constant assault fears, and it is absolutely great that girls start out and continue in life with completely equal opportunities as boys.
But aren’t we missing anything? Aren’t we forgetting that girls are after all incipient homo sapiens females?
There is a flawed concept that in humans the mating choice belongs to the female. Duly note that I am talking about raw, simple, sexual mating, not the social intricacies which our intelligence created. I’m referring only to basic instinct. The partner choice of our prototypical cave ancestors.
when Facebook investigated how many of its users did in fact meet their spouses in colleges, the analysis revealed something interesting. The men most likely to have met their wives in college were not those who attended schools that were majority female, but rather those that were majority male — which actually makes sense. Had they attended 60%-female colleges, settling down would have been the furthest thing from these men’s minds. (source)
In my opinion, this “choice”, sorry for the lack of a better word, always belonged to men. Men choose partners, men are actually enjoying choosing so much they can’t stop it, even when they should.
The slowness of the feminist takeoff is another huge sexual fantasy. It is how the female side of the species chose to respond to living in an imaginary world created by males.
Not openly discussing generic female sexuality like submission, offering, abandonment, but instead encouraging constant competitiveness, just for the sake of outpacing male peers, has no valid long term goal, in my opinion.
I am just a man. I couldn’t seriously describe the effects male attraction has on a female, and yet, I strongly believe there is a similar list like the one written above that I think females experience, but different in content.
Girls don’t discuss directly their experience of being attracted to boys, instead they compete. As they become women, the continue on this road of competition. Because of the mistaken idea that they are in charge, and have the last word on which interested male they’ll accept, they enter a competition with the other women. This is one thing that feminism should tackle too, but instead it seems to largely ignore it. They worry so much about Lolita: