The New Male Sexuality Read Online Free

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 fathertakes 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