The New Male Sexuality Read Online Free Page B

weapons boys get. You can cuddle a doll, comfort it, feed it, talk to it, sleep with it. But what can you do with a fire truck that has anything to do with relationships?
    Ask little girls about their best friends, and this is what you get: “Janie is my best friend because we talk and share secrets.” Research shows that girls spend much more time than boys in one-to-one interaction with their friends, in what one researcher called “chumships.” Boys go in a different direction. They learn that the primary thing in life is doing or performing in the world out there, not in the family in here. When little boys are asked about their best friends, their answers usually are about activities: “Robert is my best friend because we play baseball and do lots of other things.” Much more so than girls, boys spend time in large groups, often playing games.
    These separate emphases set the stage for huge problems in adult relationships. Both men and women say they want love and intimacy, but they mean different things by these terms. Women favor what has been called face-to-face intimacy: They want to talk. Men prefer side-by-side intimacy: They want to do.
    In almost all societies, femininity is given by having the right genitals. Masculinity or manhood is not. It is conditional. Having the right genitals is necessary but not sufficient. As Norman Mailer put it: “Nobody was born a man; you earned your manhood provided you were good enough, bold enough.” In his book Manhood in the Making , anthropologist David Gilmore notes a recurring notion “that real manhood is different from simple anatomical maleness, that it is not a natural condition that comes about spontaneously through biological maturation but rather is a precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds.” It is assumed that girls will grow up to be women simply by getting older, but boys need something special to become men. Thus, most societies have had special rituals, usually difficult and painful, sometimes life-threatening,that boys had to go through before they themselves and the rest of the group considered them to be worthy of the name of men. The good thing about these rituals was that once one had navigated his way through them, one’s manhood could never again be questioned.
    Western societies long ago got rid of these rituals. But in the process, something valuable was lost and men were left in a perpetual state of anxiety. Now one’s manhood is always on the line. One deviant act is all it takes for your manhood to be questioned. Maybe you really aren’t good enough or bold enough; maybe you don’t have what it took. This is why men walk the thin line I mentioned earlier.
    Early on the boy gets the idea that he can’t be like the person who means the most to him, his mother. No longer is it acceptable to bask in her warmth and nurturance, except occasionally, and no longer is it possible to think that he, as she did, will someday give birth to babies. She’s a woman, and he can’t be like her or any other woman. In effect, he’s wrenched away from the closest relationship he’s had and may ever have. In most primitive societies, boys were also wrenched away from Mom, but they were entrusted to the care of one or more men who guided their development. In our society, there is no such arrangement.
    There is only Dad, or whoever is playing that role for the boy. It is from him that the boy will learn his most important lessons about masculinity. Unfortunately, that relationship is rarely nurturing or positive in our society. Fathers are often not physically present and when they are, often are not emotionally present. Physical affection, emotional sharing, expression of approval and love—these are the human experiences that very few boys get from their dads. It is a tragedy of the greatest magnitude for men not to have been respected, nurtured, loved, and guided by their fathers.
    Martial arts expert Richard Heckler