Lion Kimbro's Wiki: TheProblemOfMaleSexuality

The problem of male sexuality is essentially:

: What do we think about male sexuality?

We fear it.
We think it’s evil.
We think it’s sinful.
We criminalize it.
We medicalize it.
We deny it.
We lie about it, pretending that it’s something different than it is.
We get “poetic” about it, constantly trying to “see it in a different light.”
We say it’s “socially constructed,” “learned,” and can be “unlearned.”
We don’t study it.
We try not to think about it.
We try not to talk about it.
We try to feminize it.
- We try to turn it into “intimacy.”
We try to “harness” it, for positive ends (completely unrelated to sex and sexuality.)
- explanation: “One danger … in a men’s spirituality movement is that it will devolve into an attempt to “tame” men, to mute our passion or simply channel it into pre-approved efforts.” (source) – that is, it’s not that men shouldn’t understand how their sexuality contributes to what they want to do; it’s that typically, “harnessing” refers to putting under control, rather than seeing as a source
We try to get men into therapy.
We absolutely do not honor or appreciate male sexuality, much less fulfill it.

This is true whether we’re left (liberal) or right (conservative.)

The growing consensus is that men are intrinsically broken, harmful, and shameful, and deserving of treatment, reprogramming, and reshaping. These efforts have been underway for decades, if not centuries, if not millenia.

(Post-Scriptum: Alternatively, they say that sexuality (by which they mean male sexuality, typically, unless they also target women’s romance novel tastes) is learned and can be unlearned.)

Very recently, female sexuality has been viewed positively in the mainstream. This absolutely cannot be said about male sexuality. (Written in the early 20-00’s.)

Google for “Men’s Sexual Needs” and “Women’s Sexual Needs.”

You will find the following:

Notice anything different?

RetrainingMen

http://honorday.org/silversonghonor.html

: Sexual feelings are learned and can be unlearned. The construction of sexuality around dominance and submission has been assumed to be “natural” and inevitable because men learn to operate the symbol of their ruling-class status, the penis, in relation to the vagina in ways that ensure women’s subordinate status. Our feelings and practices around sex cannot be immune from this political reality. And I suggest it is the affirmation of this power relation, the assertion of a distinction between “the sexes” by means of dominant/submissive behavior, that gives sex its salience and the tense excitement generally associated with it under male supremacy. – How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women's Movement

To clarify my intent – This is an example of women trying to retrain men, and not only men, but also themselves (“We need to stop reading Romance novels!”)

But this is entirely wrong: Men who sexually fantasize about dominating, and women who sexually fantasize about submitting (which is not total, just common,) cannot “unlearned” these things, which they didn’t even “learn” in the first place. It can be resisted and fought against but the fight cannot be won: It is essential.

For myself, I was raised blind to dominance-submission, argued against / resisted any tendencies I might see in myself (EqualityWashing myself,) didn’t consciously see it until my late 20’s even, (see: PornIsSanity, PornIsEducational?,) and when I saw it: Everything stood clearly explained, from my childhood life to present to future to everything seen in movie theaters, Disney, to the porn stand, to the women’s porn stand (Romance novels.)

Continuing in the article:

: Men’s sexual violence is not the work of psychotic individuals but the product of the normal construction of male sexuality in societies like the United States and Australia now – as a practice that defines their superior status and subordinates women. If we seriously want to end such violence, we must not accept this construction as the model for what “sex” really is.

Okay, here is what I believe she’s saying: Until men’s (and even women’s) sexuality everywhere is completely uprooted, sexual violence (and here I assume she is talking about child molestation, spousal domestic violence, and on,) will continue.

She’s hoping, (gambling, really,) that any connection between sex and violence is purely due to social construction, and that it can be not only unlearned, but fundamentally retrained.

Well, I personally think I was part of one of these little experiments, (see: OccasionalMisandry,) and I can say very clearly, “It doesn’t work, and only ends up completely and thoroughly confounding both men and society about their own basic natures, and screws everything up pretty bad.”

Here’s another:

The Centerfold Syndrome: How Men Can Overcome Objectification and Achieve Intimacy with Women

Again, it’s trying to make women out of men. PaperForGold. And TheProblemOfMaleSexuality.

You’ll see this pattern, over and over and over again:

“Sexuality is learned, it’s not natural.”
- Marna (ReUniting) admits that it’s natural, but that it’s still bad, and so society won’t be whole until men deny what’s natural to themselves, though she hides it behind nasty EqualityWashing.
“What men really want (and need) is intimacy.”
“Porn is bad.”
“Sexual desire in men is bad.”
“Enlightened people don’t do sex.”

Ad nauseum.

If you see the phrase “porn addiction,” or “sex addiction,” or “objectification,” or “patriarchy,” or “socially constructed,” or any of that crap – you can guess that you’re probably in very bad waters.

TheProblemOfMaleSexuality

LionKimbro's Wiki

See Also