Toxic Masculinity and Your Sex Life: How Do They Relate? Sexual Healing

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ColumnWe’re in the midst of major teachable moment, thanks to the sheer awfulness of the recent Isla Vista event and #YesAllWomen, the viral hashtag that followed in its wake. Toxic masculinity is finally getting the analysis it deserves – but what does it mean for your love and sex life?

Let me start by saying that although this column is in part about finding compassion for the experience of men and boys, it’s not in any way excusing harassment and violence (both online and off).

Work must be done, legislatively and otherwise, to completely alter the landscape of male privilege — we must end all affronts to women’s bodies. Yet I want us to take this conversation to the next level – which is to say a deeper level. Let’s unpack what toxic masculinity means for your love and sex life.

Several men I know have recently teased me about how often I refer to patriarchy in this column – “What’s the question? I don’t know, but according to Stefanie, the answer is definitely patriarchy.” I don’t bristle at the criticism because I realize that I’ve mostly spoken about the way patriarchy, that all-pervasive personal/political bedrock philosophy of most of recorded history – affects women. But our boyfriends, our husbands, our fathers, brothers, cousins, sons and co-workers – patriarchy hurts them too. Not to mention the dudes and bros – the most entitled and unconscious first-world men.

An easy way to get inside of the raw angst of so many women in the wake of not just Isla Vista, but a growing global rape culture, rampant misogyny, the PUA and men’s rights movements, and unprecedented online harassment of any woman who dares label herself a feminist, is via this disturbing Margaret Atwood quote:

Men fear being laughed at by women. Women fear being killed by men.

Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Sixty-four percent of women who are murdered are killed by a current or past intimate partner. When men are murdered, it’s usually by strangers. Why are women so afraid of being killed by men, particularly men that they are/have been intimate with? A chilling quote from Elliot Rodger’s manifesto hints at it:

Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.

The operative word here is “gave.” Although this is the rant of a mentally ill sociopath, it’s also the underpinning of many of our assumptions about heterosexual relationships and about male “ownership” of female bodies. Even the healthiest of us are socialized to believe that women’s bodies are not truly their own. In this way, Rodger’s belief system is part of a continuum — he just took it to its most deadly extreme.

In this model of sexuality – let’s call it the “Don’t give the milk away for free” model – women possess a commodity that men need. Sex between consenting adults, whether it’s a casual hookup or sex within the confines of a traditional marriage, is best when it’s not transactional. Unless the transaction is agreed upon at the outset – most often with a sex worker. (Not that that there’s anything wrong with that!)

The deeply ingrained idea that men always want sex more than women want sex is part of the problem. We are objects, not subjects. We are cast in a role, not directing. It instantly objectifies us before anyone has been exposed to a perfume ad of a photoshopped woman’s torso. This myth of women holding their sex for ransom is older than Eve. Scientific data continues to reveal the true breadth of women’s desire, the fact that women get sexually bored faster than men do, and that our libidos and need for novelty are far more intense than we’ve ever acknowledged. Our capacity for pleasure is still a secret to most of us.

Women are not merchandise in the marketplace of sex – we are sexual beings with agency. We have desires. We teach our girls that only boys have needs, and that as girls, it is their duty to fulfill them. We don’t give girls the chance to chart the map of their own desire. And what of the boys?

We pathologize sex and yet teach boys that they’re supposed to be sexual aggressors. We tell them that they will want girls more than girls want them. We tell them that this wanting will rule them, that if they don’t feel it all the time, there is something wrong with them. We tell them that their desire is not just ever-present, but that’s it’s a dangerous threat. (This is the ethos behind the veil in Middle Eastern countries – women are such tempting, delicious treats that men cannot control themselves – so they must literally be hidden from view.)

Having your emotions shut down when you’re a young male child, being taught that crying is “gay” or that compassion makes you a “fag” – that kind of early patterning can cause some serious damage. It’s bad enough when a person’s actual sexual orientation is in the crosshairs of bullying, but even for young boys who will be straight men – being taught not to feel can do long-term damage. Stop for a moment and think about what may have happened to the men in your life when they first understood that sensitivity was for suckers.

Think about your boyfriend, your exes, your father, your brother, your male co-workers – all the cis-gendered, heterosexual men in your life. How many times have you seen one of them cry? With Father’s Day coming up next week, it’s a really opportune moment for us to examine the deeper implications of masculinity not just in our culture, but in one-to-one interactions with the men we know.

If you are a woman who dates and sleeps with men – examining your own assumptions about masculinity can help you transform your relationships. Start by looking at any gross generalizations that you have about the men in your life, and then work backwards – why do you feel that way?

I’ll get us started – mine has often been: “Men are 12.” I throw this one around casually, based on how excited one of my exes still gets about GI Joe at the age of 42, and how my father still likes to play video games. I often say this without necessarily examining the deeper implications of boyhood/manhood, and what it means to “be a man”.

What does it mean to be wounded but to have to cover up that wound so that no one ever sees it? The shame women feel about their bodies, about being not beautiful enough, is perhaps equivalent to the shame men feel about being perceived as weak.

What does it mean to always have to be dominant, aggressive, always the initiator? Not just in bars, where an old-fashion dating dance still seems to rule the roost – the men approach, the women decide. We sometimes choose to break through these boundaries and are called rebels for it – but what if we could move closer to overall equanimity here?

We want our men to understand why we are feminists, and why they should want to be feminists too. But the learning curve is steep, the reverse socialization fraught with psychological landmines. Boys are made to feel that being sexually predatory is not just required, but that they aren’t “real men” if can’t “get” girls.

What if we began to shift this language in our pop culture? We still talk about how our rom-coms are best when the guy “gets the girl” in the end. If girls are taught that they are not objects on the sales rack of sexuality, and boys are taught they are not consumers in this toxic marketplace, we’ll start to wring some toxicity from our relationships, our sex lives, and the culture at large. And it all begins with you.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon:

The Art of Receiving: Do You Deserve Pleasure?

The Madonna-Whore Complex in Depth: Virgins, Whores, and You

How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution

 

 

 

Stefanie Iris Weiss

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of nine books, including her latest title–Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, 2010). She keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more. Stefanie is a regular contributor to British Elle, and has written for Above Magazine, Nerve, The Daily Green, Marie Claire, EcoSalon and Teen Vogue, to name a few. Her HuffPost blog is sometimes controversial. Stefanie is an on-and-off adjunct professor when not busy writing and teaching about sustainable love. A vegetarian and eco-activist since her teen years, Stefanie has made her passion into her work, and she wouldn't want it any other way. She believes that life is always better when there's more pleasure, and sustainable satisfaction is the best kind. Learn more about her various projects at ecosex.net and follow her on Twitter: @ecosexuality.