EOTM: Sexual Psychology - Part 2 - Puberty to 40

Part 1 Part 3

We now move into act II of this tragedy in 3 acts.

Unfortunately for young men, they are utterly incapable of understanding the reasons why the culture finds it so necessary to prevent them from gratifying the raging hunger they are experiencing. There is a small bit of biological timing that makes it impossible for average teenagers to fully grasp the implications of their actions, so appealing to their reason was abandoned long ago. The physical maturation of the onset of puberty roughly corresponds with a stage of mental maturation called "Formal Operations" which, in lay terms, is the ability to deal with abstract concepts and conceptual reasoning. Parents who have suffered through this stage may remember the time when "what if" became their child's favorite passtime.

Prior to entering this stage, the child's mental processes are dominated by "Concrete Operations". Children in the concrete operations stage are simply incapable of grasping anything outside of their own immediate experience and tend to deny that it even can exist. Parents who have tried to warn their children of the dangers of tobacco and other addictive drugs are quite familiar with the denial of "It won't happen to me".

The common ages at which children are allowed to engage in adult activites reflects a cultural understanding of this phenomenon at the intuitive level, even when specific knowledge of the mechanics is missing. Children generally are granted the priviledge to drive an automobile, which is a very concrete skill, at age 16. However the ability to vote and affect public policy is delayed until age 18, giving the child more time to develop reasoning ability, while the right to purchase and consume the powerful mind and mood altering drug alcohol is delayed until age 21 in most states, reflecting the common wisdom and understanding of the potential harm of each activity if engaged in without proper ability to assess the potential consequences and make enlightened choices based on that understanding.

Given the extended period of dependency of young humans before they can become self-supporting in an urbanized, industrialized, agriculturally-based society, and the generalized conditions of scarcity which prevailed in the desert regions of the middle east which surrounded the so-called "birthplace of civilization", it is generally accepted that human civilizations must prevent their children from starting to produce offspring as soon as they are biologically capable. (see the Socio-cultural context page for a more thorough exposition of this) The extremely powerful biological forces which are driving the sexual urge make this far easier said than done.

Historically, physical separation was often used. Adolescent men and women were simply prevented from being together unsupervised by an adult who understood the probable consequences to the young woman of a pregnancy before she had secured the commitment of a man to be her lifelong protector and provider. Neither young men nor young women were capable of fully understanding the long term costs and burdens of raising a child from infancy to self-sufficiency. Only a relatively mature and financially secure man would be able to take on such a burden, precisely the type of man who had the greatest bargaining power in choosing a wife and thus the most unlikely to assume the financial and emotional burdens of raising another man's child. Rather than attempting to explain the complex reasons underlying this to children incapable of grasping it, the last recourse of the exasperated parent often came into play: "Just because". It is usually far easier to transmit what must be done than why it must be done.

The simplest method of communicating this to a child incapable of understanding abstract concepts was to get them to view the act of sex as destructive to some concrete object. This they could understand. Thus a mythical concept called "virginity" was conceived and children were told that it was very real and very important. Not WHY it was important, just that it was. As is often the case with folk wisdom communicated in this manner, eventually the controls became effective enough and entrenched enough in tradition that the "why" no longer mattered. Another example of this is the jewish tradition of adhering to dietary laws which prevented food poisoning in a desert climate lacking refrigeration, and often adequate cooking facilities, but which serve no useful purpose today.

By the time that effective means of fertility control other than abstinence had been developed, most people had forgotten why abstinence had been important and simply continued to believe that it was. In fact tradition had done its job so well, that fertility control was itself viewed as evil because it allowed breaking the prohibition against non-marital sex. Sex itself had become the evil, not just sex which produced unsupported children who either died or became a burden and drain on society.

Unfortunately for men and women alike, both of them were not able to make the transition instantly on their wedding night from the belief that sex itself was bad to the belief that it was something positive to be shared between them. Some people have the prohibition so deeply ingrained in them that they are never able to make the transition. This is particularly true of women since they, bearing disproportionately the consequences of unrestrained fertility and being the more effective locus of social control of the sexual urge, are most often the target of the internalized controls and prohibitions.

A young man who honored the need of his object of affection to retain her mythical "virtue" until the wedding night might be rewarded for his courtesy and chivalry by being locked into a marriage to a woman incapable of responding with passion and warmth, one perhaps whose mother advised her to "lie back and think of England", thus depriving him of the emotional contact and intimacy which was one of his primary reasons for commiting in the first place. Every young man has heard tales of loveless sexless marriages, and every one of them has sworn "not me". All the more reason to test the waters before signing on as a lifer.

However, this was decidedly NOT in the best interests of the female anxious to snare a mate. In fact the less giving the female was capable of being, the less likely it was that a free sample would inspire the young man to return. The relatively rare woman whose sexuality remains intact has no difficulty attracting male companionship. Men invariably respond to the underlying warmth and emotional health of such a woman by valuing her highly as a whole person and returning frequently to enjoy the pleasure of her company which may or may not include having sex with her, but in either case is not dependant on it. On the other hand, a woman who is so emotionally damaged as to be incapable of giving and relating to a man must rely on his powerful sexual urges to lure him within the reach of her clutches. The mother's dictum of "why would he buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?" struck fear deep into the hearts of many a young woman and created a firm resolve to not be left in the lurch. They, too, swore "not me".

However, the drive to survive is not so easily contained or destroyed. Pubescent women are just as susceptible to the biological imperative to help the species survive by reproducing as young males are. Physical separation required enforcement and constant vigilance by an adult with some vested interest in keeping the girl-child as marriageable as possible. This became progressively more difficult as the physical mobility of the population increased. The fictitious concept of virginity required constant social reinforcement to keep the young peoples' rapidly developing mental abilities from allowing them to see through it. Another means of control, which was more internalized and required less maintenance, was required. Enter ROMANCE.

Romance was the perfect means for co-opting the sexual drive of the female into a socially acceptable form. First, it thoroughly sanitized all that nasty sex out of the picture and replaced it with the universally positively regarded emotion of love. Second, it bundled the social requirements for (barely) acceptable sex into a single unified whole which followed the form - if a then b (then c, then d, etc.). It was ok to sleep with a man if romance was in the picture because you were "in love", and if you were "in love" then he would WANT to marry you and provide for you and protect you and give you expensive gifts and support you in the manner in which you wanted to become accustomed and so on ad nauseum. Even better, you didn't have to sleep with him because romantic love was SO pure, that he only wanted what you wanted and if you didn't want to sleep with him then he didn't want you to.

Romance was a potent and heady drug because it tied directly into the teenage tendency toward grandiosity and desire for personal power. It wasn't that nasty dirty shameful sex he was after, it was her pure and beautiful soul. And it was so powerful that he would risk anything, suffer any hardship, climb any mountain, slay any dragon, wait any length of time necessary to be able to prostrate himself at her feet and bask in the glow of their mutual love for each other. Retch, puke, vomit.

Unfortunately pubescent males are just as grandiose as pubescent females, so this tied directly into the hero mythology that hooks so many young men. What could be better to prove himself and secure the affection and love he craves for all time with the same act of bravery, devotion, and self-sacrifice. And what better way to sanitize his own impulses which have been so deeply shamed than to perform some great heroic act, thus atoning for all his evilness and proving himself worthy of her love, her soul, and her body which she would gleefully share with him in deep and fulfilling passion. Retch, puke, vomit.

There were only a few small flies in the ointment.

• There is a reason these are called "fairy" tales, they don't exist. This is not reality, it is fantasy. Real men do not act this way, only adolescents.
  
• Few men these days have the financial, power, and status resources to be able to take time off from making a living to go slay dragons.
  
• Besides real dragons are in pretty short supply these days, so the dragons must be created from circumstance. The modern substitute is risk-taking. Teenage males demonstrate their "bravery" in order to impress their would-be princesses by taking useless and needless risks. Frequently their reward is not the eternal and undying love they were seeking, but a nice casket and graveside service.
  
• Everything hinges on her attractive power. She has only a passive role in the process, no active role. She is a helpless victim of the circumstances which create the opportunity for him to be a hero and his own willingness to do so. If she is an enterprising young woman, she will create the circumstances by becoming a "damsel in distress" or her modern counterpart "the woman in jeopardy".
  
• The drug rush that young women get from such power is addictive. Men soon learn that there is an endless supply of dragons for them to slay. Women have so fallen "in love" with the victim role that they refuse to pass up any opportunity for a repeat performance, even when men have tired of "proving" themselves over and over and have moved on to better ways to spend their time, after having realized that the promise of love was a lie constucted to manipulate them into confirming the woman's sexual power over them. Women find themselves playing to an audience made up exclusively of other women, which is fine with most of them because men find the whole thing rather boring and do not fully appreciate the creativity and skill required to continually deliver such a finely honed victim performance.
  
• Feminism has beaten men to death for the role they play in this grand melodrama, so men have become much less willing to play their designated part even the first time, knowing that instead of receiving the adulation they expect for their grand gesture that they will be bashed, sneered at, and humiliated.

Thus we deliver our pubescent children to the threshold of adulthood with diametrically opposed agendas, in a cultural context which gives them no realistic and practical guidance for how to proceed, in a society which simultaneously glorifies and vilifies sex, and expect the results to be something other than the carnage which has resulted. Sometimes I have to wonder if there is intelligent life on Earth.

The stage is now set for the exposition of the tragedy. It would probably be far better for all concerned if males and females were still separated during this stage of their lives because it will take years for them to unlearn all the nonsense of the patterns of interaction established during this entirely unnatural period of their lives. Many unfortunates will fail to do so, and will find themselves alone at middle age and beyond wondering what the hell went wrong.

Developmentally, it is inevitable that adolescent males and females will regard each other as objects since they are just beginning the stage of neurological development which will allow them to be able to view anything any other way. Just as we do not expect infants to walk, talk, or control their bladders and bowels until they reach the stage of physical and neurological maturity which is the prerequisite for doing so, we cannot expect adolescents to exhibit fully developed adult reasoning and social skills until they have reached the stage of physical and neurological maturity which allows them to do so.

What is not inevitable is that they become arrested in this stage and never develop the ability to see beyond their own ego and self-importance. Children normally progress very smoothly through the normal developmental stages based on physical and neurological maturation. (In the view of all except their parents whose need to live vicariously through their children is symptomatic of their own arrested development and who tend to view the child's developmental rate as an achievement of the parents, so attempt to force the child's development to conform to some arbitrary timetable which fits their own ego needs but not the needs of the child.) However there are certain critical periods for the development of each skill. If a skill is not mastered during the critical period, it is difficult or impossible for the child to develop it later. For example, a child who does not develop language skills by puberty will likely never develop them.

There are certain social skills, like language, which require social interaction with those who have already developed them. The ability to have mature adult relationships and assume mature adult responsibilities is a social skill which normally develops beginning with the onset of puberty and proceeds rapidly for the next 5 to 8 years. The commonality of the ages of 18 and 21 as transitional ages in many cultures is no accident, nor is it arbitrary. The process slows down after that, but basically will continue throughout life with another peak or transition somewhere around the age of 40. Now referred to as "mid-life", this is the age that has marked the end of the normal human life span for most of the history of our species. Again it is neither accidental nor arbitrary that the "founding fathers" specified age 35 as the minimum for election to the presidency. Empirical observation over thousands of years of human history demonstrated that it was necessary to attain that age before a sense of social responsibility and the largeness of things had developed to the point where someone could demonstrate wise leadership on that scale. Again this is reflected in the folk wisdom of referring to someone of that age as "mature".

By isolating our adolescents in a separate "youth culture" of extended education and indolence, we effectively prevent them from developing these mature social skills by depriving them of contact with those who possess them. Like language, without this social interaction children simply cannot develop these skills. They become arrested at the stage where everything is an object - people, relationships, love - and their life becomes dedicated to the pursuit and acquisition of objects - clothes, expensive athletic shoes, cars, houses, boats, jewelry, etc. This of course fits in very nicely with our consumer/merchantile culture. Their only social interaction comes from other adolescents who have not mastered adult social skills and from their parents who are themselves arrested and generally lack those skills. In fact, many parents tend to regard their children as objects, providing the most potent lesson of all and shaping the children into thinking of themselves as objects.

Then, one day, the children's hour is over and these arrested adolescents are dumped out into the so called "real" world with a script for "success" and a head full of unrealistic expectations. The next few years tend to be very painful as they try to master the environment of the work world, a social environment largely based on their success in that world, and an intimate relationship with another equally self-centered arrested adolescent. Almost no one succeeds in all three.

Men have been trained to regard women as beauty and sex objects and their self-esteem is all tied up in how much beauty they have been able to purchase with their success and financial power. Women have been trained to regard men as success and source-of-new-objects objects and their self-esteem is all tied up in how much success they have been able to purchase with their beauty and sexual power. A wonderful example of this was shown in the movie which came out several years ago starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, entitled "The Jerk". Having met when they were both poor and could appreciate each other as human beings, they became rich by accident. Then, in the true tradition of Greek tragedy, they became poor again as a result of the same event that made them rich. In one scene Bernadette Peters's character was sitting in the middle of the floor crying over the loss of all their wealth and delivered this incredibly insightful line: "It's not the money I'll miss, it's all the stuff."

In this one brief scene, the disease of the 20th century is revealed. She is incapable of seeing that the stuff is a direct result of the money, which in turn is a direct result of the work expended to acquire the money. She only sees the stuff. He sees that her happiness depends on the stuff and has nothing to do with him except to the extent that he can provide her with stuff. People have ceased to be human beings to each other and are pursued as trophies, objects which commemorate their accomplishments: his accomplishments in the area of being successful in providing her with stuff, her accomplishments in being beautiful enough to attract a man successful enough to provide her with stuff.

The old saying that life begins at 40 is again folk wisdom which reconizes that the process of maturation proceeds as the human ages regardless of whether they think or do anything about it. The mythology of "stuff" has failed to provide the promised happiness and people begin to undertake the process of doing the work that their parents screwed up: teaching themselves to be a mature adult able to have mature adult relationships.

Now is where the cruelty of nature reverses itself. The man looks over at the arrested adolescent woman who he has been carrying around for years, working long hours at a high stress job so he can make the money to provide her with stuff, listening to her bitch him out and whine that he isn't providing her with the emotional stuff she needs or even enough of the material stuff, tolerating vicious emotional abuse because she sees THE BITCH as the only model of female strength and has to keep up appearances of not knuckling under to a man to please her feminist sisters, living without the emotional support which was the reason that he commited to the bitch in the first place, putting up with her endless manipulations to control and remodel him into exactly the object she wants him to be, realizes that hold her beauty power once had on him is gone, and says "enough".

If he has truly matured he looks for a woman who herself has grown up, given up the cinderella fairy tale, claimed her own power instead of indulging her addiction to her beauty power, decided not to rest on her sense of entitlement and expect to be given to the rest of her life and instead has actually realized that she has to give instead of just receive and consume, and wants to be a partner. Sadly not all men do this and settle on trading their worn out 40 for two 20s. Even more sadly, if he has grown up he will likely have to spend a long time alone and looking for a woman who has, because women in the 90s tend to demand the right to not have to.

The poisoned legacy of feminism is that it considers even arrested adolescence to be too much to ask of most women and demands the right to claim a state of infancy as the natural state for women. Just as the female infant is picked up and comforted more quickly than the male infant who must cry longer and more aggressively, ie. perform, for attention, females now feel entitled to the best of everything without having to DO anything to get it except look cute. And when they outgrow their infantile cuteness and are expected to purchase the success and money they want with either hard work like men do, or with sex in the time honored arrested-adolescent tradition, they cry "foul, oppression, backlash, glass ceiling, RAPE!!!!!!!"

I seriously doubt that there is much which can be done for most women who are now aged 18 to 35. The feminist nightmare of the more power women get, the louder they scream about not having any power is too seductive for these arrested adolescents. Every once in a while I see a hopeful sign [of a few women] who are willing to claim their own power and sexuality, but for every one of those I see 10 or 20 who are so addicted to the power of victimhood, so enthralled by the tyranny of the weak, so in love with THE BITCH, or so successful in making money off their sexuality (none dare call it prostitution) that they are absolutely unwilling to grow up.

The real "Beauty Myth" is that women have to be beautiful in order to find a mate. Open your eyes and look around you. You will see women of all sizes and shapes, beautiful and ugly as a mud fence, wearing wedding rings. Women who are not and never have been beautiful still have been able to find a man willing to make a commitment to them. These are the women who did grow up and realized that they had to offer a man some substance instead of relying on tight buns and a painted-on Kabuki mask or dishonest manipulation to trap a man into making a commitment.

Age 40+

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Back to “Gender War, Sexuality, and Love”

EOTM: Sexual Psychology - Part 1 - Working Class Heroes - Puberty

Part 2 Part 3

Anyone who truly wishes to understand the behavior of men toward women in a romatic/sexual context these days would do well to read the following 4 books:

• Why Men Are the Way They Are, by Warren Farrell
  
• The Myth of Male Power, by Warren Farrell
  
• Lip Service, by Kate Fillion
  
• The Masculine Mystique, by Andrew Kimbrell

In addition, both for grins as well as an understanding of context and reaction:

• The Rules, by Ellen Fein & Sherrie Schneider (See if you can get it from the Library. DO NOT put money into these bimbos' pockets.) then read -
  
• The Code, . Do not read only one of these books, either read both or neither.

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Once again we must start with the basics if we are to understand very complex behaviors. No male suddenly wakes one day a man. Human beings do not wake up into a new world every day. Their actions today are based on the sum total of life experience to date. As the old saying summarizes this wisdom, "The child is father to the man."

Sexual behavior is only one small aspect of the total human being, yet we often totally lose sight of that fact when we focus on an activity which consumes, at most, 1/2% of an adult's time and characterize and make judgements about the rest of his life based on that ridiculously small fraction. I'm sure that if the readers think about it they will realize that the reason they came to this page was not to understand the specific mechanics and motivations of male sexual behavior, but more the entire context of mating, marriage, and commitment and how male sexuality influences these. It becomes a chicken and egg cycle to determine which is actually cause and which is effect.

The differential conditioning of males and females into the social roles of "man" and "woman" begins at birth. Lest anyone make the mistake of treating the newborn as simply a fragile and precious new life, they are dressed differently. Male babies are, from that moment, touched less, smiled at less, receive less positive attention, and must cry longer or more intensely before being picked up and comforted. This differential treatment of infant males versus infant females is just as characteristic of female adults as it is of adult males.

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"As soon as you're born, they make you feel small,by giving you NO time, instead of it all." -- John Lennon, "Working Class Hero"

Part 1 - Working Class Heroes - prologue

The very first thing that male babies learn is that they must work harder and more persistently than females in order to get their basic needs met. This is in fact a kindness to the male babies because these conditions will not change throughout their lifetime and they might as well start getting used to it. Males will consistently be judged more critcally and punished more harshly and, conversely, rewarded less frequently and lavishly than females for the same behaviors. Males learn, before any other skill, to recognize the conditions they must meet in order to survive physically and emotionally, and that the attributes required to meet those conditions usually include aggression, persistence, and performance.

As the young male grows, there are several conditions that get added. The first is conformity to expectations. Few adults are so emotionally ill or vicious as to punish a newborn, although some are, but by age two punishment has become the preferred means of behavioural control for most parents. This statement will probably provoke waves of protest based on a misunderstanding of the term "punishment". It is just as much a punishment to deprive a child of a basic need as it is to beat them. The old method of sending a child to bed without supper is actually a more effective means of behavioural control than a spanking because the internal emotional response to an attack is anger and retaliation or fighting back, while telling a child that he or she is so awful that they don't even deserve to be fed when hungry introduces a deep sense of shame. Shame is such an effective means of controlling behavior that many parents get addicted to its power and become very abusive of the power it gives them over the child.

Shame is entirely different from guilt, although most people confuse the two and use them synonomously. Guilt is a relatively benign emotion experienced by healthy human beings as a response to doing something which is against their own value system. It is essentially synonomous with remorse. People feel guilty when they make mistakes. Normal responses to guilt are the making of amends and the change of future behavior to avoid repeating the mistake. The ability to avoid guilt is entirely under the control of the individual through choices of behavior. We feel guilty about what we DO, not about what we ARE.

Shame on the other hand is a deep sense of wrongness; of being "broken" in a way that is unfixable. There is nothing we can DO to reduce the sense of shame except to remodel ourselves to remove the defect. The incredible power of shame to motivate people to do this, as well as how deeply associated with shame normal sexuality is, can be seen in the not uncommon willingness to have one's own genitals cut off in order to conform to some social "ideal". (1) It is difficult to imagine a culture where it would be considered shameful to have a left hand, so at some point in their life everyone would have their left hands chopped off, yet the practice of cutting off some or all of the genitals of one gender or the other is more common in human culture than its absence. Usually it is masked under some polite term such as "circumcision" which allows it to be double-thought into believing that it is a requirement of some faceless entity called "society" instead of the grisly practice that it is.

The next condition that young males are trained that they must fulfill in order to survive both physically and emotionally is competition. Conformity is not enough. It is not sufficient to simply "measure up" against a set of standards and meet the minimum requirements, that will simply allow the young male to avoid the more extreme forms of punishment. In order to secure the rewards of having basic physical and emotional needs met, the young man must learn to successfully compete against other males, and now, at the dawn of the 3rd millenium, against females.

Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the portion of the cultural indoctrination system of children called "education". Prior to the establishment of publicly supported school systems about 200 years ago, it was the role of a multi-generational family and a community to help children learn those skills required for survival. Grading was strictly pass/fail. Pass meant you were still alive, fail meant you were dead. It was far more important to know how to plant a crop or butcher a hog than is was to diagram a sentence or solve for X. Literacy was a luxury reserved for the upper classes.

As industrialization forced men from the land which had provided sustenance for them and their families for several hundred thousand years, the needs of a captive work force required to operate and maintain complex machinery changed significantly. Public school systems developed as a mechanism for developing skills which older members of the family could not teach because they generally did not possess. It was necessary to provide both a base set of skills, minimum requirements if you will, commonly called the "3Rs" (Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmatic), as well as a means of measuring the differential abilities of individuals to master the increasingly complex conceptual skills required by the developing technology. Thus individuals were ranked in relation to each other and many, if not most, teachers graded "on the curve". I have even seen teachers throw out exams on which the majority of the class scored above 90% and come back with a more difficult test to spread out the curve a bit. The forced ranking system which requires that for every individual who excels one must fail guarantees that the only person able to be truly unthreatened by the success of another is one so securely at the top that they consider themselves unreachable. Thus success breeds both arrogance and condescention.

"They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school.
They hate you if you're clever, and they despise a fool,
'til you're so fuckin' crazy you can't follow their rules."
-- John Lennon, "Working Class Hero"

The insanity of having to send a child to school, confine them to a fixed location, and provide inducements in the form of the shame of "failure" or rewarding those who "excel" with the best grades to motivate them to learn, should be immediately apparent to anyone who has spent any time with a child who has not yet experienced school. From age 3 up a child's favorite word is "why". Even younger children are so enthusiastic about exploring and learning about their world that a house must be "child-proofed" to prevent those explorations from leading them into dangerous situations. However a child's natural curiosity does not always, in fact seldom, lead them to develop exactly those skills required by an urbanized industrialized society. It is a remarkable bit of PR that the process by which a child's natural tendency to want to learn is suppressed while replacing it with conformity/competition training is called "education" from the Latin e ducare "to lead (or draw) out".

In addition, humans, particularly human males, are not by nature sedentary animals. Major constraints are required to force these children to submit to the regimentation to teach them to take life sitting down and rely exclusively on outside authority to tell them whether they are ok or not. However this destruction of their natural human tendencies is essential to training the male child to stay put in his cubicle or on the factory floor. One of the most disturbing trends of the past 30 years has been the movement away from the acceptance of this restlessless as a normal trait and movement within the largely matriarchal education system, or as I term it "the industrial skills factory", to medicate the child into submission. Any child who does not submit meekly to confinement in the ranks and files of the classroom is likely to be labeled "hyperactive" and have his body chemistry messed with in order to make him more compliant. Male children are 4 to 9 times more likely than females have such a diagnosis applied to them. This is very similar to the ratio of women who received psychoactive medication for anxiety compared to men 30 years ago.

The disparity between the real and claimed intent of the process called education is nowhere better illustrated than in that sub-system of the process euphemistically called "physical" education. There is a fascinating bit of irony in the stereotype of the "dumb jock". Have anyone tell you that he was a physical education major and I'll bet that your estimate of his IQ will immediately drop 50 points. We somehow expect that someone who excels physically cannot be more than mediocre mentally, while the stereotype of the nerdy intellectual shows that we believe the converse is also true: the excellent student cannot excel physically. The common shorthand for phys-ed, "gym class", shows the truth of the situation. In a country where obsesity is rampant, heart disease a leading cause of death, and millions are spent on "health" clubs, physical education in our public schools is little more than an audition system for the organized sports program. Those students most in need of learning about maintaining their physical health are the ones least likely to benefit from participation and, in fact, are so often humilitated by their poor performance that they are the ones most likely to seek to be excused from participation. The vast majority of "physical education" classes offered have nothing to do with exercise physiology or nutrition, nor do they include a physical assessment of the needs of the student, but rather are one more opportunity to be ranked against others. They are little besides competition training and opportunities for failure.

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The bomb of puberty

We hear the term "biological clock" often these days. Women are commonly understood to have "biological clocks" that govern their ability to bear children and reproduce. As time runs out, people understand the sense of urgency that a woman feels to achieve the lifestyle arrangements necessary to support child bearing and rearing. Despite the many changes regarding marriage and child rearing in our culture in the past 40 years, the 2 parent family is still considered the ideal so, as the sand runs out of a woman's biological hourglass, she is expected to have an increasing interest in getting married to someone who can help her provide the type of environment in which to raise children.

What is less commonly understood is that men have biological clocks as well, which appear to run in the reverse direction from women's. The male's biological clock is like one of those alarm clocks which starts out softly and gets progressively louder. Young men have a clock that begins to go off about the time they sprout pubic hair and within a year or two is is resounding within them like a combination of Big Ben, Westminster Abby, and Notre Dame all combined. When puberty hits, young men are overwhelmed by a sense of urgency to get about the business of reproduction. Whether this is dismissed as "raging hormones" or given the respect it deserves, it will be one of the ruling influences of their lives for the next 30 years or so but it will peak within the next 5 years.

Someone once remarked that Mother Nature had a cruel sense of humor when she made men reach their sexual peak at 17 - 19 while women didn't reach theirs until 40, at which time men are "running on fumes". Aside from the fact that this probably isn't true, it ignores the complex biological and cultural influences which govern sexual expression and reproduction.

By the time a young male hits puberty he is about 2/3 crazy from having to continually perform and compete to gain approval and acceptance, but generally has mastered the art of conformity to expectations in order to gain the love he craves. He has been thoroughly indoctrinated in his expected role of protector and provider, and knows without question that the only permissable source of intimacy and emotional closeness for him is a from a woman with whom he is involved in a sexual relationship for which he will have to pay by protecting and providing. He has adjusted to some degree to the idea that all past actions and accomplishments expire at midnight, so the relevant question is not "what have you done?" but "what have you done for me today?" He has learned that his "sexuality" (whatever that is? All he knows is that is it somehow related to this incredibly useful tool for peeing.) is something terribly shameful and needs to be hidden, but that isn't all that difficult. Overall it sucks, but it's the only game in town and besides he was never given a choice of whether he wanted to play or not, only whether he wanted to play it well or poorly.

Then mother nature shucks out the BIG joker. BONG, BONG, BONG!!!!!

All of a sudden he is sitting there in excruciating pain as his formerly useful but otherwise unexceptional penis has suddenly begun to swell up without warning and this new addition of hair that has sprouted around it has wrapped itself tightly around the end like so much dental floss and is threatening to slice into it like a cheese slicer. Fortunately it is not all pain, because this tool formerly valued mostly for its utility has now become the source of the most delicious sensations.

The most bewildering thing for this young male to contend with is the fact that those other creatures which are as numerous as his own kind, ie. girls, have suddenly changed from being vaguely interesting, but mostly rather silly and annoying, to being the most fascinating thing he can think of. And, as a matter of fact, seem to be just about the only thing he can think of. At least 10 times per hour on a slow day.

And he is painfully aware of the cruelty of mother nature's sense of humor because he cannot escape the fact that, while he cannot seem to keep his mind off them and his incredible desire to be close to them for reasons he still does not understand, they seem to be far more interested in the type of car some older male drives, or the performance of some semi-human anthropoid in those pointless competions called sports, than they are in whether he continues to breathe or not. The only solaces he has is that he has been trained in the art of performance for approval, so some of the means to gain their treasured attention are accessible to him, and the fact that every male he knows is in the same boat even though they mostly lie about it.

As Warren Farrell puts it, she is a genetic celebrity while he is a genetic groupie. From this moment forward he will have to purchase every bit of the affection, approval, and love that he so desperately needs with his performance, his financial and status success, and his conformity to her expectations and ability to meet her material needs. It's a dirty job, but his only alternative is emotionally starving to death.

It will be many years before he realizes that he is simply responding to a biological impulse that drives every living thing, and he will have to endure much nonsense and mind-fucking about what is wrong with its expression and with him for wanting to express it. He will spend great amounts of money and time seeking its gratification, make a fool of himself many times over, love it, hate it, wish it would go away, be terrified when it is gone for even a moment, and generally experience both the best and worst moments of his life from it.

Part 2 – Puberty to 40

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EOTM: The Nitty Gritty of Male Sexuality

Male sexuality is really very easy to understand. Men feel a tie to the natural world and natural forces whether they realize it or not. The force that drives young men to find young women attractive and to try to mate with them is the same force that causes flowers to bloom, and crops to grow, and is responsible for every bit of life on earth: the drive to survive, the quality and essence of life itself. No amount of veneer of civilization can change the nature of life. No matter how many insane notions humans dream up about the way life"should" be, life will remain as it really is until it all is destroyed.

Almost all multi-celled life on earth is the result of sexual reproduction. For a longer discussion of this see the pages titled Biology1, and Biology 101. Our very ability to have things to eat is directly due to the natural force of life driving a member of one subset of a species, called the "male" to fertilize a member of another subset of the species, termed the "female", in order to produce offspring. This drive is manifested in human males to the same extent that it manifests in male animals and the male parts of plants. Its primary characteristic is urgency. In the natural world the male is the reproductive servant of the female. He stands ready at all times to deliver the male element of sperm as soon as the egg is fertile. When she lets him know she is ready, he must be ready. Males everywhere stand ready to rise to the task.

What is much more difficult to understand is the behavior of men in the contexts which are not in themselves sexual but which our culture has attached to sexuality in order to make its expression "acceptable". Civilization today consists of nothing but fictions about life. Men and women have been cut off from their ties to the natural world so they no longer understand the forces that move them and move within them. They have attempted to substitute fictions and illusions, and the results are the same as if they tried to eat fictional and illusionary bread.

Nowhere is this more apparent and painfully destructive than in the area of our lives related to sexuality. Female sexuality has already, for the most part, been destroyed. The natural partnership and division of labor which evolved as a result of very real biological differences between men and women has been twisted by revisionist fanatics into a fiction about history-long and world-wide conspiracy by men to "oppress" and harm women. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a result of this incredibly insane fiction, relationships between men and women, already severely strained by the cultural fictions which dominate sexuality, are breaking down almost completely. Cut off from the history and reality which created the practices, cultures have made fertility control practices into traditions and belief systems which are not only obsolete in today's world, but which have begun to destroy the very social structures they were initially developed to preserve.

Men and women tend to very naturally fall into partnerships. Within the partnership there is also a natural division of labor which evolves based on differing abilities and preferences. In pre-industrial, non-urban societies these divisions tend to be more informal, far more flexible, and based more on individual choices than on strictly enforced social roles. The inability of an urbanized and industrialized society to tolerate normal individual variations created rigid definitions of roles and enforcement of conformity to them. What before had been done by choice, people were now being forced into doing because someone like them had once done it and the expectation got transferred to them that they would (must) do the same.

The natural tendency of humans to resist being forced into anything was countered by the fact that each role had certain rewards that came only with that role and no other. Men, due to the fact that they were unhampered by periodic interruptions of "productivity" due to childbirth, were the obvious choice of the gender to force out of the home and in the factories. Women, due to the fact that their so-called "careers" or "productive output" would be stalled by childbirth, were the natural choice to provide maintenance of the homestead, staying at home to care for the children that the men were now isolated from. Each was compensated for isolation from the other's worlds by culturally sanctioned power and recognized authority in their own. Men had power in the world of work, women had power in the domestic world and the world of relationships. Over time the knowledge that they had ever been comfortable outside their cultural niche got lost. What had once been a comfortable and convenient arrangement for providing the environment necessary to raise children to maturity became a prison cell of roles and expectations based entirely on the plumbing one displayed at birth. None of this changed the basic urge to merge, it just made it infinitely more complicated, increased the severity of the consequences, and in general drove everyone crazy.

Women were backed into a corner where their sexuality was their only economic asset. This separated women from their sexuality as completely as men were separated from a sense of intrinsic value to their work by being forced to work in intolerable conditions to earn the wages to fulfill their culturally indoctrinated role as providers. Still, there was a lot of pride in fulfilling that role for men. Being able to provide for a family was the only accomplishment that most men of the industrial age are able to point to as the result of an entire life's work. For most men of the past 2 centuries, the price of an outlet for their own sexuality has been a life of indentured servitude in the factories and offices of Consumer Society.

It should be regarded as a measure of the value that men have placed on their sexuality, as well as its incredible power and persistence, that they have been willing to do so. Men are required by the structure of society to purchase an outlet for their sexuality by turning over economic assets. Women have been required by the structure of society to deny themselves an outlet for their sexuality, except in a culturally sanctioned exchange of economic assets. Thus society has turned all women into prostitutes, and all men into johns.

The extended period of childhood dependency enforced by industrial and post-industrial society, makes it nearly certain that both genders will be denied a culturally sanctioned outlet for their natural drive to mate for a period of several years after its onset. During this period, the mechanisms of the exchange of money for sex become so ingrained in the mentality of both men and women, that they continue to follow them even when they are no longer necessary. Women routinely withhold sex and intimacy as a means of gaining power and favors. Men bitterly resent this and retaliate by seeking to get sex without having to pay for it.

Both end up feeling used, taken advantage of, violated, and "oppressed" by the other. No trust or intimacy gets built. The foundation of mutual respect, trust, and regard which used to develop in most marriages never gets built today. Having had their own needs denied and fucked with by the other gender for so long, men and women begin by seeing each other as being diametrically opposed to their interests, an obstacle to be overcome. Men, suckered so many times into turning over hard earned money in response to signals of sexual receptiveness, become angry when their responses have been triggered only to be exploited. Women, so estranged from their sexuality that 50% of them are unable to respond orgasmically even when all the cultural conditions have been met, are often not even aware that is what they are doing, so the man's behavior is totally confusing and frightening.

This whole process of breaking down the pair bond which is the heart and foundation of the family structure has greatly accelerated in the past 30 years. The delicate balance of power in the worlds of work and domestic relations was completely destroyed when women began to demand the same degree of power in the workplace that they had always enjoyed in the home, and which they assumed, because they had never seen it, that men had as much power there as women did in the home. When they encountered the fact that it wasn't there to be had, they didn't go "oops, never mind" like Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live, they blamed men. It wasn't because men did not have the power they were being demanded of to share, it was because they were "backlashing". The last reason that men had to voluntarily enter into the institution of marriage and commit their lives to supporting a wife and children was gone. The only thing left was the sex drive, and men began to pursue a strategy of gratifying it as inexpensively as possible.

This is not to say that men consciously set out to exploit women, they in fact do not. Men have a deep and sincere desire to love and be loved by women. They have made themselves totally crazy trying to live up to their part of the bargain, but always find nothing under the shell they've picked once the money has been laid down. Men distrust and fear women and the way that women have abused their sexual power over men. Men are learning how to deny their own sexuality in the same way that women do, because it is the only means they have to protect themselves from being exploited by it. More and more this is the only aspect of men that women see. This and the unrestrained and angry expression of it which takes the form of forced sex or rape.

You see, to paraphrase the NRA bumper stickers: when sex is outlawed, only outlaws will have sex. Women simply do not see any other aspect of male sexuality, because it makes men too vulnerable to women's manipulation.

Psychology of Sex
Romance
Love
Biology Basics
The Socio-Cultural Context

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EOTM: Healing Men - Going to the Valley*

( * In honor of Ayn Rand. )

1. Shoot your television.

Television is the most destructive force in the world today. By turning it on, you invite into your home and into your mind a conspiracy by some of the most brilliant minds in the world to undermine your sense of self-esteem and your ability to be happy. Advertising relies on 3 principles: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. This is referred to as the FUD factor. Advertising intentionally undermines these and ties the product being sold to solving the dilemmas of these universal human emotions. Television also contains the "Fundamental Lie of Media" which is that what you are seeing has any relationship to reality whatsoever, and particularly that it is a true and accurate representation of reality.

2. Rid yourself of guilt and shame.

Guilt is "I did something wrong." Shame is "I AM something wrong." The concept of "Original Sin" is a means of social control, and a very effective one. Children get infected with the virus of shame before they learn to walk, talk, or control their bowels. Many spend the rest of their lives trying to atone for something over which they had no absolutely no control. Of course, this means they waste all the time and energy which they might have used to change things over which they did have some control so the cycle feeds itself.

3. Reclaim your own moral authority.

Learn to rely on your own sense of ethics and internalized value system to judge the rightness or wrongness of anything you do. Before the 10 commandments was the law: Love is the law, love under will. Harm none, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Act in love, love of life, choose every action for the best of those affected; and you will live free from guilt and shame.

4. De-mythologize women and men.

Both have a light side and a dark side, just like duct tape. Women are NOT the "fairer" sex. Men are NOT universally violent, exploitive of abusive.

5. Decide what you really want.

Its your life. Everybody gets only one. Practice responsible stewardship of this great and mystical gift.

6. Educate yourself on the issues.

Don’t be suckered by lies: particularly feminist lies.

7. Don’t be afraid/unwilling to fight.

This is how men harm themselves most. Remember the bullies in grade school who would beat up kids and take their lunch money. Kids who challenged them sometimes got a bloody lip or a black eye, but then usually ended up keeping their lunch money. If you are dealing with someone who consistently refuses to fight fair, then -

8. Don’t be afraid to walk.

The power to leave is seriously underutilized. Remember the old country and western song "You can take this job and shove it." People who abuse their power are often abetted by simple voluntary submission to that power. Remember that all relationships except marriage and child-support are purely voluntary.

9. Hold women accountable.

Name it, demand they claim it, tame it. If you catch someone cheating, call her on it. If she refuses to own it, then walk.

10. Do not be fooled by the tyranny of the weak.

It is the most subtle form of power. The ultimate shell game of power. There are no sins of omission, only commission. Any phrase in the form of "I need you to … " Is a foul lie and designed to trigger the reflexive protect/provide male role. Some one may need human contact, or reassurance. Saying that they need you to call them every day is a control game masked by weakness. Leave these people to grow up or disintegrate on their own.

11. Do not fall for mix and match logic.

"So?", "So What?", and "What does that have to do with it?" will get you somewhere. Argument, defensiveness, or justification will not.

12. Demand your right to want what you want and participate in the definition of the relationship.

The female does NOT "make the rules." Any fool can make a rule, and only fools will mind it.

13. Practice civil disobedience in the face of the social demand that you bear all the responsibility and risk for initiation.

14. Look honestly at the power games you play and put them behind you.

15. Learn the law of the harvest.

16. Understand the entire secret of male power: Just do it.

Shut up and shovel the fuckin’ gravel.

17. Never trash a woman for free expression of her sexuality. Remove the word "slut" from your vocabulary.

18. Never tolerate being trashed for your sexuality.

You are alive because of sex, the person attempting to trash you is alive because of sex. People who trash sex are trashing life and in a very real way are part of the death worshipping cult which dominates the national consciousness today.

19. Learn to recognize man-hating. It is poisonous and all pervasive.

20. Reclaim your own self esteem by ridding yourself of attachment to its substitutes: ego and status.

These are socially based and very fragile and can be taken away from you in an instant. A deep understanding in the true inherent value of the self cannot.

21. Study the use of makeup and jewelry.

Do not consider a relationship with a woman who habitually wears either and particularly avoid women who habitually wear both.. Don’t spend much time with a woman who is afraid of her own face. Understand that lying about her face is just the tip of the iceberg: she will also lie about a great many other things.

22. Study the matriarchy of family and the educational system.

Most men as well as women grow up with men largely absent from their lives until they reach High School, by which time basic personality and social attitudes are completely entrenched. With the father emotionally or physically absent, mothers often engage in an unconscious form of "emotional incest" with their sons, asking them to fill the role in the mother’s life that the father failed to do. Thus young males start life with an emotional debt to pay off which was incurred by someone else. (Think about the biblical phrase "Visiting the sins of the fathers on the children unto the 3rd and 4th generation.) This is the emotional equivalent of the $27,000 of national debt which is the share that each child born today must pay off, with accumulated interest in his/her lifetime.

23. Do not allow yourself to be tricked into acting simply to prove something.

This is one of the most subtle and effective forms of manipulation. A denial of a wrong is not the same as an affirmation, even if if does move you in the same direction. Many people try to manipulate others by "accusing" them of the opposite way they want them to behave, so that the denial of the accusation will involve some action to prove that it is false. The prototype of the way men use this against men is "Whassmatta, are you chicken (afraid, a wimp, ...)?". The prototype of the way women use this against men is "Do you think I look fat?" or "I'm afraid you're going to leave me." A killer 1-2 combination is "Are you AFRAID to make a commitment?" Attempts to prove these accusations false are always more destructive than saying "Yes, and this is why...".

24. Spend time in the company of men.

Men’s groups, men’s work, men friends. And among women who do not hate maleness.

EOTM: The Rules for Guys

Dear (zenpriest):

I know you do despise "The Rules" and other such dating traps, but when I got this tongue in cheek Rules for Guys, I just knew I had to send a copy along to you

---------------------- The Rules for Guys --------------------

1. Be a "creature unlike any other."

However, in particular think in terms of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (Universal 1954), a dark monster that conquers her. Beauty and the Beast. Chicks love that shit.

2. Don't talk much to a girl (but do take her dancing.)

She only wants to talk about relationships and girl stuff. So take her dancing. They go nuts for this. Learn enough to get by and look cool, though you won't need it much after you have her hooked. In the meantime you can flirt with the other girls on the dance floor.

3. Pay her way on the date, but expect to get back in kind.

Buy her a nice meal, so that she knows what she owes you in exchange for the meal. In addition, if you buy her a fancy schmancy $50 dinner at some ritzy place, she won't be able to turn down your request for a $300 "loan" until you can "get to the cash machine." Good investment.

4. Don't call her after sex.

Make her wait a few days. Girls do this stare at the phone thing, makes them all anticipatory. Don't give them what they want. Call her in a couple of days or if you get horny again. Also, after sex, just roll over and go to sleep, even if she hasn't had an orgasm yet. You did a lot of work and you're tired, and you have important work to do tomorrow.

5. Always end phone calls first.

Especially if she's read the Girl's Rules that tell her to do this, you won't have to worry about long phone calls. I mean girls can yak so long on the phone.

6. Don't give her any warning about a date.

Make sure she stays free all the time in case you call. And more to the point, keep yourself free in case something comes up elsewhere, if you know what I mean. If you call and she's not available, act real hurt, make it seem like you will end the relationship if she does this a lot.

7. Tell her what she wants to hear (i.e., Lie.)

You like long walks on the beach. You love kids. You like to cook. You're looking to settle down in a country home with that one special girl. You love horses, paris, chick movies, sushi and Meryl Streep. You support her goals. Tell her you're rich, famous, whatever. She'll figure out the more ridiculous ones eventually but if you play this right you'll get laid first and have her captured. Don't be scared to eventually talk to her about "the relationship" -- girls go for this. Just be sure not to believe it yourself.

8. Stop dating her if she doesn't put out by the second date.

Pretend like you're not super eager to get laid but drop the hint with gentle physical contact. It is nice to date easy chicks and all and get laid on the first date, but some of the hottest ones like to wait a date. However, if she doesn't at least give you a blowjob by date #2, #3 at the latest, there are better investments out there. On date #3, remind her of the "third date rule."

9. Tell her you love her.

This is the big corallary of rule #7. Don't do it right away but definitely do it if she's showing reluctance on that blowjob. Practice saying it like you mean it. As the old saying goes, "Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

10. No more than casual sex on the first, or 100th date.

Definitely don't get too involved, as she might wanna be monogamous or something. Make sure that you never let yourself get tied down.

11. Tell her what to do.

Hey, in the end they all want to be dominated. So make all the decisions and see how she goes for it. If so, you can probably get this to continue in the bedroom. No girl is perfect, but most of them like to please a man so you can change the one(s) you have to fit your needs.

12. Be the bad boy.

Girls love the "bad boy." They hope they can "reform" him, or they're a case of point #11 above. Either way, you can be as bad as you like. Treat her like she doesn't exist. Be mysterious. Dangerous. Wear cuffs and a leather motorcycle jacket, even if you drive a Hyundai. (Park the Hyundai somewhere else and walk to where you meet her, though.) Remember, nice guys don't get laid.

13. Don't let her know anything she can pin on you.

Girls like to get close to their guy, and "communicate." But later, if you break up, she might try and get back at you so for crissake don't let her know anything she could use or spread to others. Invent deep intimate stuff you can tell her in bed, she'll go for it. If you can't think up your own, buy one of those books with Fabio (the guy from the "I can't believe it's not butter" commercials) on the cover and be one of those guys. (God, this guy can't tell butter from margarine and chicks swoon over him? Something strange going on here.)

14. Don't tell her you're married!

For some reason they get really upset. When you take off your ring, get some tanning lotion or put your hand under a sunlamp to make sure it's not visible where you took it off. Or tell your wife you just don't want to wear a ring; invent some sort of bizarre hand disease or rice picker accident. Anyway even the ones who haven't read the Girl's Rules don't want to date married guys so don't let her (or your wife) know.

15. Be a pain to live with.

Well, this isn't a thing to so much try to do as a reminder to be yourself. If you shack up, don't alter your own life just to make it easier for her. One exception, which is admittedly a royal pain, but worth it -- put the toilet seat down after you take a wizz. She sees that and she'll think she's found god's gift to girls, and she'll give you better sex than a $300 hooker. Compare -- 5 seconds of your time each day to put down the seat vs. $300 blowjob. No brainer!

16. Don't get caught staring at her tits or other girls'.

For some reason girls don't like it when we stare at their tits when we talk to them. And they don't like us staring at other girls' either. As if we have a choice! Anyway, they're watching for this so don't get caught. Check their eyes, then do your looking.

17. Don't let her leave your things in your apartment.

Or give her a key, until you're sure you can count on her or very regular nookie. Otherwise they might try to insinuate themselves into your life before you are sure of this.

18. Even if you're engaged or married, you still can play around.

I mean, do they own you or something? This rule is the most fun.

19. Do The Rules even when your friends or parents think you're nuts!

Truth is, you're getting laid, and they are just jealous.

20. Don't give her the ring, but make her think you will -- or give her a fake ring.

Drop hints and pretend like some day you want to be married to her, but don't actually do it. You can even get engaged if you want to lock in some regular pussy. There's no law that says you actually have to follow through with the ceremony. Plus, it takes an expert to tell cubic zirconia from a diamond, and if she takes her ring to an expert she clearly doesn't trust you and is a lost cause anyway. You can get one of these rings for about $100 and trust me you'll get a fuck worth far more than that out of it.

21. Double check the birth control.

There's a trade off here. On one hand you don't want to use condoms, so get her on the pill ASAP. On the other hand if she runs the birth control she might blindside you with something annoying like a kid just to hook you. You decide. If she gets pregnant, take the new "morning-after" pill for guys. (It alters your blood type.)

22. Don't discuss 'The Rules for Guys' with girls.

Like I need to explain this one to you? Do they explain their rules to us? Thought not.

22a. Don't discuss 'The Rules for Guys' with your therapist.

Because if you have a therapist you've really missed the point of "The Rules for Guys."

23. Figure out her romantic dream.

Almost all girls have one. In 90% of cases it's the knight in shining armour, the handsome prince or the tall, dark and handsome mysterious stranger. Harlequin Romances isn't exactly growing broke selling girls books about how a guy comes into the girl's life and does something as simple as fixing her car to make her life right and sweeps her off her feet. You would be amazed at the "mileage" you can get just by taking her car down to the shop. Though if you can find a good mechanic, let me know, OK? Anyway, subtly find out her own personal romantic dream, and play-act it. On the cheap, of course -- you only have to play-act. While she may dream of a billionaire who whisks her away to his ranch in his jet, she'll settle for a $60 rental limo and a $40 1-hour rental horseback ride.

24. Sometimes ya gotta break The Rules.

Hey, Burger King said it best. And it's a great place for a cheap date (use $4 from the $300 she "lent" you.) But in this case I mean you gotta break the Girl's Rules.

25. Do "The Rules" girls. Yes, you can!

If you suspect that some really attractive girl is following "The Rules" for girls, take heart. I mean if she's a dog, lose her. But if she's got a great set or you have some other reason to particularly want her, you now know her exact game and can use it to get her. The book tells these girls to follow its rules religiously, even when they don't make sense. You will have to wait 6 dates, but the authors do tell girls over 30 it's OK to have sex, so they will. Forget young "Rules" girls unless you are really keen on virgin-plucking. You only have to date 'em once a week -- if you date them Friday then you are free as a bird on Saturday; they'll end calls and dates; they won't call you when you have other girls over -- a lot of advantages, and as long as you see past all the manipulative "hard-to-get" tricks you won't be fooled, just laid.

First, you have to check if she's a "The Rules" girl or just a stuck-up bitch. Sometimes it can be hard to differentiate them. Test this by first telling her how much you admire a girl who sticks to her principles, and then call her Thursday telling her you just got front-row Orchestra seats to the Boston Pops (a classical musical group) concert on Friday. If she says yes she's the stuck-up bitch. Say, "Did I say Boston Pops? I meant Iggy Pop!" and dump her.

If she says a reluctant no, she's a "The Rules" girl. The book tells them never to accept a weekend date after Wednesday. Rush out to the bookstore to get a copy of "The Rules." You'll find it in the dating /relationships section. Since you've never gone near it before ask at the cashier's desk. When you get there you'll know why you've never been to this section before from the titles of the books. "Venus and Mars Together Forever." "Men who hate women and the women who love them too much." Like Dave Barry says I am not making this up. You're the only guy in weeks to go to this section other than to laugh at the titles, so if you're lucky some chick might even hit on you. But if not, go buy the book, and then read it. It's short.

Now you'll know her exact game. Problem is, as noted, it will be 6 weeks until you get laid. Be sure you have something else on the side during those six weeks.

But look at the advantages.

Other than those noted above, you'll learn that she won't bring up crap like "marriage" or "kids" or "the relationship." She expects you to bring these things up. Soon the book will tell her to dump you. Track this, and make sure to start dating another "Rules" girl before the breakup -- 6 weeks before the breakup if you can time it right.

26. Do 'The Rules For Guys' and you'll get laid.

Don't forget this. You may be tempted to break them, to be "nice" or "sensitive" or even listen to her. But everybody knows that nice guys don't get laid. You want to be nice or in the sack? I thought so.

EOTM: The Law of Thelema*

"Love is the Law, love under will."

Except as motivated by love and the need to express love, all acts are unlawful. Most unlawful of all, are those acts which seek to extort love by pretense: by denying one's own will or self to deceitfully appear to be food for another's appetites. Next come those acts which are based on will, but not on love. If both of these two types of unlawful acts were purged from humanity, we would live in utopia.

Harm none, and beyond that take the responsibility to choose your own actions based on wisdom regarding their consequences, is the only rule a non-fool really needs.

( * Thelema is the Greek word for will and is related to the Greek for love, Agape. The Greeks did not recognize romance as a form of love, they had an entirely different word for it, Eros. )

EOTM: "The Rules" are for Fools!!!

"Any fool can make a rule, and EVERY fool will mind it."

One of the saddest phenomena of recent years is the appearance of a book called "The Rules", only surpassed in its stupidity by its popularity and the enthusiasm with which its message was received and adopted by women. Nothing more than a cookbook for women obsessed with marriage containing recipes for lying and manipulation: this book promises true love and eternal happiness as the reward for women turning themselves into a commodity and manipulating the market to create an artificial scarcity of that commodity.

Several immediate knock-offs capitalizing on its popularity immediately appeared. One was a satire called "The Code", which outlined an equally reprehensible system of manipulation for men. "The Code" was mostly tongue-in-cheek, like the email sent to me by a female journalist as a part of a correspondence we had on the issues of dating.

However, I find no humor whatsoever in this type of thing. I have not yet heard back from her about whether she actually found it funny or was sending it to me as an example of some of the issues which I have written about. Underneath any humor that men might find in it, is a deep and bitter resentment over the type of manipulation which has been used against them and to which each rule is a suggested counter-measure. Underlying any humor that women might find in it, are demeaning and obnoxious stereotypes of men, plus likely some of the same bitter resentment.

The best response to "The Rules" was by couples' therapist and author Barbara DeAngelis, Ph.D. Entitled "The REAL Rules"; this book starts out with what used to be called the "Golden Rule", really the only "rule" anyone ever needs: "Treat everyone the way you want them to treat you." All the rest of her "rules" are just guidelines for implementing the first rule.

In a world filled with horrors, it is easy to become numb to atrocity. This is the first step toward death: the death inside and the social and spiritual death which so often preceed actual physical death. Those who follow "rules" such as those originated by the author of the referenced email, and by the authors of the book "The Rules", are the walking dead. So are the people who have written those rules: zombies which live in a state which is neither completely dead nor completely alive.

When one takes instructions on how to conduct one's life from a dead person, one embraces death over life. How could there possibly be a greater fool than that?

The Law of Thelema

EOTM: Escape from the Dating Trap

Men and women today are trapped in a cycle of manipulation and counter manipulation which few of them understand. Throughout the 20th century, all reality and substance have been slowly leached out of everyone's lives and have been replaced by addiction to, and narcotization by, an unfufilling cycle of acquistion, achievement, and disappointment when that which they acquire and achieve fails to fill the emptiness inside. Then a new cycle begins to acquire more and achieve more in hopes that it will be enough, followed by a cycle of even more disappointment when it fails to be. In the process, both men and women have been stripped of their humanity and turned into objects to be acquired, then disposed of.

The devastating effects of mass media have created homogenized caricatures of men and women which do not reflect the reality of any woman or man, yet which both sexes have been subtly conditioned to expect of the other. Trapped in sets of roles and expectations of appearance, mislead about what the other sex wants and expects, completely lacking role models except the fictional characters fed to them under the disguise of "entertainment", people are leading fictional lives and choosing fictional mates. When the day comes that one or both can no longer maintain the fiction, or one either discovers or reveals the degree to which their shared fiction departs from reality, the result is emotional carnage and hate. We see more of this around us every day than we ever see of real love.

The societal pressures and demands for pairing and mating, combined with the biological pressures to do the same, are slamming men and women up against each other and have trapped both into living scripts which are fallacies and fantasies and have no relationship to real lives. These scripts have extensively defined, restrictive, and unrealistic roles and are enforced by an inflexible set of social "rules". The dating script traps people into trying to be different than they really are and expecting the other to be different than s/he really is. When the deception is finally revealed, everyone feels betrayed.

In order to escape from the dating trap, which I call the "first stop on the train to stupidville"; one must avoid being railroaded by social expectations, or deluded by wishful thinking which cannot separate fantasy from reality, long enough to understand who s/he really is and what s/he really wants and whether the other person is likely to have what you want and want what you have.

The moment two people enter into a social relationship called "dating", they become trapped into social roles which were historically adaptive, but have not changed in adaptation to a changing environment. At that point it is too late to be talking about expectations, because they have already been built. The very use of the term "date" or "dating" carries with it all the baggage of expectations that this is a "special" kind of friendship or relationship. "Specialness" is the most addictive drug known; once addicted, like any other addict, the "Specialness" addict will sacrifice all self, all integrity, and all other relationships to keep getting a "Specialness" fix.

As the "old" social roles and structures have been eroded by the changing realities of the 20th century, most notably the protector/provider roles for men and the materially-dependant/nurturer roles for women, both sexes have struggled to forge new roles out of the wreckage of the old. Neither have suceeded very well nor are faring very well. The rage and hatred which is the inevitable result of frustration and betrayal are mounting. We have reached the point of "Counting bodies in the gender war", as a woman journalist recently put it.

The white flag of surrender is not possible. The chilling suggestions that cloning makes it now possible to create a race with only one gender are among the most frightening statements ever made. Like the nuclear weapons stalemate which threated to end the human race for much of this century, the nucleus of the cell stalemate will bring the race to the brink of total destruction.

Men and women alike must step out of the trap which keeps throwing them up against each other in the growing cycle of frustration, rage, and hate. We need a demilitarized zone where we can sit down at the peace table and negotiate a peaceful resolution to our differences. We need delgates to a peace process which neither denies the war, nor believes that it is inevitable. Once conscripts, we need to become diplomats. Once foot soldiers, we need to become negotiaters. Once fools following rules which do not serve us, we need to become enlightened and realize that rule-ish is foolish: so we must create new roles which do not follow the old rules.

The cycle of blame must stop.

Most web sites I see are mostly about throwing the grenades of blame into the emotional life of the other gender. Unfortunately, most men's issues sites are devoted to throwing back the grenades that feminism has thrown at them, and a tragic number of the women's sites are devoted to throwing more grenades.

For anyone ready to become a draft resister, a conscientious objector, in the new "Emotional and Gender Vietnam" - listed below are some Radical Alternative Raradigms, based on Reason, Accountability, and Purpose.

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Reason Accountability Purpose

”The Rules” are for Fools!!!

Healing for Men

EOTM: The Destruction of Little Girls' Sexuality

In her book, "Warrior Marks", Alice Walker explores the practice common throughout much of Africa, the Middle-East, and some of Asia, of chopping off the genitals of little girls. Collectively known as "FGM", or "Female Genital Mutilation", these practices range from cutting off the tip of the clitoris to complete removal of the clitoris and inner labia and scraping the flesh off of the outer labia to create an open wound. In this extreme procedure, termed "Pharonic", the sides of the wound are bound together and a small stick inserted to leave an opening to pass urine and menstrual blood once the remains of the outer labia have healed together with scar tissue.

Much confusion about this procedure is generated by the fact that it is often referred to as "female circumcision" which leads people to regard it as similar to male circumcision. After centuries of this ignorant and brutal practice, it is not difficult to understand how entire peoples could lose any knowledge of what an adult woman's intact genitals look like.

Before inhabitants of so-called "civilized" western culture indulge themselves in too much smug self-congratulation, they need to ponder whether in fact western culture does not do much the same thing in a hidden, covert, and dishonest fashion. These so-called "civilized" western mothers hide their intent to destroy their daughters sexuality by leaving their genitals attached ( in most cases ) but by severing the mental and emotional connection which the little girls have to them. I call this westernized version of FGM by the term "Female Genital Mindfuck."

I know a man who has been married over 25 years and has never once SEEN his wife's genitals, nor even seen her naked. She dresses and undresses in the closet. They do have 3 children, but so do the women whose genitals have been chopped off have children. The parts of female anatomy which are functional for reproduction are fortunately beyond the reach of the circumcizer's knife, and somewhat beyond the reach of the knife of fear and shame which western women use to detach their daughters from their own genitals rather than detaching the genitals from the girl.

This is how one 19 y/o woman described the experience in a correspondence with me:

"My mother told me that most men were after one thing...and she just look down between my legs (which didn't seem very interesting to me...I was probably 10).

"I read Songs of Solomon where he talks about how splendid he saw the womans body, and how incredible he viewed sex.

"I never told you about my grandmother. The word Sex is spoken as a nod of the head. She wouldn't have a clue what "going down" or "giving head" implies and she dang sure wouldn't let you talk about sex. She probably would have gotten on to me for reading the Songs of Solomon had she ever caught me and gave me some big lecture about that.

"Talk about mixed messages! How do you know to believe! So you know what I did?? I sheltered myself. I stayed away from those stupid Seventeen magazines and I never joined "girl talks."

"I saw older men out there who weren't looking for a cheap thrill, and wanted more than that "weird" thing between my legs."

This young woman was so dissociated from her own sexuality that she referred to her genitals as "that 'wierd' thing between my legs." I wonder if it is possible to grasp the enormity of that level of dissociation by using an anology of her referring to her eyes as "those 'weird' things below my eyebrows" or to her ears as "those 'weird' things hanging on the side of my head."

Another woman I know, one who was doing her level best to harass me into a "romantic" relationship in which I had no interest whatsoever, responded to my challenge of her assertion that she was a "sensuous woman" by actually looking at her own genitals FOR THE FIRST TIME AT AGE 42. This woman had deep and serious disturbances when it came to her notions of relationships, and particularly of her own sexuality. I saw her once get so egged on by some "you go, girl" types that she made an absolutely obnoxious fool out of herself by not letting go by any comment about an object which was longer than it was wide without making some comment about inserting it in herself. Since this happened to be a May Day celebration, at one point she suggested mounting the 16 ft long X 6 inch around Maypole. In a very misguided attempt to let her "sexual nature" out, several times she stood up and proclaimed to the crowd "Big ones, line up. Little ones, bunch up."

One might be tempted to leap to all kinds of conclusions from "See what happens when female sexuality is unrestrained by social convention" to the "See, men really dislike and are threatened by a woman freely expressing her sexuality" of the "you go, girl" grrls. However, what this woman was expressing was most decidedly NOT any form of intact healthy female sexuality, but rather a twisted and perverse caricature of the sexuality that SHE THOUGHT OTHERS WANTED HER TO EXPRESS. And herein lies the key: by first depriving a young female of access to her sexuality, then by destroying it in many cases, there is a void left into which ridiculous notions of "romantic love" or any other socially constucted fictions can be placed.

As the target of all this contrived display, I was disgusted both by her performance and by her stupidity, as were two of her friends who happened to be in attendance. They kept asking themselves "Why doesn't HE get her out of there? Can't he see what those people are doing to her by egging her on?" ( Why doesn't he RESCUE her? )

There are a whole lot of answers to this question, I'll try to be brief. First, I long ago stopped resuing women from the consequences of their own stupidity. Rescuing is the primary means whereby this culture destroys little girls' competence. In this woman's particular case, she had been so belligerent, obnoxious, and agressive in her attempts to bulldoze her way into my life and dictate to me the script of a ridiculous romantic fantasy which she wanted me to fulfill for her, that I really didn't care what happened to her. In my opinion, the more painful the consquences the better because this woman had been stubbornly refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever for her own actions for more than two years at this point. I wanted it to be as painful as possible for her so that the pain would penetrate the wall of denial which so far had been impenetrable. In addition, there were more than a dozen WOMEN around her who were allowing this to continue or actively participating in egging this woman on. Fascinating that they were either sitting on their passive asses watching this woman completely humiliate herself, or actively participating in encouraging her to do so. But I, as a MAN, got assigned the "responsibility" of rescuing her amidst a bunch of women who took no responsibility themselves. I don't think so.

However, I was not completely without compassion since I knew about the way this woman had been raised and the fact that her mother had seen to it that she had been dissociated from her sexuality at a very young age. While stories such as the woman whose parents subjected her to a clitorectomy as a barely preadolescent girl, as well as the persistence of the practice of male circumcision, show that Genital Mutilation is alive and well in the United States, it is this more subtle form of destruction of a young female's sexuality that haunts these women as well as the men who try to love them and connect with them sexually, their marriages, and their relationships with their own children and the culture as a whole.

Over the years, I have repeatedly tried to sew those severed connections back together, only to encounter time and again the same type of resistance to my efforts that the man mentioned above, whose wife undresses in the closet, experienced. The cruel paradox is that, with the advent of the mythological "sexual freedom for women", there are a lot of women who have been giving out the message that they would LIKE TO BE reconnected with those feelings. However, any man who is foolish enough to take them at their word will get slammed for it.

Women still retreat and hide behind the fictions of "true love" as a means of deceiving both themselves and men about the true nature of their wants and needs. Despite the economic gains of women over the past 3 decades and, contrary to all the bullshit about women only making 75 cents per dollar a man makes, achieving essential wage parity when factors of experience and time in the work force are compared; women still expect to be "pampered" and showered with affection and tokens of male devotion. They still want and expect to get their sexual needs met, but they refuse to take responsibility for their own sexual needs and usually manage to make the man responsible for them at the same time they hold the man in contempt for having his own needs.

I am constantly astonished at the attitude of women who are supposedly "seeking relationships" with a man. I make something of a hobby of reading personals ads and surfing "romance" web sites just to keep my blood pressure up and remind myself why I never have married and never intend to. No wonder women get their condescending view of men confirmed if they only meet the type of men who will tolerate the following kind of arrogant condescencion.

"Okay, so I went to the "tips on writing ads". That helped!

"I am seeking to find someone out there who is honest to a fault, not too hard to look at, rather tall, great personality, loves to pamper women, opps, erase that, I meant, loves to pamper a woman, knows how to give and take, will understand that most women will, one way or the other, get in that last word, understands that sex is not everything (I realize that will exclude 90% of you guys), understands that sex is an important part of things, (what can I say, I'm a woman, you're not suppose to understand what that meant).

"I know, I sound like an awful person, but I'm really not."

I would say that this woman needs to retake her "tips on writing ads" course. If it had not been one of those "pay for your grins" sites, I would have sent back the following response:

"Yup, sure enough, I'm one of that 90% of guys you wanted to 'weed out'. I would suggest that you re-take your 'tips on writing ads' course. Surely they didn't suggest that slamming 90% of all men was a sure-fire tactic for catching the attention of that small fraction of the remaining 10% who can meet all your other criteria. Now, let's see what you have demanded so far: 1) honesty, nothing wrong with that; 2) attractive, tall, and great personality, you and every other woman in this country. Since you've already ruled out 90% of all men, and the men who have such a killer combination of desirable attributes as you require will likely have their pick of women, you are fishing in a pool which is small indeed. 3) "Loves" to pamper women, no make that "A" woman, obviously you. Since men in the age range you are prospecting often have kids, ex-wives, and often colleges to support, the ones with enough money left over to "pamper" you are becoming small indeed. Now, lessee, 10% of 10% of 10% works out to 1/10th of 1%. Now, let's look at what you are offering such a rare man. Passionate sex? Nope, you've already made it quite clear that YOUR assessment of the significance of that activity is going to be the prevailing standard of the day. Understanding and emotional support? Nope, again. You are going to demand the "last word" in ANY argument, and you're gonna retreat behind the old feminine mystique and just say I'm not supposed to understand what you mean. Well, I gotta tell you that even if I were such a man as fit all your demands, this is sizing up to be a pretty bad bargain. You yourself even admit as much when you end your ad with 'I know, I sound like an awful person, but I'm really not.' Whether you are or not doesn't matter. Your ad makes you sound like someone who will do until the real thing comes along. Maybe you should think about retaking the 'tips on writing ads' course and re-writing your ad?"

Obviously, this woman's mother told her that "men are only interested in one thing" and she has held onto this notion until her late 40s. And just as obviously, she is only interested in men as crippled in their self-esteem as she is so they will tolerate her smug arrogance and absurd demands while practically spelling out the fact that she has no intention of giving the man anything he might want in return.

A few years ago, I would have felt sorry for this woman. Now, all I can manage to do is to feel sorry for the poor bastard that she gets her hooks into.

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Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: The Yoni

EOTM: Female Sexuality

It should go without saying that a man's experience of encountering female sexuality is nothing like a woman's experience of female sexuality as an aspect of herself. Men have been being steadily flogged for years over some ill-advised comments about female sexuality which Sigmund Freud made decades ago. The most unfortunate aspect of Freud's theories has been that, as a "founding" theorist in a fledgling science, his theories have been far more influential to the science than they merit.

A far different, and in my male experience a far more accurate, picture is given in Rufus Camphausen's work, ”The Yoni: sacred symbol of female power” His wife, Christina Camphausen, produces some of the most subtle and beautful images of the gateway to life for all human beings. In many ways, the awe, wonder, and mystery which a man feels towards the female power to create new life is in directly proportion to how he experiences those emtions towards his own life. Norman Mailer put it beautifully in his 1971 "Prisoner of sex".

"If he began this remedial reading with the firmest male prejudice of them all, which is that women might possess the better half of life already, he was never to encounter any comprehension among female writers that a firm erection on a delicate fellow was the adventurous juncture of ego and courage. One attitude in Women's Lib remained therefore repellant: precisely the dull assumption that the sexual force of a man was the luck of his birth, rather that his finest moral product, or if not his - here, full blast, came genuine conservatism - then a local gift passed along by something well achieved in his mother, his father, or farther back down the line."

Sexual desire, in the male side of the human race, is a reflection of the degree to which a man feels alive. In a field of food grains, the most vital, the most vigorous, the most full of life themselves, produce the most offspring. Sexual drive, that overwhelming desire to engage in the act that creates new life, is the ultimate expression of life itself: both the meaning and the definition of life are the same - life is what creates new life out of itself.

The feelings that men have in response to this creative potential in women is like the experience called in some christian faiths by the name "the Rapture." It is a total experience which integrates mind, body, emotion, and spirit. It is no accident that many people have been known to cry "Oh God!" at the moment of sexual release, because the notion of god the creator imbues the act of creation itself as an act of Godliness, and the experience is as close to a direct encounter with the creative force as most people get in their lifetimes.

Many of the ancient religions treated the sexual union of man and woman in just this way: as a holy act of creation. The earth itself was seen as female, and the ability to generate life out of one's own body as the most distilled essence of uniquely female energy. Male energy was seen as complementary to female energy, and they joined for the purpose of creating life. Both were essential, and essentially different.

The notion of these energies as pure and perfect complements of each other is expressed in the Chinese symbol of yin and yang, also called the Tai Chi, or "Grand Ultimate."
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Female Sexuality is such a powerful force that most cultures either celebrate it or suppress it, or sometimes both.

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Amidst the constant bashing of men with accusations of sexual harassment and all types of "rape"- marital-rape, date-rape, even "mind-rape" and "symbolic rapes" - there has been a subtle and complete disconnect between male and female sexuality. As a male, I simply cannot understand why women in general allow the sex-haters to speak for them. Unless, of course, it is because that women generally do hate sex and their own sexuality.

The brutal suppression of female sexuality by other women is generally very subtle and covert in western cultures. Throughout Africa and the Middle-East, however, the female hatred of female sexuality is proven to millions of girls each year when trusted older women take them away, often without telling them what is about to happen to them, and chop off these little girls' genitals in the most brutal and callous manner possible. When women from these cultures immigrate to others where these assaults on little girls, collectively referred to as FGM or "Female Genital Mutilation", are not generally practiced, they still carry the grisly tradition with them. Somewhere on the web, ( I lost the link when my bookmarks file became corrupt ) there is a story of 3 women who could not bear to perform this horrible act on their own daughters, so they did it to each other's daughters while the mother went outside so she could not hear the little girls' screams.

I cannot adequately describe the rage I feel when such practices are blamed on the desires and preferences of "MEN" in general.

The Worship of the Yoni

The Destruction of Little Girls’ Sexuality

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EOTM: Male Sexuality

Introduction

In the past 30+ years millions of books have been sold on the topic of male sexuality. Very few of them have contained any "insider" information. While the detached and scholarly works usually miss the point, they are far more palatable than the the thinly disguised male-hating tirades written by women for consumption by women. Most of what has reached print has been women holding forth with great authority on topics in which they have never had any first hand experience. Women interpret, explain, judge, and condemn men for their conduct of sexual relationships without examining the role and conduct of women; as though those relationships were conducted in a vacuum without interaction with women. In the classic form of "do as I say, not as I do", some of these works have been in reaction to and contained vicious attacks on the psychologist Sigmund Freud for his condescending view of female sexuality, while their own condescention is both less based on empirical investigation and more extreme and oversimplified.

What has been largely missing from the public discourse is the male voice regarding male sexuality, love, mating, romance, and marriage. The results have been tragic for both men and women. As one of the less extreme of the feminist authors put it: "Women cannot hear what men do not say". This page and the ones which follow it are one small attempt to remedy the lack of a male voice speaking for males in the whole confused area of gender relations. Not that there have not been male voices speaking about males, there have been some. However, they have tended to take the supplicative "Uncle Tom" posture of remaining focussed on the female perspective and basically carrying the message "what's wrong with men". They have remained about males, not for males. Notable exceptions to this are the works of Warren Farrell, Andrew Kimbrell, and Robert Bly. There are other authors as well, many of which are noted in the reading list, but these 3 stand out for the clarity with which they see and present the issues.

While it is tempting to respond to the 30 years of male-bashing by bashing women back with the same intensity, doing so will hardly de-escalate the hostilities. Yet there has been far more nonsense published purporting to represent women's interests than works of any real merit. I'm a great believer in allowing people to learn from their own mistakes and experience. As I expect anyone with a brain to choose persons to represent their interests based on how well those representatives understand those interests and how consistently they work for them, I hope that women are beginning to wise up to how their pied pipers have sold them a bill of goods and led them down the road to isolation and unhappiness. Those who refuse to apply the acid test of sanity deserve the results they are getting.

However, it would be a disservice to men to not express the anger and exasperation that men feel over the absolute confusion, impossible expectations, and infantile tantrums which they have been putting up with for most of their adult lives in the area of their own greatest needs and vulnerability. For the most part, I will make no attempt at presenting a balanced view. When the average book store has a Men's Studies section the same size as its Women's Studies section, I will start writing in a balanced fashion. I have yet to see a book by a woman author which made more than a passing attempt to overcome her own female biases and present a balanced view. When women begin to abandon feminism for equitism and start shouting down women who are presenting gender hatred with the same fervor that they shout down men who say "Wait a minute, there's 2 sides to this", I will become their advocate to the same degree that I am now men's advocate. Until then there are far more and louder advocates for women than for men. It is time to provide a bit of balance.

It is my fervent hope that women will begin to examine their own behaviors and attitudes, following the christian dictum of dealing with the beams in their own eyes before getting so eager to take an axe to the specks in the eyes of their male brethren, and realize that they have changed far less than they believe in their spasms of self-congratulation and self-adoration. Male sexuality exists only in relation to female sexuality and women must get over their compulsions to play the passive and helpless victim, blaming men for every bit of their unhappiness, and venting limitless bile on men if things are to ever change for the better.

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Male Sexuality - the male perspective

The most elegant description of male sexuality I have ever read was in Norman Mailer’s "Prisoner of Sex" published in 1971. By then feminist publishing was in full swing and the book was written mostly in response to feminist critiques of male sexuality and men's conduct of their sexual relationships with women.

"If he began this remedial reading with the firmest male prejudice of them all, which is that women might possess the better half of life already, he was never to encounter any comprehension among female writers that a firm erection on a delicate fellow was the adventurous juncture of ego and courage. One attitude in Women's Lib remained therefore repellant: precisely the dull assumption that the sexual force of a man was the luck of his birth, rather that his finest moral product, or if not his - here, full blast, came genuine conservatism - then a local gift passed along by something well achieved in his mother, his father, or farther back down the line."

Very different from the picture of male sexuality presented by such media favorites as "The Burning Bed" and "Sleeping With the Enemy" and the views expressed by leading feminists. First the use of the term "delicate fellow". Here is Mailer, the ultimate Macho Male Chauvinist Pig, speaking of men as "delicate". What gives?

The truth that women seem to have dismissed entirely is that men are delicate in many respects. Men have the same depth and range of emotions that women do. Women do incredible levels of violence to men with their words, particularly in their distortions and outright lies, yet never seem to consider the possibility that these verbal assaults on men leave scars. It is part of what I call the chain of violence. The fact that the violence is verbal and emotional rather than physical allows it to be double-thought away with reasons, excuses, whys, and becauses. And the violence is aimed directly at the two essential elements according to Mailer: ego and courage. When I remembered this quote, I substituted optimism for courage. It holds equally well. The optimism that a man might find a relationship with a woman who accepts him for what he is, has something to offer in her own right, and will keep HER commitments, is fading in most men.

All this seems to be founded on the belief that the center of male sexuality is the phallus. This is a phallus-see. *groan* The center of male sexuality is that IS his finest moral product. Sexuality is about reproduction, society seems to have completely lost sight of that. The sexual drive is mother nature's way of insuring that there is a next generation, and a next after that. Mom nature certainly wants the best and brightest children, just like any mother, so the urge to mate is strongest when the self-esteem, ego, is highest. Male sexuality at its heart is a holy offering, a "finest moral product". Yet all we seem to hear is how awful and ugly it is and how it must be contained by such institutions as marriage and romance.

Given the bad name that lust has in our culture today, most readers will probably be surprised that the word lust comes from the same root as luster, to shine. How many times have we all heard that confidence is sexy? One of the definitions of lust is ardent enthusiasm, passion. How incredibly schizophrenic it is that, in this culture, passion is glorified, but lust is spit upon. Only those men who are so incredibly insensitive and thick skinned that all the male bashing hasn't beaten them down still pursue women with the enthusiasm that men did 40 years ago. These men hardly make for satisfying lovers in the longer term.

Men I've talked with do view their sexuality as a great gift which they keep trying to share but keep getting told that it is the wrong size, or the wrong color, or too often, or too seldom, or too exploitive, or inherently harmful. Everything about male sexuality has been redefined in the last 30 years in terms of how well it meets the woman's needs. Men's needs are totally denied and negated. Men are increasingly being seen as mindless beasts of burden whose lot in life is to drag a family around financially and emotionally.

In 1996 a book came out which epitomized the dilemma facing men these days in trying to develop relationships with women which may become sexually intimate. Titled "The Rules", this book outlined strategies to minimize the elapsed time between "hello, my name is..." and "I do." Men have known for a very long time that this was what many, if not most, women were out to accomplish, but what made this book noteworthy was the completely cold and calculated, openly dishonest and manipulative manner in which the exploitation of male needs was presented and was advised to be pursued.

There were several immediate responses to this book, capitalizing on its notoriety. One of these, a humorous response called "The Code", was much more honest in its approach and advice, but sadly not any less manipulative. Both sides treated the whole question of mating as a game to be played where one must win at the other's expense. Neither of them even mentioned the concept of a developing a relationship of mutual trust and support. Each in its own way advocated a life of lying.

Men and women seem to be caught in a reaction, counter-reaction, counter-counter-reaction spiral. The dishonesty and manipulation in "The Rules" is excused by the lame justification that women have to act this way because men act the way they do. So men start acting according to "The Code" justifying it as self defense against "The Rules". And on and on. In this race to not be the eploitee, by being the exploiter if necessary, the whole point of pairing up and marriage is lost.

Male sexuality cannot be separated from the male roles and roles of men in our culture, nor from the attributes of maleness itself. For the last 500 years there has been an increasing "enclosure" of men away from the land to which they were once bound toward the cities. Industrialization and then servicization demanded uniformity and the definitions of what is acceptable have become narrower and more rigid. Much which was previously considered normal has become deviant. The body is even often referred to as a machine and expected to perform like one. Andrew Kimbrell, in “The Masculine Mystique”, provides an excellent description of the transformation of men from homesteaders to housing unit dwellers and the progressive dehumanization of men which has occurred.

The last behavioural holdout was in the area of sex. Until the 60s, the fact that men had a sex drive was simply considered one of those "facts of life". Many social mechanisms sought to control it, but the fact that it existed was generally accepted.

Then in the 60s and 70s two very odd things happened. Just as the advent of the pill promised sexual freedom for women without the fear of pregancy, sexuality became both a means by which men oppress women and something that men do poorly for women. The model of the perfect man became one who turns on when the woman flips the on-switch, stays on as long as she wants, turns off the moment she wants it off, and stays off until she wants it on again, courtesy of Masters & Johnson. Not that I am ridiculing their work, it was groundbreaking, but some of the interpretations and conclusions drawn from their work are somewhat off-base. Gone were the days of "I felt good, she felt good, it was ok". The orgasm counter was clicking, but not fast enough to suit everyone.

The orgasm quota was kinda weird but ok. What really was strange was the manner in which the expression of attraction toward a woman changed from a pretty good thing into a very bad thing. In 1974 a woman author indicted every man in every culture for rape and things have never been the same since. It is simply not possible in the 90s to discuss sexuality without discussing rape and its implications. What used to be demanded of men as simple courtesies or be welcomed attention are now described as variants of rape. Several credential-less self-appointed "experts" went so far as to declare than there was no such thing as normal human sexuality and declared ALL heterosexual relationships to be rape.

Male sexuality has taken a serious beating in the media and in private interactions. Man bashing comments are as endemic to our culture today as racial slurs were prior to the 50s. Male sexuality is portrayed as exploitive, violent, and abusive. At one point it became very trendy for females to "recover" lost memories of childhood sexual abuse. These were accepted as incontrovertable fact until research was done which showed that the so-called therapist could lead someone into believing that she was experiencing a memory when in fact it was something suggested by the therapist. In her excellent book on the female side of relationships, ”Lip Service”, Kate Fillion shows how, in the 90s, the difference between a date where sex occurs and a date rape is a phone call the next morning which begins the type of romance leading to marriage which the woman is expecting. It has now become a criminal offense for a man to not live up to a woman's expectations. Male sexuality has come to be defined purely in terms of the woman's wants, and any behavior which does not meet those wants is becoming criminalized.

This is the other set of jaws in the vice of marriage. Warren Farrell in his excellent book, “Why Men Are the Way They Are” shows how it is universally accepted in this culture that MEN OWE WOMEN FOR SEX. Lizard Amazon in her "Slut Manifesto" talks about the crazy extremes that a woman is excused for going to when her expectations of a long-term committed relationship are not met. The message is clear to men. DO NOT have sex with a woman unless there is a serious possibility of marrying her or unless you are ready to be a complete Code Cad and treat the woman like a non-person while taking grave personal risks with your career, your finances, and your freedom. The temptation to do so because, if she is a Rules kinda girl, that is the way she is treating you is tempered by the dire potential consequences.

So much to think about before even considering the questions of attraction and what really does turn men on. And what is the difference between a woman he wants to have sex with RIGHT NOW and a woman with whom he feels comfortable spending the rest of his life?

Hopefully an honest examination of the answers to these questions will lead to more balanced and improved relations between the genders and improve everyone's chances for finding a mate with whom they can lead happy and satisfying lives.

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The Nitty Gritty
The Bitch
Rape
Men, Are You Sick of It?

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