FOREWORD (76 page)

Life itself can be a great healer. If so far in this book I seem to have stressed the inhibitions learned in our earliest years, let me add now how much I believe in the remedial powers of experience. We meet other people who see us in a new way, people who ease our anxieties, give us hopeful models of freedom, open doors our parents marked shut, people who love us for ourselves and not for being like them.

In short, new people, new relationships, give us the chance to practice new ways of being, thinking, and feeling.

As young men even as idealistic as Eddie finally take courage and invite a girl to bed at last, reality teaches a Nancy Friday

566

profound lesson. The first time may be scary. The second, less so. And even nice girls can enjoy the proceedings.

Repetition and familiarity ease anxiety. In time, mostly pleasure is left. Freud may have made a science of our unconscious fears. He also believed in the reality principle: We can learn.

If Eddie has not yet learned all he needs, he is still young.

Struggling against the destructive contradictions of a double standard
he will not accept,
Eddie himself is a sign of change.

I think his letter is wonderful.

Here, at the end of these pages, I find that my years of research have confirmed something even the most uninstructed woman takes as given: Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.

He loved his father, but was taught to show that love only through mindless imitation of his father’s mindless imitation of
his
father’s Victorian authoritarianism.

He loved his mother, but feared her power.

The male principle in society says he is expected to be tough and domineering with women, always in control, and sexually voracious. The female principle is the opposite; when he approaches women, he carries with him all his unconscious memories of mother’s awesome powers of retaliation and rejection.

How can he handle the fear and rage that sex means for a man under these conditions? He can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop, being a man. The frustration is blamed on women, goddamn them! Maybe the best thing to do is turn your back on them and forget the whole problem. In the end, it is the man’s relentless desire for women that keeps him from this surrender. Fantasies are invented. At least for a sexual moment, magic is called in, reality altered, the perceived nature of women changed; the conflict is healed: Fantasies are the triumph of love over rage.

There may come a time when society will find ways to have the sexes work together rather than in opposition. In Men In Love

567

fact, I believe it is beginning now, not through idealism but through economics. As more women go out to work to help support the family, fathers are going to have to share in raising children. Women will reap the rewards of independence, men the pleasures of nurturing. In my opinion, nothing will more effectively reshape our forms of adult sexuality than a society in which children, from the time they are born, are loved, raised, and acculturated by both parents.

This will teach daughters and sons that love, tenderness, and compassion can come from either father or mother – as do the harsh disciplines that society and reality demand. Rewards and punishments, love and hate, intimacy and autonomy, will not be taken as dichotomies that run along feminine or masculine lines, but as mixtures that vary with the temperaments of individual mothers and fathers.

I will not comment on fourteen-year-old Davey’s letter (above), but close my remarks in this book with a personal message for him:

I have read your P.S., Davey and I know.

Nancy Friday

568

Nancy Friday invites both men and women to contribute to her ongoing research on sexual identity. She would welcome reactions to the male fantasies included herein, or to her own comments; please be as specific as possible.

She would also welcome any fantasies, male or female, readers would like to contribute.

Please state age, schooling, employment, marital status, and any other biographical information that you wish. Send to:

P.O. Box 634

Key West, Florida 33040

ANONYMITY GUARANTEED

Nancy Friday

January 1983

Men In Love

569

NANCY FRIDAY

Nancy Friday is the author of the acclaimed, bestselling study of mother/daughter

relationships, MY MOTHER/MY SELF. Her

first book,
My Secret Garden
explored the nature and meaning of women’s sexual

fantasies and was followed by a sequel

volume,
Forbidden Flowers
. Nancy Friday and her husband, novelist W. H. Manville, divide their time between homes in New York City and Key West, Florida.

Nancy Friday

570

Men In Love

571

“NANCY FRIDAY EXAMINES MEN’S

SEXUAL FANTASIES WITH THE SAME

STUNNING CANDOR SHE BROUGHT TO

MY MOTHER/MY SELF…. LISTEN TO

THESE MALE LONGINGS AND ….

LEARN.”- Gael Greene

author

of

Blue Skies, No Candy

The taboo-shattering study based on the candid responses of thousands of men age fourteen through sixty. The landmark book that is changing men’s deepest feelings about their own sexuality. And helping women who care about men understand them as they have never understood before.

“EXTRAORDINARY … NANCY FRIDAY’S COM-

PASSIONATE, BREAKTHROUGH DEFINITION AND

EXPLORATION OF THE INNER LIFE OF MEN

COMES AT THE PERFECT TIME. WOMEN WILL

NEVER BE ABLE TO LOOK AT MEN IN THE SAME

WAY MEN WILL HAVE THEIR CONSCIOUSNESSES

RAISED.”

-Sirgay Sanger, M.D.

“FASCINATING … SENSITIVE AND THOUGHT

PROVOKING.”-Library Journal

An Alternate Selection of

The Literary Guild

ISBN 0-440-15903-2

• The Masculine Conflict
  
• Masturbation
  
  • DRAKE
    
  • HARRY
    
  • BILL
    
  • ALLAN
    
  • LESTER
    
  • CLIFTON
    
  • HAL
    
  • DON
    
  • JUD
    
  • JULIUS
    
  • BURT
    
• Sharing and Living Out Fantasies
  
  • LEON
    
  • ��
    
  • ��
    
  • LEE
    
  • PENROD
    
  • CHIP
    
  • LES
    
  • WARREN
    
  • CHRISTOPHER
    
  • MURRAY
    
  • PATRICK
    
  • MIGUEL
    
• Oral Sex
  
  • DAN
    
  • DONALD
    
  • FRED
    
  • RUSSELL
    
  • LOU
    
  • AL
    
  • JERRY
    
  • BRADLEY
    
  • BEN
    
  • WAYNE
    
  • OLIVER
    
  • STEVE
    
  • EDDIE
    
• Semen
  
  • THEO
    
  • HAMILTON
    
  • JOHN
    
  • BRUCE
    
  • HERB
    
  • WALTER
    
  • SETH
    
  • ALVIN
    
  • SALTY
    
  • HUGH
    
• Anal Sex
  
  • JACKIE
    
  • VITO
    
  • MITCH
    
  • LAWRENCE
    
  • LEWIS
    
  • HENRY
    
• Starry-Eyed Oedipus
  
  • TIM
    
  • DYSON
    
  • BENNET
    
  • SAILOR
    
  • DAN
    
  • JAKE
    
  • BUTCH
    
  • PHIL
    
  • CHET
    
  • JEFFERSON
    
• Fetishism
  
  • ROY
    
  • KIP
    
  • NEIL
    
  • TUCKER
    
  • JACK
    
  • KEITH
    
• Water Sports
  
  • BERNARD
    
  • DENNIS
    
  • HANK
    
  • MELVIN
    
  • FITZ
    
  • CYRUS
    
• Voyeurs and Exhibitionists
  
  • JAMES
    
  • GREG
    
  • JOSH
    
  • JESS
    
  • KENNETH
    
  • MEL
    
  • SANDY
    
  • MAURICE
    
  • DANIEL
    
• Women with Women
  
  • CROSBY
    
  • TRENTON
    
  • CLIVE
    
  • STEVEN
    
  • PRENTISS
    
  • GENE
    
  • LEONARD
    
  • LUKE
    
  • PERRY
    
• Animals
  
  • GERALD
    
  • BUCK
    
  • RICK
    
  • DALE
    
  • KING
    
  • LUDWIG
    
  • CRAIG
    
  • PAUL
    
• ��
  
  • MICHAEL
    
  • CONRAD
    
  • NED
    
  • GILBERT
    
  • MORT
    
  • CLEMENT
    
  • DEKE
    
  • DAYTON
    
  • RUDY
    
  • LOWRY
    
  • LENNIE
    
  • KENT
    
  • JASON
    
  • ED
    
  • VERN
    
  • BEN
    
• Sharing the Woman with Another Man
  
  • VANCE
    
  • TROY
    
  • VIRGIL
    
  • AUSTIN
    
  • SUSIE
    
  • THOMAS
    
  • MAC
    
  • JEFFREY
    
  • REYNOLDS
    
  • RODDY
    
  • CLAYTON
    
• Groups
  
  • JUSTIN
    
  • LARS
    
  • HARVEY
    
  • ALLEN
    
• Straight Men, Gay Fantasies
  
  • JOCK
    
  • CONNARD
    
  • WADE
    
  • SAM
    
  • DAVID
    
  • EVERETT
    
  • TEX
    
  • JONATHAN
    
  • CHANDLER
    
• Bisexuals
  
  • FARRELL
    
  • CLARK
    
  • JONES
    
  • ANDRE
    
  • BLAKE
    
  • JEFF
    
  • WILL
    
  • JIMMY
    
• Homosexuals
  
  • NICK AUGUST
    
  • JONAS
    
  • TOMMY
    
  • PHILIP
    
  • RED
    
  • ARTHUR
    
  • FRITZ
    
  • JETHRO
    
  • JOE
    
• Transvestites
  
  • JOEY
    
  • GEORGE
    
  • DAYLE
    
  • HOWARD
    
  • CRANE
    
  • LLOYD
    
• Breast and Vagina Envy
  
  • ALEX
    
  • BREWSTER
    
  • HORATIO
    
  • ��
    
  • DEAN
    
• Sadomasochism: The Chains of Love
  
  • ELIOT
    
  • TOD
    
  • LARRY
    
  • MATTHEW
    
  • HANK
    
  • ROCK
    
  • VINCE
    
  • ROD
    
  • GERARD
    
  • NIGEL
    
  • DOUGLAS
    
  • PETER
    
  • DR. LEWIS BROWN
    
  • RONALD
    
  • CLIFFORD
    
  • ROY
    
  • ZACK
    
  • VINCENT
    
  • BOYD
    
  • BENJAMIN
    
• Virgins
  
  • VERNON
    
  • EDDIE
    
  • OMAR
    
  • BUDDY
    
  • SHERWIN
    
  • ANDREW
    
  • SHEP
    
  • MILT
    
  • CECIL
    
  • DALE
    
  • FOSTER
    
  • DAVEY