The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (8 page)

Male violence in general has intensified not because feminist gains offer women greater freedom but rather because men who endorse patriarchy discovered along the way that the patriarchal promise of power and dominion is not easy to fulfill, and in those rare cases where it is fulfilled, men find themselves emotionally bereft. The patriarchal manhood that was supposed to satisfy does not. And by the time this awareness emerges, most patriarchal men are isolated and alienated; they cannot go back and reclaim a past happiness or joy, nor can they go forward. To go forward they would need to repudiate the patriarchal thinking that their identity has been based on. Rage is the easy way back to a realm of feeling. It can serve as the perfect cover, masking feelings of fear and failure.

My father and mother have been married now for more than fifty years. Dad has never relinquished his patriarchal status and she has never challenged it. Yet by clinging to patriarchal thinking, they forfeited their chance to be happy together. The threat of violence, of emotional abuse, is always there, standing in the way of intimacy, keeping them from forgiving one another and starting over. Sadly, they are stuck in the trap of patriarchy. And it remains the breeding ground for everyday violence, the subtle, intimate terrorism that intensifies resentment and closes off the possibility of knowing joy.

It is not easy for males, young or old, to reject the codes of patriarchal masculinity. Men who choose against violence are simultaneously choosing against patriarchy, whether they can articulate that choice or not. In his insightful essay “Gender Politics of Men,” R. W. Connell calls attention to the fact that men who oppose patriarchy remain at odds with the world they are living in:

Ultimately the men who choose against violence, against death, do so because they want to live fully and well, because they want to know love. These are men who are true heroes, the men whose lives we need to know about, honor, and remember.

M
ost men and women are not having satisfying and fulfilling sex. We have all heard the notion that men come to relationships looking for sex and not love and that women come to relationships looking for love and not sex. In actuality, men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all the emotional satisfaction that would come from love. Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing.

If women have been taught through sexist socialization that a journey through the difficult terrain of sex will lead us to our heart’s desire, men have been taught that their heart’s desire should be for sex and more sex. Coming in the wake of sexual liberation, women’s liberation seemed to promise heterosexual and bisexual men that women would begin to think the same way males do about sexuality, that female sexuality would become just as predatory, just as obsessive as male sexual desire. Lots of men thought this was the promise of paradise. Finally they were going to be able to go for the sexual gusto without having to worry about commitment. Sexist logic had convinced them and convinces them still that they can have connection and intimacy without commitment, that “Have dick will travel” meant that their needs could and would be met on command, at any time, anywhere.

In our culture these attitudes toward sexuality have been embraced by most men and many post–sexual liberation, postfeminist women. They are at the root of our cultural obsession with sex. When I first began to write books on love, to talk to lone individuals and then large audiences about the subject, I realized that it was practically impossible to have a serious discussion about love—that discussions of love, especially public conversations, are taboo in our society. Yet everyone talks about sex. We see all manner of sexual scenes on our television and movie screens. Talking about sex is acceptable. Talk shows engage audiences daily with explicit discussions of sexuality. Discussions of sex are fundamentally easier to engage in because in patriarchal culture sex has been presented to us as a “natural” desire. Most folks believe we are hardwired biologically to long for sex but they do not believe we are hardwired to long for love. Almost everyone believes that we can have sex without love; most folks do not believe that a couple can have love in a relationship if there is no sex.

Feminist movement was able to challenge and change notions of female inequality on many fronts, particularly in such arenas as work, education, and religion. However, sexism continues to shape the ways most people think about sexual relations. No matter how many men in our nation are celibate or have only occasional sexual experiences, people still believe that sex is something men have to have. Underlying this assumption is the belief that if men are not sexually active, they will act out or go crazy. This is why male-on-male sexual violence is accepted in our nation’s prisons. This is why rape—whether date rape, marital rape, or stranger rape—is still not deemed a serious crime. This is why the rape of children, especially when conducted by mild-mannered, nice men, is allowed. If this were not so, celebrities accused of sexually abusing children would no longer be cultural icons. The assumption that “he’s gotta have it” underlies much of our culture’s acceptance of male sexual violence. It is why many people continue to believe that anyone who is raped may have “asked for it” by “seductive” dress or behavior, no matter how many television programs have aired the facts about sexual violence.

Children today learn more about sex from mass media than from any other source. Whether watching daytime soap operas, a porn channel, or X-rated movies, children in our nation are more aware of the body and of sexuality than ever before. Yet much of what they are learning about sexuality conforms to outmoded patriarchal scripts about the sexual nature of men and women, of masculine and feminine. They learn that in the world of sexual relations there is always a dominant party and a submissive party. They learn that males should dominate females, that strong men should dominate weaker men. They learn that whether he is homosexual or heterosexual, a man deprived of sexual access will ultimately be sexual with any body. If deprived long enough, even if he is straight he will have sex with another man; if he’s gay, deprivation will lead him to engage in desperate sexual acts with women. Again and again children hear the message from mass media that when it comes to sex, “he’s gotta have it.” Adults may know better, from their own experience, but children become true believers. They think that men will go mad if they cannot act sexually. This is the logic that produces what feminist thinkers call “a rape culture.”

Males, whether gay or straight, learn early on in life that one of the primary rewards offered to them for obedience to patriarchal thought and practice is the right to dominate females sexually. And if no female is around, they have the right to place a weaker male in the “female” position. In the anthology
Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse,
men who have been victimized by stronger boys, brothers, and other male peers share how the logic of patriarchal thinking about the right of the strong to do as they wish with those whom they deem weak was presented to them by their abusers. This same logic has usually shaped the thinking about sexuality embraced by adult abusers. Ed writes of his older brother’s sexual abuse of him: “I learned about sex when I was nine years old. I was giving blow jobs at ten. While other kids were out playing with guns, I was learning how to ‘please’ a man. I was taught how to be a ‘woman.’ My brother liked to act out fantasies in which he was the ‘man’ and I was the ‘woman.’ ” This older brother married and took with him into marriage the notion that it was his right to have sex with anyone he desired, whether they wanted to or not. His need to dominate was the salient feature in all his sexual relationships.

Within a culture of domination struggles for power are enacted daily in human relationships, often assuming their worst forms in situations of intimacy. The patriarchal man who would never respond to demands from his boss with overt rage and abuse will respond with fury when intimates want him to change his behavior. Men who do not daily lie and cheat at their jobs do so in their intimate bonds. This lying is usually connected to inappropriate sexual behavior or to discomfort about sexual behavior. In his powerful essay “Who He Was,” Eric Guitierrez recounts how he told lies to cover up the reality that his father was gay: “About the same time I began lying about my father I began lying about myself. I didn’t offer my lies indiscriminately…. Rather than making up comforting details that would portray my flashing, gay father more like the hardworking, lawn-mowing dads that lined our street, I instead embellished his shortcomings, his weaknesses, his rages, into real perversity…. I enthralled my classmates with stories of how my father would tie us up or throw crystal goblets at my terrorized mother…. I was an accomplished liar, building false identities for my father and myself by overstating truth on its own trajectory.” Lying about sexuality is an accepted part of patriarchal masculinity. Sex is where many men act out because it is the only social arena where the patriarchal promise of dominion can be easily realized. Without these perks, masses of men might have rebelled against patriarchy long ago.

Little boys learn early in life that sexuality is the ultimate proving ground where their patriarchal masculinity will be tested. They learn early that sexual desire should not be freely expressed and that females will try to control male sexuality. For boys this issue of control begins with the mother’s response to his penis; usually she does not like it and she does not know what to do with it. Her discomfort with his penis communicates that there is something inherently wrong with it. She does not communicate to the boy child that his penis is wonderful, special, marvelous. This same fear of the boy’s penis is commonly expressed by fathers who simply do not concern themselves with educating boys about their bodies. Sadly, unenlightened approaches to child abuse lead many parents to fear celebration of their child’s body, especially the boy body, which may respond to playful physical closeness with an erection. In patriarchal culture everyone is encouraged to see the penis, even the penis of a small boy, as a potential weapon. This is the psychology of a rape culture. Boys learn that they should identify with the penis and the potential pleasure erections will bring, while simultaneously learning to fear the penis as though it were a weapon that could backfire, rendering them powerless, destroying them. Hence the underlying message boys receive about sexual acts is that they will be destroyed if they are not in control, exercising power.

Adolescent sexual socialization is the vulnerable moment in a boy’s life when he is required to identify his selfhood and his sexuality with patriarchal masculinity; it is the meeting place of theory and practice. During these formative years, when a boy’s sexual lust is often intense, he learns that patriarchal culture expects him to covertly cultivate that lust and the will to satisfy it while engaging in overt acts of sexual repression. This splitting is part of the initiation into patriarchal masculinity; it is a rite of passage. The boy learns as well that females are the enemy when it comes to the satisfaction of sexual desire. They are the group that will impose on the boy the need to repress his sexual longings, and yet to prove his manhood, he must dare to move past repression and engage in sexual acts.

Sexual repression fuels the lust of boys and men. Shedding light on the negative impact of this socialization in the essay “Fuel for Fantasy: The Ideological Construction of Male Lust,” Michael S. Kimmel demonstrates that sexual repression creates the world in which males must engage constantly in sexual fantasy, eroticizing the nonsexual. Exploring the link between sexual repression and sexism, he explains:

Despair and rage are the feelings men bring to sex, whether with women or with other men.

Encouraged to relate to sex in an addictive way by the patriarchal thinking which says “he’s gotta have it,” males must then adjust to a world where they can rarely get it, or never get it as much as they want, or where they can get it only by coercing and manipulating someone who does not want it, usually someone female. In
The Heart of the Soul
Gary Zukav and Linda Francis describe the characteristics of individuals addicted to sexual obsessions: “They cannot rest from thoughts of sex. They move from one encounter to the next. Each sexual experience brings only temporary relief from their craving, and it quickly returns. No amount of sexual activity can satisfy it.” They explain that the “sexual craving is not for sex, but for something deeper.” The fact that the craving always returns is the clue that addictive sexuality is not simply about getting sex. For the patriarchal male, be he straight or gay, addictive sexuality is fundamentally about the need to constantly affirm and reaffirm one’s selfhood. If it is only through sex that he can experience selfhood, then sex has to be constantly foregrounded. Zukav and Francis explain: “The more intense the pain of fear, unworthiness, and feeling unlovable becomes, the more obsessive becomes the need to have a sexual interaction.”

Sex, then, becomes for most men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting to someone else but rather about releasing their own pain. The addict is often an individual in acute pain. Patriarchal men have no outlet to express their pain, so they simply seek release. Zukav and Francis stress that the sex addict fears being inadequate and he fears rejection: “The stronger these emotions are, when there is no willingness to feel them, the stronger becomes the obsession with sex.” Male sexual obsession tends to be seen as normal. Thus the culture as a whole colludes in requiring of men that they discount and disown their feelings, displacing them all onto sex. Steve Bearman makes this point in the essay “Why Men Are So Obsessed with Sex,” explaining that “even if we do not engage compulsively in anonymous casual sex, pornography, masturbation, or fetishistic attempts to recover what has been forgotten, sex nevertheless takes on an addictive character.” Whether straight or gay, male sexuality assumes this addictive character.

Since it is neither possible biologically nor practical, given the few hours in a day available for leisure activity, for men to be in sexual interactions constantly, patriarchal pornography available in myriad forms becomes the site of sublimation, the place where the sexual addict can get a quick fix. Patriarchal men can do pornography anywhere all day long. They can watch movies, look at magazines, look at real females with a pornographic gaze, undress them, fuck them, dominate them. Kimmel contends that male consumption of pornography is fed by the sexual lust males are taught to feel all the time and their rage that this lust cannot be satisfied: