Thanks Sarah – this issue needs to be aired. Many men have peculiar sexual interests, and I think it’s better women don’t have to face it. It is the task of men to keep this stuff bottled up – for the sake of women, and of our relationships with them. Literature and popular culture allowed us some reprieve in recognising we are not alone in feelings we have, and repress. We consumed these isolated admissions in art quietly. The dirty book shared. Rampant internet self-expression, and growth in belief of superiority of self over others, has led to “dirty books” everywhere. People are misconstruing acknowledgement of our shared dirty secrets as permission. No, you are not permitted to indulge your weirdness with others who don’t share it. Get back to your partners, families and work, and if you want to carry out the perversions, close the doors.
Exactly all those best selling light S&M books like Shades of Grey or Nine and half Squeaks have an 80 per cent female readership .
When I was about 19 I found myself sharing with a ‘courtesan’ in New York our shared enthusiasm for L’Histoire d’O. Fun fun fun .
Of course. Everything thinkable by humans is possible. But, in the main no, and don’t mistake what women are willing to do for what they want to do. Married men get to find that out. 😉
Right-Wing Hippie
2 months ago
I can’t remember who it was who said something along the lines of, “The entirety of human culture is the story of men trying to get with women.”
Gandhi, probably.
Someone also said that male sexuality was like being chained to a gorilla.
Fortunately/unfortunately my gorilla is getting older but I suspect that women do not quite understand how much men can be affected.
Is it me or are all heterosexual men rather envious of gay men and the comparative ease of getting sex?
Sarah seems to have made a thoughtful and compassionate attempt to understand this.
Another wise and perceptive thought strikes me while listening to a spy novel. The fact that overwhelmingly men fall for ‘honey traps’ perpetrated by women suggests that there is a dramatic difference between men’s desire for sex and women.
They idea that men can manipulate women through sex is absurd. Not so the other way around.
Adoptive Loiner
2 months ago
As a man, I for one don’t feel at all patronized or pidgeonholed by your sweeping generalisations about what you have decided is going on in all mens’ minds, based on a dirty book written by a man with breasts.
Because obviously a woman could never be sexist or cliched in her writing, unlike us perverts.
Thats good because she quite clearly refers to some men only. I read an article discussing the permissive confusion of paraphilia and identity; you read an article that called you a pervert. Interesting.
We don’t just mount an engine when we want to get from one place to another. We have wheels, brakes, steering wheel etc. Same with the men’s sex drive.
There’s nothing to uncover here of any value. It’s all dirty cogs and screws that get meaning only as parts of the entire vehicle
A vehicle without that engine has no real purpose. Properly understood it’s a thing of beauty. The brakes are just social/cultural imperatives for self-regulation, pretty much everything else is cosmetic.
I think I understand you; men are overwhelmingly interested in sex with women and constrain themselves and are constrained by society from allowing themselves to do dreadful things.
Because he’s a man I guess and I don’t think the equivalent delusion in women (believing they are men born in the wrong body) has a sexual basis; in fact it seems more to be a denial or avoidance of sexuality.
It’s like doing your phd in the, I’m a lumberjack ditty. Funny enough I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody already did.
Julian Farrows
2 months ago
Transgenderism provides the perfect progressive cover under which men of a peculiar bent can flaunt their sexual fetishes in public and receive applause for it.
Surely, women or at least some women, are very good at entering into this world which appeals to both sexes.
After all, it turned out to be a woman who wrote ‘The story of O’ to entertain her partner of the time, and a woman who made herself a multimillionaire from the dreadful ’50 shades of grey’.
Some women dominatrixes are very adept at entering into men’s fantasies and getting pleasure and often money for themselves in the process.
In the past, women I know have told me about the most shocking fantasies they entertain but would never admit to these publicly due to women’s different perceived social roles and expectations (although this has changed more recently).
Matt M
2 months ago
It isn’t that difficult: perverts should keep their perversions to themselves.
Whether they want to dress up in women’s clothes or drive nails through their private parts, they should do it in private. This is what clubs in Soho are for. What they shouldn’t do, should never do, is parade their perversions in public.
By all means, wear a suit and tie to the office as Dave and then put on your dangly earrings, your evening dress and call yourself Daphne when you get home.
The general public and children, in particular, should never have to confront these degenerate practises.
Live and let live and all that, but keep it to yourself please mate.
Ditum isn’t qualified to write about men or what men think.
She can do it, but take it with a grain of salt.
Everything she “knows” is based on questionable books produced by fetish obsessed writers, not your average human male.
She extrapolates from a small number of men to the entire male species.
Mah. To me she seems both sensible and well-informed. I’d much prefer a woman who makes sense to a man who does not – much as I would prefer a good actor in blackface to a bad actor with naturally dark skin.
Something that is very much on display in her writing.
Jeff Butcher
2 months ago
When Ditum discusses Luc Sante in this article she undermines the point she is trying to make – most men are perverts but I’m pretty sure that while many of them fantasise about playing with a pair of tits most don’t fantasise about having a pair of their own.
That is a whole other kind of ‘male desire’ that doesn’t really align with what I think most men (or women for that matter) would think of when considering the issue.
Then why title the article ‘the messiness of male desire’ and use as your example a transsexual? It’s hardly representative is it? Besides what’s ‘defensive’ about my post? I think you may be projecting a bit there….
Dan Croitoru
2 months ago
A tomboyish idealization of men’s “messy desires”. LOL. Most men have no proper fantasy apart from the pseudo fantasy of having sex with their mothers to be saved of the incertitude of having or not having the phallus. In Eyes Wide Shut Tom Cruise’s character cannot come up with a proper fantasy for his wife’s affair with the naval officer. His recurse to paranoid conspiracies and castrating display of performative sex is exactly what men do. They “save the world”. Not only his character cannot sexually perform but he cannot even imagine himself performing. His wife has no problem having the most fundamental proper fantasy “being raped by multiple men and enjoying it while feeling guilty”. She doesn’t try to save mankind …
Of course, that’s why we count on you to save the world !
J Dunne
2 months ago
There are few more crushing satires than the “men writing women” meme: “She breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards…”
Most of the authoritative insight that feminists provide us with when constantly writing about men is equally ludicrous.
Grahame Wells
2 months ago
Agree with final para, we’ve got to realise desire is fluid not fixed or ‘born that way’ because apart from in general (ie sexual desire exists – and is generally reproductive and thus heterosexual) desire type isn’t written in the genes. Are there deterministic biological drivers of a latex fetish wear kink for instance? Surely not. So perversion can be caught, developed and morphed. Sometimes into very dark places. A reason for some censorship of the Internet partic in the under 18s or over violence incl fetishes that lead to mutilation (incl transgenderism). People aren’t rational and reasonable but driven by wild, twisted libido often. Present company excepted of course!
Paul Thompson
2 months ago
I get very tired when I am told that I am not allowed to sneer at trannies. They are pathetic deluded perverts. Sneer I will. Self-delusion which involves self-mutilation as the endpoint is not a virtue.
Jake Raven
2 months ago
I’m sceptical about the trans fad that’s in vogue at the moment. I suspect if there was more pushback to allowing these men to use womens’ spaces and competing in womens’ sports this thing would fade into the shadows where it belongs. Too much time and coverage is given to this minority issue.
DEI and organisations pandering to the wokeraty, has made this a lifestyle choice, I, for one, don’t buy it.
It’s nice that you don’t buy it. But are not concerned enough about it to join in the pushback. It is, after all, simply a ‘minority issue’, one that – apart from its detrimental impact on almost every institution, including the judiciary, the education system and the healthcare system; its threat to the safety and well-being of women and girls; its assault on the rights of same-sex attracted people; the medical harm it’s doing to vulnerable young people; and the chilling effect it’s having on the employment rights and freedom of speech of absolutely everybody who believes in biological reality – certainly receives ‘too much time and coverage’.
Martin Goodfellow
2 months ago
Perhaps the inventors of ‘The Pill’ got things wrong. If they had gone for reducing sexual pleasure for both sexes, rather than contraception, then sex could have been more rationally ordered. Reproductive choice could have been just that, but without the fun. Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course.
TESTOSTERONE! We need to understand, and make allowances for, testosterone. After all, society is increasingly being asked to make allowances for oestrogen (menstrual leave, maternity leave, menopause leave).
If some of the women out there want to know what testosterone FEELS like, simply Google ‘stag in rut’. Observe the poor, dribbling creature patrolling his harem. He daren’t stop to eat lest another boy interlopes, and he consequently loses half his body weight during the rut. He daren’t even enjoy coitus, when it happens, completing the process in seconds.
It’s a powerful hormone that most men just about keep under control with intellect/rationality, but some cannot. It might be that their bodies produce high levels, or their receptors are particularly sensitive.
Some men are driven to despicable acts by the testosterone, but lazily branding them all monsters and perverts, and punishing them with incarceration, doesn’t prevent the next one.
A female colleague of mine, a biology teacher, speculated that perhaps courts should consider excessive levels of testosterone as mitigation for crimes.
I don’t agree but we do have a double standard
Steve Jolly
2 months ago
When considering male and female dynamics, I’m often struck by a feeling of hopelessness, like maybe this whole equality thing is just never gonna work. I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off segregating men and women into entirely separate societies with minimal interaction, each subject to their own laws and government. They could have their most important law be never to interact with the opposite sex except in extreme need, and then make whatever rules and have whatever kind of societies they wanted for themselves. Like a kind of collective divorce, we could divide up all the assets as evenly as possible through negotiations, then go our separate ways. To produce children, we could have some annual mating ritual like many species of animal already do, or just science our way through it and mail gametes to some clinic that handles the entire process. The male children would be sent to the male and the females to the females, who would each have the collective responsibility of raising the children however they decided. I would imagine rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment would dramatically decline. There would be no quibbling over child support. We’d never have to argue over raising the toilet seat or how full the trash can should be. Men could wear any colors together they wanted and women wouldn’t have to look at their bad sense of fashion or uncouth behavior. The frivolous waste of metals on jewelry might diminish and the diamond trade would collapse entirely. We could have AI generated porn that doesn’t use real people and so can’t be exploitative and no one would have any grounds to complain about the sexual predilections of the other side. No more MeToo movements or uncomfortable work relationships. The more I think about this, the more I like the concept. Would be hard at first but I think more peaceful and harmonious in the long term.
Didn’t they try this on Survivor, with the women eventually having to move in with the men because they couldn’t get along long enough to build shelters?
Can’t say I’ve ever watched that show or had any inclination to do so. I’ve always regarded reality TV as basically like regular TV with no writers and random people plucked off the street in place of the actors. It’s not real, and it’s not very good TV. That surprises me though. I thought women were supposed to have superior emotional intelligence and social skills in general.
carl taylor
2 months ago
Given the recent announcement that NHS England has ‘banned’ puberty blockers, it’s worth noting here that many trans-identifying male AGPs require the sacrifice of child body parts (‘gender affirming care’) as validation for the public expression of their own paraphilias.
Without puberty blockers, they won’t have those 18-year-old men and women (legal)with the bodies of 11-year-olds to mess around with anymore. Freaks.
Daniel P
1 month ago
Yeah….I dunno about this.
At 57, and as a guy that has dated A LOT since he was 13, not sure that I buy this.
Sure, when we are in our teens and early 20’s, I will go along with guys having a stronger sex drive. In fact, I will admit that it borders on being a major distraction for young men.
BUT…I will tell you now, and granted this may just reflect my unique experience, by the time we hit 30, women’s sex drives far surpass our own. Maybe we are just tired or maybe we just get tired of trying, but most guys I know over 30 tend to have gotten a grip and it is the women that get a little aggressive and nuts about sex.
Now, as for the kink stuff, and again, maybe I am unique in my experience, but the fact is that most kinky things I have done were introduced to me by a woman. Now granted, I tend to like bold women with big personalities, and I was raised in a pretty protected bubble, so…maybe that is it. But every single kink that has EVER come up in a bedroom, from bondage to ropes to spanking, all of it was asked for or pushed by the woman I was with. Then, I look at things like 50 Shades of Grey, written by a woman for women, and I do not know a guy that read the book or saw the movie.
funnily enough, i had exactly the same experience, but maybe for a different reason. we were trained about consent, and what women want, etc., etc., and very little besides. i had to learn that things i would not think of initiating were ok, and even hot/desired, including when i initiated them.
current cultural norms have put men in a bit of a box. if we do something the wrong way, or at the wrong time, it’s trouble. in fact, we have had a lot of sex scared out of us, because of all the bad that can come of it.
Thanks Sarah – this issue needs to be aired. Many men have peculiar sexual interests, and I think it’s better women don’t have to face it. It is the task of men to keep this stuff bottled up – for the sake of women, and of our relationships with them. Literature and popular culture allowed us some reprieve in recognising we are not alone in feelings we have, and repress. We consumed these isolated admissions in art quietly. The dirty book shared. Rampant internet self-expression, and growth in belief of superiority of self over others, has led to “dirty books” everywhere. People are misconstruing acknowledgement of our shared dirty secrets as permission. No, you are not permitted to indulge your weirdness with others who don’t share it. Get back to your partners, families and work, and if you want to carry out the perversions, close the doors.
You think women don’t have ‘peculiar sexual interests’?
A lot of them are more turned on by what’s in a man’s wallet as opposed to his underpants. Exceptionally weird and unsettling fetish, I’d say.
At least they’re not trying to ram it down our throat all the time.
Exactly all those best selling light S&M books like Shades of Grey or Nine and half Squeaks have an 80 per cent female readership .
When I was about 19 I found myself sharing with a ‘courtesan’ in New York our shared enthusiasm for L’Histoire d’O. Fun fun fun .
Of course. Everything thinkable by humans is possible. But, in the main no, and don’t mistake what women are willing to do for what they want to do. Married men get to find that out. 😉
I can’t remember who it was who said something along the lines of, “The entirety of human culture is the story of men trying to get with women.”
Gandhi, probably.
Someone also said that male sexuality was like being chained to a gorilla.
Fortunately/unfortunately my gorilla is getting older but I suspect that women do not quite understand how much men can be affected.
Is it me or are all heterosexual men rather envious of gay men and the comparative ease of getting sex?
Sarah seems to have made a thoughtful and compassionate attempt to understand this.
Another wise and perceptive thought strikes me while listening to a spy novel. The fact that overwhelmingly men fall for ‘honey traps’ perpetrated by women suggests that there is a dramatic difference between men’s desire for sex and women.
They idea that men can manipulate women through sex is absurd. Not so the other way around.
As a man, I for one don’t feel at all patronized or pidgeonholed by your sweeping generalisations about what you have decided is going on in all mens’ minds, based on a dirty book written by a man with breasts.
Because obviously a woman could never be sexist or cliched in her writing, unlike us perverts.
Thats good because she quite clearly refers to some men only. I read an article discussing the permissive confusion of paraphilia and identity; you read an article that called you a pervert. Interesting.
“permissive confusion” was meant to be “pervasive conflation”. I don’t know why I typed different words to those in my head.
Womansplaining?
We don’t just mount an engine when we want to get from one place to another. We have wheels, brakes, steering wheel etc. Same with the men’s sex drive.
There’s nothing to uncover here of any value. It’s all dirty cogs and screws that get meaning only as parts of the entire vehicle
A vehicle without that engine has no real purpose. Properly understood it’s a thing of beauty. The brakes are just social/cultural imperatives for self-regulation, pretty much everything else is cosmetic.
I think I understand you; men are overwhelmingly interested in sex with women and constrain themselves and are constrained by society from allowing themselves to do dreadful things.
Forgive me I’ve misunderstood
So long as they remember to use the indicators.
Why on earth is the experience of an ageing tranny being mangled into a mealy mouthed tract on male sexuality?
Any excuse for misandry.
Because he’s a man I guess and I don’t think the equivalent delusion in women (believing they are men born in the wrong body) has a sexual basis; in fact it seems more to be a denial or avoidance of sexuality.
It’s like doing your phd in the, I’m a lumberjack ditty. Funny enough I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody already did.
Transgenderism provides the perfect progressive cover under which men of a peculiar bent can flaunt their sexual fetishes in public and receive applause for it.
Flaunt
We all understood what was meant Andrew… Duh!
I know, I’m sorry, I can’t help it.
Thanks
Surely, women or at least some women, are very good at entering into this world which appeals to both sexes.
After all, it turned out to be a woman who wrote ‘The story of O’ to entertain her partner of the time, and a woman who made herself a multimillionaire from the dreadful ’50 shades of grey’.
Some women dominatrixes are very adept at entering into men’s fantasies and getting pleasure and often money for themselves in the process.
In the past, women I know have told me about the most shocking fantasies they entertain but would never admit to these publicly due to women’s different perceived social roles and expectations (although this has changed more recently).
It isn’t that difficult: perverts should keep their perversions to themselves.
Whether they want to dress up in women’s clothes or drive nails through their private parts, they should do it in private. This is what clubs in Soho are for. What they shouldn’t do, should never do, is parade their perversions in public.
By all means, wear a suit and tie to the office as Dave and then put on your dangly earrings, your evening dress and call yourself Daphne when you get home.
The general public and children, in particular, should never have to confront these degenerate practises.
Live and let live and all that, but keep it to yourself please mate.
Ditum isn’t qualified to write about men or what men think.
She can do it, but take it with a grain of salt.
Everything she “knows” is based on questionable books produced by fetish obsessed writers, not your average human male.
She extrapolates from a small number of men to the entire male species.
Mah. To me she seems both sensible and well-informed. I’d much prefer a woman who makes sense to a man who does not – much as I would prefer a good actor in blackface to a bad actor with naturally dark skin.
I am, and she’s not wrong.
Or perhaps herself as a man.
But still women believe their insight is more relevant than a man’s. Maybe yes, maybe no. But possibly a sexual example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Something that is very much on display in her writing.
When Ditum discusses Luc Sante in this article she undermines the point she is trying to make – most men are perverts but I’m pretty sure that while many of them fantasise about playing with a pair of tits most don’t fantasise about having a pair of their own.
That is a whole other kind of ‘male desire’ that doesn’t really align with what I think most men (or women for that matter) would think of when considering the issue.
I don’t understand your defensiveness. I didn’t assume she was talking about most men.
Then why title the article ‘the messiness of male desire’ and use as your example a transsexual? It’s hardly representative is it? Besides what’s ‘defensive’ about my post? I think you may be projecting a bit there….
A tomboyish idealization of men’s “messy desires”. LOL. Most men have no proper fantasy apart from the pseudo fantasy of having sex with their mothers to be saved of the incertitude of having or not having the phallus. In Eyes Wide Shut Tom Cruise’s character cannot come up with a proper fantasy for his wife’s affair with the naval officer. His recurse to paranoid conspiracies and castrating display of performative sex is exactly what men do. They “save the world”. Not only his character cannot sexually perform but he cannot even imagine himself performing. His wife has no problem having the most fundamental proper fantasy “being raped by multiple men and enjoying it while feeling guilty”. She doesn’t try to save mankind …
Speak for yourself, Dan. I neither have nor ever have had a sexual fantasy involving my mother.
Of course, that’s why we count on you to save the world !
There are few more crushing satires than the “men writing women” meme: “She breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards…”
Most of the authoritative insight that feminists provide us with when constantly writing about men is equally ludicrous.
Agree with final para, we’ve got to realise desire is fluid not fixed or ‘born that way’ because apart from in general (ie sexual desire exists – and is generally reproductive and thus heterosexual) desire type isn’t written in the genes. Are there deterministic biological drivers of a latex fetish wear kink for instance? Surely not. So perversion can be caught, developed and morphed. Sometimes into very dark places. A reason for some censorship of the Internet partic in the under 18s or over violence incl fetishes that lead to mutilation (incl transgenderism). People aren’t rational and reasonable but driven by wild, twisted libido often. Present company excepted of course!
I get very tired when I am told that I am not allowed to sneer at trannies. They are pathetic deluded perverts. Sneer I will. Self-delusion which involves self-mutilation as the endpoint is not a virtue.
I’m sceptical about the trans fad that’s in vogue at the moment. I suspect if there was more pushback to allowing these men to use womens’ spaces and competing in womens’ sports this thing would fade into the shadows where it belongs. Too much time and coverage is given to this minority issue.
DEI and organisations pandering to the wokeraty, has made this a lifestyle choice, I, for one, don’t buy it.
It’s nice that you don’t buy it. But are not concerned enough about it to join in the pushback. It is, after all, simply a ‘minority issue’, one that – apart from its detrimental impact on almost every institution, including the judiciary, the education system and the healthcare system; its threat to the safety and well-being of women and girls; its assault on the rights of same-sex attracted people; the medical harm it’s doing to vulnerable young people; and the chilling effect it’s having on the employment rights and freedom of speech of absolutely everybody who believes in biological reality – certainly receives ‘too much time and coverage’.
Perhaps the inventors of ‘The Pill’ got things wrong. If they had gone for reducing sexual pleasure for both sexes, rather than contraception, then sex could have been more rationally ordered. Reproductive choice could have been just that, but without the fun. Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course.
Certain cultures try to do exactly that – reduce sexual pleasure – via genital mutilation. Only applies to females, of course.
Oh no, it’s worth the cost
TESTOSTERONE! We need to understand, and make allowances for, testosterone. After all, society is increasingly being asked to make allowances for oestrogen (menstrual leave, maternity leave, menopause leave).
If some of the women out there want to know what testosterone FEELS like, simply Google ‘stag in rut’. Observe the poor, dribbling creature patrolling his harem. He daren’t stop to eat lest another boy interlopes, and he consequently loses half his body weight during the rut. He daren’t even enjoy coitus, when it happens, completing the process in seconds.
It’s a powerful hormone that most men just about keep under control with intellect/rationality, but some cannot. It might be that their bodies produce high levels, or their receptors are particularly sensitive.
Some men are driven to despicable acts by the testosterone, but lazily branding them all monsters and perverts, and punishing them with incarceration, doesn’t prevent the next one.
A female colleague of mine, a biology teacher, speculated that perhaps courts should consider excessive levels of testosterone as mitigation for crimes.
I don’t agree but we do have a double standard
When considering male and female dynamics, I’m often struck by a feeling of hopelessness, like maybe this whole equality thing is just never gonna work. I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off segregating men and women into entirely separate societies with minimal interaction, each subject to their own laws and government. They could have their most important law be never to interact with the opposite sex except in extreme need, and then make whatever rules and have whatever kind of societies they wanted for themselves. Like a kind of collective divorce, we could divide up all the assets as evenly as possible through negotiations, then go our separate ways. To produce children, we could have some annual mating ritual like many species of animal already do, or just science our way through it and mail gametes to some clinic that handles the entire process. The male children would be sent to the male and the females to the females, who would each have the collective responsibility of raising the children however they decided. I would imagine rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment would dramatically decline. There would be no quibbling over child support. We’d never have to argue over raising the toilet seat or how full the trash can should be. Men could wear any colors together they wanted and women wouldn’t have to look at their bad sense of fashion or uncouth behavior. The frivolous waste of metals on jewelry might diminish and the diamond trade would collapse entirely. We could have AI generated porn that doesn’t use real people and so can’t be exploitative and no one would have any grounds to complain about the sexual predilections of the other side. No more MeToo movements or uncomfortable work relationships. The more I think about this, the more I like the concept. Would be hard at first but I think more peaceful and harmonious in the long term.
Didn’t they try this on Survivor, with the women eventually having to move in with the men because they couldn’t get along long enough to build shelters?
Can’t say I’ve ever watched that show or had any inclination to do so. I’ve always regarded reality TV as basically like regular TV with no writers and random people plucked off the street in place of the actors. It’s not real, and it’s not very good TV. That surprises me though. I thought women were supposed to have superior emotional intelligence and social skills in general.
Given the recent announcement that NHS England has ‘banned’ puberty blockers, it’s worth noting here that many trans-identifying male AGPs require the sacrifice of child body parts (‘gender affirming care’) as validation for the public expression of their own paraphilias.
Absolutely. To validate their own perversion and delusion, others must be recruited.
Without puberty blockers, they won’t have those 18-year-old men and women (legal)with the bodies of 11-year-olds to mess around with anymore. Freaks.
Yeah….I dunno about this.
At 57, and as a guy that has dated A LOT since he was 13, not sure that I buy this.
Sure, when we are in our teens and early 20’s, I will go along with guys having a stronger sex drive. In fact, I will admit that it borders on being a major distraction for young men.
BUT…I will tell you now, and granted this may just reflect my unique experience, by the time we hit 30, women’s sex drives far surpass our own. Maybe we are just tired or maybe we just get tired of trying, but most guys I know over 30 tend to have gotten a grip and it is the women that get a little aggressive and nuts about sex.
Now, as for the kink stuff, and again, maybe I am unique in my experience, but the fact is that most kinky things I have done were introduced to me by a woman. Now granted, I tend to like bold women with big personalities, and I was raised in a pretty protected bubble, so…maybe that is it. But every single kink that has EVER come up in a bedroom, from bondage to ropes to spanking, all of it was asked for or pushed by the woman I was with. Then, I look at things like 50 Shades of Grey, written by a woman for women, and I do not know a guy that read the book or saw the movie.
funnily enough, i had exactly the same experience, but maybe for a different reason. we were trained about consent, and what women want, etc., etc., and very little besides. i had to learn that things i would not think of initiating were ok, and even hot/desired, including when i initiated them.
current cultural norms have put men in a bit of a box. if we do something the wrong way, or at the wrong time, it’s trouble. in fact, we have had a lot of sex scared out of us, because of all the bad that can come of it.
Sometimes being in a box is good. You can peek through the holes and make an ambush.
Does it really matter what you do at 66 for kicks?
Every radical political movement is a lightning rod for mad people.
Roth, Updike and Amis can’t be dismissed so airily; they are literary giants, even if some of their passages make women queasy.