Men and Sex Blogs: A Response
Bacchus wonders why there aren’t more male sex blogs, specifically of the confessional type, and thinks he’s found an explanation: there’s a social code that prevents “real” men from discussing sex. He quotes Steve Gilliard, who rants:
The social code of men doesn’t encourage the sharing of sexual secrets with other men, forget women. Which is why Clinton lied, which is why my toes curl when I’m asked about women I’ve dated. One of the big tenets of an adult masculinity is not bragging. You don’t have to do much to let your friends know you’re sexually active. And that’s all that is required.
[M]en are judged when they talk about sex. Yes, men tell sex stories, but they leave out the details. Sure, they’ll tell you what happened, but they leave out the details. Most men do not want to know what other men do in bed. ... Men withhold details to prevent being judged by their peers. Guys do not say “yeah Bob, I really like sucking her toes and brushing her hair after sex. That’s not anything a guy wants to know about another guy, ever.
I agree it is rather hard to find male sex blogs that don’t revolve around pornography, commentary, sexual frustration, or sucking up to women for the sake of getting dates. We men are poorly represented. But I think the explanation is more prosaic than Bacchus and Gilliard realize. Women are socialized to take an interest in discussing sex and relationships, in the same way men are socialized to take an interest in sports or politics. Women are more likely to keep journals in the first place. They are more likely to be involved in sex work. They have no other outlet, seeing as female promiscuity is still viewed as aberrant. And finally there’s that ingrained notion that male sexuality is primitive, one-dimensional, not worthy of exploration; that men who talk about sex are pigs, which is only reinforced by attitudes such as Gilliard’s.
Men certainly are judged for daring to have frank discussions about sex. The interest is clearly there, however. Just take a look at the askmen.com message boards, and the proliferation of thinly-veiled mating manuals like Maxim. The judgement comes not from real men, but from women who have a poisoned view of the opposite sex and men who are, for lack of a better term, vaginized playa hatas. In fact, of the men I know, the ones who complain the loudest about sex talk are also the least successful with women.
The vaginized man, presently accounting for about 75% of the American male population, gets all his sexual information from pornography, from pop-culture, or, worse yet, from tired coming-of-age cliches about women. He is, fundamentally, afraid of women; he’s afraid his sexual being will chase them off. Is it any wonder women aren’t satisfied with the lot of us? The real man, on the other hand, has a thirst for knowledge. He seeks out information from a secret society of like-minded males and sex-positive females. He keeps his mouth shut around vaginized males and lumpenfeminists because he knows they will never get it. I am a fool, however. The Naked Loft Party is my copious spurt of semen in the face of stifling sexual propriety.
As I noted on Phil’s blog:
Phil, you must be doing something right if someone out there feels the need to take you down a peg. Call it sour grapes. Call it envy. Your blog is a great read.
Sarah, if you do your homework you’ll see the bulk of the erotic confessionals out there in blogland are written by females. They also get the bulk of the attention, even the ones that are clearly only shouting “look at me!” There’s a double standard at work here. If a woman writes about her sexploits she’s liberated, in touch. If a man does, he’s a philandering braggart.
And I’ll be damned if the erotic doesn’t make for great art. James Joyce, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Anais Nin, Michel Houellebecq, Martin Amis—need I go on?
At any rate, this blog is much more interesting than most, which are filled with people’s trite musings and pointless accounts of mundane daily activities. A blog like this can be liberating, or it can hold a mirror up to your own your life, showing you an unpleasant reflection of your inner dullness.
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