Calling Off The Sexuality Police

My grandma adores my husband to the point where she’ll call ask how I am, interrupt me mid-sentence, and request I pass the phone to her ‘new grandson’. Between the two of us, he’s definitely higher on her favourites list right now. (Meanwhile, I’m quietly hoping the novelty of a ‘grandson’ will wear off and she’ll soon regain interest in conversations with me.) However, it wasn’t always like this. Before she properly knew him, my grandma made sure to repeatedly tell me to be careful around men and not trust any of them because ‘they’re all after one thing’ (the underlying assumption being that obviously I am not).

It’s not just my grandma. We all know the cliché – men want sex (every 7 seconds at least) and women are into ‘talking about feelings and cuddling’. There is so much wrong with these stereotypes. For starters, they deprive women of their sexuality. They also conflate feelings with sex. People might wonder why girls are pressured into sex. Well, repeating ‘sex is something you do with someone you love’ often enough makes many of them believe that being in a relationship is the reason to have sex, and the simple desire to have sex is not reason by itself. This “I love him, so we should have sex” sort of thinking is the by-product of girls never being given a chance to embrace their sexuality. And this is just the tip of the iceberg…

However, girls are not the only ones whose minds are infused with damaging gender stereotypes. In this article, I want to take a closer look at the male side of human sexuality misconstructions.

In her book Promiscuities Naomi Wolf describes how terrifyingly early sexual stereotyping starts. Kids aren’t even out of elementary school, and they definitely have no idea about the actual mechanics and emotions related to sex when they are bombarded by messages saying boys aren’t interested in feelings. By senior high the good ol’ “they just want one thing” is the catch-all phrase for describing boys’ attitude about the opposite sex. Boys and young men are ‘supposed’ to think more about bodies than personalities, want sex and not conversation, be attracted to breasts and buttocks instead of the whole person, and go for quantity over quality. Disturbingly, this sexist approach is not a veiled message – it’s what adults openly communicate to young people.

I read an article once where the author described a student talking about what brought her to a gender studies class. One of the things was a conversation she had with her uncle before she went to college. He had one thing to say: “look out for yourself and stay pure” – i.e., steer clear of any pre-marital sex. What the student found interesting was the contrast between this and what the same uncle told her older brother when he left for college: “make sure you have all the fun and girls you can get” (the uncle was obviously counting on his nephew’s potential sex partners not being appropriately warned by their relatives). Boys and men are encouraged to actively pursue sex. Hollywood movies, advertising, and even families all work hard to convince men they should spend their youth ‘going wild’ before they settle down with (read: support) a wife and kids.  

However, there’s a serious problem with this attitude. Young men aren’t mindless sex-obsessed creatures. Contrary to what popular culture might lead us to believe, men between the ages of 15 and 35 have interests other than sports and sex. What’s more, many feel confined by these stereotypes and would like to act differently. However, that’s when they hit a ‘sexual glass ceiling’. Any guy interested in pursuing a meaningful relationship with a woman and refusing to simply objectify her is viewed as lacking manliness. Young men who do not focus on hook-ups are often labelled and judged. Boys who openly express interest in females as more than sex objects are still commonly called unmanly, and heaven forbid, girly, or – as an extension – gay.

Here are a couple of fairly uncontroversial statements to ponder: (1) human sexuality is complex and (2) men and boys are human. It would follow that all men and their desires can’t be reduced to ‘they just want one thing’. It’s really pretty obvious once you think about it. There are women who are all about sex with no strings attached (turning to popular culture, Samantha from Sex in the City has become a bit of an icon) and men who have no interest in a series of one-night stands (Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill is one example). I’m certain we all know people like this, so there’s actually no need to draw on fictional characters. There would be even less need to do so if sexuality wasn’t so heavily policed and so intensely judged. Men who are so inclined should be allowed to be open about wanting relationships at a young age without being labelled losers who are wasting their youth. And on the flip side, women who want to have casual sex with men on a first date (or even without a date) shouldn’t be called easy, bad, slutty, or a host of other derogatory terms. 

It all really boils down to one thing: the fact that most men and women want to avoid loneliness. However, at an early age we are socialized (by a heteronormative culture) to react and interpret our need for companionship in very gendered ways: women are socialized to expect being wooed and to focus on their feelings while men are told to pursue women with the end goal being getting them into bed. Changing the framework for thinking about adult relationships can take years. It would be to everybody’s benefit if kids today weren’t socialized to into believing the same tired narratives about men and women and sex. It’s time to allow for a broader definition of sexuality that is defined by individuals.

Maria M. Pawlowska is healthcare analyst with a passion for reproductive health and gender issues. Her articles on different aspects of reproductive and women’s rights have been published by The Maternal Health Task Force, RH Reality Check, HealthyPolicies, The European Pro-Choice Network, and The Good Men Project among others. Maria currently lives in London with her husband. You can reach her at: m.pawlowska@gatesscholar.org. Follow her on Twitter @MariaPawlowska.

Photo credit Picture Perfect Pose/Flickr

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