The Uncelebrated Beauty of Men’s Sexuality
By S. HiteFrom the May 15, 2009 issue | Posted in Culture | Email this article
Ironically, pornography seems friendly to men — more than to women — but its underlying message makes fun of men. Subliminally, it tells men that their sexual expression is ridiculous, base, insensitive, even grotesque. Visually it frequently makes men look ugly and coarse, foolish and unappealing.
Who hasn’t seen porno images? They’re all around us, in magazines, on the internet and even in fine art. The makers and distributors of the images must believe men like them, that they are generally making “what men like,” because they market it to men, and the industry is growing. Although few women buy porno, most industry spokespersons claim that “the number of women is increasing”; any gain they refer to is nominal.
Do most men really like pornography? Do they find it laughable or do they think to themselves: I wish I could be like him, lucky guy?
It’s difficult to know whether men like the way they are portrayed in porno. If you’re male, you’re raised with the idea that if you find something revolting, you must look it straight in the eye and say: “Wow! I like it! I’m bad!” Boys are not supposed to shy away from vulgar things; doing that makes them “girlish.” Therefore, the more disgusting a pornographic visual is, the more a “real man” should not show disgust. But, privately, do most men really think they are “like that,” or do they experience their sexuality as more subtle, more diverse, possibly more erotic and even spiritual? Of course, not all men look at porno, so why is it generally considered for men? Is it because women supposedly don’t need to jerk off? Or because the material puts men on top as “the winners,” denigrating women as “the losers”?
In porno, there is a subliminal text. Men are almost always presented as predators with erections, almost as rapists. One of the unspoken clichés of porno is that the man must show no feelings, but follow a strictly physical sexual scenario.
Porno portrays men having pleasure focused on erection and ejaculation, rarely seeking eroticism, or other purely sensual activity, for its own sake. And porno rarely presents men in love or sexually active in a non-focused way. It does not show men seeking full-length body contact or needing to hold another person and be held.
BEYOND BIOLOGY
Sexual exuberance, desire, elation, love not satisfied by orgasm, fantasy — these states are about something other than a biological drive to reproduce the species, the “male sex drive” that in pornography is central to sex. Today, male sex drive as a concept has taken on a mystical ring. During the late 20th century this term was used so often that it became “unquestionable truth” and is now assumed to be biological.
But is it? Logically, if men supposedly have a biological drive to “thrust,” then shouldn’t women have a complementary reverse “drive” to open? Or is the entire idea of “sex drive” a fraudulent ideological category masquerading as scientific fact? What about the other sexual states that men experience, which are not seen in porno? Are men as mechanical and aggressive by nature as they are depicted? Society has tried to insist that a real man should “get hard” at will, whenever appropriate, meaning in a private situation with a reproductively aged female, but it is impossible to will an erection into being.
In truth, the penis is a delicate part of the male being, responding with exquisite sensitivity to every nuance of emotion a man can feel. Erections come and go in men, during sex and during sleep. Most men say they seek desire, not the mechanical means of orgasm or creating erection. Desire and arousal are the pleasures that spread through the body; orgasm, after all, can be attained alone during masturbation. The beauty of male sexuality is not so much about erection. It is about all the gestures and subtle meaningful body movements, including the ups and downs of erection — tumescence and non-tumescence, de-tumescence and re-tumescence — ways in which the body speaks.
These movements represent a man’s beauty and personality and are very erotic. Pornography as we know it does not represent that diversity of expression. It often pretends to be avant-garde by being shocking, passing itself off as incredibly open when compared to the old value system of prudery. But it is not revolutionary. Such images do not address a more valuable and interesting view of who men are sexually.
What is male sexuality? Why is it so closely identified with intercourse in a reproductive scenario?
The answer involves understanding centuries of enforcement of the idea of sex as an animalistic physical desire to be controlled by putting it into a reproductive context within marriage. Yet this ideology contained the seeds of its own destruction by furthering the idea that men’s sexuality can only be freely experienced outside the family.
THE MIND-BODY SPLIT
In my research, it seems that the split between “body” and “mind” or “soul” — as pornography depicts — is the crux of the problem men experience, not whether or not they are in a reproductive relationship. The definition of sex created to go with our social order and family structure, originating about 3,000 years ago, has been focused on the reproductive act. This detracts from other activities because we have evolved from a culture that wanted to increase reproduction to one in which most of us use birth control. Men’s sexual nature is “polymorphous-perverse,” as a New York Times book review characterized the picture of men that emerges from The Hite Report on Male Sexuality.
Men in my research show great diversity. Take, for example, masturbation. This can allow a man to express his sexuality without a focus on reproduction or coitus. As one man puts it, “I have more or less two sex lives, one with my wife and one with myself.”
Men say they enjoy masturbation because they can fantasize about whatever they want and there is no pressure on them to perform. During masturbation, in my research, men stimulate themselves in many more places than they do when with a partner.
And this one: Anal stimulation. In my research, many men express a hidden desire to be caressed and “penetrated” — possibly by a finger — anally, since just inside the anus in men there is proximity to the prostate, which when stimulated can result in orgasm. However, most men do not explore the various feelings they wish to express during sex with a partner, especially a female partner, but instead try to follow the reproductive scenario depicted in most pornography. Our sexual acts have been channeled into too limited a form of expression; sex could be more interesting if it was not always focused on one scenario: “foreplay” followed by “penetration,” the high point being fucking, coitus or “the act.” The appearance of Viagra and the fear of HIV have increased rather than decreased the focus on erection. For example, many men are nervous about having to put on a condom and consequently losing their erection or their sexual desire. Not only are men asked to use condoms, they are expected to provide clitoral stimulation to orgasm in many cases.
But many men cut short foreplay because they are afraid they may lose the erection which they have been taught is necessary to enjoy sex and which would be “shameful” to lose. More men could reach much higher peaks of feeling and arousal if they did not feel anxious about how they should behave sexually.
WHAT’S BAD FOR THE GOOSE…
How do men feel about how they are depicted as treating women in pornography and about the violence to women shown in most pornography?
Most men feel perplexed, and wonder why this can excite them. Although pornography frequently denigrates women — showing women beaten, black and blue, and liking it — it also denigrates men. It cheapens and brutalizes their sensibilities, destroying their possibility of personal sexual discovery, blocking their power to express themselves with others and implanting clichés such as “a real man is the one with the biggest, hardest erection.” Pornography’s implication that men are beasts whose underlying unchangeable natures make them likely to be violent to women is misleading and dangerous. Porno’s messages bisect men psychologically, showing sexuality as separate from emotion and the soul. This can affect men in a very negative way, causing them to think that they are two people — the sexual animal and the thinking, spiritual individual. Pornography is above all propaganda — an ideological construct used to direct men toward a certain style of reproductive sexual activity, to tell them the kind of attitude they should have towards sex and women. Women in pornography serve the basic purpose of legitimizing the male sexual expression.
In fact, pornography presents the most negative outdated versions of who men are to the rest of the world. If we change our basic views of what sex is, then we will contribute to a better world, a new world.
Dr. S. Hite, visiting professor of gender and culture at Nihon University in Japan, has lectured at universities around the world including the Sorbonne, Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics. Dr. Hite is the author of 12 books, including the groundbreaking, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which has sold more than 48 million copies, and The Hite Reader (Seven Stories Press, 2006).
16 Responses to “The Uncelebrated Beauty of Men’s Sexuality”
May 18th, 2009 at 4:43 am
I thought there was a lot of helpful truth in this article about the reductionist view of male sexuality in pornography. This may be well established in some quarters, but I think it bears restating, certainly in view of some of the confusion about men’s sexuality (from men and women) I see in my consulting room, and the now medicalized obsession with needing to be able to obtain and maintain a firm erection at all times.
However, like Dr Klein, I think Dr Hite does herself no favours by overstating her case. What evidence is there that MOST pornography depicts violence towards women? The suggestion that most men look at pornography depicting “women beaten, black and blue, and liking it” only seems to limit the effectiveness of the article’s argument, in my view.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
It feels odd do disagree with Marty Klein but while I agree some of the information about men Hite draws from is decades old (I recognize some of it from her own early work) I wouldn’t say it’s well-distributed. And certainly very little of it has percolated into porn.
Or, more specifically, in to the way *hetero men* are depicted in hetero porn. Which is what I think Hite brings to the conversation.
I agree it’s not that we’re presented quite as rapists or that all porn with men in it is violent. It’s that we’re not really that much *there* in them *except* for erections and intercourse. There’s very little conversation with men in porn (probably ok since dialogue in porn isn’t really the point) but men also make surprisingly little *noise.* This is fine, I guess, if you assume (as pornographers seem to) that 99% of their audience is hetero men for whom men in porn are only foils or proxies for the viewers. And I’m pretty sure pornographers say they do it that way because straight men become anxious if there’s too much erotic focus on men.
But just a quick skim of the top few porn-upload sites (youporn, redtube, etc.) from a minute or two ago it’s easy to see how Hite, and millions of other viewers (especially non-hetero-male viewers) could get the impression that men are presented in ways that are highly depersonalized, very respectful, aren’t very attentive, aren’t very multi-dimensional, and, especially, aren’t necessarily most interesting to straight women viewers.
I’m sure Hite would say that women aren’t presented with a whole lot of sophistication or dimensionality either… had that been the focus of her column. But that’s well-covered ground anyway. Instead she’s inquiring into the presentation of men in porn and asking what I think are some excellent opening questions.
For the record, a few years ago on my blog I started experimenting with representations of hetero men as primary objects of desire and… even though I’m exactly *not* porn-star material and even though I mostly tried to present myself in non-porn-star contexts the reception was huge enough that I was voted the sexiest male blogger that year. Not, sorry to say, that there’s a lot of competition in that category.
Point being that even if there’s nothing wrong with the way men are typically (meaning eighty plus percent of the time) there’s something missing that what’s presented should represent such a narrow, narrow range of men’s possible erotic *heterosexual* experience.
One last thing considering how prickly Hite tended to be about men in her original Hite Reports I’m thrilled with her new, much more sympathetic approach. Men *are* stinted. The presentations of men in porn (especially in the face of virtually non-existent comprehensive sex education) really are limited and non-informative. And if we’re going to be heterosexual (certainly my preference) it would be nice if the middle of the bell-curve of porn offered a wider range of activities that don’t just *also* feel good but, often, feel better than what men do in porn… and that tend to feel better for our partners as well.
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Oh yeah. I don’t now why I imagine that opinion authors never read comments but Shere Hite, if you’re reading this thanks for everything! When I was much younger I read both your reports cover to cover. I didn’t always like what I read but I learned a heck of a lot — about what my partners wanted but also about what I might enjoy if I was willing to try it. And if I don’t agree 100% with your approach in this column I really appreciate the direction you’re taking the conversation. So thanks again for that.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Many years ago I challenged Marty Klein’s defense of child porn. Now, I must question his interest in fantasy. My research on “the new intercourse” (the Coital Alignment Technique) resulted in perfect male-female harmony with INTERCOURSE — simultaneous orgasm “almost always” or “often.” The need to coordinate sexual movement puts men and women into the HERE and NOW. The Helen Kaplan sex therapist training group tested the CAT technique and noted that it “diminished the tendency to fantasize.” The CAT was just discussed on Oprah. It has been included in the commemorative update of THE JOY of SEX. The world is changing, as we speak.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am
Dr Hite is totally 1000% wrong about men and porno!
Straight male porn is a type of science fiction for men - imagining a world where women like sex as much as men do, and are as openly overtly sexual as men are. We know it’s fantasy - and that’s why we like it! Because we know it’s so different from the real world, where most women hate sex - and where female sexophobia has a rationing effect, leaving most straight men chronically sex starved - ESPECIALLY the men in long term committed relationships.
Porn is also a blessing for the guys who don’t have a partner, allowing them a sexual outlet - and for all straight men, porn gives us a sexual outlet free from female control - we can be sexual whenever and wherever we want, on male terms, without having to submit to female limits.
THAT is what porn is about!
Along with strip clubs and prostitution, porn grants men the freedom to be sexual and masculine without apology and without submission to female sex rationing!
May 21st, 2009 at 6:14 am
“imagining a world where women like sex as much as men do”?
I’ve not noticed “sex rationing” being a particular problem. In fact, most of my girlfriends have been hornier than I have. Perhaps women don’t like having sex with *you*? Have you tried not being sexist and seeing if that makes you more attractive to women?
May 21st, 2009 at 8:30 am
Gregory Butler makes interesting comments and to flag these as “sexist” as McDuff does is an infantile response. Whilst he could have put things less aggressively, he makes a good point that women are socialised to view sex as something they give to men rather than a shared pursuit. This disempowers both men and women. Not only are the men “sex starved” but so are the women.
It’s an interesting phenomena in a lot of porn. The woman is depicted as the object of desire whilst the man is little more than an animated dildo. It means that a lot of porn fails to stimulate women - not because they find sexual imagery unappealing, but because conventional heterosexual porn barely portrays men at all. Perhaps this explains why a lot of gay porn is actually purchase by women.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
McDuff,
We’re not talking about you personal life here.
Assuming you’re even telling the truth - there is a longstanding American male culture of braggartism, ESPECIALLY when it comes to matters of sex.
What I’m talking about is another longstanding American custom - the systematic conditioning of women to repress their sexuality and to view their sexuality as something which can only be expressed with a long term committed partner (and even then, the sex has to be rationed out).
This custom exists side-by-side with the systematic social conditioning of American men to be hypersexual, and to see themselves as failures if they do not have very frequent sex.
It’s this social disconnect that creates horrible crimes like domestic violence and rape - and it is also the reason why America has so much pornography.
In a better world, most women would be as sexually free and aggressive as most men are.
And you - and every other man out there - knows as well as I do that THIS IS NOT THE CASE IN OUR COUNTRY TODAY.
That’s why men need porn, and strip clubs, and prostitutes, to make up for that sex gap.
That’s not ’sexism’ that’s telling the truth as it is.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Gregory Butler, “the real world, where most women hate sex”????? I agree with McDuff- incredible sexist. Really, the women you know hate sex? I’ve never heard a man, even a sheltered conservative who doesn’t get out much, say such a thing. You seem to have a thinly veiled hatred of women, and feel angry that they’ve been “holding out on you”. “…without submission to female sex rationing!”? What planet are you on. You sound like the kind of guy who rapes out of anger that women are withholding something from him that he has a right to. If you feel deprived, try working on your sexism and anger towards women. Might make you more attractive.
May 21st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Marie Sommers,
Like I said to McDuff, this is not about people’s personal lives.
This is about social trends.
Now, maybe you are among the minority of women who actually like sex - but I’m sure you know as well as I do that many women do not - if you don’t believe me, just go to any beauty salon, or laundromat, or any female oriented blog on the net, and just ask the women there about how they feel about sex.
Or, ask married men about their sex lives.
Please do not try and deny the fact that many married women give up on sex as soon as they’ve had the desired number of children.
And do not ignore the mute testimony of the very existence of pornography, strip clubs and prostitution - if the majority of men were sexually satisfied, they wouldn’t have to pay for sexual satisfaction.
Since most men aren’t - that’s why we have to rely on commercial sex.
Those are cold hard facts.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Gregory - there’s absolutely no evidence that only a “minority of women actually enjoy sex”.
It presupposes that sexuality is purely biological. Our desires MAY be but our behaviour definitely is not.
What we know is that some - but not all - women view sex as being rewarding only when it is ‘emotionally integrated’. This is a cultural and not a biological phenomenon.
Anthropologists will confirm that it is by no means universal - even a cursory examination of sex roles in other cultures or ages will confirm this.
Recent research into female sex tourism in the Dominican Republic and Tunisia is interesting. The female clients tend to present the nature of the transaction as an emotional and not a sexual pursuit. However, it’s abundantly clear that physical intimacy and sex with much younger men is a vital element for their satisfaction.
In a bizarre reversal of the normal representation of prostitution, the media portray the male sex worker as predatory and the female client as their prey. However, many of the men involved have both male and female clients. They often say they find the female clients more demanding as they not only have to simulate physical arousal but also pretend to love them. They want to “rent their body but also their soul”. In contrast, their male clients are far less demanding as they are able to admit to the physical element of the transaction.
Contrary to what you say, it is “cold hard fact” that both men and women can enjoy sex on a physical as well as an emotional level. However, men and women are conditioned to view sex in different ways. It wasn’t so long ago when women were not expected to enjoy sex at all. They were famously instructed to “lie back and think of england”.
Society now allows women to be sexual beings but only when it is integrated into their emotions. - they are allowed to ‘make love’. In contrast, men are required to divorce sex from emotion and regarded as less masculine if they cannot.
I would suggest that both men and women suffer as a result of these limited sex roles. Commercialised sex teaches men that women have value sexually and that they do not. Would you say that is good for their psychological wellbeing?
Unlike seperatist feminists, I’m no advocate for the repression of commercial sex - it is futile and merely maintains the status quo. I see the sex industry in its current form, as a product of the damaging sex roles predominant in our broken society. The solution is a world in which both men and women can enjoy sex and pleasure in any way they freely choose, without the restrictive baggage.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
It’s easier to find porn online than nudes in photographs. I find the comments interesting. I couldn’t remember S. Hite’s first name spelling, until a comment noted Shere. Why isn’t it used in her byline?
Generalizations about what is and who feels what are probably inaccurate. In the short time I have been online, I have been surprised by the removal of pubic hair from women and some men in videos, photos. I had heard of it for several years, but had not seen it. My reaction is that it makes women look like pre-pubescent girls. There is a difference between porn made by women for women and other porn. Finally, it is sad that people have been snarky (a word I learned online) in comments to one another.
May 25th, 2009 at 1:51 am
“Please do not try and deny the fact that many married women give up on sex as soon as they’ve had the desired number of children.”
What! Really? Why?
I honestly didn’t know that. i know some women don’t enjoy sex, but the idea that ‘most’ of them stop as soon as they can, wow, thats scary. I don’t know any women like this at all, I know some get ’sterilised’ once they’ve had the desired number of children, but never stopped sex.
it would be kindof shooting yourself in the foot.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:08 pm
alot of indy’s weren’t born when the “porn wars” raged so long ago among feminists/leftoids and anarchists- me too.
the pro-sexers won.
everything said above has been said before. it’s too bad younger people may have to be dragged thru this bible-thumping crap.
think twice about starting the war again ‘cuz you’ll lose- ya can’t beat desire and the truth- ever.
hite’s crackpot delusion that “porn = violence” has been ripped to shreds as 99.9% is just nudity and sex- AND representational.
none of my tons of porn has violence or women being degraded.
always remember that sex and sexism are 2 different thangs- right?
once i asked an anti-porn women if she thought 2 men in a foto in a mag having sex was violence. she not only said yes but that “i was her killer!” i kid yee not!!
i could go on forever but it’s too sad and indy’s a drag.
but i gotta add this laugh-riot;
hite said “it is impossible to will an erection into being.”
really (?!) ms. hite…
goodbye sex-kgb.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:04 pm
if ya like doin it ya might like lookin at it
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Male sexuality is a predatory, biological reality, the evolutionary serpents tail that has nothing to do with either beauty or Love. It does not deserve to be celebrated, but judged for wht it is, a self deception among men and a self deception for those women who accept this as anything to do with a bond of the heart. As William Shakespeare wrote in his poem Venus and Adonis:
Call it not love for Love to heaven is fled
Since sweating lust on earth usurped his name.
Under whose simple semblance man has fed,
upon fresh beauty blotting it with blame,
which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves
as caterpillars do the tender leaves.
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
while lusts effect is tempest after sun.
Love’s gentle spring doth alway fresh remain,
lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies,
Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:07 am
Half of this article is 30-year-old conventional wisdom, while the other half is inaccurate and wild assertion. If we didn’t know it was Hite, we’d assume it was from Bill O’Reilly or some anti-porn activist. Examples:
* “the violence to women shown in most pornography”
* “Men are almost always presented…almost as rapists.”
* “If you’re male, you’re raised with the idea that if you find something revolting, you must look it straight in the eye and say: “Wow! I like it! I’m bad!””
Either Hite has watched very little pornography, or she hasn’t listened to any men lately. In any case, thinking that porn causes men to valorize intercourse or erections is plain silly.
Hite is known to pride herself on her scientific achievements. This article would benefit from a dozen facts; even one single fact would be an improvement.
Finally, Hite should look at lesbian and gay male porn. She’ll see the same tropes–limited caressing, few tender words. How would she explain that? Perhaps she’s never heard of fantasy.