the secret is that sex is terrifying for most men

 

What I learned about male desire in a sex doll factory Illustration: Lehel Kovacks/The Guardian If we look at it closely and with compassion, male desire is more complicated than most people assume it to be by Tracy Clark-Flory

Once, while visiting a virtual reality shoot, the director told me that what straight men most want from these immersive point-of-view scenes is cuddling and extended eye contact. They want connection.

In 2001, the sex therapist Rosemary Basson published a model of “responsive desire” that considers the many relational and contextual factors leading to the wish for sex, including emotional satisfaction and intimacy. Her work represents a departure from Masters and Johnson’s bedrock theory of sexual response –excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution – and challenged the concept, and ideal, of sexual desire as a spontaneous urge.

In the years since, Basson’s work has been widely interpreted as a model for women’s desire, but she never intended it that way. In fact, Ian Kerner, a psychotherapist and sexuality counselor, says it applies to men’s desire as well,

In 2016, a study published in the Journal of Sex Research surveyed straight men in long-term heterosexual relationships about what elicited their desire, and found that key factors included “feeling desired” and “intimate communication”. The experience of rejection and a “lack of emotional connection” notably decreased their interest in sexual intimacy. 

One of the study’s researchers, Sarah Hunter Murray of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, went on to publish a book that argues against the popular view that men pursue sex for pleasure alone. “Men want to have sex because they want to feel close and connected,”

He notes that many straight men fantasize about women who seem “to exist primarily to sexually service men and derive tremendous pleasure themselves from the effort to do so”. Bader argues that these fantasies arouse men not because they facilitate misogyny but because they allow men to counter pervasive beliefs, “for example, that women don’t enjoy sex, don’t enjoy pleasing men, and easily feel disappointed or hurt by men pursuing their own interests”.

He cites, for instance, “men who like to dominate in order to transcend feelings of helplessness” and men who like “to be dominated so as to not feel guilty and responsible”. Sometimes, Bader writes, men who have developed a sense of guilt toward women, “solve” this dilemma through objectifying women and divorcing sex from intimacy. 

The potential for being made a fool is a recurrent theme in well-considered writing on straight men’s sexuality. The researcher Brené Brown maintains that men learn early on that they are responsible for initiating sex and that “sexual rejection soon becomes the hallmark of masculine shame”. One of the therapists she quotes in her book, Daring Greatly, asserts, “I guess the secret is that sex is terrifying for most men.”

　男は性的快楽を求める怪物、みたいに思っている女性がいるが、実は、男性も親密な関係を望んでおり、そうした親密な関係や自分を性的な欲望の対象にしてくれるような女性に性的にそそられるのだ。女性に拒絶されることを極度に恐れており、自分では満足してくれないんじゃないか、と自信がなく、だからこそ、自分を性的に満たしてくれる女性を空想し、また、罪の意識や無力感にさいなまれ、それを克服しようとして、かえって支配的になったり、あるいは、マゾ的になって”男としての責任”を放棄したり、女性を部品化することで、女性への罪の意識から脱却を試みているのだ、と。