Men are tackling some tough sexual issues. Issues like male sexuality and sex addiction. For decades there have been men who were for gender equality, against violence and against sex role injustice. But now men’s liberation seems to be showing strength in the sexualarena. There are currently a number of male-run websites exploring the myths around “male supremacist sexuality,” and taking a hard look at porn addiction as well.
In what follows I’ll give a few examples of what I’ve recently come across where male-run websites are challenging what they see as an outdated idea of male sexuality based on objectification and domination.
- From the website xyonline.net – title: “Men, Masculinities and Gender Politics”
“Porn makes sexism sexy: it makes domination, hierarchy, violence and hate feel like sex. Sexism is eroticized. Pornography is also one of the main enforcers of homophobia.”
- From the website zeromacho.eu – title: “Des Hommes Contre La Prostitution”
“Paying for access to the most-private parts of the body of a person who feels no desire has nothing to do with a business contract based on freedom and equality. In those circumstances, freedom is an illusion and equality is trampled.”
- From the website menagpro.org – title: “Men Against Prostitution”
“Using prostitutes is not a normal masculine behaviour. In US and most European countries only between 10 – 15% of the grown up male population have ever visited a prostitute. Meaning that less than 85% of all men have never payed a woman for sex. Out of those who have, 95% have done it only once or twice. In fact less than 1 percent of the male population can be regarded as returning prostitution customers.”
- From one of the biggest sites, goodmenproject.com
“So why do men have such a difficult time with intimacy? The answer is that most men are taught from an early age to be competitive, that feelings are a sign of weakness and to avoid vulnerability and dependency at all costs…Guys today are neither the mindless, sex-obsessed buffoons nor the stoic automatons our culture so often makes them out to be. Our community is smart, compassionate, curious, and open-minded; they strive to be good fathers and husbands, citizens and friends, to lead by example at home and in the workplace, and to understand their role in a changing world.”
- And from feedtherightwolf.org, a site dedicated to information about porn addiction recovery
“I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do with your life. But I think that techniques that I used to stop porn addiction could be used to make lasting change in all areas of our lives. In the following article I share my struggles with pornography….”
Gender role progress is steady; sex and porn are going the opposite way
Since the women’s movement in the 60’s and 70’s, the availability of birth control, and the fact that it finally became all but impossible to support a family on one income, women have begun working alongside men in all walks of life. As women’s roles changed, it seems inevitable that men would be prompted to reexamine their idea of the male role.
And yet, there is a proliferation of extreme sexual content and a growing appetite for it across media, including gaming, music videos and particularly internet pornography, which all feeds into obsessive cybersex and sex addiction.
Many men are open to the idea of learning to relate sexually in a healthier way, i.e. “hot sex is consensual sex.” But this “movement” exists along side a pornography and cybersex industry incorporating fantasy scenarios of eroticized domination, power and humiliation of every conceivable kind.
The cyber-charged explosion in sexual content is like a ten foot tall two-year-old on the rampage; the evolution of our sexuality seems slow and halting by comparison. Congrats to the men who are weighing in on this.
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