GuidoWorld

Asymmetric Sex Drives

August 20, 2007 on 6:45 pm | In General | No Comments

If you were to line up all the adults on the planet by sexual interest and desired frequency to engage in sexual intercourse it would be highly gender biased. The top half demonstrating elevated sexual interest would be dominated by males and the bottom half with a relatively low sex drive would be dominated by women.

This tendency for the male sex drive to be predominant in the species is found throughout the animal kingdom. Yet, despite this obvious fact, most adolescent boys are led to believe that the sexual desire and interest of girls is very similar to their own. Yet, they conclude, girls for the most part are just better at managing their sex drive.

Other than human beings it is rare to find interspecies violence or murder. The bulk of violence and murder amongst members of the same species almost always involve males and almost always involve mating issues. In the animal kingdom interspecies fights occur for two reasons to defend one’s territory and to acquire a female in heat. If one looks close enough the battles over territorial rights often involve mating privileges and rights.

While most animals have limited mating seasons, the human species is a sexual being all year round. In most of the animal world the male sex drive culminates during mating season and seems to subside during the remainder of the year. In humans, there is no off season, and the male sex drive is a relatively constant force. This means that in humans the male is rutting the bulk of his adult life. It is not unusual for men to find their sex drive wane as they get older, but many men are preoccupied with sexual desire for decades.

A number of studies have indicated that adolescent and young adult males think about sex every minute of every waking hour. This is in itself amazing, but sex also plays a dominating role in the dreams of males. Not many would argue that the sex drive dominates the typical life of male human beings.

With this in mind it is odd how little we talk about the role the male sex drive plays in the emotional and intellectual development of males. I’ll talk a little about how my sex drive affected my emotional development and then based on this I’ll offer a couple of theories on men in general.

The first thing I should say is that though I had serious doubts that women desired sex as much as I did, I still interacted with and reacted to females as if they had a similar sex drive as myself. This view was reinforced by the unanimity by which my girl friends told me that they wanted “it” too, but………

I think it’s safe to say that from the age of 13 till at least 19 I was the typical adolescent boy whose life revolved around the desire to have sex. This meant that I also figured that this was also the number one issue for all the girls I knew. The fact that all of my conversations with girlfriends and girl friends revolved around the topic of relationships and sex only confirmed this suspicion.

What this meant is that every social interaction I had with females was rife with sexual meaning. Every word, every gesture held with in it a sexual victory or defeat. If a girl smiled at me, it was a signal to proceed a head. A laugh was almost as good as the girl saying I want you now. If she flirted or played with her hair, it was a sign that she was losing the battle of sexual restraint and that she soon would be as willing as I to get this relationship sexualized.

The fact that every social moment was either a sexual victory or defeat meant that the potential for rejection was pervasive. Sexual rejection was the most pervasive experience of my adolescence. I, and I believe most male adolescents do not separate sexual rejection from a rejection of their entire self. Therefore hardly a minute goes by in the life of an adolescent boy in which he doesn’t feel rejected of disliked.

Women often complain that men are emotionally unavailable, crippled or distant. I think it is hard for men to stay emotionally invested after a number of years of perpetual rejection. If women want sex as much or near as much as men do, then personal rejection is the only logical conclusion to the fact that we aren’t having sex multiple times each day during our adolescence.

I’m not quite sure how I survived my adolescence without becoming an emotional invalid or becoming detached and cruel. Maybe I had a high pain threshold or didn’t think I deserved better than what I had. Maybe my doubts about the truth of female sexual interest helped me not take it too personally. Maybe I was able to dwell on my successes, or maybe I was just so hardwired to be emotional and intimate that nothing could deter me.

Whatever the reason is that I came out the other end of adolescence relatively open and emotionally healthy, I fully understand how it is possible that most men’s emotional self-esteem never got out alive.

This brings us to another of the great gender conflicts and that is the area of cuddling. Many of my early girlfriends thought that we should be content with cuddling and not need to have sex. They standardly felt that my sexual desire was a sign that I didn’t really love them, and that I could only prove my love by being content just holding them.

Even the girlfriends who I had sexual intercourse with would routinely complain about my reluctance to just hold them, and view that as an indication of my only wanting them for sex.

These attitudes and their expectations demonstrated how poorly females understand the biological imperative involved in the male sex drive. The biological imperative is to have sexual intercourse, and that imperative may arise numerous times throughout the day. In other words a males sexual urges may be sated and satisfied for a brief time before the biological imperative reasserts itself.

Now as I get older I find it easier to spend an increased amount of time cuddling, yet in my youth one had to earn that time with me by a considerable amount of sexual activity. Asking me to cuddle before my sex drive was sated was not an easy task, and did not solidify my feelings of attachment.

This again shows the significant difference in sex drive between the genders. Asking a adolescent male to cuddle instead of having sexual intercourse is tantamount to asking a runner who completed a marathon to just put their hand in the water, or of a starving person to just sit back and smell the food, or just touch it and put it in their mouth but not to eat it.

This is not to say that young men or men in general are not capable of enjoying sensual moments or just view it as foreplay, but it is to point out a need to be sensitive to the male needs in terms of the sexual imperative. Even at my sexual peak I was able to enjoy holding and lying with my partner, but first I needed to be sexually sated. Forcing me to cuddle without having sex was something I could do on occasion, but was not something I could do consistently without feeling frustrated and undesirable.

The themes began here will be addressed again in the following posts.

I will end with the lyrics to one of my songs which deals with this sexual dynamic and the destructive effects it can have on a relationship.

Just Talking

Brad was a man with mighty big plans that never got off the ground
He wanted love more than anything but ended up fooling around…..just chasing tail
She’s just talking……..Shut your mouth and open your mind

He thought she smiled at him
She wore that sweater again
She had her friends talk to him
The next day at school she didn’t even look at him

All those years he felt rejected, humiliated and confused
Took a toll on his emotions, his true feelings he withdrew……felt like a tool

She’s just talking

Paints her face, eggs him on
Giggles at his jokes and then flirts with Ron
Telephones but says goodbye
She gets his heart then screws his mind

By the time he got to college he gave up being real
He found he got more action when he played to seal the deal

Now he’s just talking……..shut your mouth and open your mind

Got them eating out of his hand, such a stud, plays to his fans
With a buzz on he seems like the man, so romantic says I love you on demand
Whispers I love you as he takes her hand

Got a job, got a wife, tried to settle down
After the birth of their first child her sex drive just wore down……life’s her child

She says he doesn’t share, she says he doesn’t care, complains he’s never there
…….soon they have an affair

She keeps talking he keeps walking …..further away

Any disclosure she attacks with shame, any tenderness she treats as a game

When he offers solution she says he doesn’t listen
When he says what he needs, she asks for more distance…..is it just resistance?

She’s just talking, he keeps walking
She keeps talking, he’s just walking away

Jim Guido

PS To listen to Just Talking go to Priorities Album

Male Sexuality

August 10, 2007 on 6:58 pm | In General | No Comments

Now that I’ve written a good amount on capitalism and our free market economy I thought I’d shift gears and talk on an entirely different topic. I have started a basic outline for a book on male sexuality, and I’ll write a bit on some of the topics the book plans to cover.

In many ways these posts will be as much about gender differences as male sexuality. Yet, in the long run I feel a practical discussion regarding male sexuality is really needed in our society. The dialogue regarding human sexuality has been dominated by feminist literature which rightfully has focused on feminine rather masculine sexuality.

The women’s movement has done much to enlighten and inform woman about their sexual life cycle, and its many stages. Feminists have dispelled many myths regarding female sexuality while bringing to light many issues which were previously ignored or hidden.

Male sexuality, however, has remained rather bound in myth and hidden. While most modern woman now openly discuss everything from their menstrual cycle to their g-spot and clitoris, men have remained fairly mute on their sex drive and sexuality.

In many families a young woman’s first menstrual cycle is recognized and cherished as a right of passage. Often times the budding of womanhood is celebrated with gift giving and hugs, or at least with supportive conversation. There are many families in which this celebration is held along gender lines leaving the men uncomfortable and out of the loop. Yes, and there are many families who do not recognize puberty and react to the first menstrual cycle with shame and secretiveness.

While many societies have ceremonies recognizing a boy’s right of passage into manhood our society does little to mark the passage. Most rights of passage have little to due with the biology of puberty but instead challenge a boy to be a man in a very task and role oriented manner. Initiates often have to prove themselves as a hunter or warrior, or endure some excruciating pain in order to be considered a man.

I’m not aware of any society that celebrates a young man’s first wet dream or his ability to have an ejaculation. In our society wet dreams and ejaculations are something seldom talked about in any other way than informational/biological. Men aren’t made to feel good about their sexuality and instead are quickly instructed to curb their sex drive.

In general a man’s sexuality is something he is supposed to curb and overcome. Most men aren’t taught to celebrate their sexual desires, but rather to view it as a temptation at best and a weakness in general.

In the next post I plan on discussing some of the ramifications of how our society deals with and denies a boy’s blossoming sexuality.

Jim

The Debt Endgame: A Theory

August 1, 2007 on 5:51 pm | In General | No Comments

Four or five years ago I began to wonder how economic globalization would work out. I figured that the long term goal would be for people around the globe to earn similar pay for like work. In order for this to happen either the industrialized west would have to have a sharp decrease in pay or the far east and third world nations would have to enjoy a sharp increase in pay. My initial inclination was that it would be a combination of both, the east would rise while the west’s earning rate would decline. Likewise the middle class of the west would experience a decline in their standard of living while the east’s middle classes standard of living would rise.

At about the same time I felt that the rate of debt of the American consumer was getting out of hand. I wondered if this would somehow be used as an opportunity to defeat the American middle class. Since that initial thought much has happened which supports this intuition and has made it more feasible.

I began to believe that the American and European middle class were beginning to be viewed as an obstacle to a global economy. Since the trend has been for more and more money to go into fewer and fewer hands I began to look for mechanisms to be put in place to help accomplish this goal.

The feds reaction to the tech and stock market bust of 2001/2002 was to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. Low interest rates encouraged everyone to borrow the cheap money, and put it to use. Many people put the money to work in the real estate market and the housing boom began to pick up steam.

As the real estate market climbed so did consumer debt. American’s level of debt skyrocketed along with the value of their homes. With interest rates so low, it was hard to save money. Money put into money markets and bank accounts did not keep up with the rise in the cost of living (inflation). This caused people to seek higher returns with their borrowed money. Not only did real estate boom, but Americans put their money back into the stock market and it too surged.

Increasing numbers of retirees dependent on the interest and dividends from safe investments such as money markets and CD’s were finding their nest eggs insufficient. This forced many older American’s to take on more risk by increasing their exposure to the stock and real estate markets. The image I use for this is that the low interest rates were like someone shaking the brush forcing the birds to take flight. In keeping with this image I viewed these older American’s as vulnerable prey for the economically ambitious.

With interest rates at historic lows American’s lost their appetite for savings and soon for the first time since the depression the US had a negative savings rate. This trend has continued and now we’ve gone nearly two years with the US having a negative savings rate.

As the US and its citizens began to pile up debt at mind boggling levels, I began to think that maybe it was getting to the point where consumers were never going to be able to pay it back. Whether this debt situation was by accident or design the question became what does a society do when its citizens carry unserviceable debt?

The lending policies of the US, the World Bank and the IMF have often put developing nations into the same scenario that the US consumer now finds itself in. What did the US do when debtor nations became overwhelmed in debt?

The short answer is that the above agencies usually found a way to cut a deal allowing a portion or all of the debt of a developing nation to be pardoned. Usually this process involved an exchange in which debt was forgiven for ownership or assets and resources. The US government or US corporations usually became the owners of resources like oil, or cash crops such as bananas or coffee in return for a release from debt. Sometimes the debt was forgiven for military favors such as US bases on their soil, or for ownership or control of state or dominant companies to be handed over to US interests.

As early as five years ago I became convinced that the true economic leaders were looking for a way to take away the assets of the American middle class in a similar fashion. I thought that they would find a way to mire consumers in unrepayable debt and then forgive the debt in exchange for ownership of middle class assets.

I have to admit that even I thought that this was a bit far fetched. But it’s sad to say that the last five years have done much to make this a real possibility. The current real estate melt down has exposed millions of American’s to the real possibility of going bankrupt from having debt which far exceeds their means of payment.

The US is printing money at an obscene pace. The buying power of the dollar shrinks with each dollar added to the economy. It matters little if the added dollar is an actual dollar bill or is just electronically created. What is important is that the dollar is quickly losing its worth and literally becoming worthless.

In a world where money is created out of thin air and in such vast quantities real wealth must be measured in something other than dollars. I feel that ownership of tangible and abstract things is a more accurate assessment of wealth.

He who owns the land, water, trees, buildings and patents for things is truly wealthy. While the banks who own the mortgages are the real owners of the homes those with the mortgages are said to be the owners.

What if the lenders and the owners of all the assets of the American middle class offered terms to forgive the debt? What if they offered to help you pay off your debt by garnering your wages? What if they said that they would allow you to stay in your home while they took 30% of your wages to pay off your mortgage and credit card debt? What if the condition were that once you payed off your debt your pay would stay cut by 30%? How many would take this deal? How quickly would that help close the wage gap between the industrialized and emerging middle class?

What if they said they would allow you to stay in your home, if it was no longer your home? What if in exchange for the title of ownership they generously offer to forgive your debt?

As I say I entertained these thoughts a few years ago. Though they seem draconian they are appearing more and more possible. Such a scenario would accomplish the two goals I saw for modern globalization, it would continue to put more and more money into fewer and fewer hands and it would close the gap between the industrialized and emerging world’s middle classes.

I’m not saying every banker, billionaire or baron of business has or had this vision. In our competitive system of free enterprise many bankers and powerful businessmen will be relative of substantial losers in this brave new global world. Yet, if I thought of this possibility I’m sure people of ambition and economic means did also.

Some will want to define this as paranoid conspiratory thinking. I prefer to view it as good old fashioned American opportunism. It shouldn’t seem odd that an economically motivated globalist would have a vision and find the means to make that vision into a reality.

Jim Guido