GuidoWorld

Ironic Gender Tendency

October 9, 2007 on 10:20 pm | In General |

Before I get to the post I had promised to write a couple of blogs back dealing with sexual appetites and monogamous relationships, I thought I’d take a few moments to expand on an idea tacitly expressed in the last post. That would be that although females have a tendency to focus on beauty, they often don’t emphasize this when it comes to sexual partners.

Often times one finds woman choosing or actively pursuing sexual relationships with men for other qualities than beauty. While men often blatantly seek sex with beautiful or voluptuous women, they seldom make celebrity a major decider. Women, on the other hand, often seem to gravitate towards men who are famous, wealthy and successful regardless of their physical beauty. While the musicians, actors and athletes who find themselves surrounded by groupies are often viewed as handsome hunks, there are just as many who have groupies despite not being particularly attractive.

Wealthy professional men and celebrities who border on the hideous can often find themselves eager female sexual companionship while poor or common men with firm bodies and relatively handsome faces will find sexual companions a rather scarce commodity.

This again is perplexing for the average man who hears women pepper each and every conversation they have with constant references to the beauty of this person or that thing. If a woman’s world is so dominated with the concept of beauty than why do they not find many men beautiful and why do they than seek sex with men who they often acknowledge not being particularly handsome?

Anyway this is just an observation that came to my mind during the last post.

I so want to reiterate a few things about these observations regarding male sexuality and gender differences covered in these posts. First, they are obviously tendencies and are not intended to suggest that every male or female fits these qualities to a tee. Second, all of the observations I’m putting forward are based on heterosexual males and females. This is done to one, keep things simple, and two because this is the sexual world I live in. Though I have many gay and lesbian friends it is not an emotional and sexual  world I can understand well enough to provide any insights.

This brings us to a thin line I seem to be walking in these posts exploring male sexuality and its impact on heterosexual relationships. On one level I’m starting from my own personal sexual world and experiences and using them to form some basic observations of human relationships. I’m then using conversations with others and reading of sexual literature to help validate and expand these theories.

I’m hoping to base my observations on real life experience, without doing some sordid tell all diary. I’m trying to use my sexual life as a litmus test and reference point so that I don’t stray too far from the real and just spout forth theory after theory.

I also realize I’m making a lot of generalities which some may find offensive and others will react to as being too stereotypic.  Yet, how can  one talk about  gender without  being broad and judgmental? Of course there are going to be overstatements and inaccuracies. Yet, tending to the hundreds of exceptions in every general tendency would water down the power of the observations and one would end up saying nothing.

It is absurd to think that all of humanity can be broken down into just two categories, or a thousand for that matter. Yet, I think looking at some major tendencies of the genders can be very instructive and potentially have a great impact on improving the quality of life for many of us.

The goal of exploring and discussing male sexuality is to help us create reasonable expectations of men and to understand the hurdles their sexuality poses for their ability to find happiness and successfully exist in intimate relationships with others.

One of my working hypotheses is that the structure of our society is often blind to and unnecessarily negative regarding male sexuality. The result of this is that many men are often emotionally damaged and ill prepared to flourish in a monogamous intimate relationship.

The solution to this seems to be in engaging in a frank discussion of male sexuality and then in some tweaking in the way we structure and view relationships. For those of you who are upset at my focusing so much energy on sexual behavior and thereby missing the other vital aspects of healthy and successful interpersonal relationships I ask you to be patient.

The male sex drive is very strong and deserves to be fully appreciated and respected before we move on. The biological imperative is not everything, but it is central and important. A rewarding monogamous relationship involves much more than sexual gratification, but it appears to me that the visceral aspect of the male sex drive usually gets demonized and undervalued. I’m attempting to give the male sex drive its primal role and importance before integrating it into a balanced healthy relationship.

Jim Guido