Before going on with some of my observations and theories regarding male sexuality I think it is important to point out the obvious. In the essay regarding asymmetrical sex drives I’m focusing on the experience of rejection as a response to most women’s relatively low sex drive. I fully realize that there are many other possible emotional responses to the difference in intensity of the biological imperative in men and women. Yet, in these essays I’m focusing on an emotional response which I think is most common in adolescent boys in modern America and which helps explain many of the apparent emotional deficits feminists have been quick to point out in their male counterparts.
In the essay on men feeling inessential and needing to prove themselves and find meaning in life, I once again realize that this is only one possible reaction. Just as two children may respond very different to the same parenting strategy, likewise two societies may respond very differently to a social situation. In fact, there is much anthropological evidence to this fact in modern field work with various cultures. In some societies men react to their feelings of being inessential by either being abusive and extremely dominating of women. Other societies revere women and make them into religious and spiritual icons. While men in other societies find meaning by emulating women or find alternative symbolic ways of “giving birth”, or of making male gods responsible for creating the universe and human kind.
While I will stay focused on male sexuality in our modern society I will try not to stay blind to other societies and other possible reactions to gender differences in sexual desire and personality.
Jim Guido