“Men are just naturally sexual. It’s in their genes”—or so they tell us. We’re told that “boys will be boys,” and “they simply can’t help themselves,” as if they’re prisoners to their sexual urges. Men are not only expected to need sex, but are also expected to act and speak in a sexual manner. And if they don’t act as such, these men put themselves at serious risk for being chastised by the people around them—sexuality a fundamental to manhood. To be sexually aggressive is to be masculine, to be strong, and to be a man. But why? Does one less x chromosome lead to a world of difference in sexual energy? Do baby boys come out of the womb with stronger sex drives than baby girls?
While many hold firm beliefs that our sex drives are determined entirely by our DNA, I have a very hard time believing that is the case. In fact, I believe it all to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we tell men that they are sexual beings with intense sexual needs, then of course they will act as such; this “boys will be boys” rhetoric is giving them permission to be sexual aggressors, because we’ve told them that evolution, God, or some other magical force has made them that way.
Because of the way we treat male sexuality, women, in turn, are left to police the sexualities of the men around them. It is OUR responsibility to keep these sexual desires (and uncontrollable boners) in check. If we do not make our “no’s” very clear, and keep our necklines higher than our collar bones, we’re “asking for it” and have no one to blame but ourselves. After all, penises supposedly have minds of their own—minds that the men they are attached to, have no control over.
This particular discourse on the male sex drive not only puts a great deal of responsibility on the women of the world, but also leaves them to feel as if they must accommodate their male partner’s sexual needs, or face dire consequences. Society tells women that we absolutely must maintain regular sex lives, or we will, inevitably, jeopardize our relationships, our marriages, and our great loves. And if God forbid, we let the sex in our relationships slip, we can only expect that the men in our lives will have to cheat, or have to leave us, so that their sexual needs can be actually be met.
Although, this hyper-sexualization of men not only hurts their female counterparts, but also does a significant amount of damage to the men themselves. Because men are sexualized in our everyday culture, men who do not conform to such hypersexual behavior will be unwillingly thrown into a category of “unmanly” social outcasts. We demand that men be having constant sex, and if they are not having it—they must be thinking about it, talking about it, or acting like they actually are getting it. In masculinity’s eyes, there is no room for the sexually inactive, nor the asexual. Men are to be men, and men have sex: that’s just “biology.”
But what happens to the men who don’t need regular sex? The ones who don’t feel the urge to sleep around or hide pornographic magazines under their beds? What about the romantics of the male species, the men who believe sex is special and not something to be thrown around? Will they simply lead a life being ignored form the mainstream male narrative? Will they be left to feel embarrassed about their needs (or the lack thereof)? In a perfect world, I would suggest that we stop sexualizing men and treat them as the complicated, emotional humans that they are—rather than being the animalistic sex hunters they are projected to be.