Bettina Arndt asked: “Why do men take such risks for the sake of sex?”. Novelist Philip Roth wrote: “Every mistake a man can make usually has a sexual accelerator”. What is it about men and sex?
The problem for males begins early. When a boy reaches puberty he’s almost immediately at his sexual peak: too young an age to negotiate sexual agreements with girls his own age who are likely to reject his clumsy advances with disdain, and go off to pine romantically for older boys. So it is with a sense of rejection, inordinate levels of sexual desire and accompanying guilt that he abandons himself to the sordid adolescent world of chronic masturbation - “a world of matted handkerchiefs, crumpled Kleenex and stained pyjamas”, said the famous Alexander Portnoy.
Before the internet this activity was enhanced by the use of soiled, dog-eared copies of Playboy and, if you were lucky, Hustler magazines borrowed from friends or handed down from older siblings. If a kid had the courage to purchase his own stash he’d avoid newsagents and the contemptuous glares from the elderly female owners and visit instead a 7 Eleven in the small hours to peruse its more eclectic collection.
The sort of struggle a man experiences persuading a woman to have sex with him continues even after he has succeeded. His sperm, those not waylaid or killed on the frenetic journey, can be seen rushing at the single egg like a line of men outside a nightclub - with as little chance of getting in.
Arndt’s new book What Men Want In Bed documents married men expressing frustration over the lack of sexual interest shown by their wives. “I’ve had enough. I’ve earned my rest” or “For goodness sake aren’t you over it?”, they are told. Unfortunately for men they don’t get over it; the throbbing desire that began at an early age and led some to pornography, prostitutes and unfaithfulness continues unabated, often wrecking otherwise happy marriages, or destroying careers. This prompted Arndt to suggest, to the horror of other feminists, that women should sometimes “just do it” with their partners even if they lacked the desire.
The delightful Stephen Fry was put on a hotplate recently for his casual comments about women’s ulterior motives for having sex. The major character of his 1994 novel Hippopotamus had already said this: “Men like sex and women don’t. It has to be recognised and faced. Women’s constant rejection of such a self-evident fact doesn’t help at all. They will claim that only the other day they saw a man whose bottom reminded them a little of Mel Gibson [I know, but the novel is 17 years old] and that they got quite juicy thinking about it. ONLY THE OTHER DAY? What about only the other MINUTE?”
Much has been said, quite rightly, about the treatment of women as sex objects.
But some pornography* has men objectifying and demeaning themselves. The male performers are presented as grey, pot-bellied torsos with wiry-haired nether regions (the more men required the less savoury their appearance). The sole female, though kneeling submissively and surrounded by a vast assortment of male genitalia, is the only person with a face and as far as we can tell the only one having any fun - beaming a smile whenever she can.
Besides wives and pornographic actresses there are plenty of other women involved in the mundane task of satisfying men. In suburban homes ladies with rollers in their hair work the numerous phone sex lines. Seemingly indifferent to the fervent requests and heightened activity occurring at the other end, they sit back, filing their corns and whispering: “Give it to me big boy!”.
In Francois Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses young Antoine skips gleefully off to the local brothel only to be confronted with a jaded young lady who immediately tells him there will be no kissing, and orders him over to the handbasin for a rinsing of his ‘portions’. Antoine promptly leaves after spying an employee with a warmer disposition on the stairs.
Europeans - or is it just the French? - seem to accept that a loving husband has needs that can only be satisfied by a mistress or a visit to a brothel. French crime writer Georges Simenon didn’t bother to leave the house: “the need was so great that when he heard a chambermaid outside in the hallway he got up, opened the door, lifted the girl’s skirt and possessed her on the spot. She didn’t even stop what she was doing but merely said: ‘Oh Monsieur!’ “.
So, what of women’s sexuality? That complex blend of factors (love, trust, commitment, romance and hormones) that makes a woman want to have sex. The complexity though doesn’t mean it is any less absurd than its male counterpart. You want a lifetime companion you can laugh with? Marry another woman, I say! Will a box of Ferrero Rocher really do the trick - you’re kidding aren’t you?
There is women’s pornography (sorry, ‘erotica’) and Sex In The City. There are movies with the nauseating Richard Gere and Julia Roberts, Mills and Boon novels about square-jawed freaks in doctors’ coats and eighteen inch purple dildos.
Famous and successful men can set ladies’ hearts and other parts fluttering. After scoring consecutive centuries against South Africa in only his second Test, cricketer Phillip Hughes suddenly found himself being sexually accosted in nightclub toilets by Afrikaner goddesses. Now he’d be lucky to get a smile from a farmer’s daughter at the Macksville Show.
And there are some unpleasant surprises for men: while they’re laughing at the absurd sight of a topless Mitchell Johnson wearing a Santa hat their partners are privately swooning.
Gore Vidal wrote: “Sex builds no roads, writes no novels”. No, but it can drive a man insane. “A copy of Hustler please.”
* viewed for research purposes only
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