Fantastic reflections. This is definitely something I have struggled with over the years. There is a very specific cultural expectations, heavily influenced by Christian expectations, that makes male sexuality difficult to navigate for me.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing. Is there a particular aspect of that struggle with male sexuality you think would be interesting/helpful for me to write about?
After pondering a bit I think the shame 9f wanting certain things. I think there is hang ups around asking for what you desire and then the aftermath of you get what you want. I've worked through a lot of this already but there's essentially no healthy, compassionate guidance that I was able to find as I began this journey.
This was super interesting to me as a woman, who really has no experience of this. The only thing I would add is the cultural disgust aspect is that we also have to acknowledge, i think, it's mixed with a lot of fear. In male/female relationships there's a lot of fear when men express not feeling in control because there's a physical power imbalance. Nearly all men are stronger than me, so if a man confided in me that he felt there was a separate beast he wasn't yet in control of I would be a little concerned (of course depends on the relationship I have with the other person) because I would be the one in the vulnerable position when they don't feel in control. Even if everything is consentual I think after that i would question if they can stop and read my body language, etc.
I can see too how the current climate is just the pendulum swinging too far from a "Boys will be boys" era to a post #me too era. Men used to face no accountability for sexuality and now we have a culture where there's debatably too much, in the sense that it's expected that men are always in control and in private with their sexuality and cannot struggle openly with it.
This is a really helpful perspective, thank you. In gay land, the power and physical strength are, if not equally matched, still male and therefore less dangerous. I can absolutely see how the differences in male and female strength create a dangerous-feeling dynamic for women.
This is definitely something worth exploring more in my writing, and is further evidence for me that men learning to work with and cooperate with their intense sexuality is necessary for a healthy world.
I've long believed that men will find our way forward from the mess we're in now mostly thanks to leadership from our gay brothers, and this piece is a great example of why. I grew up (fairly) straight in a very conservative (small-c, non-political, and deeply sincere) Christian household, and struggled with a lot of what you're describing here.
The idea of "embracing the tiger" is a good one across the spectrum of male tendencies. And it is a heroic journey. In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham", a riff on the Arthurian tale of masculine virtue, Gawain says to the countess who has been trying to seduce him, before he rides out to meet his doom:
"My Lady you're lovely, far beyond dreams
and I want you in ways that make my flesh scream,
but those are not thoughts that I need on this day
when I'm facing the end, as we all do, in a way
with each gentle morning and each quiet eve.
Each day is our last, and so this I believe:
A man is the master, foremost, of himself.
This comes before honour, or courtesy, wealth
in material things or the plaudits of men,
or the love of great ladies. A man, he must ken
his strengths and his faults, and then do his best
to master his powers and choose what is left
to this Earth when he passes from memory and life,
will it be works of joy or a history of strife?
Will it be a reflection of all that he was
or a moment's hot passion? The persistent buzz
of fame and of fortune, of lust and desire...
all worthy in youth, but all of them tire
when the shadows grow long and the night's drawing in,
and a man looks beyond both virtue and sin
to ask in his heart if he was the master
of himself, of his soul. Was he a good pastor
of the only parishioner put in his charge?
This is the question that looms for me, large
as the day of my death... perhaps it approaches,
and I grow out of youth, and my future reproaches
the choices I've made, although I can forgive
the young man who I was, just learning to live."
How we embrace our lust, our aggression, our proclivity for risk-taking, and in general our extremes--and the data show that men tend to extremes more than women, across the spectrum--while not letting them run away with us is the fundamental challenge of being a man.
Suppressing all that is a non-starter. Sublimating is better. But embracing and acknowledging and accepting without excusing or condemning is the dream. Finding ways to experience ourselves *as men* without leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in our wake is as heroic as it gets.
Oh my goodness, I’ve never heard those passages, thank you so much for sharing. You are absolutely right - integrating with our extremes is necessary for healthy men and a healthy world. And I worry about a lot of the terrible advice in masculine spaces online that are teaching young men dangerous lessons. My hope is to speak more to these issues in the new year.
That version of Gawain is my own, which is likely why you've not heard it :-D I'm trying to avoid shameless self-promotion, but you're talking about stuff that I care deeply about and has imbued my work, so you often say things that resonate with something I've written, and it seems wrong not to share it: https://siduri.net/books/sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-and-ham/
I agree men are getting terrible advice. I first started thinking about this stuff in the late '90s, and there was simply no forum for it. The "Men's Rights Activist" community was a toxic waste-dump, and no one else wanted to hear it. The one academic I talked to about men's issues in the modern world was a Canadian who ended up working at a Mexican university because no one north of the Rio Grande had any tolerance for men's issues... except in some corners of the gay community: there was someone I followed on LiveJournal, a Toronto-based writer, who I was reminded of by what you write here regarding the basic distrust of penises (there was a push at the time to split the Toronto Pride parade, more-or-less on the basis that men had no place in it.)
And here we are, 25 years later, with things not getting a whole lot better... except now voices like yours are speaking up, and hopefully getting heard. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with these thoughts.
I’ve often thought over the past year after my deconstruction that your arguments are the reason we should not be shocked at all the sex and sex abuse scandals within the various sects of Abrahamic faith churches. When sexual desire is made taboo, sinful, and something to be suppressed, this is going to build tension, anger, and even violence, especially within the younger men demographic you mentioned, causing many of them to lose control of “the werewolf”. I truly believe a HEALTHY embracing of one’s own sexuality instead of attempting to repress it would have made a completely different world within these faith communities where the abuse and scandal would have been minimal. We all know that will never happen though, as sex is such a central topic in their “holy” books and culture.
Fascinating read. Interesting that the sex worker seemed surprised by the werewolf in her clients when female sexuality appears to beckon it. The biological preference for a tall muscular male for example. Seems awfully similar to a werewolf. For further example, the same woman who may speak of the dynamics of physical size, brute strength and these difference having a hand in their feeling of safety in interacting with a man, may also harbor a rape fantasy. She may want nothing more than the feeling of him with his weight on top of her and to feel helplessly devoured. I recall an attractive female acquaintance once telling me “I just want a man to tell me to shut up and tell me what the fuck to do”, in discussing her frustration with dating. Yet this same acquaintance in the same breath would deem herself a modern feminist woman as evidenced by her public signaling / persona. I never brought it up for she was merely an acquaintance but I found the disconnect uncanny and could not see how her or others like her could overlook this break in logic or point of cognitive dissonance. It made me think of my own possible disconnects; wanting a nurturing woman who shows strong moral character, empathy and promise in domesticity whilst simultaneously respecting my autonomy and fucking my brains out, for example. And to speak to your point, it also made me think of how to integrate and bridge them (like an analogy of Jesus loving the monkey mind as opposed to shaming it). I always found the disconnect between what people (women and men) say or act out in society in comparison to the way they are within the private interior psychological realms, which the sexual realm borders on, quite something to contend with. How does one reconcile those contradictions between the public self and the private “werewolf”? For they seem as forces of chaos or spirits released from pandora. Your writing in this piece speaks to those lingering contradictions within human sexuality.
Just wonderful. I'd personally love seeing more wolves in the wild. As I read your article the idea of "mansplaining" came to mind. So now a man is shamed if he explains something to a woman or attempts to articulate his thoughts??
This essay really speaks to me when it when comes to the idea of taming myself in order to be more pleasant and accepted by people I really don't care to associate with in the first place. As a girl I was often told to stay quiet, don't make waves. Be a good girl. I lived like that for 40 years. Once I joined my writing group an aphiany happened. I told myself that I will have a voice and I'm going to go against everything I was taught because it literally nearly killed me. Now I wake up every day super excited and spicy!
These reflections are very interesting, thank you Stephen. It feels like there’s some disconnect between what society wants for men (and from men) and what makes life for men healthy. I hope our efforts to live more honestly yield more of a balance as a collective someday, and find peace as individuals, men and women.
Lady here (hi Stephen!!!). I am bisexual. I have been in relationships with both men and women. Eventually married a man and have a child now. It is fascinating to read the male perspective. Women Don’t really feel the compulsion until perhaps the early 20’s but most definitely the early 30’s. Mine, when it happened, I likened to feeling like a teenage boy. It was eye opening. Women are encouraged to dampen down that “animal” inside, and those that don’t are labeled negatively - unless you are a celebrity who flaunts it, then you get the side eye from every other woman wishing they would just cover up the stop the attention seeking behavior.
I am actually quite jealous men have such a high drive, mine is shit. Surgery next week to fix some physical issues that are part of the cause. What I wouldn’t give to be normal again, or have reasonable medicine to help. Husband is patient and supportive. Having a child really fucks with a woman’s body, and for me in the worst way. I never recovered and my body did not heal.
As a younger adult, I had what Freud would call “penis envy”. I wanted to be more of a man. I suppose in today’s terms I would have been a “they”, but it is too late for me, I’m too old, too married, and a mom. Any bisexuality in me, and it is still there in a fierce way, will likely never be acted on again. I am a conundrum. It’s ok. I did live that life, had those adventures and wild relationships, and all the threesomes and bdsm adventures one could want.
Thank you for writing this! I am currently where you are at in terms of living a healthy lifestyle and embracing/integrating my lust/sexuality into my conception of who I am as a normal human/animal. Like you, I have gone on strange journeys with my sexuality throughout the years (including periods of religion-inspired asceticism/shame, SSRI-influenced impotence, and an encounter with infidelity in college that left me questioning everything about myself because I couldn't account for how I seemingly transformed into someone capable of committing such a sin/transgression). I think the key, for me, was to stop looking at it as something foreign to myself, like a demon that would occasionally come to possess me. Instead, I now look at it as a core and primal part of me, always present, like hunger or thirst. Now it doesn't surprise me out of nowhere, and I'm more aware of when it seems to be in the driver's seat (and, thus, if I can push the metaphor a little further, I can help navigate the car and not act like a hostage tied up in the trunk). By the way, your tiger metaphor reminds me of "Life of Pi" (the film in particular; I never read the book). It's quite good, and I highly recommend it. I also recommend the book "How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human" by Melanie Challenger. Looking forward to your future posts exploring this topic!
I remain hopeful that we can keep moving toward embracing the fact that we are humans...we are animals, just overcomplicated animals with way too many trinkets. I support healthy sexuality, NB/M/F/IS/ et .al . whatever that reality and expression happen to be and whatever equipment happens to occur along with.
Elements of excitement and not being certain of what's going to happen next remain several of the biggest draws for me for sexuality involving a/several/however many consenting partner(s). The level of trust I have with my other is really what makes the experience even more fulfilling and special. I want fulfilling and special. I enjoy sex, overall, most all of the time. When I'm not enjoying it, partner(s) not enjoying it, I'm communicative and likewise receptive.
Pushing boundaries is part of the relationship for my current partner and I, but also respect, and again, trust. I understand having part of one's self that one isn't yet certain they have total control over. I also understand being trepidatious or even outright afraid of that part of someone else. This is why we have agreements, words, signals, etc to tell one another this is what I'm pretty sure I'm okay with, this not so much, this not at all and so on...along with how to communicate those in the moment. This element of planning allows for more surrender, exploration and potentially enjoyment during. And, of course, decompressing/talking it out afterward. Aftercare!
I honor your feelings on this Clare and admire your strength in talking about your experience with the power imbalance that exists and how this could impact your relationships given the "beast" or "animal" or however its called being present or possibly present in a partner (or one's self, as it happens). I often feel like I'm more readily and easily in control, without necessarily ever being stronger than the other person physically, in terms of what's happening to my body and what from my body is happening to another person. I feel like it's a discipline and mindset and a practice one works at and improves over time.
Thank you for giving me the space to express myself, whoever is reading this. And to whomever may not be reading this with potential frustration over the space I've taken up, I fully embrace and refer to my freedom to offend. <3
Fantastic reflections. This is definitely something I have struggled with over the years. There is a very specific cultural expectations, heavily influenced by Christian expectations, that makes male sexuality difficult to navigate for me.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing. Is there a particular aspect of that struggle with male sexuality you think would be interesting/helpful for me to write about?
After pondering a bit I think the shame 9f wanting certain things. I think there is hang ups around asking for what you desire and then the aftermath of you get what you want. I've worked through a lot of this already but there's essentially no healthy, compassionate guidance that I was able to find as I began this journey.
I completely relate.
This was super interesting to me as a woman, who really has no experience of this. The only thing I would add is the cultural disgust aspect is that we also have to acknowledge, i think, it's mixed with a lot of fear. In male/female relationships there's a lot of fear when men express not feeling in control because there's a physical power imbalance. Nearly all men are stronger than me, so if a man confided in me that he felt there was a separate beast he wasn't yet in control of I would be a little concerned (of course depends on the relationship I have with the other person) because I would be the one in the vulnerable position when they don't feel in control. Even if everything is consentual I think after that i would question if they can stop and read my body language, etc.
I can see too how the current climate is just the pendulum swinging too far from a "Boys will be boys" era to a post #me too era. Men used to face no accountability for sexuality and now we have a culture where there's debatably too much, in the sense that it's expected that men are always in control and in private with their sexuality and cannot struggle openly with it.
This is a really helpful perspective, thank you. In gay land, the power and physical strength are, if not equally matched, still male and therefore less dangerous. I can absolutely see how the differences in male and female strength create a dangerous-feeling dynamic for women.
This is definitely something worth exploring more in my writing, and is further evidence for me that men learning to work with and cooperate with their intense sexuality is necessary for a healthy world.
I've long believed that men will find our way forward from the mess we're in now mostly thanks to leadership from our gay brothers, and this piece is a great example of why. I grew up (fairly) straight in a very conservative (small-c, non-political, and deeply sincere) Christian household, and struggled with a lot of what you're describing here.
The idea of "embracing the tiger" is a good one across the spectrum of male tendencies. And it is a heroic journey. In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham", a riff on the Arthurian tale of masculine virtue, Gawain says to the countess who has been trying to seduce him, before he rides out to meet his doom:
"My Lady you're lovely, far beyond dreams
and I want you in ways that make my flesh scream,
but those are not thoughts that I need on this day
when I'm facing the end, as we all do, in a way
with each gentle morning and each quiet eve.
Each day is our last, and so this I believe:
A man is the master, foremost, of himself.
This comes before honour, or courtesy, wealth
in material things or the plaudits of men,
or the love of great ladies. A man, he must ken
his strengths and his faults, and then do his best
to master his powers and choose what is left
to this Earth when he passes from memory and life,
will it be works of joy or a history of strife?
Will it be a reflection of all that he was
or a moment's hot passion? The persistent buzz
of fame and of fortune, of lust and desire...
all worthy in youth, but all of them tire
when the shadows grow long and the night's drawing in,
and a man looks beyond both virtue and sin
to ask in his heart if he was the master
of himself, of his soul. Was he a good pastor
of the only parishioner put in his charge?
This is the question that looms for me, large
as the day of my death... perhaps it approaches,
and I grow out of youth, and my future reproaches
the choices I've made, although I can forgive
the young man who I was, just learning to live."
How we embrace our lust, our aggression, our proclivity for risk-taking, and in general our extremes--and the data show that men tend to extremes more than women, across the spectrum--while not letting them run away with us is the fundamental challenge of being a man.
Suppressing all that is a non-starter. Sublimating is better. But embracing and acknowledging and accepting without excusing or condemning is the dream. Finding ways to experience ourselves *as men* without leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in our wake is as heroic as it gets.
Oh my goodness, I’ve never heard those passages, thank you so much for sharing. You are absolutely right - integrating with our extremes is necessary for healthy men and a healthy world. And I worry about a lot of the terrible advice in masculine spaces online that are teaching young men dangerous lessons. My hope is to speak more to these issues in the new year.
That version of Gawain is my own, which is likely why you've not heard it :-D I'm trying to avoid shameless self-promotion, but you're talking about stuff that I care deeply about and has imbued my work, so you often say things that resonate with something I've written, and it seems wrong not to share it: https://siduri.net/books/sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-and-ham/
I agree men are getting terrible advice. I first started thinking about this stuff in the late '90s, and there was simply no forum for it. The "Men's Rights Activist" community was a toxic waste-dump, and no one else wanted to hear it. The one academic I talked to about men's issues in the modern world was a Canadian who ended up working at a Mexican university because no one north of the Rio Grande had any tolerance for men's issues... except in some corners of the gay community: there was someone I followed on LiveJournal, a Toronto-based writer, who I was reminded of by what you write here regarding the basic distrust of penises (there was a push at the time to split the Toronto Pride parade, more-or-less on the basis that men had no place in it.)
And here we are, 25 years later, with things not getting a whole lot better... except now voices like yours are speaking up, and hopefully getting heard. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with these thoughts.
I’ve often thought over the past year after my deconstruction that your arguments are the reason we should not be shocked at all the sex and sex abuse scandals within the various sects of Abrahamic faith churches. When sexual desire is made taboo, sinful, and something to be suppressed, this is going to build tension, anger, and even violence, especially within the younger men demographic you mentioned, causing many of them to lose control of “the werewolf”. I truly believe a HEALTHY embracing of one’s own sexuality instead of attempting to repress it would have made a completely different world within these faith communities where the abuse and scandal would have been minimal. We all know that will never happen though, as sex is such a central topic in their “holy” books and culture.
Completely agree
Fascinating read. Interesting that the sex worker seemed surprised by the werewolf in her clients when female sexuality appears to beckon it. The biological preference for a tall muscular male for example. Seems awfully similar to a werewolf. For further example, the same woman who may speak of the dynamics of physical size, brute strength and these difference having a hand in their feeling of safety in interacting with a man, may also harbor a rape fantasy. She may want nothing more than the feeling of him with his weight on top of her and to feel helplessly devoured. I recall an attractive female acquaintance once telling me “I just want a man to tell me to shut up and tell me what the fuck to do”, in discussing her frustration with dating. Yet this same acquaintance in the same breath would deem herself a modern feminist woman as evidenced by her public signaling / persona. I never brought it up for she was merely an acquaintance but I found the disconnect uncanny and could not see how her or others like her could overlook this break in logic or point of cognitive dissonance. It made me think of my own possible disconnects; wanting a nurturing woman who shows strong moral character, empathy and promise in domesticity whilst simultaneously respecting my autonomy and fucking my brains out, for example. And to speak to your point, it also made me think of how to integrate and bridge them (like an analogy of Jesus loving the monkey mind as opposed to shaming it). I always found the disconnect between what people (women and men) say or act out in society in comparison to the way they are within the private interior psychological realms, which the sexual realm borders on, quite something to contend with. How does one reconcile those contradictions between the public self and the private “werewolf”? For they seem as forces of chaos or spirits released from pandora. Your writing in this piece speaks to those lingering contradictions within human sexuality.
Thank you so much for reading, and these are some excellent insights
Just wonderful. I'd personally love seeing more wolves in the wild. As I read your article the idea of "mansplaining" came to mind. So now a man is shamed if he explains something to a woman or attempts to articulate his thoughts??
This essay really speaks to me when it when comes to the idea of taming myself in order to be more pleasant and accepted by people I really don't care to associate with in the first place. As a girl I was often told to stay quiet, don't make waves. Be a good girl. I lived like that for 40 years. Once I joined my writing group an aphiany happened. I told myself that I will have a voice and I'm going to go against everything I was taught because it literally nearly killed me. Now I wake up every day super excited and spicy!
These reflections are very interesting, thank you Stephen. It feels like there’s some disconnect between what society wants for men (and from men) and what makes life for men healthy. I hope our efforts to live more honestly yield more of a balance as a collective someday, and find peace as individuals, men and women.
Lady here (hi Stephen!!!). I am bisexual. I have been in relationships with both men and women. Eventually married a man and have a child now. It is fascinating to read the male perspective. Women Don’t really feel the compulsion until perhaps the early 20’s but most definitely the early 30’s. Mine, when it happened, I likened to feeling like a teenage boy. It was eye opening. Women are encouraged to dampen down that “animal” inside, and those that don’t are labeled negatively - unless you are a celebrity who flaunts it, then you get the side eye from every other woman wishing they would just cover up the stop the attention seeking behavior.
I am actually quite jealous men have such a high drive, mine is shit. Surgery next week to fix some physical issues that are part of the cause. What I wouldn’t give to be normal again, or have reasonable medicine to help. Husband is patient and supportive. Having a child really fucks with a woman’s body, and for me in the worst way. I never recovered and my body did not heal.
As a younger adult, I had what Freud would call “penis envy”. I wanted to be more of a man. I suppose in today’s terms I would have been a “they”, but it is too late for me, I’m too old, too married, and a mom. Any bisexuality in me, and it is still there in a fierce way, will likely never be acted on again. I am a conundrum. It’s ok. I did live that life, had those adventures and wild relationships, and all the threesomes and bdsm adventures one could want.
To quote Al Bundy “I’m married with children.”
Thank you for writing this! I am currently where you are at in terms of living a healthy lifestyle and embracing/integrating my lust/sexuality into my conception of who I am as a normal human/animal. Like you, I have gone on strange journeys with my sexuality throughout the years (including periods of religion-inspired asceticism/shame, SSRI-influenced impotence, and an encounter with infidelity in college that left me questioning everything about myself because I couldn't account for how I seemingly transformed into someone capable of committing such a sin/transgression). I think the key, for me, was to stop looking at it as something foreign to myself, like a demon that would occasionally come to possess me. Instead, I now look at it as a core and primal part of me, always present, like hunger or thirst. Now it doesn't surprise me out of nowhere, and I'm more aware of when it seems to be in the driver's seat (and, thus, if I can push the metaphor a little further, I can help navigate the car and not act like a hostage tied up in the trunk). By the way, your tiger metaphor reminds me of "Life of Pi" (the film in particular; I never read the book). It's quite good, and I highly recommend it. I also recommend the book "How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human" by Melanie Challenger. Looking forward to your future posts exploring this topic!
I remain hopeful that we can keep moving toward embracing the fact that we are humans...we are animals, just overcomplicated animals with way too many trinkets. I support healthy sexuality, NB/M/F/IS/ et .al . whatever that reality and expression happen to be and whatever equipment happens to occur along with.
Elements of excitement and not being certain of what's going to happen next remain several of the biggest draws for me for sexuality involving a/several/however many consenting partner(s). The level of trust I have with my other is really what makes the experience even more fulfilling and special. I want fulfilling and special. I enjoy sex, overall, most all of the time. When I'm not enjoying it, partner(s) not enjoying it, I'm communicative and likewise receptive.
Pushing boundaries is part of the relationship for my current partner and I, but also respect, and again, trust. I understand having part of one's self that one isn't yet certain they have total control over. I also understand being trepidatious or even outright afraid of that part of someone else. This is why we have agreements, words, signals, etc to tell one another this is what I'm pretty sure I'm okay with, this not so much, this not at all and so on...along with how to communicate those in the moment. This element of planning allows for more surrender, exploration and potentially enjoyment during. And, of course, decompressing/talking it out afterward. Aftercare!
I honor your feelings on this Clare and admire your strength in talking about your experience with the power imbalance that exists and how this could impact your relationships given the "beast" or "animal" or however its called being present or possibly present in a partner (or one's self, as it happens). I often feel like I'm more readily and easily in control, without necessarily ever being stronger than the other person physically, in terms of what's happening to my body and what from my body is happening to another person. I feel like it's a discipline and mindset and a practice one works at and improves over time.
Thank you for giving me the space to express myself, whoever is reading this. And to whomever may not be reading this with potential frustration over the space I've taken up, I fully embrace and refer to my freedom to offend. <3
Thanks so much for reading and sharing! And yes, mileage may vary, but at least be prepared for the werewolf to return 🤣 I wasn’t.