Jackson Bliss - A Scarcity of Affection Among Men

This is one of the unfortunate truisms for men in this culture - we are raised to see affection as foreplay, as sexual, and not as a vital human need. Over at the Good Men Project, Jackson Bliss shares his experience of waking up to this reality and his process of understanding it.

A Scarcity of Affection Among Men

October 7, 2013 by Jackson Bliss

Jackson Bliss sees how men have grown up seeing affection as sexual behavior, not social behavior. And that is one of the tragedies of our times.

—

Once, just as I was about to step inside Union Station in New Haven, an old black guy with fuzzy grey hair and glasses stopped me on the sidewalk and asked me if I had a light. Though technically I’d stopped smoking when I’d started grad school, my bad habit resurfaced at the end of every semester because of the stress. It was reading period, so I pulled out my lighter with a little guilt and tried lighting his cigarette. The wind was strong and erratic though, extinguishing the flame every time I rolled the flint. As I became impatient, I finally grabbed his soft, wilted old hand and cupped it with mine, lighting his cigarette undisturbed. He took a big puff and exhaled. Then he nodded his head, smiled at me and said: Thank you, son. By the time I was inside the train station, I was bawling.

At first, I didn’t understand where the tears were coming from. Maybe, I wondered, it was the anxiety of having to write three thirty-page essays in the next ten days or my secret dread of seeing my on-again-off-again girlfriend in New York who I fought with every weekend like a professional scrapper trying to dodge the first inevitable blow. Maybe it was the dreary Connecticut weather finally getting to me, weather that reminded me of Dante’s description of purgatory. Maybe I was sad because I was a poor grad student from Chicago who sometimes felt lost and out of place in New England. And maybe I was just really vulnerable that day. Whatever the ultimate reason, the tears poured out of me inside the station, on the escalator and even on the train where I looked out the window to avoid the sharp looks of commuters. The real issue buried underneath my grief was the fact that I rarely got the male affection I’d wanted as a kid. And the sad thing is, I’m not the exception either. 

♦◊♦

My pops is a good guy, but he’s old school (which means he’s not very good at expressing himself). While he’s slowly learned to respect me as a man, we’ve never been very close. When we hang out in Chicago, for example, I’m almost always the one to initiate things. Because we’re different politically and professionally, we’ve had to strain to understand each other for most of our lives. When I was a kid, we never played in the backyard together (I played catch or soccer with my spunky obāsan). Because I was a latchkey kid, I only saw my parents for four hours a day max, most of our time spent in the kitchen and the TV room.

To be honest, I can’t remember my dad hugging me as boy nor do I remember him being proud of me growing up (except when I graduated from high school, which was really important to him). Even when I gave my MFA reading six years ago in nearby South Bend, I remember not being surprised that my dad didn’t show up. Now, I don’t point these things out an indictment because my dad is a good and hard-working person (and god knows I could be a rambunctious, argumentative, and exasperating little punk). My dad helped me a little bit with my college tuition, paid for my final year of high school at my Jesuit prep school and remained emotionally devoted to my obāsan his entire life, even after my parents split up. He was a dad in the only way he knew how to be with me, slowly evolving once he remarried his second wife and had a third son (who he has a much more proactive and affectionate relationship with). It’s only recently that I’ve truly felt he’s proud of me for the man I’ve become, and maybe this is related to my stubborn professional aspirations as a fiction writer, to finishing my PhD, and to marrying the love of my life. Maybe his recent respect for me has nothing to do with any of those things. As I’ve grown up and become comfortable with my self, I’ve learned to overcome the big issues I had with him, but I point out the scarcity of affection in my relationship with him because I think it partially explains why male approval was always so important to me growing up, why I still have a soft spot for male affection, why I still find myself seeking the respect of older men. 

♦◊♦

One of the pernicious consequences of living in a country still struggling with homophobia, social verticality, and patriarchy, is not just the rigid gender roles this system imposes on men (and obviously women), but also the way it prevents grown men from expressing love, gratitude and affection to each other (and often to their sons). Because of this, many boys grow up seeing affection as inherently unmasculine because their fathers never modeled affection and unconditional love as a constituent part of their own masculinity.

Just as tragic, our system still punishes boys for expressing love and affection to each other (except in the case of sports) by subjecting them to social and sexual taboo, which means boys will grow up seeing affection as (hetero)sexual behavior and not social behavior, which is troubling. For many straight boys, affection will become gendered, the unique behavior of girlfriends, moms and female friends. While girls are victims of the system just as much as boys are, the system victimizes them in different ways at different stages (through slut-shaming, income inequality, domestic relegation, sexual objectification and ownership, for example). But one of the major systemic tragedies for boys is the ongoing poverty of male affection in their lives. As psychoanalytically unsatisfying as it is, for many grown men, there is a void inside us that was earmarked for our fathers’ attention and approval (which can often feel like signifiers of love). It’s a void we carry with us into adulthood, a void that only disappears (if it disappears at all) with friendships that are deeply communicative, supportive and unconditional. This void only disappears (if it disappears at all) with a lifetime of self-forgiveness for the emptiness we feel inside. This emptiness is not our fault, but if we deny its existence or pretend we’ve moved beyond the scene of our childhood trauma, we become victims of our own pathology, innocent bystanders in the crossfire of denial, unlovability and self-reproach.

Men only heal when we surround ourselves with others who are engines of deep and uncontrollable love, people who are compassionate, affectionate, forgiving and open with their emotions. For me, the most recent source of affection, kindness and love has been my wife, who I love more deeply than any person I’ve ever known. In high school, it was my religion and English teachers. In college, it was my brother and my friends. Someday, it will be my own fatherhood, which will give me new emotional space for repairing the tiny broken parts of me and for expressing my endless devotion, explicit love and continuous affection for my baby. Even though he doesn’t exist yet, even though she hasn’t even been conceived, my love for him is already enormous, already bigger than myself.

—

Photo: lenny montana / flickr

The New Man 141: Pelmas and Bollt – How to Admire Women Without Being Creepy

Tripp Lanier's newest The New Man podcast features Christiane Pelmas and David Bollt discussing "sexual attraction, beauty, your relationship, porn, art, and most importantly — how this all impacts your power and fire for living."

This is an interesting topic for a lot of men - and the discussion is not only about how to admire women in a non-creepy manner. It's also about living a life that does not cut off your sexual energy, how to be in balance with that, and what women are looking for in men.

TNM 141: Pelmas and Bollt – How to Admire Women Without Being Creepy

06 AUGUST 2013

Podcast: Download

When you’re with your woman, are you afraid to get caught checking out other women?

Is it confusing that a woman makes an effort to look beautiful but you’re a jerk if you get caught looking at her?

And how can you admire a woman’s beauty in a cafe without being creepy?

Christiane Pelmas and David Bollt are hear to continue the conversation on sexual attraction, beauty, your relationship, porn, art, and most importantly — how this all impacts your power and fire for living.

In this interview:

• If you’re in a relationship, is it wrong to check out other women?
• How to be with your woman and admire other women, too
• How cutting off your sexual energy is killing your mojo for everything
• Why many guys live a split life sexually (think Don Draper or Carlos Danger)
• How does looking at certain images of women kill your power and freedom?

From a woman’s perspective:

• As a woman, what is it like to be admired by men?
• What makes a man’s attention creepy?
• Do women only want rich or good looking guys to check them out?
• Is there a mixed message when women make an effort to appear beautiful but men feel like a jerk if they look?

Click here to learn more about Christiane Pelmas at TheRewilding.com

Click here to learn more about David BolltClick here to visit David’s ModelSociety.com

Alyssa Royse - The Danger in Demonizing Male Sexuality

A nice article from Alyssa Royse writing for The Good Men Project. Male sexuality has been demonized by both men and women in the last few decades. But these abusive men are a small minority, although the media does not make it look that way.

The Danger in Demonizing Male Sexuality

MAY 28, 2013 BY ALYSSA ROYSE

Alyssa Royse explains how our current predator/prey model of sexual relationships is harmful to both men and women.

Jamie Peck over at The Gloss, wrote a great little piece asking a great big question: Can Men Write About Sex Without Sounding Like Douchebags? In asking, however, she wasn’t pointing at men and suggesting they are douchebags so much as she was pointing at all of us and suggesting that we have a tendency to demonize male sexuality. She rightly points out that most of the men who achieve any sort of status and acceptability in writing about sex are somewhere on the gender queer spectrum. Sure, James Deen has a successful blog, but if you read most of the comments on it, there’s this weird anger at him for being a porn star, and enjoying it and writing about it. It is couched in the assumption that he is just doing what every guy in the world would fantasize about doing, because, you know, the only thing straight guys want to do is pound as much pussy as possible.

Puzzling.

I was trying to wrap my head around why that was, and unable to come up with anything really to contradict it, when the incredibly brilliant Sabrina Morgan left the following comment on Facebook:

Cis men are also in the position of the cultural desirer, never the desired; many genuinely believe that since “no one” finds them sexy/since their sexuality is considered threatening, no one wants to hear what they have to say about sex.

God, that woman is brilliant. And she’s right. It is at least possible that women love the likes of Dan Savage because he is in no way threatening to us. I could be drunk, dirty-dancing on his lap and he’d be all like, “bitch, please, put that shit away.” I like to think he’d also give me warm milk and tuck me in, but who knows. The point is, he is no threat to me.

But more than that, he is an ally. He has, time and time again, stood up for the rights of women to have full agency and autonomy over our bodies, spoken out against rape culture, and generally paved the way for an open dialog about human sexuality and our right to it. (Yes, I know there are many people who have serious bones to pick with him, he is not perfect, but on the whole, he is an example of a man who can write about sex without being called a douchebag for doing so.) Charlie Glickman can write about sex and sexuality without being called a douchebag, but he is also widely considered queer, and not a threat to anyone.

But to Sabrina’s point, what of the cisgender men? Specifically, heterosexual cis men? How we read their words has so much to do with what we, as a society, assume about their sexuality and how it manifests. Society seems to have set heterosexuality up as a thing that involves men pursuing, and women either accepting or rejecting—mostly rejecting.

This starts young. I live in Seattle, which is, by any standard, a very progressive city. Many of us do a mommy / daughter sex-ed class at Seattle Children’s Hospital as our daughters get close to starting menstruation. In the session of the class that is less about biology and more about navigating sexuality, the presenter offered the idea that girls would have to start learning how to say “no” to boys who were going to want to touch them sexually.

I looked at my daughter, who sort of rolled her eyes at me. And the woman went on, listing the many ways that girls could rebuff boys. I looked at my daughter again, and she said, “go ahead mom.” And I did. I raised my hand and said, “Can we also talk about how to teach girls to say ‘yes’ to sexuality. Can we teach them that sex is about pleasure for all parties involved, and that learning how to identify and say ‘yes’ to things that give them pleasure is how they learn to draw their boundaries and say ‘no’ to things that don’t.”

She replied that surely I could understand that protecting girls from boys was more important. I told her that I surely did not see it that way.

But it starts that young. Yes, girls are told that boys are predatory and somehow out of control. The corollary there is that boys are told they are predators, and out of control. Therefore, not a desirable thing, but a thing to defend against. From the get-go, we are teaching our kids to fear male sexuality, and to repress female sexuality.

As they age, and their media exposure extends beyond the protective (and crappy) bubble of children’s programming, we see example after example of men having to pull huge gestures to lure women into sex, or catch them, or trick them. Just off the top of my head: In Superbad when one of the guys talks about getting girls drunk enough that they can be “that mistake;” in Spiderman when he shoots a web to catch the girl who said “no” half a dozen times, pulling her in for an epic kiss that leaves them both breathless; in Anchorman when the guy uses a cologne made with “bits of real panther” that “60% of the time works every time” to get the girl. I could go on and on, but that point is that popular culture sets up this idea that men are sexual predators who need to resort to trickery and cologne to fulfill their one and only mission, which is sticking their penis in a girl.

It’s sad. It’s insulting. And it’s damaging.

♦◊♦

This way of looking at male sexuality conflates sexuality with predation. It means that he who posseses sexuality is assumed a predator.

That is obviously damaging to the vast majority of men who simply are not. They want and like sex just as much as the rest of us. However, it’s downright dangerous when you extrapolate that out to situations like the horror of Stubenville. It is this line of thinking that allows people to say, “boys will be boys.” As if this kind of predation is just natural for guys, when in fact it is not normal for guys to be predators. Most men are not predators.

Steubenville, and the way-too-many incidents like it, are not examples of natural male sexuality. There are examples of a violent rape culture than perpetuates the idea that predation is the natural manifestation of sex.

So with this in our mind’s eye, no, it is not possible for us to believe that heterosexual cis men can write about sex without being douchebags. And that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart as someone who loves men, in a whole lot of ways.

You do not need to trick us into sex, in fact, you shouldn’t. And you don’t need a cologne with bits of real panther to attract us. In fact, lay off the stuff, seriously. A little dab’ll do ya.

♦◊♦

So, how can we all work together to change our collective impression of male sexuality as something that is dangerous and disgusting? Besides the obvious—understanding male privilege, dismantling of patriarchal mythology and ending rape culture? Those issues are far too big for me to take on here, but without accomplishing those three, nothing changes. So while we work toward those goals, here are some steps to take along that path:

1. Be an ally. Help us stop the violence against women. I am assuming that none of you would do what happened in Stubenville, but would you have helped stop it? Have you been vocal about how wrong it was? About how that should not represent you or your sexuality? From a societal perspective, we need your help. From a personal perspective, when we feel safe, we let our guards down, and that’s the first step to an intimate connection.

2. Ask women what they want, and listen to what they tell you. We are all different; we all want different things from the men in our life. Rather than getting lost in a frustrated guessing game, ask us. Listen to our answers. Tell us what you want, with words, and listen to our responses. Whether it’s sex or any other relationship, the best way to not be seen as predatory is to not act like a predator. And that means communication, not acquisition. Which, by the way, is also called consent. “Yes” is the safest word of all.

3. Let us in, don’t lure us in. Lay off the cologne, the pick-up lines, and the games. Please. Trust that you do not need to trick people into wanting you. Trust that you are worthy, just as you are. And that you deserve someone who wants you for who you actually are, how you actually are.

4. Don’t take it personally. Your self worth is in no way connected to whether or not some girl (or guy) wants you. I am constantly telling people to “Consider Cilantro.” (Seriously, I need that on a t-shirt.) Some people love cilantro. Some people think that cilantro tastes like tinfoil soaked in dish soap. That in no way reflects on the worthiness of cilantro. And cilantro never takes it personally. If you can, don’t even think of it as rejection, you are just cilantro sometimes. After all, you’re not attracted to every person you meet, why would every person you meet be attracted to you?

5. And lastly, know that your body is beautiful. I, like most females, was warned that penises and balls and anuses were gross. I was told to hold my nose, close my eyes, get it over with. Imagine my disappointment when I saw my first penis and there were no festering boils hissing my name, no sulfurous clouds wafting up from a menacing member. I thought it was kind of cute. As I learned more about them, I grew to love them, in and out. Hell, there are times when I was sure I heard angels giving hummers on high when I’ve see one. Most of us straight chicks really like your bodies. You don’t need to trick us into liking them. That is what makes us straight, after all.

However, they are not lures, and we are not fish. Do not, ever, show them to us unless we ask for it. The bonus for you is that when we ask for it, it’s because we want it, so you aren’t really risking rejection at that point, Mr. Cilantro.

♦◊♦

I am sorry that generations of lazy storytelling and bad media have perpetuated the myths of men as predators and women as victims. Or the idea that women’s purity is what can redeem the nastiness of male sexuality. It is wrong for both men and women alike.

But the only way we’re going to change it is together, and it’s gonna take time. We need to all be better. Oh, hey, I know, we need to come together—if we want to, that is. You can also come alone. Or with someone else. Aint’ no skin off my back, as long as it’s all consensual. And, hopefully, pleasurable.

A Collection of Posts on Male Bisexuality

When I first began to question and try to understand my gender identity, bisexual didn't really seem like the right word, and it still doesn't. Back then, I used it anyway because having some kind of label was important to my 20-something self. To complicate matters, my sense of the issue had a lot to do with androgyny - I saw myself as androgynous and I was drawn to androgynous people romantically - not girlie-girls and not manly-men.

If I have to define my sexuality at all, and would rather not, I now prefer the prefixes omni- or pan-sexual - both terms essentially mean that gender is not an issue in choosing romantic partners. My feeling is that calling myself bisexual is to affirm the gender binary that I do believe to be useful anymore (at least for some of us).

I understand that my sense of this is different than many others - I'm probably just making this sh!t up on my own, which is cool.

There have been several articles of late (which means in the last month or so) that address male bisexuality in one way or another, so I thought I'd share them here. I suspect many men are not strictly heterosexual (maybe most men, since extremes seldom exist except in our imaginations). Nevertheless, I have no desire to force my views on someone else - but I would like to create more tolerance and understanding among the various sexuality "camps," and I use the word camps because sometimes it feels like war.

My gay friends used to tell me to quit messing around and get fully out of the closet. My straight friends figured I was already "weird," so what's one more thing. My family never spoke of it again after I told them, but my sister never left me alone with her children after that. Most of my gay and lesbian friends will not date a bisexual, so the bis I know end up with other bis (less often) or in apparently "normal" binary relationships. Transgender folks (including transsexuals and transvestites, among many other groups, including my favorite tribe, the gender queers and gender fuckers) seem to have a hard time in either the gay or the straight world - the gay world sees them as a political liability, and the straight world is, I think, scared of them. Transgender people cause straight folks to think about their own gender identity in ways that make them uncomfortable.

You know, the other thing that seems silly to me, is that the LGB community still largely buys into the heteronormative sexual identity (you're either gay or straight, or one of those weird bi people who like both) and the binary gender identity - it's either male or female. And then there's polyamory, which I do not buy into, but many other pan or omni folks do.

Anyway . . . .

First up, however, is an integrally inspired article from Beams and Struts a couple of months back.

Not Gay Enough: Closing the Closet Door on Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Individuals

Written by Abbie Kopf

Young liberation movements are consumed by the act of defense – fending off attacks on character and, unfortunately in many cases, person. Marginalized groups spend the formative years of their crawl into mainstream acceptance combating the propaganda of legislators and moral leaders, who warn “normal” folks of the impending moral apocalypse, brought to you by the unmentionables. For the LGBT community, our identity has been defined by outsiders through the incendiary characterizations that we’re child molesters, abominations, mentally ill, incestuous, vulgar, sex-crazed, perverted, subversive and unable to control ourselves. Fortunately, in excruciating increments we’re gaining victories and reticent support across the ideological and political spectrum. Far from accepted, yet light years ahead of where we’ve been, we’re hurtling towards unprecedented visibility not as scourges of humanity but as people who simply want to love freely and equally.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s recent repeal highlighted the dissolving effectiveness of the tired arguments which have, for so long, weighed us down in nonsense. Those in favor of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell came out swinging with the golden oldies, explaining that if gays were allowed to serve openly in the military, unsuspecting soldiers would be raped in the shower, unit cohesion would be obliterated and the barracks would turn into a giant orgy. Yet curiously, and perhaps for the first time, the public wasn’t buying it. In fact, an overwhelming 67% of Americans supported the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

As we win these landmark battles with greater frequency, our identity will be less defined by fanatical homophobes and we can begin the arduous task of self-defining who we are. So far, our simple explanation has been that we’re just like heterosexuals, with the exception that we’re gay. We want the same things as our breeder brethren: a spouse, job security, a nice house and maybe some kiddos. We just want it with the same sex. In essence, we’ve made heterosexuality and homosexuality two sides of a coin which, regardless of how it lands when flipped, is joined by a common sexual structure.

Read the whole post.

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This last one comes from Rachel Rabbit White. And for the record, dang, those guys in the photo below are skinny as hell.

Who’s Afraid of Bisexual Men?

14thJun. × ’10

By Rachel Rabbit White

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. The room is dark, filled with the sound of flesh smacking flesh and throaty “ahhhhhs.” Next to me are huddles of middle aged men, standing, pants-off, half-hard. I’m sitting upright, purse in lap feeling a bit overdressed.

In front of me is a triple set of couples, all in the doggy-style position, fucking in front of a mirror. Guy on girl, guy on guy, guy on girl. The earthy smell of anal sex filters the air.
It’s a swinger party. Or “lifestyle party” if you prefer. But something here is different. This party is Chicago’s first and only all bisexual lifestyle party. Usually, guy on guy sex is sort of not allowed.

I’m here undercover, doing a story for Gapers Block (click for entire story) In the lifestyle, I’ve learned, male bisexuality is taboo. Just like on TV or in small towns or high-schools.

I admire bisexual men. Not only do I find them strong and courageous and cool but I have a thing for them. They’re my “type.” Or, everyone is secretly bi and I just pull it out of the guys I date. Okay, I don’t *really* believe that, but because I’m bi, I tend to assume everyone else is too.

Read the whole article.

* * * * * *

 
Finally, the Sexuality, Gender, and the Body blog posted an article on the basics of bisexuality. Nothing new, but they did offer some good links at the end, which I am including below.

Links

• Wikipedia is always good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality
• Richard Von Krafft-Ebing thought that bisexuality was the natural state of being: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Freiherr_von_Krafft-Ebing
• Recent coming-out of an actress in True Blood: http://www.okmagazine.com/2010/06/anna-paquin-on-being-bisexual-it-wasnt-like-it-was-a-big-secret/
• The Bisexual Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/x-3366-Bisexuality-Examiner~y2009m7d15-Bisexuality-101-Am-I-bisexual
• Ridiculous quiz: http://www.allthetests.com/quiz19/quizpu.php?testid=1155452146&katname=Test-yourself-in-questions-of-love
• NY-Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/05sex.html?_r=1
• Religious Tolerance: http://www.religioustolerance.org/bisexuality.htm
• BiBasics: http://out.ucr.edu/pdf/BiBasics.pdf
• Arousal patterns of bisexual men: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/bisexuality.pdf