Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating?
Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating?
Men do think about matters of the heart, but writing about it publicly could be seen as undignified, says journalist Imogen West-Knights
Do I think a trailblazing men’s dating column is going to suddenly solve the so-called crisis in male emotional communication? No.
This is really interesting considering the points they bring up in the article. This one in particular:
“If it’s going well, it comes off braggy and vulgar, and if it’s going poorly, stop whinging in print.”
Men attempting to communicate their experiences are immediately judged for it. Here's another one:
“Paradoxically, the sort of men who have the insight and sensitivity to write well about that experience preclude themselves from doing it exactly because of the sensitivity and awareness that would make their writing insightful,”
So male sensitivity and awareness means men not talking about things? That doesn't sound healthy.
I think a good model for a dating community would be the /r/daddit subreddit. Here's men communicating emotions in a male-oriented space, getting helpful support and feedback from a welcoming community. Another great one for this was /r/bigdickproblems. Aside from the pervs asking for dick pics in DMs it was full of helpful advice about sex.
I think a good model for a dating community would be the /r/daddit subreddit. Here’s men communicating emotions in a male-oriented space, getting helpful support and feedback from a welcoming community.
I think this is a very salient point. Most of the positive male content on social media are people in long term committed relationships with their partner, and are focused on how they uplift and adore their partner. Or conversely, it's men helping other men to do things like lift heavy things and put them back down again. Helping others at the expense of yourself, your time, your emotional energy, etc. is what is often celebrated in men's spaces. Women are allowed to celebrate themselves, their strength and their struggles in a way that is rarely afforded to men, likely because of power imbalances laid out by the author.
The criticism tends to mostly occur in spaces where masculinity is equated with some form of sexism or bigotry or flaunting of power. The sexism part and the imbalance of power with regards to gender is what makes writing about dating and romantic feelings so tricky. Some topics would become off limits for fear of being associated with toxic behavior - a woman writing about sexual promiscuity might be celebrated for embracing feminism, sex worker rights, and so on, whereas a straight man writing about sexual promiscuity would likely be labeled a womanizer. Similarly, complaining about the toxic behavior of men is often allowed (although it sure garners a lot of highly engaged male responses) or even celebrated when it's done tactfully enough, whereas criticism of toxic behavior of women in dating by a straight man would be much more widely criticized and quickly labeled as incel behavior.
It leaves a really small needle to thread, or an exceptionally verbose and emotionally intelligent individual to thread it. Whereas a woman might get away with more generalizations about toxic male behavior and have it generally understood to not be a statement which is intended to represent all male behavior, a man decrying a similar pattern would likely have to spend a few paragraphs talking about imbalances of power in gender dynamics and make it clear that pointing out this behavior is not meant to represent an opinion which applies to all women they encounter. It's a lot of emotional bandwidth and labor to need to perform in order to share relationship woes and stories which seems like a rather high cost of entry to me.
Helping others at the expense of yourself, your time, your emotional energy, etc. is what is often celebrated in men’s spaces. Women are allowed to celebrate themselves, their strength and their struggles in a way that is rarely afforded to men, likely because of power imbalances laid out by the author.
It feels like in the dating world, men are valued by what they can do and women are valued for what they are. The old trope of "Mom's going to be so happy I'm marrying a doctor" still applies in a lot of places. Conversely, a man is considered a success if he's dating a particularly attractive woman. You also see this in hetero couples where the woman makes significantly more than man, which can cause all kinds of internal and external friction.
While this is symptomatic of the power imbalance, we need to be able to have a conversation about it before we can start breaking that imbalance.
It leaves a really small needle to thread, or an exceptionally verbose and emotionally intelligent individual to thread it.
Absolutely. And not only would a column like that be painful to write, it wouldn't be very fun to read either.
I'd also add that men today are pretty fucking horrible. I'm a man and even I don't like being around them. If there was a dating column that threaded that needle I don't think most men would read it, and if they did they'd dismiss it as beta garbage.
So male sensitivity and awareness means men not talking about things? That doesn't sound healthy.
I think it's more that sensitive men are less willing to come off as braggy and vulgar. Not that Sensitivity = Quietness
BDP was interesting like ten years ago, then it went to center on not bragging/bragging and even shaming. Well that was what I felt anyways.
It's like being tall, can't complain without acknowledge you're lucky being tall (so the actual problem just goes out the window).
There's so much to unpack in this really short article it's hard to know where to start. At the very top we should probably start with male and female socialization and focus and how it leads to very different media consumption patterns. In broad strokes men are socialized to pay attention to action and resolution. Problems are to be solved. Objects are to be built. Efficiency is to be analyzed. The focus is often on the non human elements in life or the measurable and tangible things. Women, on the other hand, are socialized to pay more attention to the human element. It's no surprise, given their historical role as caretakers of the home, the family, and the community. Problems aren't just to be solved, there's a need to manage the emotional needs of the parties as well. It's less about the objects you build but more about how and who you build them with. Efficiency isn't very important if everyone is unhappy as a result of changing the process.
This difference in socialization is likely behind the differences in media consumption. Men tend to consume more media that is action oriented and women tend to consume more media that is about human interactions. Romance novels, for example, are much more heavily consumed by women than men and the reverse is true for something much less focused on the human such as books on business. There is something special about the topic of romance, however, as gender disparity among readers of romance novels is highest, and while I couldn't find any statistics on relationships blogs and advice media, I suspect strong disparity among gender in this space as well.
Starting from this space it's easy to see how a straight male blog on relationships is just generally speaking not a very likely thing to exist in the first place. However, this begs the question of why the author is curious why it doesn't exist in the first place. The author is not a straight male and it's fairly clear there most likely isn't a very large straight male audience for this sort of thing, so why ask about it's existence? There's a few main trails of thought here that I think are relevant.
The first is that the author enjoys this kind of content and is curious why men aren't interested in the same content. I think this is adequately answered by the above, at least in broad strokes. Another thought in the same vein is that they're transferring what they get out of relationship blogs to the needs of men - that whatever they get out of the writings from women on sex and dating is something that they believe men need or can see how some of them might desire the same thing. To an extent, I think this can also be explained by the reasons above. A cisgender heterosexual romantic/sexual relationship consists of both a man and a woman. If, in general, men are more concerned about outcome (acquiring a relationship, being successful in a relationship, etc.) than they are about the human element (how a relationship makes you feel, the moments that make a relationship special, etc.) then a man might be able to get just as much if not more information from reading a blog about sex and dating written from the perspective they are missing. If they are trying to understand the needs of potential partners, there's no better place to find them then in the thoughts of people who resemble them. A male's perspective wouldn't have a particularly high utility to them, except perhaps when its dressed as a set of action items such as how to pick up women which almost always veers into the territory that the author and many other individuals rightfully consider as toxic (such as pickup artists).
Another potential trail of thought is that the author sees straight men in need of education based on her experiences interacting with them and has decided that it's good to have both male and female role models and is struggling to find the male ones. This would be a transference of an observed educational need. I think it's important to note that this need may be one sided in that it's implied that men would also desire this education. It's also important to note that there's a level of broad strokes thinking here which I think one can rightfully deduce as well as specific strokes which apply more to the individuals likes, wants, and desires and is subject to their own personality. A good example of this is how courtship should play out. Some people feel strongly that the heterosexual male needs to initiate courtship and others might be perfectly fine with the woman initiating. The relative importance of say tips on how to initiate that courtship, where it's appropriate to initiate it, how long one might need/want to know someone before initiating, what words to use when initiating and so on and so forth vary on a personal basis. Seeing a need on one or more aspects of this could represent a broader general need among men as a whole, or simply reflect the social circumstances of where the person exists, how attractive they are, their persuasion towards this kind of behavior and just pure happenstance. I suspect there's a fair chunk of this trail of thought by the author given that they mention a 'so-called crisis in male emotional communication.'
Of course none of these thoughts even begin to touch on a lot of the technical difficulties with respect to writing on this subject as a straight male. I think the author does a good job of bringing up the most salient points of power dynamics and an online audience and how that is likely to amplify its effect to a straight male writer more than a female one, but I don't think they do a good job of mentioning how badly some of these gender dynamics already affect women who do write on this subject. She mentions that women are allowed to denigrate men in print, but fails to mention how articles like that often draw in a lot of negative male criticism even when the author does so in good faith and is sure to couch their words in a way to make it very clear they are speaking in broad strokes and not about men as a whole. The same would be exponentially worse for men writing about toxic women, requiring an even higher emotional burden before sharing their experience which also would undoubtedly be met by some irate individuals on the internet claiming that the author must be sexist and a womanizer. If men are in a crisis of emotional communication, why should the author expect that they have the desire to expend what little emotional energy they have left on the burden of attempting to write about sex and dating in a way which draws more positive attention than negative?
Ultimately these trails of thoughts are different enough that I'm not sure they're all served by simply having more straight men write about sex and dating. While I do think the inclusion of more media of this nature is good for the world in general, the educational need would probably not be particularly well served by this given that straight male consumerism of relationship focused media is fairly low. Scientific and educational books are more likely to meet the eyes of straight male readers, and may do a lot more for teaching them how to have better a sex and dating life than a blog ever would. If we're focused on disparities among consumption habits by gender, de-gendering the socialization of children might result in less disparity. Some of these may not even be problems at all, but simply a reflection of human diversity as it loosely correlates with genetic expression.
Can just we skip to the part where gender is impertinent and we just lead our lives in ways that fulfill ourselves and others? Support and adore your partners, communicate and productively work through unmet expectations, etc. It really shouldn’t matter much what’s between one’s legs.
At some level, men just need to stop giving a shit about what maladjusted men think and focus on what actually matters - living a good life for one’s self and those around them. If we’re actually interested in flourishing beyond our critter origins, anyway.
This is the same problem as with race. Colorblindness won't help anyone, because there already is a system of structural discrimination in place. The same is true for sexism and gender biases. Just wishing to be in a neutral and fair place won't bring us there. I would really like to be able to skip all the racism, sexism and other discrimination systems as well. But it will take work to change them. And not only that, I would argue that we need to abolish capitalism on the way, too. Because patriarchy and racism are deeply intertwined with capitalism. So, unfortunately no easy task...
Oh, btw it's also interesting that you seem to convolute sex and gender. Because you write "it really shouldn't matter much what's between one's legs." Well, depending on the context it doesn't (you rarely see the genitals of others). Just a reminder that penis ≠ man and vulva ≠ woman.
There’s no disagreement here. Just venting frustrations about the cis-hets. I don’t think I need to discard idealistic dreams and exclusively operate in praxis mode in all places and contexts. It’s too heckin’ stressful.
Yeah, I’m well aware that sex =/= gender as a person as trans experience. But that’s how the world at large treats it and it would be awesome if there were just no preconceptions or expectations on the basis of assigned sex.
They do, its usually pick up artist bullshit
Don't dismiss the PUA too quickly. There is a lot of BS in the PUA scene, but also some basic considerations that men don't get taught in any other way.
The traditional view used to be: men watch porn, women read romance.
That's not a constructive way to get anywhere, and arguably has been making things worse with the wider availability of more violent and objectifying porn.
Under a general veneer of "getting laid", the PUA also teach stuff like:
- Don't be the creepy stalker
- Have some empathy
- Treat your partner like a human being, not just a sex object
- ...ok, so maybe that's it.
May not sound like much, but it's still a step above the "take, use, leave" that gets taught otherwise.
@Gaywallet It is an interesting question and the success of Dan Savage suggests that the "straight" part of this question might not be irrelevant.
I love Dan Savage and I really enjoy when he talks about his sexuality from a male perspective as a straight male. I do think there should be more straight male writers about this. I would really enjoy hearing from them in the classic question and answer format
I have been reading / listening to Dan Savage for years for my sex and relationship advice. With him being a gay man its interesting to hear his perspective as a man and dating men. Its been wonderful for my development and I highly recommend him to everyone.
That being said it would be interesting to hear from a straight or bi men as well. I often hear things that he says about men in general that I disagree with and wonder if its me, a gay thing or something different. A diversity of voices is always helpful especially if its about kink. Its more interesting as a topic and there are plenty of kinky woman writing now and few kinky men. Which is ironic since there are more kinky identified men than woman as a population overall
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Nora Ephron, Anaïs Nin, bell hooks, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dolly Alderton, Candace Bushnell, and so on.
A recent New York Times article about the podcaster Scott Galloway noted that he smuggled relationship content into advice about career paths.
And of course, as so many young men are doing of late, you can dive headlong into the cesspit of woman hacking, care of professed misogynist Andrew Tate.
“If it’s going well, it comes off braggy and vulgar, and if it’s going poorly, stop whinging in print.” So maybe it’s not surprising that a lot of male writers wouldn’t touch this subject with a bargepole.
“I think some of the things I get away with saying about men would seem a bit gross from guys, because of the obvious power imbalance,” Annie Lord, British Vogue’s dating columnist, told me.
But not even an imagined – and it seems pretty impossible – golden age of personal writing by men is going to force straight guys into hand-holding, tear-shedding summits with their friends when the truth seems to be that, whether for societal or biological or whatever reasons, they don’t want to.
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