Category Archives: men
Women Want Betas
A lot of guys think women only want so-called Alphas — big, muscular, domineering guys. But a study at the University of Tennessee and published in PNAS, found that most women actually want more reliable and generous “Betas.”
The preference for Betas began much earlier than expected, shortly after humans began living in large social groups, according to a study that used mathematical models to determine when humans first began living monogamously.
Before that, the most dominant men had the most access to women. Apparently, Betas have more brains than brawn and realized that even if they couldn’t compete physically they could attract women by devoting themselves to just one.
And, as fathers became monogamous instead of widely spreading their seed, children got more resources, had better survival rates, and developed bigger brains, too.
Which reminds me of a question I’m sometimes asked: Why do men get aroused through intercourse but women more often thru outercourse (the clitoris)?
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Sexy Weiner?
Congressman Anthony Weiner has admitted sexting a picture of his package to young women — yet again — in the tradition of Brett Favre, Kanye West and assorted flashers everywhere.
What are these men thinking?
Tracy Clark-Flory over at Salon put out a call on Twitter to get women’s reactions to this sort of sexting. Plenty of women wanted to see a man’s chest. But with few exceptions the response to THIS was complete repulsion. When asked whether crotch shots “do it” for them, one tweeter replied, “If by ‘do it’ you mean ‘send me to the toilet retching,’ then yes, they do.”
Flashers seem similarly clueless. Flasher message boards suggest that these men expect women to get turned on. At least one man finally “got it,” saying, “I simply can’t do it anymore… I found that I was basically just offending woman after woman.”
Men love looking at lady parts, so they think women must love the sight of man parts, too. Surprisingly, “penis” is a common web search among men, straight or gay, and they are as likely to “google” penis as vagina. No wonder they think women want to look at theirs, too. Of course, porn depicts women going wild at the sight of the male member. But porn is a wildly inaccurate instructor on women’s sexuality.
Some believe the flaunting is tied to evolutionary psychology. After all, “Male monkeys and apes routinely display their penis (usually erect) to females to indicate sexual interest,” says cognitive neuroscientist Ogi Ogas. The move may make female monkeys and apes swoon. But among women, retching seems an unlikely process by which to pass on ones genes.
But I think women’s reactions also run counter to Freud’s contention that women experience “penis envy” (this being the supposed cause of our feelings of inferiority: “His is so big!”). I know my first reaction to seeing a penis was a huge relief that I, myself, was streamlined. Looks like others might feel the same.
Women may appreciate a man’s package in the context of “wanting” and/or loving a particular man. But this sort of sexting? Not so much.
It seems men are a bit more obsessed with the sight of their penises than women are.
In “honor” of Anthony Weiner’s ongoing determination to run for Mayor of New York City, this is a repost of a piece originally published June 10, 2011.
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Men Don’t Feel Sexy–and It Sucks
Running an online magazine about masculinity, I’ve come to observe a curious phenomenon. When we post about issues around men who feel unsexy or sexually unwanted, our comments blow up…
That’s a slightly edited observation from Noah Brand, editor-in-chief of The Good Men Project, and author of a top-read post entitled, “Men Must Be Needed Because We Can’t Be Wanted.”
I have heard from some of these guys on BroadBlogs, too. Like this, from Potis:
Women have learned that they are the sexy gender.
So men must desire women but it’s hard for women to desire men — after all, the male body isn’t that desirable, thanks to the media, right?
So women have to settle down with a partner when they have learned not to desire his body. But they expect him to cherish her beauty and desire her.
Comments like this usually arrive after reading, “Women Seeing Women as Sexier than Men.”
I wrote the post because when I complain of constant female objectification and the dearth of sexy-men billboards, women often “explain” to me that women just have sexier bodies.
I don’t buy it. I believe that men have sexy bodies, too. But due to a cultural bombardment of sexy-woman images, especially those that fetishize lady-parts but not man-parts, we all come to see women as the sexier sex.
I’d like to see men portrayed as sexy more often. I’d like to see women portrayed as more-than-sexy, more often. And I’d like to see “sexy” more broadly drawn.
But some guys don’t get it. They think I’m putting them down. They think I’m bragging on how much more desirable we women are. Just to rub it in.
Other guys tell me that they ARE sexy and plenty of women think so! Clearly, not all guys fear that women don’t find them attractive. But men who do worry think that “women are sexier” means more than it does.
So here’s what I’ve told Potis and others:
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Feminine Things Make You Look More Womanly, Right?
Look at the images below and then look at the faces. When does the feminine face turn masculine?
Now look at these images and then look the faces. Once again, when does the feminine face turn masculine?
You’d think that feminine things would make women look more womanly. And maybe they do in some contexts. But when researchers asked people to look at gendered objects like those above, and then judge how masculine or feminine each face appeared, the results were counter-intuitive.
Researchers found that people who looked at feminine objects thought the faces seemed more masculine, and vice versa when masculine objects appeared. Just like me.
The researchers say this happens as an “adaptation effect,” which Lisa Wade over at Sociological Images describes as,
a neurological phenomenon in which “looking at something for a long time makes you more likely to see its opposite” (source). For example if you look at a white screen after looking at a red one for a while, the white screen will appear green (red’s opposite). Or, if you look at lines moving right for a while and then look at static lines, they will appear to move left.
Apparently, our brains see both people and things as gendered — and those genders are “opposite.” But as Dr. Wade points out, “We are ‘opposite sexes,’ then, but only in our minds.”
Source: Sociological Images
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I Love My Wife Because She’s Aging
By James Stafford @ The Good Men Project
I’ve grown immune to the use of sex to sell products. I can’t tell you who the starlet of the week is. I’m immune to beer commercials and other “buy this product and have sex with hot hard bodies” advertisements. What I find attractive has aged along with me.
I have no more interest in twenty-year-olds than they have in me. Flirty young waitresses just embarrass me, but you wouldn’t know that from commercials, movies, and television. According to pop culture, all I want is a girl gone wild.
And because pop culture insists on making every woman believe that she isn’t beautiful if she isn’t a twenty year-old size zero, and on making every man doubt his virility if he’s not chasing (and catching) supermodels, I decided to break the man code and tell you the truth about what I find attractive.
I love the gray in your hair Read the rest of this entry
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Do Women See Sexy Men As Sexy?
![Picture10[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/picture101.png)
When women look at men who are sexily posed or who show skin, they don’t always seem sexy, as I’ve discussed before. Is there any hope?
First, the problem: Imagine watching the Bikini Open “in reverse” so that women are fully clothed while men wear revealing Speedos. What about nearly nude men dancing on platforms? Or a camera focused on a man’s butt as he walks by. All this may look sexy. But women may well see it all as “gay.”
In fact, a sexily posed man may be played for laughs, a favorite ploy of Sacha Baron Cohen.
But then, women are so used to sexualized bodies being meant for men’s “consumption” that women can come to see nude or near-naked men through men’s eyes, too. And of course, sexualized images of men that are meant for men would be gay. (Nothing wrong with being gay, but it’s not a big turn-on for women.)
![David-Beckhams-Shirtless-HM-Super-Bowl-Ad-Video[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/david-beckhams-shirtless-hm-super-bowl-ad-video1.jpg)
Yet David Beckham can show skin and still look sexy. Maybe it’s because he seems so hyper masculine and hetero that it’s hard to think of him as gay. Sociologist, David Mayeda, has been theorizing on what makes men seem sexy to women. He describes Beckham this way:
Tattooed, rugged, athletic, showcasing a lean musculature and menacing glare, Beckham embodies a (dominating) masculinity… he is globally recognized, financially wealthy, and married to a woman who also holds currency in popular culture. This last point is critical. By being married, Beckham confirms his heterosexuality, and her extraordinary beauty and international popularity raise his standing as a “real man.”
![110909--fathers-baby-hmed-2p.grid-6x2[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/110909-fathers-baby-hmed-2p-grid-6x21.jpg)
So must men be hyper masculine to seem sexy? Not always. Plenty of women find buffed men holding babies alluring. Again, the images are muscular and masculine. Having produced a baby he sure looks hetero. But the loving care signals something of the feminine side: sensitivity, not dominance. He’s masculine in a fatherly way.
Men are sometimes confused by women who want masculinity and tenderness. This just goes to show that many women do like both — perhaps especially combined. And who knows, there may be extra appeal in the sense of a man who appears committed to his partner and family.
Looks like “sexy men” too often fit inside a box that is as narrow as the box for “sexy women.” The current feminine ideal is skinny with big boobs while the current masculine ideal is limited to hard-bodies + dominance. Or toned + sensitive.
Luckily “sexy” and “attractive” can also exist outside the “bodily sensual” box for both women and men.
Enter Don Draper who is sexy by way of his face, his confidence, and his success, despite being generously draped in clothing. This is a sort of sexy that may work like a dog whistle. No bare skin to trigger notions of sexuality in men’s eyes, so that leaves women free to notice it.
But it would be nice for both sexes to move further away from our cramped boxes.
As a last note, this is all about imagery. Both women and men can find real-life men and women pretty sexy even if they don’t match these cultural ideals.
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Choosing Beauty Over Sex, or Anything Else–Lessons From Tootsie
Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie
A lot of guys think women want to be beautiful so they can get sex. I’m sure many do. But some guys are surprised that — or don’t believe that — it’s often the reverse: many women have sex hoping to feel beautiful.
But then, men’s value often rests on how much sex they have, while women’s value often rests on their looks.
A woman may capture the Wimbledon title yet be slighted as not “a looker.” She may even become Prime Minister of Australia yet folks debate, “the size of her bottom… the cut of her hair.”
And as I’ve said before:
From the time they’re small, little girls are told they’re pretty – or notice when they’re not told that. They receive gifts of play makeup and vanity sets. They watch endless repeats of Disney princesses on DVD, buy beautiful princess dolls, and then graduate to Barbie or Bratz. All of whom have extensive wardrobes. It’s all about being pretty.
Meanwhile, girls and women are bombarded with media images of impossibly beautiful women who are photoshopped up the wazoo, modeling what they’re supposed to look like.
Who’s popular in middle school and high school? Pretty girls. By the time they’re in college young women are under relentless pressure to be hot, as if that’s the most important thing in the world.
When Dustin Hoffman took the role of Tootsie he got a shocking first-hand glimpse of all this.
In the film, Hoffman plays a difficult-to-work-with actor who no one will hire. So he poses as an actress to get a role. In an interview that’s gained a lot of attention, Hoffman says the experience helped him to see how men can unknowingly reinforce impossible beauty ideals.
His make-up artist had made him look like woman, he recalls, but:
I was shocked that I wasn’t more attractive… I said “Now you have me looking like a woman. Now make me beautiful.” I thought I should be beautiful. If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible. But they said, “This is as good as it gets.”
At that moment he had an epiphany that made him think twice about how he treated women. He told his wife,
I think I am an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order to ask them out… There’s too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.
Women are taught from the time they are small that their value lies in their beauty — unfortunate since our shell is shallow and looks are fleeting.
But is it any surprise that beauty so often seems more important than sex – or anything else?
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How to Pleasure A Woman
Men get much of their sex ed from porn, which has little to do with pleasing actual women (porn stars are acting ecstatic, after all, and the focus is often on pleasing the man). So WebMD asked reputed sex educators, Tristan Taormino and Lou Paget, to talk about some common mistakes men make. Go here to see the full text. We’ll also look at research from Cindy Meston and David Buss, who researched and wrote, Why Women Have Sex.
Men imagine that women feel something parallel to what they feel, says Paget, leaving a “huge disconnect” about what feels good to women:
When a man has intercourse with a woman, and his penis goes into her body, that sensation is so off the charts for most men, they cannot imagine that it isn’t feeling the same way for her. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
The vagina is actually less sensitive than the clitoris and the surrounding parts for most women.
And a vibrator can help. So don’t be insulted, thinking something is wrong if that’s what she needs, say the authors. “Some women can’t have an orgasm with less than 3,000 rpm, so think of a vibrator as your assistant, not your substitute.”
But many men continue to believe that women should be able to reach orgasm from vaginal penetration. Taormino says:
I still get letters from people who say things like, my wife can’t [orgasm] from intercourse unless she has clitoral stimulation — please help. I want to write back and say, ‘OK, what’s the problem?’
And then there’s the myth that bigger is better. It all depends. Length is great for women who enjoy having their cervix stimulated, say Meston and Buss. But the same stimulation can be painful for other women. And if the penis is too long, “it feels like you’re getting punched in the stomach,” Paget explains. “It makes you feel nauseous.” Still others feel neither pleasure nor pain—and often not much of anything.
Generally speaking, width is more important than length. But depending on the woman, some prefer larger and some smaller.
And men should not assume they know what a woman wants based upon what other women have wanted. Taormino points out that:
You develop a repertoire as you mature sexually, but you should never assume that what worked for the last person is going to work for this person.
So open the lines of communication and ask what feels good. But consider: If you constantly ask her if she’s coming, do you really think she will? The badgering can move her from erotic to just feeling pressured. So don’t overdo it.
And finally, let her know how gorgeous and sexy she is. That’s one of the biggest turn-ons a woman can get.
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Ogling: A Turn-Off
![1[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/112.jpg)
Men may ogle, or stare at women, because they are sexually turned on, and many women may enjoy the attention (some don’t). But ogling could be a sexual turnoff for a man’s partner.
I surveyed my women students (a total of 47, non-random sample) and asked: How attracted would you be if your partner let you know he thought you were the most attractive woman in the world? He never ogles other women because he only has eyes for you. Nearly everyone gave this scenario 10’s on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 = very turned on; 1= very turned off; n/a = no affect).
What if he said, “You’re the most attractive woman in the world,” but he sometimes ogles other women. No 10’s anymore. Answers fell mostly around 7. But if he did it a lot responses dipped to about 3.
What if he assured you that he found you just as attractive as other women, but still sometimes ogles? Typical response landed around 4. If he did it a lot, 1’s were common.
Now let’s up the ante in terms of how he feels for you. He explains that he loves you and not them, but other women are just more attractive. Suddenly we find 1’s all around. One student went off the scale, writing in “0.” With exclamation points!!!!
Many seem to think women dislike ogling because they fear cheating, or being left for another woman. So a cure is prescribed: “Be more secure.” Yet few women cited concerns with cheating as their problem. Instead, most simply didn’t like feeling that their man was “as attracted” or “more attracted” to other women.
The feeling likely has something to do with how women’s sexuality works.
Men operate by seeing a sexy woman, or sexy body parts, and getting excited. No wonder so many want to stare. But how do women work? First, the mere sight of a man, or any part of him doesn’t do a whole lot for most women. Hence, the abundance of girlie magazines and the dearth of beefcake.
Men aren’t sex objects in our culture. Women are. As Linda Phelps explains in an article called, “Female Sexual Alienation,” a woman gets aroused by feeling like her guy is turned on by her. So it stands to reason that if she feels like he’s getting turned on by someone else, that has the opposite effect: it’s a turnoff. Hence, the survey results.
Ogling may dull a woman’s libido for just a few hours, for several days, or permanently – a few hours being most common, women said.
So men, you can ogle if you like, but it could put a damper on your real sex life.
I’m on vacation. Originally posted June 15, 2011
Ogling posts on BroadBlogs
Staring at Breasts Is Good For Men’s Health? And Women’s?
Ogling: Boys Will Be Boys?
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Male/Female Friendships Help End Rape
![220px-WhenHarryMetSallyPoster[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/220px-whenharrymetsallyposter1.jpg)
by Michael Kimmel PhD
Cross-posted at Sociological Images
Let me ask you a question: Do you have a good friend of the opposite sex?
Odds are you do. In fact, the odds are overwhelming.
When I first began teaching, 25 or so years ago, I asked my students how many of them had a good friend of the opposite sex. About 10% said they did. The rest were from what I called the When Harry Met Sally generation. You’ll remember the scene, early in the film, when Harry asserts that women and men can’t be friends because “sex always gets in the way.” Sally is sure he’s wrong. They fight about it. Then, thinking she has the clincher for her position, she says, confidently, “So that means that you can be friends with them if you’re not attracted to them!”
“Ah,” says Harry, “you pretty much want to nail them too.”
Young people today have utterly and completely repudiated this idea. These days, when I ask my students, I’ve had to revise the question: “Is there anyone here who does not have a friend of the opposite sex?” A few hands perhaps, in the more than 400 students in the class.
But let’s think, for a moment, about the “politics” of friendship. With whom do you make friends? With your peers. Not your supervisor or boss. Not your subordinate. Your equal. More than romance, and surely more than workplace relationships, friendships are the relationships with the least amount of inequality.
This changes how we can engage men in the efforts to end sexual assault, because there are three elements to sexual assault that can be discussed and disentangled.
First is men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, to sex. This sense of entitlement dissolves in the face of an encounter with your friends. After all, entitlement is premised on inequality. The more equal women are, the less entitlement men may feel. (Entitlement is not to be confused with resentment; equality often breeds resentment in the privileged group. The privileged rarely support equality because they fear they have something to lose.) Entitlement leads men to think that they can do whatever they want.
Second, the Bro Code tells those guys that they’re right – that they can get away with it because their bros won’t challenge or confront them. The bonds of brotherhood demand men’s silent complicity with predatory and potentially assaultive behavior. One never rats out the brotherhood. But if we see our female friends as our equals, then we might be more likely to act ethically to intervene and resist being a passive bystander. (And, of course, we rescue our male friends from doing something that could land him in jail for a very long time.)
Men’s silence is what perpetuates the culture of sexual assault; many of the excellent programs that work to engage men suggest that men start making some noise. We know the women, or know people who know them. This is personal.
Finally, we’re better than that – and we know it.
Sexual assault is often seen as an abstraction, a “bad” thing that happens to other people: Bad people do bad things to people who weren’t careful, were drunk or compromised. But, as I said, it’s personal. And besides, this framing puts all the responsibility on women to monitor their activities, alcohol consumption, and environments; if they don’t, whose fault is it?
This sets the bar far too low to men. It assumes that unless women monitor and police everything they do, drink, say, wear etc., we men are wild, out of control animals and we cannot be held responsible for our actions.
Surely we can do better than this. Surely we can be the good and decent and ethical men we say we are. Surely we can promise, publicly and loudly, the pledge of the White Ribbon Campaign (the world’s largest effort to engage men to end men’s violence against women): I pledge never to commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and girls.
Our friends – both women and men – deserve and expect no less of us.
Michael Kimmel is a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stonybrook. He has written or edited over twenty volumes, including Manhood in America: A Cultural History and Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. You can visit his website here.
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