I’ve been thinking about this issue for about a year now but it coalesced last night when I read a quite long, but well-thought-out blog post on this site that made light of how many women absorb shame from men when we have sex with them. Before that, we’re fine, happy with ourselves, like being a woman, and like our bodies. I think women are getting better at accepting our bodies as they are and the media is helping with that. I know I am. There are more women of all different sizes on T.V. and in all media. The SIZE SHAMING, no matter what size, has decreased. More women understand that it’s more important for us to love ourselves than to please a man.
But, reading her blog, I immediately related to the experience of being mystified as to why a man I was with would turn pornographic in his tone, talked about how hot I was, did the sweetie, beautiful “speak” and then wanted to get sexually nasty as opposed to sensuous and intimate. My assumption is it’s the testosterone and most women consider it normal. The last lover I had said, “Why do you have to be so seductive?” “Me? Seductive?” I’m a chipmunk! What was he talking about? I don’t think he was seeing who I was; he was seeing who he wanted and needed to see. He was projecting. Women are individuals not porn stars and it’s objectifying to treat us like we’re part of your MENTAL fantasy, not a person in front of you. But again, I’m not sure men can help it because of the shame they’re socialized with. Their minds are all cluttered up with objectifying materialism which makes them feel better. Their feelings are stimulated by things; women’s bodies, food, cars, houses, boats, and on and on. I’m not sure women understand this.
How much does that happen? Probably all the time. It’s men’s fantasy need of having a car or motorcycle that reminds them of a childhood toy that they loved. Then they imagined they were a superhero on that vehicle and some adult males still do it. They get a life-sized one and keep the fantasy going. It’s objectification that transfers over to sex with a woman. I suppose this underlies the barely clad woman advertising a car that is so nauseating to us.
It’s something to keep in mind that men probably watch a tremendous amount of porn because they can’t express their sexual feelings as much as they need to or the way they want to in our civilization that shames it. Most men are not relational, not romantic and don’t want to be yet many women need that to be turned on! If he acquiesced, he would be too much like a woman and he’s not a woman, he’s a man, which means he’s a part wild animal, part human. Not all men are of course but most of them are. It’s scary for some women like me when they turn wild animal. I guess other women like it.
I think that men project a lot onto women, as though it’s our issue, about how turned on they are by feeling ashamed, nasty, or mean. OR…is shame projected on to them from all sides FOR BEING male as though they are expected to be like that even if they are not? The writer I read didn’t say that in her blog or maybe she doesn’t understand it. I think men get turned on by feeling repulsed. They’re attracted to women and things that are not nice and that are uncivilized and wild. It’s all that testosterone blasting through their brains that blows everything up. It’s the opposite of most women. I know some women are attracted to pain and ugliness, like a sadistic thing but it’s not terribly common. Still, I’m not judging it. Nevertheless, I am not that way.
It appears to me that everything in our civilization exists as it is to control men’s sexual nature and make things peaceable for women and children. Before, most of the time it was working. NOW, society seems to be tearing itself apart because men’s sexual nature is finally coming to the surface, there is more awareness of abuse of women and children, guns are everywhere which men love (you don’t see women using them in public much), we see incest, pedophilia, and sex trafficking at the highest levels of institutions, all the lies, and control about it are coming forward, the institutions don’t know exactly how to lie about it anymore. Men are victims of the system too otherwise they wouldn’t be victimizing those more vulnerable than them. It’s a trickle-down from the women and men in power who hold the system in place.
Civilization uses guilt, shame, control, incarceration, blaming women, sports, and the media all to LIE about men’s sexual nature. I guess we’re still working on a balance to our civilization as though it’s progressed from being in the wild. Sometimes I think it’s worse because it represses the true feelings and then they explode to the surface.
