From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: treating men as sex toys
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 06:04:49 GMT

In article <MUFFY.92Dec24114049@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>
>I keep running into this idea, which seems very strange to me.  Most
>recently, I heard a man on a mailing list say it: he will have sex with
>men when he just wants sex, but he will only have emotional
>relationships with women.  I've heard other men say this and some of the
>postings about male-male sex in other cultures seem to say something
>similar.  I've also heard some women with this idea that men are fine,
>exciting, etc., for sex, but you can't really get emotionally close to
>them they way you can with a woman.
>
>For me, this is not true at all; the emotional interactions seem to be
>pretty identical.  I know that in our society men are discouraged from
>expressing "soft" emotions, which could hinder forming close emotional
>bonds, particularly with other men who are doing (or rather avoiding)
>the same thing.  Nonetheless, I believe that men and women have the same
>set of possible emotions, the same capacity for strong emotions, the
>same ability to love or get hurt or care about someone.
>....
>Is this something anyone else has noticed?  Something anyone can
>explain?

I read a book recently called _Men and Friendship_.  When the author was
was floating trial balloon for it, his male friends (or rather, he
realized, his male *acquaintances*) almost all responded to the
proposed project by cautioning that he would be suspected of
homosexuality, or at least of promoting it.  In fact, the more
clueless men didn't even get that far: "You're going to write a
book about homosexuality?!" they'd exclaim.  But in a funny way,
they were right.

To me, the "men as male sex toys only" pattern is, itself, a subspecies of
the homophobia afflicting men.  The other, more intriguing, side of this
pattern is the interesting tendency of men in many longstanding male-male
"monogamous" relationships to have little or no sexual interest in each
other, sometimes from the very beginning, despite a tremendous affection
and an intense loyalty.  Some of the longer-lived couples of any
gender/orientation combination I've seen are of this type.  The author
of this book interviews a man from such a couple, and is struck with
admiration, but also dismayed and finally angered that he couldn't find
an equally strong relationship between two heterosexual men.  Perhaps the
fact that these two gay men weren't even having sex with each other was
insult added to injury.

It's almost as if men can have love for each other without sex (with
each other, anyway), and can have sex with each other without love, but
have the most trouble trying to have both.

Of course, that's hardly uncommon between the sexes, either.

The point I'm winding around to: yes, the *capacity* for strong feelings
is there, I'm sure, but the expression often lacks something, because
most men -- and, when it comes down to it, most women -- are uncomfortable
with men expressing these things as openly as most women do.  It's as if
there are these two absurd gender monopolies -- Appearing Strong for men,
and Expressing Feelings for women (as if the two were mutually exclusive!)
-- and men who are sexually attracted to other men are in that much greater
danger of infringing on both monopolies.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: soc.bi