“Men Just Can’t Help It”
By: Alan Parley Buys
Tags: Patriarchy, Masculinity, Men, Feminism, Sex

We have set the bar incredibly low for men’s sexual responsibility.

In an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (humor me, please), Xander is asked a question something like, “Do guns really make you think about sex?” to which he responds, “I’m a seventeen-year-old boy. Linoleum makes me think about sex.” This little snippet has stayed with me even though it has been six or so years since the last time I watched an episode of Buffy. It has stayed in part because I was a religious Buffy fan in those days, and partly because it fit into a larger narrative of what my sexuality as a boy should look like.

Growing up Mormon, I was always taught that women needed to be “modestly” dressed. In large part, I was told this was to help men control their lustful thoughts. I was told that men cannot help it. If men see an attractive woman or too much skin, they are going to have “impure thoughts”. Often times there was a sort of resigned humor present in these conversations. After all, it is so funny that men are just mindless sex-crazed animals, right? That’s why Xander gets to quip that he is always thinking about sex.

We are accustomed to seeing and hearing stories about young men who have “only got one thing on their mind”. We have incorporated this belief into cute cultural rituals such as the father of a girl cleaning his gun and having the “dad talk” with any guy his daughter dates. We would rather intimidate young men with subtle threats of violence and giggle than teach young men that they can be sexually responsible.

Patriarchal masculinity teaches men to be aggressive and dominant. This bleeds into their sexual lives. I was often told that if men got past a certain point of arousal, they would lose control and give in to their sexual urges. I believed this when I was growing up because I thought it was just the way it was. bell hooks observed:

“ The assumption that “he’s gotta have it” underlies much of our culture’s acceptance of male sexual violence. It is why many people continue to believe that anyone who is raped may have “asked for it” by “seductive” dress or behavior, no matter how many television programs have aired the facts about sexual violence.” -The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks.

This permissive attitude toward male sexual aggression she refers to can be denied by some, but we only have to look as far as any given tinder interaction to see that many men feel as though they should be allowed to send pictures of their penises with reckless abandon.

What I learned by examining my own sexuality was that I could control it, but I needed to believe that I could. As cheesy as that sounds, it is still true. Being taught all my growing up years that if I saw a woman’s bare shoulders, I was going to have “bad” thoughts about her was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I had to “wrestle with my thoughts” in order to not sexualize women who were wearing tank tops. In the past five years or so, I have changed my internal narrative to understand that I am not an animal, and that there is nothing sexual about shoulders. Voila! I can look at women’s shoulders now without sexualizing them.

I am intrigued by the number of men who were upset about the recent Gillette ad because it portrayed men as mean and sexually aggressive. I think that those men should be just as upset at the songs, tv dialogue, religious rhetoric, and cultural expectations that insist that men can’t help but be sexually deviant in some form because in the end those messages are what are truly degrading to men and masculinity.

I think it’s time for men to stand up for themselves when we hear these ideas expressed. Too long we have bought into the narrative or laughed it away as just another cute joke. From now on I’m going to call out others when they say that men can’t help it because we can help it. We are more complex than penises and an urge to reproduce.

This looks different than the religious dogma that is intended to curb men’s apparently insatiable sexual appetite. I am not saying that we should repeat the tired mantras of, “Control your thoughts! Bridle your passions! Try not to think about sex!” Instead, let’s say, “You are more than your sexual drive. There is nothing wrong with feeling sexual, but there is absolutely no reason in the world that you should have to feel sexual all the time. You can look at linoleum and only be thinking about linoleum.”