I’m growing up about 20 years later than him, but feel many of the same things. Recognising sexual urges, but unwilling to act on them because that’s what bad guys do, to put it simply. I was able to work through this a few years ago and realise there are ways to act on these urges without being a bad guy, but even still I’m always excessively cautious around people I’m interested in because I don’t want to be thought of as ‘just interested in sex’.

As for things I wish women more widely knew… actually, I wish all people more widely knew that sex is not at the forefront of every male brain. It’s a part, sure, but so many sitcoms and commercials and comedians and movies play it up as the defining characteristic of all men, and I have no doubt this just perpetuates it.

Bravo for your bravery.

This is a contentious topic. Like race, it’s also a deeply important topic. For the good of society, those of us who have thoughts and questions need to be brave and speak up. We WILL get some flack. We need to push past it. We need to wait until everyone calms down and then gently bring up our points again. We need to keep doing this and doing this and doing this.

In my experience, pop culture tells us that many women are ashamed of feeling lust. But we’re less likely to hear about men who are confused and ashamed of their urges. There are certainly plenty of examples of men who approach sex with bravado and confidence. (Some of these men seem like positive examples of the male animal; others seem like cads.)

I come from an over-educated, over-liberal background. (As a teenage male, I subscribed to “Ms. Magazine.”). I realize my experience is not representative of males in general. I even realize that it’s not the most common male experience. But I bet it’s fairly common amongst participants here. I’m a heterosexual male, raised in the 70s and 80s, who learned that my sexuality was shameful, brutish, and best kept closeted.

Actually, I grew up in a sort of Catch-22. I yearned for women and yet so wanted to be a gentleman. My female friends heaped praise on my conduct and told me that they wished they’re boyfriends could be more like me. Then they said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I fall for a nice guy like you?” Why? Because I’d subdued my “bad” sexuality to a point where it didn’t show at all. Many people thought I was gay or asexual. Who would be attracted to someone like that?

The facts: I look at women and I feel lust. In fact, like many men, it can be (but isn’t always) completely impersonal. I can see certain body parts and feel lust. I don’t need to know anything about a woman’s personality in order to feel lust. I just need to see her legs or whatever. I have no control over this.

(I have TOTAL control on my actions. I am NOT in any way suggesting that women should accept aggressive, clumsy or unwanted advances.)

I have no control over these feelings and sensations. And yet I feel — or I was raised to feel — that they’re bad. They’re bad because my feelings objectify women. So like a black man who is “bad” because of his skin color, I’m bad because of something equally not-under-my-control.

Male friends and family members haven’t helped. They’ve either been just as confused as I am. Or they’ve been bastards who go to the opposite extreme, reveling in their lust, catcalling, etc. Positive role-models don’t exist — or at least they didn’t for me.

Women have been of no help. They’ve sent me a clear message that I’m bad if I’m sexual but unappealing if I’m not.

What’s helped has been years and years of self-examination. At 40, I’m finally at a place where I’m (relatively) at peace with my sexuality, and I have healthy, mutually-satisfying relationships with women (especially with one woman in particular). But why did it take so long? Why did I have such a perverse upbringing? And why do I have to watch other, younger guys going through the same thing? (It equally saddens me to see women growing up sexually confused, but I think that’s a bit off-topic for a male to post about in this thread.)

To be honest, what would have helped me the most would have been some small acknowledgment, by a woman, that I wasn’t a bad person because I felt lust. And I’m talking about verbal acknowledgement. I don’t mean that women should have had sex with me to make me feel better.

Here’s what I wish more women — at least the ones I grew up with — understood: all (or most) heterosexual men lust after women in an impersonal way. If they claim they don’t, they’re probably lying. (With good reason: they don’t want to be told they’re bad.) That doesn’t mean they ONLY lust in that way. Yes, I have feelings when I see lips, breasts and legs. But those feelings are nothing compared to what I feel when I’m with someone I truly care about, someone I know… Yet those simpler lustful feelings are still real and powerful. So I’m always going to be most attracted to my wife. I’m always going to lust after her more than anyone else. Love is a powerful aphrodisiac. But I will also lust after other women. I’m a grown up. I won’t act on that lust. But I’m also powerless to stop it. (Luckily, I’m married to a woman with whom I can be open about this stuff. She and I both tell each other when we see a hot chick or hot guy walking down the street. It’s not a big deal. We laugh about it. That’s SO freeing. But my God, the years it took to get into a relationship like that!)

I’m glad I live in a culture where men are chastised (or punished) for making unwanted advances.

I’m glad I live in a culture where men are chastised for making unwanted, lewd comments.

I wish we’d push such chastisement even further. I hate to think of what my female friends have to go through on a daily basis, just walking around the city, minding their own business.

But I loath the fact that I — and other men like me — have to keep such a deep part of themselves hidden, for fear of being hated by women. Many men that I’ve spoken to about this claim that this is a major factor that drives them to strip clubs and hookers. It’s not just about getting off; it’s also about being fully accepted as a sexual being. Put crudely, a stripper isn’t going to tell you you’re bad because you’re looking at her tits. (I’m not suggesting women should put up with lewd, prolonged stares from men.) It’s sad that some men have to pay to feel un-closeted.

I also get nervous any time society prompts people to bottle up uncontrollable feelings. It usually leads to no good.

Men, most women are highly intelligent when it comes to interpersonal communication, but this sort of intelligence is not nurtured and encouraged in a goal-oriented way, which leaves lots of women feeling ill-at-ease with the boundaries between their inner sense of reality and their abilities to manifest it outwardly. In other words, they sense things about people that are labelled as too complicated to address or express. While men bottle up their emotions, women bottle up their analysis. Often, this results in a rather neurotic, passive-aggressive approach to getting what they want. On top of that, they’re trained not to put their wants first in their lives. on top of that, our ability to handle stress fluctuates a lot with the cycle. So, try to get women in your lives to feel okay with flexing their female-type intelligences and expressing all their weird feelings in healthy ways and and I think they’ll be a lot happier.

Talking about the genders in a binary fashion is tough, and I find myself reverting to advices that apply to both… like moar affection & moar sexin’ = moar sanity, but

Thanks for the Man or Astroman reference. That made my night :)

As far as the spirit of the question: I have a hard time formulating my thoughts this way. For folks beyond those with whom I’m simply casually friendly or acquainted, I tend to form fairly close and relatively few relationships and so don’t really end up often in situations where gender assumptions last beyond a blink and a question to the individual about why they think or say or do something.

So I know lots of things about my wife, and learn woman type things from her and share man things about me with her when they come up, but it doesn’t really fall into a bucket of “things I wish women would know” or whatever. Likewise, I don’t really sit around with my guy friends discussing the things that women just don’t get, because I don’t feel like I’m stuck in a position where there are universal misunderstandings dividing me from my few close female friends.

I don’t know if that’s helpful, exactly, but there it is.

FWIW, as a guy, this drives insane too. Nothing pisses me off more than going to a public bathroom where someone couldn’t even use their shoe to put the toilet seat up and instead proceed to pee all over the seat. Uhg.

I’d like to know if all guys played with weapon-type toys (replicas or made-up guns) when they were kids, and why. What’s with getting a kick out of “Rambo” and violence in general? Do all men fantasize about being Rambo or some other equally gun-toting character? Also, do you not see the wee on the floor/toilet seat/wall after you put it there yourself? If so, why do you not clean it up? Just because I was raised to keep a nice bathroom doesn’t mean I enjoy cleaning up someone else’s wee. Are all men’s rooms disgusting places?

Finally, I’d like to know what men talk about with each other. Do they talk about women or cars/computers/violent movies?