Letters to the Editor
-
@ leftychris
You said: A straight man would be much better off to err on the side of extreme caution and assume that the women around him are completely uninterested in sex in general, and sex with HIM in particular, unless and until a woman has made her sexual interests and desires for him explicit. Of course if straight men were to do this, given our culture's continued insistence on sexual assertiveness on the part of men and sexual passivity on the part of women, the end result would be that the number of heterosexual encounters would drop precipitously. I'm sure that would please plenty of sexual Puritans on both the right and left!
While I agree with you that the sex drive of women may be lower than that of men, I think I would phrase what you said differently. Women are simply not always interested in sex on the terms of which many men seem to want sex. They are less interested in sex without context or personal connection. I once read a book in which the authors contended that they had made a study of different types of "love styles." They claimed that many more men than women fell under the type that they had termed ludic, which was sex as play, as recreation, as fun, as variety -- including a variety of partners.
What men may often perceive as a low sex drive in women might be more correctly termed as a slow to warm up sex drive and a greater desire for exclusivity. Perhaps it would be more helpful to men if they thought of men and women as having different styles or needs.
If a man wants lots of sex, I can think of three solutions. The first and most obvious is:
Have sex with men.
If a man cannot bring himself to have sex with men but wants sex with a variety of partners then he needs to make an effort to make himself extremely physically attractive and learn some Don Juan-type techniques. The less physically attractive he is, the more of such techniques he should learn. In other words, for the short amount of time required to get laid a man should be able to:
Make himself utterly irresistable.
If a man can bring himself to confine his sexual relationships to only one woman then he should learn to:
Make that one woman feel completely appreciated and adored.
I have known two men who were completely happy with the latter circumstance. However, they also had the advantage of truly loving their wives.
As you can see, only the first suggestion requires little effort. Men like brightstar would prefer to make little effort to please women. They see every effort on their part as a loss of power. From this comes the desire/hate attitude that they seem to have towards women.
-
@ AKA Smith
I agree with your analysis from your last post directed at me, but I guess I'm looking at the situation more from the perspective of horny guys at a bar, and for the most part they're not thinking in such subtleties and with such nuance about the issue. Thus, it's simpler for them to just generally assume that the women there are not interested in sex and not interested in them in particular, unless the woman in question has made it quite clear that she is. That would help to avoid a lot of confusion, miscommunication, misinterpreted signals, hurt feelings, or worse.
I also like this point you made:
What men may often perceive as a low sex drive in women might be more correctly termed as a slow to warm up sex drive...
That's much like what I read once in a book on the subject, namely that a man's sex drive is like a light bulb, while a woman's is like an iron. The light bulb turns on instantly and gets hot to the touch very quickly; an iron takes more energy and time to heat up, but once it does it can be much hotter than a light bulb.
As for your point about men who seek lots of recreational, strings-free sex having it with men instead of women, this already happens to a great degree--all one has to do is look at the Personals ads in any big city alternative newspaper or even better online, to see that this is a widespread practice. I can speak from experience, as someone who's experienced just about everything possible sexually (that's legal) and who has a wide ranging group of friends and acquaintances. Even though few men desire to talk about it, it's nevertheless true: If straight women had any clue as to how many of their husbands and boyfriends were sneaking around behind their backs to have sex with men on the "down low" their heads would explode. There's a reason that the idea of "trade" is such an entrenched part of gay culture and lore.
-
It's still rape if he's drunk
Norwegian Court Convicts First Woman for Rape
Thu Apr 28, 2003 9:15 AM ET
OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian court has sentenced a woman to nine months in jail for raping a man, the first such conviction in the Scandinavian country that prides itself for its egalitarianism.
The 31-year-old man fell asleep on a sofa at a party in January last year and told the court in the western city of Bergen he woke to find the 23-year-old woman was having oral sex with him.
Under Norwegian law, all sexual acts with someone who is "unconscious or for other reasons unable to oppose the act" are considered rape.
The court sentenced the woman Wednesday to nine months in jail and ordered her to pay 40,000 Norwegian crowns ($6,355) in compensation.
"This is a very harsh sentence," the woman's lawyer, Per Magne Kristiansen, told the Norwegian news agency NTB. The woman argued the man had been awake and consented.
The prosecutor had sought a 10-month sentence and argued the court should not be more lenient with a woman than a man. It was Norway's first conviction of a woman for rape.
Norway has long traditions of equality -- 40 percent of the cabinet of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, for instance, are women.