"There was, I regret to say, a certain froideur which seemed to inspire female interest. It’s almost as if the best thing you can give someone you would like to be with is a certain space to project onto you what they want you to be, rather than spoiling things by evidencing who you actually are." <-- this is definitely true, in fact something of a truism about female preferences, but the first time I've read a man being honest about how that can rationally incentivize the kind of behaviour women are at first drawn to, then lament. But at the same time, I wonder if it's entirely gendered - I think a lot of us, before we're ready for a serious relationship, feel more comfortable projecting things onto a semi-available person willing to dispense some sex and attention than someone actually looking for commitment. Women don't realise this is what they're doing, because we're all socialised to believe we want nothing more than true love from age 18 onwards, but I think for many young women that isn't true. Certainly in my early 20s I wasn't ready for the kind of relationship I have now, although I don't think that was clear to me then. I enjoy Annie Lord's dating columns in Vogue (a prime example of the kind of mainstream sexual frankness women can write without comment and men really can't), but it never strikes me she's actually looking for a man to, you know, get a joint mortgage with. She's out there looking for stories and excitement, and that's fair enough, but if young women are culturally permitted to do this, men should be too, without necessarily being labelled as immature commitmentphobes.
I happen to be a highly reserved heterosexual female who can imagine no worse torture than having to openly discuss my own sexuality, but I've been grateful for the varied representations of female sexuality by other, less repressed women, and I feel there's a void where men do the same in any kind of mainstream way. There's this weird silence about what men want and what men feel, which just gets filled up with women trying to understand it, whether successfully or not. I think it's one of the reasons we have so few prominent young (and by young I mean under about 45) male novelists writing novels about the lives of men in today's society, because there would be no space for them to write honestly and perhaps unflatteringly about their experiences with women. The only novel I've read in the past ten years that tried to get inside the head of a straight, unattached 30something man is 'The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.', which was itself written by a woman. I'd love to read something along these lines by an actual male writer, but I suspect it wouldn't get published.
I think that there's probably a cross-sex desire to accumulate positive memories and at least good stories for the times when we get a little slower and at the times that, frankly, we look our best. As you say, what we can't have is a situation where that necessary exploratory process is seen as inherently problematic if men are doing it, not least because a lot of people learn and mature by, quite literally in this case, fucking up.
I've written a lot of fiction from male perspectives over the years and can confirm, from my limited experience, there's virtually no interest in this kind of story in publishing - it's seen as very 'old guard' and often brings forward that dread word of 'problematic'. The idea of the circa 40% of the British population who identify as straight and are male being out of fashion is slightly risible to me - it sounds a bit like 'Oh, did you hear, France has gone out of fashion', but that's also why I now write on independent platforms and am planning to self-publish more of my fiction.
It's also a question around men using their own language for their own experience - I don't like the phrase 'toxic masculinity' for all kinds of reasons and have had multiple arguments with women trying to explain to me 'no, it doesn't mean all men are toxic', when in fact what I'm saying is that I don't like the phrase as a man, as is my right. It's about having that space to express and explore desires as a bloke in my own words - warts and all, without shame. I also think a lot of desires which seem transgressive and overwhelming internally seem pretty mundane when set down on paper, not least because pretty much everything is shared by someone.
It's a shame an audience can't be found for fiction by men writing about their experiences now, because the market for female life-writing/ thinly-disguised memoir/ fiction is totally over-saturated, and it does often feel that women writing about their experiences of heterosexuality are in a cultural conversation entirely with themselves, when it would be at least interesting to get some male input. Norms around sex and relationships have changed massively in the past forty years, and I really do want to know what millennial men make of navigating this new landscape; exploring these social and emotional issues is what fiction is for. Also, if I pick up another book about an underpaid, sardonic millennial woman having masochistic sex with a rich older man and the whole thing being a metaphor for capitalism, I will scream. It's been done to death.
It's the same with the conversation about self-esteem, self-care, self-love... an almost entirely female preoccupation, it would seem. I went and read Annie Lord's latest column after posting this morning, and it is absolutely impossible to imagine anything like this being written by a straight man: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/self-love-confidence. Like, I'm genuinely curious what you would even make of it.
"Froideur," as you put it, is attractive to some people (of all genders) because it's an ego boost to feel that someone who is generally reserved, cool and unemotional would be so attracted to you that they would open themselves up to you, exclusively. By the same token, some people find people who come across as (at best) warm and accessible or (at worst) needy and desperate unattractive because their affection seems to be so freely given. Some people may feel the opposite - having an open and affectionate suitor makes them feel special. Gender may or may not play a factor in this - film and TV suggest that some men, at least, dislike emotional and "clingy" women, just like some women may dislike sensitive men; whether this is particularly widespread in real life, I don't know.
Moreover, sexuality and attraction are not brute biological forces. Female beauty standards are highly variable throughout history and across different societies; what is considered appropriate when it comes to expressing attraction and talking about sex also changes based on societal conditions. You obviously know this because you mention "centuries of hang-ups," which presumably you think come from societal norms. Sexual attraction, both in the way it is experienced by any given individual and in the way it is talked about or represented in media, cannot be reduced to an "immutable characteristic."
Men should be in touch with their emotions because it's part of being a healthy human being, not because they want "sexual rewards" from women. You honestly sound like an incel using that kind of language. Orienting your whole personality around attracting people, whether that means pretending to be emotional or pretending to be distant, is obviously unhealthy. It may or may not get you laid; that's beside the point.
I think I agree with you, insofar as you seem to be arguing that men should try to be authentic rather than performative, but you're totally off base to claim that straight male horniness, as it appears in our culture, is a natural quality. For the record, I think the kind of straight female sexuality you describe is also highly performative and socially conditioned, and can be quite unhealthy. In my view (and I certainly don't expect everyone to agree), it's damaging for everyone, regardless of gender, to treat sex and relationships like transactions, and like they are the most important part of being happy.
Finally, you seem to be basing your observations on a bubble of like-minded people, on social media and in real life. Straight male sexuality, even in its most aggressive forms, is barely stigmatized in many realms of Anglo-American culture. Louis CK just won a grammy, for goodness' sake. Even straight male comedians who aren't noted sex pests regularly joke about sex and relationships - it's delusional to claim otherwise. They may not appeal to everyone but it's not like they've been driven underground by a horde of twitter feminists.
'Sexuality and attraction are not brute biological forces'. They absolutely are, or humanity wouldn't have survived this far. We can argue against many things, but not the biological context in which we find ourselves.
My writing comes from just under two decades of dating and relationships (now happily married, thank goodness). I can only tell you what I noticed and how it interacted with what I was thinking about. What I am saying is that realistically, young men are going to want to maximize their sexual opportunities, and we need to be open about what works. My advice would be to get a job and work out. You are welcome to come along and tell young men what matters more is being authentic instead.
It's all performative. That's literally how the whole game of meeting and dating and coupling works - look at animals doing mating dances. We're talking about something very different than the love which is sustained in long-term relationships and in parental units. Wanting lots of recreational sex is a phase most young men go through - and I think it's natural, too.
I'm not saying there is no space in our culture for straight men to talk about relationships. What I am saying is that we are closing the space for men to healthily express heterosexual desire (as we open it up, and even valorize it, for others).
My mission as a writer is to make sure people can talk about themselves in their own language, without shame. Saying my language is like an 'incel' for this moderate post is, whether you like it or not, part of that process. Which is sort of my point: That our culture has got ourselves into a weird, frenzied pitch about boring old straight men who fancy the opposite sex, to the benefit of no-one.
Very good piece, James. Cogent, inclusive, and thought-provoking. The plaudits were deserved, I think.
Sex, shame, desire, and morality, are a huge and messy portion of the 'human comedy' and it is the role of artists, writers and performers to describe that comedy. Unfortunately, morality (whether derived from tradition or progressive politics) can inhibit and obstruct that enterprise. It pushes things to the side, sometimes with good reason. I'm guessing this is what you meant by 'cultural safe space': the (re-)acceptance of a discourse about male desire in art and literature and newspaper columns, because there are plenty of safe spaces to be found on-line, or so I'm told, should you need to indulge yourself.
Indeed I am not, in fact, advocating for the revival of the porno cinema - though an ability to write about the kind of men who visit porno cinemas, dispassionately and openly, is something I'd support. Ironically, it might be easier for women than men to write openly and without prejudice about male sexuality these days. Thanks for reading.
"There was, I regret to say, a certain froideur which seemed to inspire female interest. It’s almost as if the best thing you can give someone you would like to be with is a certain space to project onto you what they want you to be, rather than spoiling things by evidencing who you actually are." <-- this is definitely true, in fact something of a truism about female preferences, but the first time I've read a man being honest about how that can rationally incentivize the kind of behaviour women are at first drawn to, then lament. But at the same time, I wonder if it's entirely gendered - I think a lot of us, before we're ready for a serious relationship, feel more comfortable projecting things onto a semi-available person willing to dispense some sex and attention than someone actually looking for commitment. Women don't realise this is what they're doing, because we're all socialised to believe we want nothing more than true love from age 18 onwards, but I think for many young women that isn't true. Certainly in my early 20s I wasn't ready for the kind of relationship I have now, although I don't think that was clear to me then. I enjoy Annie Lord's dating columns in Vogue (a prime example of the kind of mainstream sexual frankness women can write without comment and men really can't), but it never strikes me she's actually looking for a man to, you know, get a joint mortgage with. She's out there looking for stories and excitement, and that's fair enough, but if young women are culturally permitted to do this, men should be too, without necessarily being labelled as immature commitmentphobes.
I happen to be a highly reserved heterosexual female who can imagine no worse torture than having to openly discuss my own sexuality, but I've been grateful for the varied representations of female sexuality by other, less repressed women, and I feel there's a void where men do the same in any kind of mainstream way. There's this weird silence about what men want and what men feel, which just gets filled up with women trying to understand it, whether successfully or not. I think it's one of the reasons we have so few prominent young (and by young I mean under about 45) male novelists writing novels about the lives of men in today's society, because there would be no space for them to write honestly and perhaps unflatteringly about their experiences with women. The only novel I've read in the past ten years that tried to get inside the head of a straight, unattached 30something man is 'The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.', which was itself written by a woman. I'd love to read something along these lines by an actual male writer, but I suspect it wouldn't get published.
Thanks for your exquisite comment.
I think that there's probably a cross-sex desire to accumulate positive memories and at least good stories for the times when we get a little slower and at the times that, frankly, we look our best. As you say, what we can't have is a situation where that necessary exploratory process is seen as inherently problematic if men are doing it, not least because a lot of people learn and mature by, quite literally in this case, fucking up.
I've written a lot of fiction from male perspectives over the years and can confirm, from my limited experience, there's virtually no interest in this kind of story in publishing - it's seen as very 'old guard' and often brings forward that dread word of 'problematic'. The idea of the circa 40% of the British population who identify as straight and are male being out of fashion is slightly risible to me - it sounds a bit like 'Oh, did you hear, France has gone out of fashion', but that's also why I now write on independent platforms and am planning to self-publish more of my fiction.
It's also a question around men using their own language for their own experience - I don't like the phrase 'toxic masculinity' for all kinds of reasons and have had multiple arguments with women trying to explain to me 'no, it doesn't mean all men are toxic', when in fact what I'm saying is that I don't like the phrase as a man, as is my right. It's about having that space to express and explore desires as a bloke in my own words - warts and all, without shame. I also think a lot of desires which seem transgressive and overwhelming internally seem pretty mundane when set down on paper, not least because pretty much everything is shared by someone.
It's a shame an audience can't be found for fiction by men writing about their experiences now, because the market for female life-writing/ thinly-disguised memoir/ fiction is totally over-saturated, and it does often feel that women writing about their experiences of heterosexuality are in a cultural conversation entirely with themselves, when it would be at least interesting to get some male input. Norms around sex and relationships have changed massively in the past forty years, and I really do want to know what millennial men make of navigating this new landscape; exploring these social and emotional issues is what fiction is for. Also, if I pick up another book about an underpaid, sardonic millennial woman having masochistic sex with a rich older man and the whole thing being a metaphor for capitalism, I will scream. It's been done to death.
It's the same with the conversation about self-esteem, self-care, self-love... an almost entirely female preoccupation, it would seem. I went and read Annie Lord's latest column after posting this morning, and it is absolutely impossible to imagine anything like this being written by a straight man: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/self-love-confidence. Like, I'm genuinely curious what you would even make of it.
"Froideur," as you put it, is attractive to some people (of all genders) because it's an ego boost to feel that someone who is generally reserved, cool and unemotional would be so attracted to you that they would open themselves up to you, exclusively. By the same token, some people find people who come across as (at best) warm and accessible or (at worst) needy and desperate unattractive because their affection seems to be so freely given. Some people may feel the opposite - having an open and affectionate suitor makes them feel special. Gender may or may not play a factor in this - film and TV suggest that some men, at least, dislike emotional and "clingy" women, just like some women may dislike sensitive men; whether this is particularly widespread in real life, I don't know.
Moreover, sexuality and attraction are not brute biological forces. Female beauty standards are highly variable throughout history and across different societies; what is considered appropriate when it comes to expressing attraction and talking about sex also changes based on societal conditions. You obviously know this because you mention "centuries of hang-ups," which presumably you think come from societal norms. Sexual attraction, both in the way it is experienced by any given individual and in the way it is talked about or represented in media, cannot be reduced to an "immutable characteristic."
Men should be in touch with their emotions because it's part of being a healthy human being, not because they want "sexual rewards" from women. You honestly sound like an incel using that kind of language. Orienting your whole personality around attracting people, whether that means pretending to be emotional or pretending to be distant, is obviously unhealthy. It may or may not get you laid; that's beside the point.
I think I agree with you, insofar as you seem to be arguing that men should try to be authentic rather than performative, but you're totally off base to claim that straight male horniness, as it appears in our culture, is a natural quality. For the record, I think the kind of straight female sexuality you describe is also highly performative and socially conditioned, and can be quite unhealthy. In my view (and I certainly don't expect everyone to agree), it's damaging for everyone, regardless of gender, to treat sex and relationships like transactions, and like they are the most important part of being happy.
Finally, you seem to be basing your observations on a bubble of like-minded people, on social media and in real life. Straight male sexuality, even in its most aggressive forms, is barely stigmatized in many realms of Anglo-American culture. Louis CK just won a grammy, for goodness' sake. Even straight male comedians who aren't noted sex pests regularly joke about sex and relationships - it's delusional to claim otherwise. They may not appeal to everyone but it's not like they've been driven underground by a horde of twitter feminists.
Thanks for taking the time to engage!
'Sexuality and attraction are not brute biological forces'. They absolutely are, or humanity wouldn't have survived this far. We can argue against many things, but not the biological context in which we find ourselves.
My writing comes from just under two decades of dating and relationships (now happily married, thank goodness). I can only tell you what I noticed and how it interacted with what I was thinking about. What I am saying is that realistically, young men are going to want to maximize their sexual opportunities, and we need to be open about what works. My advice would be to get a job and work out. You are welcome to come along and tell young men what matters more is being authentic instead.
It's all performative. That's literally how the whole game of meeting and dating and coupling works - look at animals doing mating dances. We're talking about something very different than the love which is sustained in long-term relationships and in parental units. Wanting lots of recreational sex is a phase most young men go through - and I think it's natural, too.
I'm not saying there is no space in our culture for straight men to talk about relationships. What I am saying is that we are closing the space for men to healthily express heterosexual desire (as we open it up, and even valorize it, for others).
My mission as a writer is to make sure people can talk about themselves in their own language, without shame. Saying my language is like an 'incel' for this moderate post is, whether you like it or not, part of that process. Which is sort of my point: That our culture has got ourselves into a weird, frenzied pitch about boring old straight men who fancy the opposite sex, to the benefit of no-one.
Very good piece, James. Cogent, inclusive, and thought-provoking. The plaudits were deserved, I think.
Sex, shame, desire, and morality, are a huge and messy portion of the 'human comedy' and it is the role of artists, writers and performers to describe that comedy. Unfortunately, morality (whether derived from tradition or progressive politics) can inhibit and obstruct that enterprise. It pushes things to the side, sometimes with good reason. I'm guessing this is what you meant by 'cultural safe space': the (re-)acceptance of a discourse about male desire in art and literature and newspaper columns, because there are plenty of safe spaces to be found on-line, or so I'm told, should you need to indulge yourself.
Indeed I am not, in fact, advocating for the revival of the porno cinema - though an ability to write about the kind of men who visit porno cinemas, dispassionately and openly, is something I'd support. Ironically, it might be easier for women than men to write openly and without prejudice about male sexuality these days. Thanks for reading.
Yeah, I doubt visiting porno cinemas was ever 'safe' from opprobrium. (Think of Betsy's reaction when Travis Bickle tries to take her on a date.)