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Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating? | Imogen West-Knights

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/hardly-any-straight-men-write-about-sex-and-dating

Men do think about matters of the heart, but writing about it publicly could be seen as undignified, says journalist Imogen West-Knights

Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating? | Imogen West-Knights

Men do think about matters of the heart, but writing about it publicly could be seen as undignified, says journalist Imogen West-Knights

38 comments

jordanlund

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Because men are told that talking about things like that makes them creeps.

dumples

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Exactly. There should be a way to talk about it that isn't creepy

Rodeo

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It doesn't matter how tactful you are, somebody will call you a creep for it.

AnotherDirtyAnglo

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Yeah, but then you'd have to talk about women like... they're... people... or something. /s

dumples

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Can you even imagine

Mango

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Easy. Become a woman. Now it's ok.

ChonkyOwlbear

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I think a lot of good advice could easily get you tarred and feathered as sexist. It's pretty much inevitable.

dumples

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I think the article brought that up as a good point. It would have to walk a fine line and would work best as advice column to answer specific questions. I think the generalities can cause sexist issues much more than a specific example

TheFriar

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But generalities are wrong, period. When the subject is described subjectively, then you’re not crossing any lines. When you question your own perception, there’s no way you could really inadvertently cross any sexist line.

TheFriar

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You think? I dunno. It’s 100% about how you actually view women. When you talk about the woman you’re dating in a way that just recognizes them as another person, then there is no problem.

I believe wholeheartedly I could write this column without issue.

gapbetweenus

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Do you have an example?

ChonkyOwlbear

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For example discussions on the difference between what women think they want in a man vs what actually turns them on. Conscious vs unconscious desires. This isn't a women-only phenomena mind you. It takes most people a lot of experience to figure out the difference. This could obviously come off as infantilising or mansplainy.

gapbetweenus

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For example discussions on the difference between what women think they want in a man vs what actually turns them on.

I don't see how this is a good advice, since it's a giant overgeneralization. In my opinion any good dating advice is rather personal based on the people involved. Sure some people don't know what they want - no matter the gender and others are pretty well aware of their need. A good dating advice should always start with pay attention to the person across of you and don't put them into a bucket, since that's also something one would love for them selfes.

But now I'm more curious about what you think women and men really need?

ChonkyOwlbear

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Yeah, I was generalizing for the example. I would be less general in a larger piece. Good dating advice starts even before you sit down across from the other person. It starts with yourself. You have to know what you need in a partner and know what you want and to be able to differentiate between the two. Partially that just comes from getting to know a wide variety of people (friends, not just romantic partners).

You need to pay attention to what society is telling you that you should want vs what your body wants. For example, I grew up in the Midwest US during the Baywatch years where busty blondes were portrayed as the ideal. Over time I learned what really got me going was a slim, small-busted brunette. The same principle applies to non-physical characteristics as well.

PeepinGoodArgs

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Would many straight men even read this fabled column? Again, I asked some friends. “I probably wouldn’t be interested in reading a column by some dude cos I’d just think, well, that’s him I guess. I can’t imagine finding it useful or applying it to me in any way.”

I think this is it for me. Women vary, and what works for some dude's woman probably won't work for mine.

AnotherDirtyAnglo

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I think the snag is that "talk to your partner" is a boring, factual, real-world response to most questions -- which is very, very good advice... that nobody wants to hear.

snooggums

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A lot of the time that is the response after someone says that they did try to talk to their partner too. It is both true and a non-helpful answer in a lot of cases because the problems to discuss are caused by underlying communication problems.

dumples

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That is true. You could spruce it up about specifics about how to talk about it but you are right. Most relationship problems are boring and that is the boring answer. You need some advice about the interesting parts of sex and relationships where there are a focus on the sex especially non PIV sex.

AnotherDirtyAnglo

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Meh. Both people not understanding what they want or how to solve a problem is entirely possible, but the solution to that is to try a few different things and talk some more. Maybe that could be the hook... Talking to couples instead of just one person. Anyway. As much as I'd love for someone to pay me to talk about sex all day, it's not happening.

dumples

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I think that is true for most advice columns. I think it would need to a hook (bi, kinky, poly etc.) of some kind as well. It is interesting that it doesn't exist

NounsAndWords

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There are reasons to do with the history of this particular literary form, as well. It may be that, for a number of fair reasons, women are allowed to denigrate men in print, but not the other way around. “I think some of the things I get away with saying about men would seem a bit gross from guys, because of the obvious power imbalance,” Annie Lord, British Vogue’s dating columnist, told me. Women can write about dating because on a heterosexual date, society generally accepts that women are the underdogs.

Perhaps the presumption that the same privileges equally translate to different contexts plays a part. I don't see any "fair reasons" listed here. I see a group that is allowed to say negative things about one, and another that is shut down for the same thing (but that they have fair reasons to be allowed to). Maybe nobody should be denigrating anyone and it is just, in itself, unfair to denigrate others?

On any dating advise site/community I don't exactly see women as the "underdogs" with regard to support and who is 'right' in any given situation. The first examples that come to mind are reddits dating advice and "AITA" subs where I've seen more than enough examples of the old "switching genders completely changed people's opinions" posts to not feel comfortable there.

dumples

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Maybe nobody should be denigrating anyone and it is just, in itself, unfair to denigrate others?

I think this is a fair point and we should really avoid denigrating everyone. However, ignore any differences between any of the genders and their assumed roles is not helpful. There are differences we just need to recognize that one isn't better or more correct than the other.

P.S. the AITA subs are always kind of a mess. Especially with people justifying their terrible behavior.

NounsAndWords

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However, ignore any differences between any of the genders and their assumed roles is not helpful.

This is part of what I was saying in the first bit. There are absolutely differences in genders that should be recognized and respected. But context is key. Assuming women are the "underdogs in heterosexual dating" that does not translate to talk about dating. In the context of dating advice and online discussions about relationships, I very much disagree that women are underdogs. But the author is using this, presumably, to support the prior sentence's argument that women can "fairly" denigrate men in print for this reason.

ChexMax

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But also, we're not talking about dating, we're talking about sex, and women are the definite underdogs when it comes to sex, or at least casual sex. The stats on who gets to orgasm through casual sex are just abysmal for heterosexual women... Maybe we all would benefit from sex columns for men more than we'd like to admit.

The amount of false info around, " it's just much harder for women to orgasm" and " a lot of women simply cannot orgasm no matter what" is pretty easily disproven by orgasm rates in homosexual female couples, which leads me to believe it's the men in the equation that lead to women having trouble orgasming, not some inevitability.

And this is all women are clear underdogs in sex before you even touch on the difference in dangers to men v women with sex /sexual violence/ coersion

NounsAndWords

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Are you suggesting that those are valid reasons that "women [should be] allowed to denigrate men in print"? Because that's the thing I was talking about.

Rodeo

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Why is that your sole data point here? What about amount of sex in general?

Men have less sex in general and do it less frequently, so by that metric men are the underdogs.

dumples

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Great points about the orgasm gap.

Cylusthevirus

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The AITA subs are mostly exercises in short fiction.

joonazan

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AITA is garbage because it isn't about finding the best course of action but about whether you can pretend that your behaviour is justified, which is not helpful.

TexMexBazooka

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Because either A: it’s viewed as creepy or

B: no one cares

dumples

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I have been reading / listening to Dan Savage for years for my sex and relationship advice. With him being a gay man its interesting to hear his perspective as a man and dating men. Its been wonderful for my development and I highly recommend him to everyone.

That being said it would be interesting to hear from a straight or bi men as well. I often hear things that he says about men in general that I disagree with and wonder if its me, a gay thing or something different. A diversity of voices is always helpful especially if its about kink. Its more interesting as a topic and there are plenty of kinky woman writing now and few kinky men. Which is ironic since there are more kinky identified men than woman as a population overall

Cylusthevirus

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Straight men don't need to write about sex; a lot of us are terrible at it. Read Dan Savage instead, he'll sort you.

dumples

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10 / 10 would recommend Dan Savage for everyone

Anticorp

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Kiss and tell is undignified, and wouldn't be the gentlemanly thing to do.

ThatWeirdGuy1001

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This is how I've always thought.

Then I found out from multiple exes that it was a regular thing for women to do.

Splitdipless

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I wouldn't mind writing, but I'd first have to find a date...

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Nora Ephron, Anaïs Nin, bell hooks, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dolly Alderton, Candace Bushnell, and so on.

A recent New York Times article about the podcaster Scott Galloway noted that he smuggled relationship content into advice about career paths.

And of course, as so many young men are doing of late, you can dive headlong into the cesspit of woman hacking, care of professed misogynist Andrew Tate.

“If it’s going well, it comes off braggy and vulgar, and if it’s going poorly, stop whinging in print.” So maybe it’s not surprising that a lot of male writers wouldn’t touch this subject with a bargepole.

“I think some of the things I get away with saying about men would seem a bit gross from guys, because of the obvious power imbalance,” Annie Lord, British Vogue’s dating columnist, told me.

But not even an imagined – and it seems pretty impossible – golden age of personal writing by men is going to force straight guys into hand-holding, tear-shedding summits with their friends when the truth seems to be that, whether for societal or biological or whatever reasons, they don’t want to.

The original article contains 832 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

gapbetweenus

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For the starters, men need to learn to talk about sex. I never had a useful conversation about sex with other men, with women sure easy topic (just don't be a creep).

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