What is sex in two parts?

I want to make love with you,

in such a way that

I don’t know who’s who

In one room, there’s two men, laughing, using each other’s dicks to give a tour of their flat on a hookup, kissing, touching. In another, two lovers have ended up spending the week together; lying in bed, they learn each other like chemists. There’s another man, in another room, shuddering, dysphoric, trying to recover after trying something he’s never tried before. Down the corridor, performance anxiety; down further, an abuser. The whole house hears him, but nobody checks on her. Through the next door, they’re telling him they love him, a small word, almost getting lost in the pillows, nestling into his ear like a bird in its nest, a nest they both built- it takes time to build a home for such a word. The word travels down his spine like an exodus, and his mouth spreads like wings, opens as love does, meeting theirs. Downstairs, she’s lying there, he’s lying there; they don’t have it, they don’t want it. They’re smiling.

Two lovers get in drunk, knock over the furniture, laugh, can’t get it up, collapse, sleep. He’s trying an open relationship for the first time; she feels like an experiment. He’s their dog. He’s her dom. He’s having a panic attack. There are horrifying things happening in this house; there are beautiful things; there are mundane things, everyday things. He struggles to show his body to his partners, in fear of them seeing a person he isn’t, that he never was. This guy’s on his third wank of the day; another is a rapist, another is faking it. Nobody mentions the rapist; nobody talks about him, only whispers, soft as their partners wish they were with them.
He’s got a customer this evening. 

He looks at his body in the middle of sex and wonders if he’s really a man. Another man feels his masculinity like a phoenix inside him; another plays with his manhood like a lit match. “Two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude”. One finds himself dissociating midway, mind completely elsewhere, fucking ‘in absentia’. He’s only ever dreamed of sex, and woken up in a pool of his own shame. He’s with an older man, for the first time; it’s intense, but respectful- it escalates quickly, but he’s gentle. It works. 

A house of many colours. There are deep bronzes, flushes of pink, off whites and violet shadows. You’ll be walking through and come across a deep gash of red rape gutting one of the rooms, surrounded by a quiet, pale, vapid grey silence which seems to burn for aeons. We walk past it, quietly; we stop talking, walk past and walk away. One of them mentions it to their partner that night, lying in bed; couldn’t quite believe he’d do that, not sure how to respond. She combs her fingers through his hair and listens, swallows it whole.

It’s difficult not to have a very negative take on masculinity and sex. 97% of women in the UK have been sexually harassed, police are under constant inspection for sexual predation, child sexual abuse online is growing tenfold. We live in a culture of immeasurable sexual violence, driven by men and our institutions. In light of Andrew Tate, it’s clear men and boys are desperately in need of a radical programme to transform sex and our views around it. Everyone’s Invited and recent reports reveal sexual violence is rife amongst the youth, and teachers report their students idolisation of violent men. Sex isn’t meant to be primarily a moral thing, or a place without mess, or without risk; it’s not even meant to be a place without harm, this vulnerable world we make love within. But it is currently a site of much non-consensual violence, which goes beyond the realm of play, consent, and respect. Truly, whilst sex positivity has done some wonders (and, arguably, some harm) for the sex lives of women and queer people, the people who need it most are men. What to do?

Introspection

It’s worth studying the real sex lives of men. In defending the case for a “Men’s Studies”, Harry Brod writes that “traditional scholarship’s treatment of generic man as the human norm in fact systematically excludes from consideration what is unique to men qua men.” By excluding women and queer people from academia, media, workplace, power, and making out the male experience to be the universal experience, we fail to grasp what it truly is to be human, and simultaneously, we fail to grasp what it is to be a man. Men aren’t everything, and everything is not, in fact, men. As women’s studies and queer theory have fought to decenter men (cis, white, able, and so on) within academia, medicine, education, politics, there then begs a question; if men aren’t everything, what are men?

Oddly, straight men exclude their partners from the bedroom as well; allowing the body, (as an asset of their pleasure) but not the consciousness (a contradiction to their universality, their power). It’s often been said that straight men (as a class) don’t “like” their partners, they’re just good to have around; the people who matter in their lives are other men. In fact, many men deny their pleasure, their desire, which if exposed would leave them too vulnerable, fragile, effeminate, and instead replace them with a manhood passed on to them bluntly and carelessly from their predecessors. They sacrifice their desire on an altar of domination. And while many ways of sex, like BDSM and “queer sex” (both very broad churches) found ways to play with power, domination, submission, the culture of heterosexuals often refused to call it play. 

Consciousness

Knowing this, we can begin. The first point towards a male sex positivity is to allow your partner in as a conscious human, not just a body, from hookups to spouses. This isn’t just to say that you should listen to your partner,
listen to their consent, to what they like and dislike; these things are already covered in contemporary sex positive discourse. Of course you should learn how to pleasure your partner, of course make consent the first step before sex; but there’s more to it than that. The world of sex positivity hyperfixates on pleasure, but not consciousness. As Judith Williamson notes: “our bodies have become a form of fruit-machine, to be played on for pleasure: women can have different kinds of orgasms, multiple orgasms, plateaus, climaxes, ejaculation, you name it. But how about desire?” Pleasure is valuable,
important, and a component; but sex is more than an organ, more than pushing buttons. 

Desire! Desire, in the sexual context, is where consciousness and pleasure meet. Whether it be a fantasy, a kink, an action, a word, a feeling, love, closeness, violence; desire is found in conversation, dreams, and practice.

Before writing this piece, fourteen anonymous men responded to a questionnaire on the topic of sex. I asked for their best and worst experiences, what makes sex good and bad for them, their funny stories, about violence, about vulnerability, and about queerness. You can read some of the responses, paraphrased, in the introduction- some are scenarios witnessed by myself, most are those experienced by others. 

One of the things that kept coming up in the responses was performance anxiety; in fact, one responder, to the question “what would you like other men to understand about sex” said “make the woman cum first and if you can’t you shouldn’t.” It’s a bold statement, and it fits perfectly with what much of the contemporary sex positivity movement asks of men. But this certainly isn’t the kind of pressure many people want; and it’s not what sex is about for many, if not most people who do it. Valuing your partner’s pleasure is important, but valuing their desire (what they want, so much more than simply stimulation), is paramount. That means actually communicating about what you want, rather than just assuming all your partners just want an orgasm (and some do!). Much of what the sex positivity movement tells men can be summarised into “here’s how to make them cum, don’t hurt/abuse/assault them, now go.” It makes sense; this seems to be the obvious thing to shout when sexual violence surrounds you. But this puts plasters on a gaping wound, isn’t the route to create systemic, transformative change within men. Masculine sexuality is an untouchable area for much of the conversation about sex on the liberal left, and this is frankly because many men won’t approach the subject in any constructive way. The lack of any messaging beyond this leaves a vacuum for predatory, fascistic ideas of masculinity and sexuality to ripen. 

Choice

Another thing that struck me from the answers were the responses around masculinity. Firstly, the answers from trans men particularly challenged what I thought I understood about masculinity and sex. Masculinity, as far as I was concerned, often acted as a barrier to sex, a performance, a pressure on men to live up to, which many partners don’t actually want. At worst, it was a foundation for much sexual abuse, for the denial of partners agency in the name of male domination. One man wrote how “because of my size and masc look I’m usually kind of expected to take a leading or dominating role… rather than it being a discussion,” and another wrote “masculinity is quite a defining trait as much as it is an obstacle.” 

However, for trans men, the problem was the opposite; masculinity was something they had to affirm, and when respected, was entirely liberating. “On dating and hookup apps,” one trans man said, “it’s pretty much a constant battle defending my identity and masculinity. Sex can make me feel more masculine, dominant and euphoric but is also prone to making me feel feminine and dysphoric,” (emphasis mine). Masculinity, in this instance, is a great liberator, is a realisation of a so often disrespected reality, is a huge part of desire- the desire to be understood, made love to, fucked, as you are, deep down. 

For cis men, too, when masculinity is a conscious decision, a shared desire, it could be joyous. One respondent noted “(being dominant was) so much nicer because it felt like a decision, I’m not dominant because I’m a man or masc but because the discussion
was had” (emphasis mine). Another man noted “I’m not a particularly masculine person though so sometimes it can be cathartic and unexpectedly hot if it turns out to be something my partner’s into !” When we consciously decide what we want to be, and allow our partner’s desire to flow with ours, sex opens up to becoming a product of desire, as opposed to a product of
(stale, dead) presumption. 

Care

But what good is a conversation of desire that does not include the overwhelming culture of abuse that permeates our communities? This is one of the fears surrounding a male sex positivity. How do we make it so it’s not (only) teaching men how to have more pleasurable sex, but transforming the way we have sex? Coercive sex, rape, harrassment, and abuse cannot cannot constitute sex at all.
When you disregard the consciousness of your partner, completely other them, neglect their desire- even their basest desire to have sex on their terms, to have their consent respected- the foundations are laid for sexual violence. 

We have to build counternarratives against the likes of Tate, Peterson, beliefs in biological essentialism which denote men as inherently violent, dominant, or aggressive. Whilst these very masculine traits can be great parts of sex, they must be chosen, by both partners, as part of a mutual desire. Many of our partners don’t want these things, and many of them find them at best a turn off, at worst a traumatic experience. Sex could be a conversation between consciousness and pleasure, a dance of desire, but instead it can so often become something of a replaying of sexist and queerphobic patterns and movements, devoid of any agency; just playing a role (and not in a hot way). 

Of course, you’ll always find traces of the social in the sexual. Sex can be (always is?) a place to play with these power relations. But before this, we must teach the value of care in our sexual relations. Even (especially) in the most violent, aggressive, kinky sex, underpinning it all must be a baseline practice of mutual care. Without this, sex becomes not just unattractive, but at worst (and so often)
harassment, abuse, and rape.

Humility

I am not, to be absolutely clear (and as my friends and lover knows) any kind of sex guru, and this piece isn’t a claim to be. My favourite response to the question “what would you like other men to understand about sex” was “I’m not sure, I don’t know if I fully understand it yet so I don’t know what’s left for others to understand :).” Humility is also key, I think, to good sex, particularly for men. You don’t know everything- you never will. The joy is in finding out.

What I’m instead advocating for, in the wake of an onslaught of toxic influences on the sex lives of boys and men from the right, is a movement for sex positivity for men. We need to be able to discuss desire, how we love, how we fear, how we abuse and hurt, how we heal, through sex. We’ve all seen people we thought were friends turn out to be abusers, rapists- we have to respond to this, beyond just shutting them off- which, as much as it’s important to reject abusers in our communities, can lead to us believing the solution to the issue is just to isolate certain individual abusers. We also have a lot to learn from queer people, who are constantly working to rework and transform sex from a thing surrounded by shame, angst, and oppression, to one which is liberatory, positive, and respecting desire as opposed to convention, or stale tradition. Conscious choice, care, and humility; the rest will figure out itself.

This house has many rooms; its corridors are littered with moans, with whispers and outpourings, with laughter; and with silences, endless, endless silences. Men have, traditionally, never been particularly good at housework; our house is, in many ways, growing mould, falling apart- the marks of sickness, the dishes from bad meals, remain unwashed. But, as the famous Industrial Workers of the World slogan goes; “Men and boys: Revolution begins in the sink!”