"Women want trust, men want a target."
Apr. 16th, 2018 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs"Relationship coach" Ken Blackman (who describes himself as "having spent more time with his finger on a woman's clit [sic] than most people have watching television or reading social media") has an article (on Medium, naturally) entitled "Men want sex and women want love? Not exactly.", in which he made rather startling claim that has given me pause to think, but also leaves a lot unsaid.
His premise starts with a basic idea: when we're talking about substitutes for sexual relationships, on what sorts of objects do men and women spend their money? Men, he says, watch porn and buy sex dolls; women buy a vibrator. Blackman inverts the usual formula and says that, if their purchasing patterns are anything to go on, women want stimulation: a woman's sexual satisficers go straight to the sex part; men, on the other hand, want simulation: a man's sexual satisficers indicate a craving for other people.
Blackman then goes on to his "startling" claim: "Sex tends to be better when men are getting gratifying shared experience and women are getting their bodies well-handled."
That last part is uncontroversial. I've been saying that for years, and it's more or less one of the themes of all my writing: one major component of most women's sexual desire is wrapped around this core idea, that a woman's sexual pleasure is predicated on her partner having the skill and sensitivity to get her off.
The problem with Blackman's analysis of women's sexuality is that it's only half-true. The other issue is one of trust. We live in a world where women are rightfully often afraid of men, and rightfully concerned that they don't understand men. Men are volatile and dangerous, bigger and stronger, socialized from an early age about sexual expectations and entitlements that cause men to adopt terrible hidden agendas that put women at a disadvantage. A woman can only let loose sufficiently to enjoy her sexuality if she trusts the man she's with to not abuse her, either now or in the future, but to treat her as an equal who comes to the bedroom to share an experience.
Blackman barely trusts on the anxieties of a woman's trust.
But it's where he analyzes the men that, I think, Blackman's primary thesis falls apart.
Blackman's idea is that men are seeking gratifying experiences. But men seek out gratifying experiences with all sorts of things. Sports can be a source of gratifying experiences. So can computers. So can cars. Which is why, when I'm talking to a guy who says he loves sex or is good at it, I have my favorite Five Things challenge: "Name five things you find under a hood of a car. Name five things you find on a baseball diamond. Name five things you find in a computer. Name five parts of a gun. Name five things found between a woman's legs."
That last one? Most guys can't do it. Most guys don't know the difference between a vulva and a vagina. Guys' inability to locate a clitoris is positively legendary. Ask them how many openings are "down there" and name them, and they freeze up like a deer in the headlights.
Guys study what interests them. They read up on the things that really interest them. They study the hell out of it and can tell you all sorts of details about football teams, guns, computers, and cars. Guys don't study women at all. Instead, they make up stories about how women are supposedly "mysterious" and "unknowable" and "not to be trusted," and they never bother to learn the basics. If men really wanted gratifying shared experiences with their partners, they'd do something to ensure that happened as often as a touchdown.
I've never been a "relationship coach" (The word "coach" makes me think that this might not be somehing that requires a degree or certification), but I have been a safer sex educator and a BDSM instructor in my time. I'm also not heterosexual, which may skew my data, but my impressions over time is that it takes a lot more energy than we believe it does, and a lot more willingness than is generally available, to convince the average straight man to see the average woman as anything more than an extraordinarily complicated Fleshlight, and it's women who are doing absolutely all the emotional labor to do the convincing and the seeing.
The evolutionary psychology people, especially the ones who describe reproductive impulses as centering around men's promiscuity versus women's discretion, would understand this outcome just fine: women are seeking demonstrable skillfulness and sensitivity; men are seeking a target.
Personally, I think this explanation falls down in the face of so much of today's evidence. So many young men at the height of their sexual prowess seem unable to achieve even a performative sensitivity and skill, much less any actual skill, that it seems to me there's something missing from both the evopsych and Blackman's own explanations.
Blackman's general advice is fine: in a heterosexual couple, the man needs to learn how to pleasure the woman, and the woman needs to stop doing performance and help him learn how. When that happens, he'll get the connection he's looking for. But I maintain that what most men are seeking when they're masturbating is rarely a full-on gratifying shared experience; instead, what those men are doing is seeking out experiences that satisfice their desire for something woman-shaped, but not quite so challenging as a someone with a mind of her own.
His premise starts with a basic idea: when we're talking about substitutes for sexual relationships, on what sorts of objects do men and women spend their money? Men, he says, watch porn and buy sex dolls; women buy a vibrator. Blackman inverts the usual formula and says that, if their purchasing patterns are anything to go on, women want stimulation: a woman's sexual satisficers go straight to the sex part; men, on the other hand, want simulation: a man's sexual satisficers indicate a craving for other people.
Blackman then goes on to his "startling" claim: "Sex tends to be better when men are getting gratifying shared experience and women are getting their bodies well-handled."
That last part is uncontroversial. I've been saying that for years, and it's more or less one of the themes of all my writing: one major component of most women's sexual desire is wrapped around this core idea, that a woman's sexual pleasure is predicated on her partner having the skill and sensitivity to get her off.
The problem with Blackman's analysis of women's sexuality is that it's only half-true. The other issue is one of trust. We live in a world where women are rightfully often afraid of men, and rightfully concerned that they don't understand men. Men are volatile and dangerous, bigger and stronger, socialized from an early age about sexual expectations and entitlements that cause men to adopt terrible hidden agendas that put women at a disadvantage. A woman can only let loose sufficiently to enjoy her sexuality if she trusts the man she's with to not abuse her, either now or in the future, but to treat her as an equal who comes to the bedroom to share an experience.
Blackman barely trusts on the anxieties of a woman's trust.
But it's where he analyzes the men that, I think, Blackman's primary thesis falls apart.
Blackman's idea is that men are seeking gratifying experiences. But men seek out gratifying experiences with all sorts of things. Sports can be a source of gratifying experiences. So can computers. So can cars. Which is why, when I'm talking to a guy who says he loves sex or is good at it, I have my favorite Five Things challenge: "Name five things you find under a hood of a car. Name five things you find on a baseball diamond. Name five things you find in a computer. Name five parts of a gun. Name five things found between a woman's legs."
That last one? Most guys can't do it. Most guys don't know the difference between a vulva and a vagina. Guys' inability to locate a clitoris is positively legendary. Ask them how many openings are "down there" and name them, and they freeze up like a deer in the headlights.
Guys study what interests them. They read up on the things that really interest them. They study the hell out of it and can tell you all sorts of details about football teams, guns, computers, and cars. Guys don't study women at all. Instead, they make up stories about how women are supposedly "mysterious" and "unknowable" and "not to be trusted," and they never bother to learn the basics. If men really wanted gratifying shared experiences with their partners, they'd do something to ensure that happened as often as a touchdown.
I've never been a "relationship coach" (The word "coach" makes me think that this might not be somehing that requires a degree or certification), but I have been a safer sex educator and a BDSM instructor in my time. I'm also not heterosexual, which may skew my data, but my impressions over time is that it takes a lot more energy than we believe it does, and a lot more willingness than is generally available, to convince the average straight man to see the average woman as anything more than an extraordinarily complicated Fleshlight, and it's women who are doing absolutely all the emotional labor to do the convincing and the seeing.
The evolutionary psychology people, especially the ones who describe reproductive impulses as centering around men's promiscuity versus women's discretion, would understand this outcome just fine: women are seeking demonstrable skillfulness and sensitivity; men are seeking a target.
Personally, I think this explanation falls down in the face of so much of today's evidence. So many young men at the height of their sexual prowess seem unable to achieve even a performative sensitivity and skill, much less any actual skill, that it seems to me there's something missing from both the evopsych and Blackman's own explanations.
Blackman's general advice is fine: in a heterosexual couple, the man needs to learn how to pleasure the woman, and the woman needs to stop doing performance and help him learn how. When that happens, he'll get the connection he's looking for. But I maintain that what most men are seeking when they're masturbating is rarely a full-on gratifying shared experience; instead, what those men are doing is seeking out experiences that satisfice their desire for something woman-shaped, but not quite so challenging as a someone with a mind of her own.
