Tuesday, June 14, 2011

We raise boys to believe that their bodies are dirty and gross.

While I don't often agree with Hugo Schwyzer, he has a point here:
So many straight men have no experience of being wanted. So many straight men have no experience of sensing a gaze of outright longing. Even many men who are wise in the world and in relationships, who know that their wives or girlfriends love them, do not know what it is to be admired for their bodies and their looks. They may know what it is to be relied upon, they may know what it is to bring another to ecstasy with their touch, but they don’t know what it is to be found not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but worthy of longing.

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We raise boys to believe that their bodies are dirty and gross. The female nude is beautiful, we’re told by our culture, while the male nude is awkward. The penis is an object of fear and derision, disgust and ridicule. And while porn in its ubiquity teaches women that men are aroused by close-ups of female genitalia, men grow up with a sense that their penises are valued only for what they can do (stay hard and get the “job done”) and not for how sexy they look.

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