Arms entwined, their bodies fuse. Her flushed
face turns up to him, eyes wide, liquid, eager.
He pants in protests
“I’m more than just a piece of meat.”
“No you’re not,” she murmurs as she
rips the shirt off his muscled back
If you see nothing wrong with that scenario,
then you clearly believe in female sexual lust.
Men are being sexualized at a breathless rate
in contemporary culture. Can you hear all the women panting?
Hot guys and dolls are everywhere. It’s full-frontal
sex in advertising, on TV, in movies and books.
Nothing new. But it’s getting steamier out there.
What? Too much?
Is it bad for women to objectify men
in the way men objectify women?
Women are adopting a more free way of
being sexual. This is a kind of safe,
sexy, fun thing for women to do because
it’s playing at men’s games.
Sexual objectification is not a bad thing.
Everyone wants to be sexually objectified
because they want other people to think that
they’re sexy. There’s nothing wrong with it.
With the web we started to see things taken
to extremes. More violent, humor is weirder,
satire is sharper. We see it with sexualization too.
Don’t Rush Me from Dazia Moore on Vimeo.
Bring out the Beast in a Woman
What Do Women Want?
Women want to be being desired in a very primal way. It’s a point my female friend strongly identified.
She told me that one of the best things about her current relationship was how strongly desired her boyfriend made her feel, both physically and intellectually. At the same time she felt respected and cared for.
She said it was important for her to be desired physically, but not just physically: desired for everything she is, inside and out.
My response was that it is difficult for men, especially those of us who appreciate and embrace the importance of being respectful and considerate toward women, to balance those attitudes with the animalistic, non-rational expressions of passion and desire that women want from us.
Maybe it’s just me, but if I were dating and trying to achieve the appropriate balance between thoughtful consideration and spontaneous desire, I would consider the costs of failing to show sufficient respect.
Specifically, the risk of offending or hurting a woman would be much higher than the costs of showing insufficient desire and passion. There’s a risk of making a woman unhappy and endangering the success of the relationship.
I would consider the first risk much more serious than the second, and I would err on the side of respect and consideration. This may be what’s behind the delicate, tentative guy who politely thinks about you and asks if this is okay or that’s okay. He may well put you into a sexual coma—not despite these qualities, but because of them.
Let me be clear: I am not questioning or criticizing what woman want from men. I’m just trying to figure out how men can best conduct themselves within that, and pointing out how unnatural this can seem to them.
It can be difficult for men to understand truly what women want and to know how and when to switch gears in order to both respect a woman and make her feel desired.
It’s imperative that we try, of course, both for women’s sake as well as our own (if only for selfish reasons).
But men do not have the same need to be desired; most of us, I would venture, have never had the experience of being desired, much less overwhelmingly so.
Men may feel loved and appreciated but not desired—they may feel needed but not wanted. And even when a woman does express desire for a man, he is often conditioned to question it or deny it, simply because he’s not accustomed to it. Social norms and media stereotypes only reinforce this.
Men can understand on an intellectual level that women want to be desired, but we find it hard to relate to this on a visceral level.
Those of us who are more intent on being respectful and considerate toward women—such as the “delicate, tentative guy” from above—are less likely to take a chance on doing something we don’t completely understand and therefore may fail horribly at.
While some men wrongly feel entitled to express their primal desires whenever and however they want, there are others who are hesitant ever to express them, not out of fear of being rejected but out of fear of offending or hurting.
These men may not light a woman’s fire immediately, but given some time to nurture an understanding relationship in which they can become comfortable expressing their desires, they may surprise women with their overwhelming passion.
As my friend said, communication is essential, but takes time—time for a woman to discover how much she likes the gentleman she sees before discovering the beast within.
