Reason for Denying Difference Number Four: Male Vanity

Male vanity is one of most obvious reasons why some people, usually men, deny that women and men feel differently about sex

To put  it simply, it is flattering for a man to imagine that women lust after him just as he lusts after women.

Or, to put it another way, it is humbling for a man to admit that what women feel for him is quite different from what he feels for them.

Male vanity, like The Entertainer's Temptation, is one of the oldest reasons in the book for denying the differences between women's and men's feelings about sex.  Also like The Entertainer's Temptation, it was once relatively harmless tendency, often humorous, forming the basis for many dirty jokes. But today, when combined with so many other reasons for denying difference, it does cause harm. See my post Why Acknowledging Difference Matters for further  explanation.   

This form of denial is particularly harmful when young men (and often not-so-young men) brag to each other about their supposed success with women--usually in the guise of the most casual conversation, of course.  Again, this kind of thing is as old as the hills, but back when the differences between women's and men's feelings about sex were more widely accepted, it was far easier to recognize boasting as boasting.

Today, with so many people denying difference for so many different reasons, silly Don Juan stories can seem very real, even when they are exaggerated or altogether false.  The rejections, snubs, disapproval, and downright indifference that men must face when searching for a mate is hard enough already.  We make it that much harder by giving credence to stories that were once rightly confined to boys' night out.     

Reason for Denying Difference Number Three: The Virtuous Ones

Devoutly religious people, as well as other morally upstanding folk, are often among those who insist most adamantly that women's feelings and attitudes about sex are much the same as men's. The reason is simply that the myth of sameness makes it easy to appear, and even feel, virtuous.

The man who believes that the world is full of women who want to have no-strings-attached sex with him can appear virtuous for resisting this temptation. It's easy since this temptation never actually exists.

This "virtuous" man's wife can pretend that her husband's resistance to sexual temptation reveals the strength of his love and devotion to her, when neither has actually been tested.
 
The woman who manages to convince herself that her sexual desires are much like a man's can congratulate herself for the moral willpower required to suppress these urges, when in fact she has never experienced anything remotely like male lust.

The wife who cheats on her husband can make the wrong appear less serious if she tells herself that it was only lust. The truth is she has acted as she has for different and far more important reasons. 

These and similar delusions depend on the myth that women's and men's feelings about sex are the same. The moment we admit that women's and men's desires are quite different, this illusion of sexual virtue falls apart, and being good suddenly become much, much more difficult.

Reasons for Denying Difference Number Two: The Fear of Appearing Naive

In yesterday's post, "The Entertainer's Temptation," I wrote about how artists, especially storytellers, often portray women who behave like men because such depictions have an inherent entertainment value: they provide an escape from everyday life where women behave quite differently.

Today I will focus on another reason for denying difference, the fear of appearing naive.

To put it simply, anyone who dares to admit that women feel and think differently about sex than men do puts himself in danger of being accused of naivete.

In our television shows, our films, and our novels, anyone who believes that women tend to want love and commitment with their sex--that is, anyone who admits the truth of sexual difference--is portrayed as an innocent, or a fool.

The reality of our daily lives is different. Most of us know there is a very big difference between the way women and men feel when it comes to sex, and our actions are determined by this knowledge.

Women are on their guard against men who are after "one thing."  And though many men would be happy (not to mentioned flattered) to encounter a woman who wants no-strings-attached sex, these men keep generally keep this fantasy a secret, or admit it only in a joking way, to avoid giving offense, and especially to avoid being thought of as pigs.

In the same way men are on their guard against women who want commitment.

This is the sexual reality we in.

Today's  popular fantasy of sexual sophistication requires everyone to deny this reality and pretend that women and men feel the same. Anyone who admits the truth of difference threatens to undermine the fantasy. The most effective way to eliminate this threat is to accuse him or her of being a fool or, more generously, too innocent to know the ways of the world.

 We live in a culture that rewards naivete as sophistication and denounces knowledge as innocence. Anyone with sense enough to recognize the sham is compelled to keep his or her mouth shut.

Reason for Denying Difference Number One: The Entertainer's Temptation

This is  the beginning of a series of posts on the reasons why so many people today are denying the differences between women and men.

I'll start with what I call "The Entertainer's Temptation."
 
An artist, whether a film maker or a novelist or just an ordinary person telling a story, must express a truth, but he must also entertain or else no one will pay any attention to that truth.

Ideally, truth and entertainment are one and the same, but usually this is not the case.  A film or novel that truly depicts how ordinary women and men behave can be very dull. And so the artist creates extraordinary men and women for his characters.

Ideally, these exceptional people will illuminate some truth about our ordinary selves, but often we learn nothing from them. Often the artist resorts to the extraordinary not to shed light, but simply because the extraordinary can be entertaining.  If nothing else, it provides relief to a humdrum reality.

This is especially true when it comes to the sexual desires and behavior of women.  Show the audience a woman who approaches men she hardly knows, who initiates sex with them, who is wild in bed, and who expects no commitment or anything else in return--in short, show a woman who seems to feel the way most men do about sex--and she is instantly, highly extraordinary. 

Such depictions of women have entertained audiences for centuries.  They have long since become dull cliches. Today these depictions continue (and multiply) for very different reasons (the subject of future posts) but originally these depictions provided a simple escape from a reality of difference that could be (and still often is) oppressive.
   

  Out of all of the reasons for denying the differences between women and men, this desire to entertain people weary of that difference is one I sympathize with most. That said, I suspect such entertainments, though harmless enough in themselves, provided the center of the giant snowball of denial that we have to today. 

More on Women's Attraction to Male Power and Prestige

In my last post I pointed out an important difference between men and women: while men have a tendency to be attracted to a woman for her looks, women are more often attracted to men for their power, status, or prestige.

The statement about men needs no explanation. There are of course many exceptions. Some of them I would like to talk about. They will be subjects for future posts.

Today I will focus on the women's attraction to male power. I want to make this point clear. By "power" or "status" I do not mean just economic, political, or physical power--though those obvious kinds of power can help a man to succeed in finding sexual partners.  There are many, many sorts of male power that attract women.

In certain situations, a drug dealer has power. In others, a guy in a successful rock band gets the attention. There are men who achieve a kind of status through being a clown or "cool." Even being a certain type loner or underdog can suggest power.

There are women who will brag about how they are attracted to "nerds," usually meaning "computer geeks."   It's not surprising. Computers play an important part in all of our lives, and those "geeks" make a lot of money.  Nerds have power too, and power attracts women.   
 
When I was first starting out as a writer I had to take low-paying, part-time jobs to make ends meet. I was a file clerk. I was an office boy. I was a lone male receptionist surrounded by female receptionists--all of whom despised me because I was only a receptionist.   I even delivered pizza at one point.  When I was working such jobs, I was beneath women's notice.

If I took a teaching job, suddenly I became visible.  If I went to a writer's conference, especially if it was somewhat exclusive, women even found me desirable.  But as soon as I returned to another temp office job I became the invisible man again.

In this way I came to understand that my desirability as a man was directly related to my position in a given sphere. I came to see that unless I had a certain status, I was nothing as far women were concerned.

Men who have never been through that--men who find a place for themselves and keep it--have a hard time understanding just how important their position is. Most women refuse to believe this fact of male existence at all.

Women have a hard time imagining this because their own sexual worth (as well as other sorts of worth) is more constant. Whether a woman works as a business executive or a maid in a hotel, men will find her attractive, if she is attractive in any way at all. 

 One of the biggest differences between women and men is that women have a sexual power that men simply do not.  This sexual power is extremely important, but it is being denied. 

  Why? This will be the subject of future posts.

How Denying Difference Leads to Misguided Ideals of What Women & Men Should Be

Reading over my last post I found a doozy of a line:

"I see people holding the opposite sex to impossible standards. The idea of what a woman should be or a man should be becomes increasingly narrow. It is as though the fixation on the false idea of sameness has resulted in mass blindness, preventing people from recognizing the beauty in real women and men."


 What do I mean?


If we acknowledge that women and men feel differently, we can evaluate those differences. We can see that men really do have a tendency, say,  to judge women too much by their appearances alone. We can see that women really do tend, say,  to judge men by their status or power.


Once we recognize such a tendency, we can be on our guard against it.

In some ways I am lucky to be a man in culture so willing to criticize men. I am rarely allowed to forget the male tendency to fall for a younger woman, a woman with a good body, or just a pretty face. Whenever I feel attracted to a woman with any of these qualities I stop and ask myself, "Am I being 'typically male'?" Usually the answer is "yes." I'm on my guard. I think a little before acting and I'm better off for it.


Women in this regard aren't so lucky.  Because we live a culture where anyone who criticizes women is immediately labeled a "misogynist," most people wisely keep their mouths shut, even when criticism is due.   If more people just came out and said it, "Yes, a lot of women do have a tendency to go for men with power or status," maybe more women would stop and ask themselves, "Do I really like this guy? Or am I just drawn to him he's lead singer in the band?"
 
But fewer and fewer people are willing to admit that a lot of women have this problem. Instead, they retreat to the myth of sameness. They insist that women are attracted to a handsome face just as much as men are attracted to pretty one, that women are attracted to a sexy body just as much as men are, and even that men are attracted to status or power or success in a woman the same way women are attracted to such qualities in  men.

Pretend long enough that a problem doesn't exist, and a lot of people will believe it doesn't.

We end up with what we have today: many women who will not consider a man unless he has certain social or economic standing, a certain kind of power or status. When they cannot find a man with these qualities, they say, "All the good ones are married or gay," or they chalk it up to bad luck. It never occurs to them that they should reexamine their own standards and tastes because no one dares to question those standards and tastes anymore.


I'm not saying that men don't have their problems too. There are still plenty of guys out there who really want (or think they want) any woman with big breasts (real or not) and blonde hair (real or not). But we at least force such men to realize that they are being shallow and that they deserve the sort of women they wind up with.

Why Acknowledging Difference Matters

In my first post I said that the current, widespread denial of difference was making a lot of people miserable.

Strong words.  Does it really matter so much that so many people are pretending that women and men feel, think, and see the world alike?

In a word, Yes.

For one thing, the myth of sameness leaves young women unprepared for the reality of men. If a teenage girl starts dating actually believing that the boys she's going out with feel the same way she does about sex, she's going to be in for a rude awakening. Possibly she could be headed for real trouble.

And it's not fair to young men either. Imagine a teenage boy who's been brought up to actually believe that  woman will often make the first move, initiate sex, and expect no real commitment from him. That's going to be one disappointed boy. He's going think something must be the matter with him.

"But why aren't women coming up to me and leading me by the hand into their bedrooms the way they do on TV?" he'll ask himself. "Am I hideous? Does my breath stink? Am I saying something wrong?"

It's easy to laugh. But such disappointment can cause real pain to young men, especially when everyone around them keeps insisting that women feel basically the same as they do.

And young people aren't the only ones hurt by a lie.  I meet many adults who believe or claim to believe in the myth of sameness. 

I see women who hate men because they refuse to believe that men feel differently than they do about sex. 

I run into men who are full of hatred towards women because they refuse to accept that women want love and commitment.. As men, they can't get away with complaining the way women can, but inside they're seething.

Even more often I see people holding the opposite sex to impossible standards. The idea of what a woman should be or a man should be becomes increasingly narrow. It is as though the fixation on the false idea of sameness has resulted in mass blindness, preventing people from recognizing the beauty in real women and men. 

So yes, acknowledging difference between the feelings of women and men does matter. The lie of sameness is causing a great deal of pain.