Sex in America: Links & comments 6/3/14

In the USA, we men frequently get the following messages from our entertainment, advertising and pornography industries:

• The ideal woman is defined by her physical appearance.
• The ideal physical type is presented by the women in Maxim and Playboy.
• A manly man should be able to have sex with such women.
• If you can’t, you’re not a manly man.

This is a recipe for frustration and unhappiness.  It doesn’t usually boil over as it did with the young man who killed six people in Santa Barbara because of his frustration that women wouldn’t give him sex.  Usually it is merely a source of misery for men who are trapped in this kind of thinking, and for women around them.

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I recommend the following linked articles (even if what I have written doesn’t apply to you).

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement and Nerds by Arthur Chu for The Daily Beast.  Hat tip to Mike the Mad Biologist.

Prisoners of Sex by Ross Douthat in the New York Times.  Hat tip to Marginal REVOLUTION.

 

Tags: Masculinity, Mysogyny, Sex