There Are Many Barriers To Healthy Sex

Negative Messages About Men and Sex in the Media. Product marketing: It is important to realize that we live in a commercial culture and that media is a primary source for selling products. Sex sells. Because of its natural power, sex is used to get our attention and even to create a need by associating sexualized women to attract us to a product—whether a car, shaving lotion, beer, or athletic club. Be aware that marketing typically trivializes men and sexuality.

News and entertainment: Male sexuality attracts attention—often associated with shame. For example, news reports often and sadly focus on rape, lust killings, child sexual abuse, arrests of men making or distributing child porn, sexual abuse by clergymen, and voyeurism. Men are frequently portrayed as sexually troubled and even dangerous, addicted to Internet pornography, sex harassers, or sex offenders. Some TV shows engage in male-bashing. Men who try to be sexually healthy may unfortunately
take on by osmosis subtle collective shame, feeling that as a man he is somehow implicated, suspect, bad.

Avoidance (“Silence”) About Honest Male Sexual Feelings. Men’s cautiousness about expressing honest sexual feelings is a significant barrier to sexual health. This silence in expressing honest sexual feelings subverts feeling proud of masculinity and sexuality. Men (and women) get faked out, believing that male sexuality is simplistic, one-dimensional (e.g., intercourse), impersonal, and about perfect performance and proving masculinity. This may fit an adolescent emerging from childhood to manhood, but men seeking lifelong sexual health do not live in such a one-dimensional world of sex.

Male “Bravado”: Bragging and Trivializing. Seldom do men honestly talk with other men about sex in a personal way. Locker-room teasing, joking about another man, and exaggerating sexual escapades are accepted as normal male interaction. Sex is simple, no questions, automatic; it is about how often one “scores” (gets “laid”). This competitive bantering is the usual public discourse for men. When that is the only level on which men communicate with each other about sex, it reinforces a lack of understanding and acceptance and sets up self-defeating sexual expectations.

Typical male language can also be a barrier—language that is object focused (third person) rather than an expression of personal thoughts or feelings. Objectifying language depersonalizes and trivializes sexuality. For example, when a man says to his partner “Your body is hot” he may actually mean “I’m lonely and want to feel special and close to you”; “You’ve got great tits” may mean “When you invite me to enjoy you and get close to you I feel special”; or “You don’t want sex? What’s wrong with you?” may mean “I’m confused. When you flat out just say ‘no,’ I think you don’t love me. I feel rejected and controlled.”

Unrealistic Sex Expectations. Sex as presented in our society has virtually nothing to do with what we know of realistic sex according to the best scientific research. The public impression and discussion of sex in America is almost silly. When accurate information is undermined by myths, political distortions, and hype, people do not learn and accept facts about men’s bodies, women’s bodies, and how people function sexually. Without accurate information, we are susceptible to myths, “Hollywood” or pornographic notions of what is supposed to be “real” sex. You will not find men’s sexual health portrayed in a porn movie because pornography is purely about sexual fantasy.

Fantasy is “what you don’t have and can’t reasonably have in real life with a real woman.” That doesn’t make it “bad”—just fantasy. Pornographic fantasy has the message that sexual drive does not need to be regulated, that anything goes. Major unrealistic expectations are encouraged. There is an absence of positive societal messages that teach boys (and men) to regulate their sex drive. Instead, the cultural message about sex drive is negative and shaming (such as in radical feminist philosophy, anti-porn zealots, or negative religious messages of sin). Paradoxically, this shame serves to powerfully contribute to sexual impulsivity and impede men’s sexual health.