Professional Documents
Culture Documents
M a l e S e x u a l it ie s
K en P lum m er
I want to fuck. I need to fuck. I ve always needed and wanted to fuck. From my teenage
years I ve always longed after fucking.
A male friend speaking to social psychologist Wendy Hollway (1996)
Men have an overwhelming desire to relieve themselves upon a womans body.
Roger Scruton (1986)
I just like screwing. I can remember going back when I was six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
we had a pub in [country town], Saturday, Sunday morning, I d lay in bed and flip
myself ten or twelve times, and get the thrill o f not being able to ejaculate. I ve always
been highly sexed.
Barney, a gay man, speaking to Gary Dowsett (1996)
For a man, sex instinctively is a testosterone drive towards the ultimate release o f
climax. When he becomes aroused, he automatically seeks release. His fulfillment in
sex is mainly associated with the release o f tension leading to and including the orgasm.
John Gray (1998, May 8)
Authors note: I would like to acknowledge here the thoughtful and helpful comments of Jeff Hearn and Bob Connell on an
earlier draft.
178
H e g e m o n ic S e x u a l it y :
T h e P e n is - C e n t e r e d M o d e l o f S e x
sexuality,
lies the
ours is a
penis the
S t o r ie s o f H e g e m o n ic M a l e S e x u a l it y
Feminist Stories
Although it is well recognized that there are
many contrasting feminist positions, at the heart
of many accounts of male sexuality, of whatever
persuasion, lies a description of men that is
hardly flatteringone that is likely to arouse
considerable discomfort, if not outright anger, in
men. In the 1970s, for example, Phyllis Chessler
(1979) almost groans with pity for us:
W hat demon do men run from? W hat enemy
hovers behind them, what enemy waits to envelop
them from within, if they pause a bit in the
taking if not the giving o f sexual pleasure? Is
this style the inevitable conclusion o f a childhood
in which boys spend years trying to hide their
erection, years of trying to masturbate in the
dark as quickly, as silently as they can, in order
Research Stories:
The Clinical Therapy Tradition
Another tradition for looking at sexuality
takes it increasingly into the realm of the clini
cal and therapeutic. This is a deeply normative
and prescriptive view of the world. It establishes
broad, normative models of what human sex
uality is really like, identifies problems people
experience because they do not fit the model,
and then proceeds to assist people to follow
that model. In the early days, much of therapy
concerned issues of object choice (the clinical
disorder of homosexuality, for example), but
since the 1960s, a major sex therapy industry
has grown up that maps out the proper routes
for male and female sexualities. The work of
Masters and Johnson (1966) was m ost
famous for its discovery of a sexual response
cycle: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolu
tion. This model is almost entirely focused on a
sequencing of arousal and orgasmestablishing,
in effect, that whenever a firm erection is not
possible, or orgasms do not take place, there is
sexual dysfunction. Although on an individual
level, therapy may be able to provide support
and change, on a wider public level, it has the
consequence of reinforcing what male and
female sexualities should be like. It is highly
normative and prescriptive.
The ideological functions of sex research
have been much discussed. Janice Irvines
(1990) study Disorders o f Desire is a fine
account of just how coercive much sexology and
sex research has been over the past century.
Indeed, much contemporary therapy and sexol
ogy continues in the same vein today, with the
help of new technologies, all usually bringing
potential reinforcement to the hegemonic
Research Stories:
The Empirical Tradition
Much research during the 20th century has
catalogued the differences between male and
female sexuality. The mammoth volumes pro
duced by Kinsey and his colleagues (Kinsey,
Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy,
Martin, & Gebhard, 1953) provide a mound of
data based on some 12,000 (nonrandom) North
Americans living in the 1930s and 1940s, and in
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey
et al., 1953), some key contrasts are brought
out in Part 3.
Another major example can be found in the
studies of Shere Hite (1981), conducted in the 1970s
and early 1980s and providing one of the larg
est surveys of male sexuality ever produced.
Although it is very detailed7,239 men returned
a 13-page questionnaire, and this was turned into
a 1,000-page book composed of their comments
it has been much criticized on scientific (and
political) grounds. Nevertheless, it does contain a
wealth of detail from men willing to write about
their sex lives. At the heart of the study, once
again, is the idea that sex is very important to
men. They like intercourse because of the
physical pleasure, because of psychological and
Anabella:
Darren:
Tim:
Chris:
Darren:
Pop Narratives
Then there are the immensely popular cul
tural texts, such as John Grays (1992) Men Are
From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Here men
and women are seen as being so very different
that they might as well come from different
planets, and their lives are lives of inevitable
conflicts. Thus Grays task is to act as an omni
scient interpreter of all this and to help show
what the differences are and what can be done
about them. Great sex, as he calls it, involves
D is m a n t l in g t h e
H e g e m o n y ? T r a n s f o r m in g
W e s t e r n M e n s S e x u a l it ie s
T h e N e w T h e o r i e s o f S e x u a l it ie s
N ew S t o r i e d D i a l o g u e s
for
R e t h in k i n g M a l e S e x u a l it ie s
I n C o n c l u s io n : A n A g e n d a
fo r
Q u e e r i n g M a l e S e x u a l it ie s
N otes
1. There are a number o f studies on male sexu
ality, but many o f them, such as Larry M orriss
(1997) The Male Heterosexual, have a tendency to
depict the sexuality of men as unproblematic and to
see it passing through various key stages: from early
acts of penetrative sex through marriage, fatherhood,
and divorce. My article treats the whole idea as
deeply problematic.
2. There have been a number o f histories o f the
power of the penis and the phallus across society. See,
for example, Klaus Theweleit (1987, 1989). It poses
for me the interesting question: Could male sexuality
exist w ithout the penis?
3. There is not space to review all the new writ
ing usually associated with names such as Foucault,
Butler, Weeks, and others. For some overviews and
samples, see Lancaster and di Leonardo (1997),
Jackson and Scott (1996), Parker and Aggleton (1999),
Williams and Stein (2002), and Plummer (2002).
4. The recent use of the term derives, o f course,
from Gramsci. Blye Frank introduced the idea of
hegemonic heterosexual masculinity in 1987. The
work of Bob Connell takes it further.
5. Although David and B rannons listing is old,
has become more nuanced, and links to a rather oldfashioned role theory, it still serves well as an open
ing set o f images of hegemonic male sexuality.
6. In a recent but already classic study,
M cKinlay and Feldm an (1994) report on 1,290 men
from 40 to 70 years old: 17% found themselves min
imally impotent, 25.2% moderately impotent, and
R e f e r e n c e s 19
Mien. L. (2003, May). Girls want sex, boys want
love: Resisting dominant discourses of (hetero)
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Anderson, E. (1999). Code o f the street: Decency,
violence and the moral life o f the inner city.
New York: W. W. Norton.
Bersani, L. (1988). Is the rectum a grave? In
D. Crim p (Ed.), AID S: C ultural a n a lysis/
cultural activism (pp. 197-222). Cam bridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Bronski, M. (1998). The pleasure principle: Sex,
backlash and the struggle fo r gay freedom.
New York: St. M artins Press.
Cjputi. J. (1988). The age o f sex crime. London:
Womens Press.
Carnes, P. (1984). The sexual addiction. M inneapolis,
MN: Compcare.
Chessler, P. (1979). A bout men. New York: W omens
Press.
Clanerbaugh, K. (1997). Contemporary perspectives
on masculinity (2nd ed.). Westview Press.
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.
Coveney, L., Jackson, M., Jeffreys, S., Kay, L., &
Mahony, P. (1984). The sexuality papers: Male