Donald B. Jeffries

Executive Director

Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute

Author’s Preface: When I wrote the ‘treatise’ on Equitable Dating about 15 years ago, one of the parts of that essay was a portion on sexuality. But when I started this website for the Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute, I realized that issues of sexuality - and relationships - deserved their own article [and possibly, as I realize the complexity of the issue, their own book]. Hence, I have decided to write a 2nd essay on equity in male-female heterosexual interactions, entitled Equitable Sex.

There are two primary issues that I want to note in this preface, that impinge upon my analysis of equitable sex: my own experience as a childhood incest survivor, at the hands of my mother, and my adult experience (and the experience of many males) in a culture that stresses male pleasuring of women at the expense (other than, in some case, unilateral ejaculatory orgasm) of female pleasuring of men.

As relates to the first issue, as a survivor of sexual child abuse (by both my parents) I came to see “sexuality” as a ‘job’, as a task that required the unilateral ‘sexual servicing’ of females without the concurrent [though greatly hoped for] enjoyment of women’s pleasuring of me. It may be that as a result of the incest perpetrated upon me by my ‘caregivers’ (a most queasy term, under these conditions, if there ever was one) that I was attracted to female sexual partners who were either solely concerned with their sexual satisfaction, or who were themselves childhood sexual trauma survivors and, hence, their apparent lack of mutual sexual play was due to an overall dissociative experience with sex. But it is also true that other males, who were not - at least in the majority of cases - themselves sexual trauma survivors talk about this being their experience with females. Hence, it is a complex cause-and-effect relationship, and therefore it is, admittedly, difficult for me to distinguish between my own personal experience and the larger cultural expectations.

But as relates to the second issue (impacted by the first) I have met, in my sexual life, a predominant number of females - in point of fact, almost every women who has ever been a sexual partner - who seemed to think that ‘sexual play between women and men’ involved men taking care of women’s sexual desires at the expense of men’s own [my personal] sexual desires - other than, potentially, a male request for a variety of sexual positions or the frequency of sex, which some women feel is just ‘too much, too often’. My experience, as an adult male, has to a vast degree been one of women ‘waiting’ for me to ‘make love to them’ (because they had, as the culture states, ‘allowed’ me to have use of their bodies for my pleasure) while they often lay there, quite passively, waiting for sexual pleasure, with little reciprocal involvement. In fact, I’ve often thought of heterosexual ‘play’, from the male standpoint, as a kind of ‘necrophilia’, in that women often were like corpses waiting to be brought [back] to life.

Hence, I want to emphasize at the outset that when most people [and the larger cultural conversation] talk about equity in sexual relations between women and men, they seem to concentrate, almost exclusively, on how women can gain equity with men, how women can experience greater satisfaction in sexual relations with men. As with the Equitable Dating article, though, my focus is quite the opposite, ergo: how men can gain equity with women and how men can experience greater pleasure in sexual relations with women. Now, I realize that for many men - and women - there seems to be an unwritten assumption that if a fellow can “get laid more often”, he’s a happy camper, nothing else required. But from my men’s wellness perspective, that’s not only far too limiting, it also abuses the concept of “pleasure” and further undermines any kind of hope for “mutual pleasure” for both partners in the sexual encounter.

I am concerned that there be a real mutuality in the sexual interaction between men and women, whereby both parties feel that their sexual satisfaction is attended to. But my experience, as a male, has been quite the opposite of this (in the vast majority of relationships that I’ve had - and those that other males tell me about). My experience has been that when women say “let’s make love”, what they mean by those words are “let’s get together sexually in such a way that you (the man) will make love to me (the woman)”. The “let’s” would seem initially to imply a mutuality in the encounter. Yet, my quite frustrating experience with the majority of my partners has been that there is very little mutuality in the encounter. Women expect, née, demand “sexual performance” from their male partners and equally expect that their [female] responsibility in the sexual encounter involves little more than removing their clothes and allowing a man to make love to them. Whatever “pleasure” the man is going to gain from the interaction will be to the extent he enjoys pleasuring his female partner. To the extent that he expects “pleasure” in return, other than the potentiality of ejaculation, his expectation is likely to be met with incredible frustration.

Now to the essay. I will present my points, alternately, in the “call and response” methodology of my previous article, and as statements of my experience, followed by points of emphasis.

Part I: The Economics of Sex

1. 1.In many dating relationships, men often assume that if they pay for the date [or the longer-term relationship], they should “get something (i.e. sex) in return”. Many women who demand that men pay for dates [or relationships] also assume they need to “provide” something in return. Other than being oppressive to men to expect them to pay for the dates in the first place, what is wrong with this arrangement?
   

1. 1. a.This economic arrangement once again, as I note in the Equitable Dating article, assumes that the dating relationship is basically an economic endeavor, with any emotional content being of considerably less importance. If the woman is going to have sex with a man in ‘trade’ for his paying for the relationship, then that is essentially a form of socialized prostitution, trading sex for money. If she is not a free agent, then she is agreeing to be obligated to having sex with the man, even if she doesn’t desire it.
      
      

   2. b.The same is true for the man, though [a rarely recognized corollary]. He is, by this argument, obligated to provide sex to the woman, by his paying for the date. This expectation demands that he have sex with this woman, even if he thinks the woman is an inappropriate partner, or he hasn’t known her long enough to feel safe having sex with her, or for any myriad number of other reasons.
      
      

   3. c.And it is a double standard, in most cases. The very reasons she could give for not wanting to have sex with him (mainly that she is just not in the mood) are not considered to be relevant reasons for him. Generally men are not allowed, culturally, to say ‘no’ when a woman offers sex, even though women are culturally given that right. (In stating this, I am avoiding the situation of men who ignore women’s ‘no’ and force the issue anyway, i.e. date rape, because these are my arguments and that is not a behavior I engage in.)
      

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Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute was founded in 2001

to help men become emotionally healthy.