Archives for May 2014

The “Problem” with Male Virginity

May 30, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 643 Comments

On Monday, I talked a little about the toxic culture surrounding masculinity and how it hurts men. Today, I want to start the conversation to help dismantle it. And one of the best places to start is to talk about sex. Specifically: male virginity and the shame in not having sex.

One of the things that I’ve seen come up over and over again in the aftermath of the Elliot Rodger shooting is the number of men – men of literally all ages – talking about the shame and pain of being a male virgin. They talk about feeling broken or unworthy, that they’ve missed some sort of open time frame where they could lose their virginity and now they’re (metaphorically) screwed. It feels like everyone knows – like you’ve been branded by a giant V.

"Weeeee know your seeeecreeet." — “Weeeee know your seeeecreeet.”

Of course, because they’re so anxious about being an “older” virgin – where “older” can range anywhere from 15 to 50 – that they can’t bring themselves to talk about it. The fear of being “outed” as a virgin becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. They so fear rejection for being virgins that they can’t bring themselves to approach women. They can’t bring themselves to approach women, so they don’t have opportunities to lose their virginity. They continue to get older, becoming even more anxious. And so the cycle continues, leaving them feeling ashamed, lost, even bitter and resentful. Sex goes from being something to be enjoyed to a giant monolith of titanic proportions that casts a shadow over everything they do and who they are.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

So let’s talk a little about the problems with the way we think about male virginity… and how to fix them.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Enforce My Boundaries?

May 28, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 33 Comments

Doc, I was hoping you could help me with something. I’m a 30 year old guy who was sexually abused as a child by a woman. When I was younger, dating and even flirting with women brought about anxiety and a vague sense of dread. A few years ago, I got myself into therapy, started being more mindful of things that trigger me and subsequently got much more confident around women. I’ve been doing the online dating thing for the last couple of years and it’s generally been a good experience. Even when the women haven’t been a good match for me, I’ve generally enjoying meeting and talking to new people. As a result of my abuse though, I’m not really capable of physical intimacy with women until I get to know them a bit and feel comfortable around them. I usually tell them that, “I just want to take things slowly,” since I don’t feel like disclosing my abuse to people that I’ve just been on a date or two with. Unfortunately, many of the women are totally baffled by a guy who turns down sex and they often get upset. The last girl I went on a few dates with actually called me a faggot for not wanting to sleep with her. Is there a way that I can communicate my boundaries while making it clear that I’m still interested? Thank you Dr. NerdLove you’re my only hope!

Signed,

Don’t Know What to Say

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Elliot Rodger and the Price of Toxic Masculinity

May 26, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 1,130 Comments

Friday night, May 23rd, Elliot Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment. He then got behind the wheel of his BMW and proceeded to murder three more people and injured thirteen others before dying of a gunshot wound to the head. He did this because he was a virgin. This isn’t speculation. In a blood-chilling video entitled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution”, (link includes a transcript; the video itself is incredibly hard to watch) the 22 year old delivered a long rant about being a virgin, about how since he hit puberty he has been afflicted with unfulfilled desires. He was 22 years old and had never even kissed a girl. In college he felt as though he were surrounded by a world that he was not allowed to participate in, a world of sex and desire and love that he was cruelly excluded from. He wanted sex, but women refused to be attracted to him. He complained that it wasn’t “fair” that everybody else got to experience “sex, fun and pleasure” and he was left out.

He couldn’t stand how women would snub him, a self-proclaimed “supreme gentlemen”, while throwing themselves at “obnoxious brutes”. For these crimes, in his words – “the crime of living a better life than me” – they deserved to die. Because they supposedly forced him to suffer, they deserved to be made to suffer in return.

And so he killed six people and sent thirteen more to the hospital.

I wrote a little about this on the NerdLove Tumblr on Saturday when things were still fresh, but there’s still a lot to unpack here – about virginity, about society, about entitlement and – most of all – about hatred and pain. This isn’t a simple issue and we shouldn’t let it be. Because it’s about so much more than just one lone nut killing people. It’s about what it means to be a man.

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What Can One Man’s Mistake Teach Us About Open Relationships?

May 23, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 352 Comments

On Monday, I mentioned how the universe liked to drop the occasional subject into my lap, sparing me the time and effort to come up with a new topic. I didn’t exactly expect the same thing to happen again quite so soon, but Reddit apparently saw fit to provide me with a story about open relationships and dating that’s so perfectly crafted and ironic that it’s practically an O. Henry story.

In case you missed it, a gentleman posted the (now deleted) story of how he pressured his girlfriend into an open relationship to the the site’s Relationship subreddit. This Reddit Romeo expected that life in an open relationship would be hot and cold running blowjobs for him while his girlfriend – a heavier woman, although he rushes to point out “she was like this when we started” – would be getting whatever crumbs of affection she could scrounge.

I’ll give you three guesses as to how that all turned out.

"These guys? They're just my Tuesday night dates. I've got five more lined up for the rest of this week alone!" — “These guys? They’re just my Tuesday night dates. I’ve got five more lined up for the rest of this week.” (credit: DFree / Shutterstock.com)

Now as tempting as it is just to sit back and laugh at this guy and how his sense of entitlement backfired on him and appreciate it as a case of “be careful what you wish for” – and I will – this is actually something of a perfect storm of bad decisions. In fact, it went so badly that, to me, it’s a valuable teaching tool. So rather than just poking fun and laughing, let’s take a look at what he did wrong, why it blew up in his face and how he could have done things better.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Is It Too Late To Fix Things?

May 21, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 276 Comments

Doc, I need your help:

My boyfriend and I are relative newcomers to the idea of enthusiastic consent. Unfortunately, this realization came five years into our relationship. And the last two years have been spent trying to put humpty dumpty back together again. Well, really they’ve been spent just trying to understand what the hell even happened. Not much in the way of humpty dumpty going on (much to his chagrin).

Now we’ve both bought into the idea of enthusiastic consent. But the problem is that it’s very difficult for me to be enthusiastic after so much overlooked unenthusiasm. And my boyfriend generally interprets a lack of enthusiasm as a lack of love or caring.

I recognize that both of our actions have a lot to do with social conditioning—the “gatekeeper model,” as you’ve described it. We were both working in this framework of the man getting what he can and the woman giving what was owed.

Some background:

There was a long stretch in our relationship where I was really miserable having sex with him. I would have it mostly because I felt some obligation to. He would request sex, but wasn’t excessively pushy about it. But because of my family history (and social expectations at large), I am extremely sensitive to the needs of others, and it would take very little for me to feel guilty about not meeting his needs. But my own emotional and physical needs were completely invisible to him — I didn’t offer, and he didn’t ask.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t understand why someone I used to enjoy being close to now repulsed me. I didn’t even know I had needs, or that they weren’t being met. And I feel SO STUPID now for not recognizing more of this at the time. But all I knew was that I hated having sex—I would just lay there and zone out, waiting for things to finish. All the while, I could see in him that, from his perspective, he was enjoying an intimate and caring experience. And I would feel both glad that he was happy, and also furious that he could be so oblivious to what this was like for me.

After years of there being “something wrong” with our sex life, I was finally able to start to tell him how I was feeling. This Jezebel article and the accompanying comments helped crystallize the situation for me — so many stories of sex that lacked enthusiastic consent and made women feel used and unloved. That had been happening to me too, and I didn’t even know it!

We went through some couples counseling, which really helped us to communicate better. I’m finally starting to recognize my own feelings and starting to be able to communicate them. Though I still often feel like I am overreacting – shouldn’t I just give him a whatever-job and get over it???

But now what? My partner now understands that he’s hurt me. And he feels terrible about it. When we talk about it, he says it was the worst mistake of his life to not care for me in the way that he should have. Although it was very difficult for me to convince him that this was necessary, we have cut way back on any physical touching. And the only touching now is when I initiate it. Sadly, I don’t yet feel comfortable enough to initiate intercourse. He insists that he doesn’t want to do anything that I don’t want to do. And I go back and forth on believing this.

But he also says that he is hurting so badly – he is hurting because he needs to feel loved. He says he needs physical affection. But, even just touching his arm will sometimes make my heart race or fill my stomach with dread. He thinks that now I am hurting him. Sometimes he feels like I am punishing him, but he also has moments of enlightenment where he realizes that’s not true. But he can’t stop feeling hurt, and he thinks it’s important for me to hear that and be sympathetic. It is very very hard for me to be sympathetic.

I do believe that he has good intentions – that he wants to treat me well, and that with the right guidance he can learn how to. I understand that it’s not easy being a socially-awkward nerd-dude. But it’s not easy being a less-socially-awkward nerd-girl either!

He has already made tremendous strides since we started talking more honestly about all of these things. He is a nice guy, but no one ever taught him how to approach sex as a collaborative endeavor. And based on the portrayals of sex in popular culture, everything was going as it should. We both believed that. But, for me, it was making me feel ignored and powerless. Thanks a lot pop culture!

We both want to have collaborative and reciprocal sex. But we’re not sure how. Any suggestions for how to move forward from here? We can’t be the only ones, right? Or has our past unenlightenment doomed any hope of a future filled with enthusiastic consent?

Looking Ahead

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