The Price We Pay For Male Pleasure

What we can learn from nature

There was a time I had sex with a man when I didn’t want to.

I said no, I fought him off.

He was persistent. So I gave in, we had sex.

I couldn’t call it rape. Each time I did, I found a way to blame myself and absolve him. Maybe I was just playing hard to get and I did want it. If I didn’t I would have screamed or kicked him in the balls.

But, he knew I didn’t want to have sex with him. I wasn’t a willing participant.

So, why did he keep going? And why did I give in?

I avoided the answer for years, till one day I dared to face the truth.

At that moment I believed his pleasure was more important than my pain. I rationalized that he was governed by urges he had no control over and that he would get blue balls they hurt like hell. So I gave in because I knew I would be okay after all, it was just a moment’s pleasure.

But I was wrong. That ‘moment’s pleasure’ haunted me for years. Finding ways to creep back into my present.

Sometimes forcing me to examine what happened and when I did figure jerking off wouldn’t have cost him any emotional damage other than a moment of irritation. So I began to wonder how many men would hurt women for their sexual gratification. It turned out to be many.

A study, published in the journal Violence and Gender reported that one in three men endorsed forced sex but denied rape, suggesting that they don’t see forced sex and rape as the same thing. An independent study also reported that more women self-report victimization when behavioral descriptions were used instead of labels like rape.

This means there is a disparity in what people regard as rape and consensual sex. Especially among men who view women as sexual objects and women still grappling with what they had experienced.

But the biggest injustice we face is that we’ve lost autonomy over our body and men have taken control. It’s so ingrained in our culture that it’s normalized from advertisements, to entertainment, to politics, to how we dress and raise our children.

I watched an episode of K.C undercover with my 11-year-old sister, there was a scene where a guy kissed K.C against her will. She slapped him and the guy said, I know you liked it.

The guy felt entitled to K.C’s body and assumed no matter what he did to her she would like it. After all, it wasn’t his fault but K.C’s perfectly glossed lips that got in the way.

So Girls grow up accepting that being female comes with being objectified and losing the autonomy of their body. Boys grow up believing the female body is solely for their sexual gratification. The #metoo movement showed how widespread sexual harassment is. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment consists of “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. It’s clear that women do not have the freedom to choose, but it doesn’t have to be like that.

Sexuality and nature

A National Geographic documentary on the bowerbird was so therapeutic it restored my faith.

A male diligently built a straw bower fashioned to impress a female. The structure was artfully decorated with odd pieces of aluminum foil and plastic scattered in a mosaic pattern around the bower.

In the center was a piled of shattered glass that glittered like diamonds when the sun hits them. At the opposite end was a large pile of clear and colored glass, with a few shell casings and aluminum pop-tops. It was beautiful and he knew it.

For hours he perched on a branch beside his bower and rehearsed his love songs. Sometimes he walked the short length of his straw bower, licking every individual straw to leave behind traces of his DNA. Or he would rearrange a pop-top here, a plastic ring there, or drop one of his shell casings on the pile of glass, then cock his head to listen to the ching it made. I bet he imagined making that sound for a female.

And then, one morning, a female appeared.

She perched on the branch beside the bower for a minute, then hopped right inside. The male went berserk, squawking and fluffing and racing around his bower. He stopped at one end and picked up a pop-top to show her, then dropped it and did another lap around the bower. She kept watching him. Then she began to lower herself, ever so slightly lifting her tail, tipping her head forward. The narrator told us that was the “choice” sign.

The male was ecstatic he screeched even louder and hopped toward her. No coercion, no rape. Just beautiful instinctual sex. The whole experience was therapeutic.

The male didn’t force her to mate despite his urge he had waited to be chosen. I smiled because that was what consent looks like. The narrator proceeded to say

In this species (as with most birds), a male can’t force a female to mate. Like a solo rock star, he must devise a bower, song, and dance that wows the gals.

“The male wants access to the female’s eggs,” explains William Eberhard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Costa Rica. “And he’ll do whatever it takes to please her. But it’s her game; she sets the rules. And she makes the choice.”

This is not limited to birds alone male millipedes demonstrate the same patience and willingness to please a female to be chosen as a mate. They use their special legs to rhythmically massage a female’s reproductive tract, as a way to stimulate her once she is ready she allows him to inseminate.

In Nature the female has a choice, she has complete autonomy over her body, and their male counterparts respect that so much so that they willing to go the extra effort to impress just to have access to her.

The premise we work on is heavily flawed, that is not how nature intended. These behaviors we grew accustomed to are learned and not inborn. We can learn new ways to interact with. Women can have complete autonomy of their bodies and not be at the mercy of men. And men can demonstrate patience and find beauty and honor in being chosen.

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