Fear Of Men’s Sexuality (Well, Just The Ugly Ones)

My attention was drawn this week to an article in the Guardian.  This article made the point that, in these days of greater-than-ever freedom and appreciation for female sexuality, male sexuality has become a feared and mistrusted aspect of modern life.  From current misgivings on the sexualization of children — in which girls are the victims and boys the latent danger, to the treatment of sexuality among the less young, where sexually confident older women are celebrated and even eroticized for their boldness but men are written off as lechers — this article thought that the attitude towards male sexuality by most of modern society lay somewhere equidistant between fear and loathing.

While I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in this, I’m not sure there isn’t another element to it.  I think that, mundanely enough, it depends very much on the attractiveness of the man (or woman) in question.  Nobody, for example, would call George Clooney an old goat for going out with a woman 20 years his junior; but by the same token, nobody said Demi Moore should be ashamed of her self for her relationship with a man 15 years younger.  Bernie Ecclestone or Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, were fairly well mocked for their younger partners when they were past their prime.  I think there’s a very looks-ist streak to public approval of age-asymmetric relationships and the sexualities that these can imply, and that it can apply both ways.  And while men can indeed all be written off by current opinion as pawing satyrs or potential rapists, whatever the age, I still think the better looking ones are less harshly treated — which is no surprise really, it’s only human nature to like pretty people more.

I don’t want to make the usual complaint that the world nowadays is totally centred around the young, who already have enough going for them with their skin tone, fully functioning knees and hangover-beating superpowers, or obsessed with good-looking people and their hatred-inspiring glide through life.  And I’m not saying it’s the young or handsome who makes these leching-or-fetching decisions on the behaviour of their elders, because it isn’t.  (And I know I’ve even strayed too far from the point of the article I was originally talking about for my own point to make a whole lot of sense.)  I just think that male sexuality isn’t feared anything like as much when there’s a significant element of attractiveness involved.

James Bond could grab any girl he wanted, confident that any initial slap round the chops would soon melt into grateful submission; Erno Goldfinger, on the other hand, would have had to hand over his treasure for the same privilege, and no amount of it could have paid off the niggling certainty that the woman in question (and the audience) would despised him for it.  And even though Bond’s methods can look a bit Neanderthal these days, his appetite would still be seen as more masculine and less predatory than his arch enemy’s.  So Bond can let out his sexuality to the full for free and isn’t vilified for it; but Goldfinger has to pay and because he’s short, ugly and ginger, he represents all that’s bad about the dark forces of nature lurking in the male brain.  Life’s unfair — especially for those of us without either looks or bullion.

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