P is for... Playaa Slayers!

Got pointed in the direction of this book last night:


...And couldn't put it down. It's interesting.

Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male, suggests we’re missing the big picture. “Romantic” young men who feel “great affection” for the women they bed outnumber the tosser; but they’ve been drowned out by a toxic cultural message, argues Andrew P. Smiler.

I've been thinking about this for a while now... The idea that guys aren't really as bad as girls make out. Take Valentine's Day, for instance. The amount of effort that my male friends willingly put in for their girlfriends took me aback. But why did it? How very rude of me! It got me thinking that perhaps girls are fed vicious rumours about boys that generally aren't true...


Andre P. Smiler is a research psychologist and Wake Forest University professor. In his book he pulls together reams of data – including his own interviews with nearly 1,700 men – to reveal that actual Casanovas are few and far between these days, and don’t see much action. In one pair of large-scale studies, just 15% of young men boasted three or more partners in any 12-month span, and only 5% sustained those numbers annually over three years.

But... Guys only want one thing, right? That's what's ingrained into our brains. The media says it.



For decades, the dominant direction in popular science has been towards a dim view of male self-control. This science is reinforced by a relentless barrage of stories about philandering public figures. Men and women alike end up buying into a myth of male weakness, deploying suspicion and cynicism to try and dull the pain of betrayal.

Now, Andrew Smiler is arguing that most young men would actually rather have emotional and physical intimacy with one partner than rack up a tally on the bedpost.

If there's one mistake we consistently make about men, Smiler argues, it's that they aspire to be "Casanovas" (promiscuous men). Whether motivated by a hunger for status in the eyes of other men, or driven by the evolutionary imperative to spread their seed, most men want one thing - but never with just one person... So goes the myth.

In Challenging Casanova, Smiler notes that heterosexual young men these days actually tend to fall into three categories: a small percentage of "players" with a high number of sexual partners; an equally small percentage of young (almost always devoutly religious) guys who are determined to remain abstinent until marriage, and a much larger third group whom he argues want to follow "a reasonably traditional, romantic approach to dating." Even when they're "hooking up" these guys are engaging in the gateway behavior into what they hope will be a relationship.

These ideas contradict everything we've been told about men.

Even to the point where critics of Smiler don't blieve him. "I'm constantly told that the ‘boys are lying' to me about what they really want," Smiler says in a phone interview. "The Casanova myth is so deeply ingrained that people are convinced that boys who claim to want relationships rather than casual sex are either incredibly rare or full of crap."

The small number of genuinely promiscuous boys is explained away by absence of opportunity rather than absence of desire. There seem to be few other aspects of human sexual behavior where the disconnect between reality and perception is so vast.

Smiler blames older generations for giving modern guys a bad name. He argues that guys today are genuinely different in their attitudes towards sex than their elders. A substantial part of that evolution he puts down to a much more widespread acceptance of cross-sex friendship. "Today, most boys have at least one friend who happens to be female – a ‘girl friend' but not a ‘girlfriend,'" Smiler writes; until recently, "that was incredibly rare." The mainstreaming of platonic friendships with the other sex has transformed young men's attitudes towards sex, for the better; as guys are no longer solely looking at girls for sex.

Greater emotional depth, or at least the willingness to articulate that depth is what sociology professor Amy Schalet asserts sets contemporary teen boys apart from their fathers' generation. Schalet found that the American teen boys she interviewed "used strong, hyper-romantic language to talk about love." Her findings fit with those of a major 2010 study that shattered stereotypes about what boys want: "Two-thirds (66%) said they would rather have a girlfriend but no sex compared to only one-third (34%) who say they would prefer to have sex but no girlfriend. Similarly, two out of three (66%) agree that they could be happy in a relationship that doesn't include sex."

Schalet asserts that in terms of their emotional dexterity, boys today are "more like girls" than ever before. Perhaps that's because girls today are more like boys? In the past 25 years, girls have made undeniable progress educationally, athletically, financially – and sexually. As more and more girls have made steps to escape the straitjacket of classic feminine expectations, they've given permission to guys to start to do the same. The end result is that in terms of what they want from sex, boys and girls may be more alike than ever before.

Perhaps one the most poignant part of Smiler's work for me was the idea that actually, a man's sexual choices are just that, choices. Physiology and evolution may influence desires, but they don't override any man's capacity to reflect before acting. The myth of male weakness and the Casanova Complex suggest that men are ultimately powerless in the face of their sexual impulses, and that it is the responsibility of those who are less horny - women — to cover their bodies, set healthy boundaries, and generally prevent civilisation from collapsing into orgiastic chaos. Young men today don't have any less testosterone than did their dads, but when it comes to sex, they're thinking and acting differently. Biology hasn't changed, but boys have, and for the better. May they teach their parents well.

Aside from monogamy, desire is another interesting issue that I think guys get a bad rep about. The idea that men are unable to control their sexual urges.

Girls are often given the responsibility; even recently I had a conversation with an older woman who insisted that girls dress for men and should be more careful and modest. Modesty culture slutshames women, but it does something else almost as destructive: it tells boys a lie about what it means to live in a male body. What boys need to hear from their teenage years is that while erections may not have a conscience or the capacity to cogitate, their owners still do.

Modesty culture places an unreasonable burden on girls; but what gets missed is that it also sets men up for a lifetime of believing that they aren't responsible for their own sexual urges. Boys don't need to be protected from their own horniness, they need tools to learn to manage it. Lust is a biological reality, but the socially-constructed assumption that it is only truly overwhelming for boys is destructive in two ways: It shames girls for being horny (because sexual desire is framed as exclusively masculine) and it teaches boys that they are at the mercy of urges they can't be reasonable expected to control.

It's a tricky one though, eh boys? Because on the one hand you might be winning over society's perspective on the male of the species, on the other, you're losing your ability to blame those slip ups and wandering eyes on your testosterone...

Gutted.

Let me know your thoughts; have guys really changed?

L.