Do men like sex?

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Who's oppressing whom?

Model 1

According to a wide-spread belief, societies are ruled by the men. Even though men and women have equal rights according to the letter of the law, women are actually oppressed. Our societies are built up like this:

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♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀

This seems to be the belief of most people, not just feminists. Also, men, as well as women in many parts of the world (e.g. Japan) tend to have the opinion that that's how things should be.

Evidence for this theory is not hard to find. Indeed, an overwhelming majority of heads of state, members of governments and parliaments and such have been in the past and still are men, regardless of the political system in one or another country. Men's average salary is significantly higher than women's. In most parts of the world, domestic tasks are still considered to be women's job and the man is considered the head of the family. Last but not least, men are clearly stronger and more aggressive than women, while women are more acquiescent.

Claims of women having been oppressed by men throughout millennia are something each one of us has heard countless times ever since our childhood, and we encounter them virtually every day whenever we read a newspaper or watch television.

Model 2

However, Model 1 has fatal flaws. Let's look at the two most obvious.

In most countries of the world, men have, upon reaching a certain age (usually 18), the obligation to serve as the government's slaves for a significant period of time – usually around a year, sometimes several years. They are separated from their homes, families and activities, deprived of contact with women in their most virile age, submitted to a uniform prison-like routine and harsh discipline, and forced to perform a variety of hard and often dangerous or demeaning tasks while having to endure any humiliation which the supposedly superior personnel chooses to subject them to.

That grave violation of human dignity is being justified with the need to defend the country from a possible military attack – a task for which women are too weak.

It remains unclear, though, how it's then possible that some of the men (the so-called conscientious objectors) are being freed from the military slavery. That fact seems to suggest that it's not inevitable for the national defence to enslave ALL young men. How many slave soldiers are necessary then? I don't think the proponents of male slavery (who rant about the military service being every "real" man's "honourable duty", or even the very experience that turns a boy into a man) are asking themselves that question very often. More strangely, they seem to turn deaf when confronted with the well-known fact that the strongest military powers in the world (like the USA) can not only defend themselves but conquer other countries without even having a slave army.

Secondly, for some bizarre reason, men who are excempted from the military slavery for "ethical" reasons, are not set free. They still have to serve the same (or sometimes a slightly different) amount of time as slaves in the so-called community service (sometimes referred to in English with the German term "Zivildienst"). What would be the overwhelming national interest to justify that?

Thirdly, even admitting that we can't make women shoot rifles and dig trenches, it remains unclear why can't they be forced to serve a certain time in community service, like male conscientious objectors are.

Those three contradictions seem to suggest that, apart from national defence, mandatory military service is also (or perhaps even mainly) motivated by the society's desire to enslave their young men. (I have some ideas as to why, but that would require a separate article.)

Fourthly, feminists insist that women's physical weakness is the result of gender discrimination, and it will disappear as soon as the discrimination disappears. If that is so, shouldn't the society try to help that process by forcing women into military service, so that they could overcome their oppression-induced unnatural disadvantages? No, this is the point where feminists turn deaf. That is clearly the part of equality they are not interested in.

The purpose of this article is not to discuss whether or not military slavery is good or bad. The point is: even if we disagree with the feminists and hold that warfare is men's job, as women are simply not up to it, there remains the question: if men have the duty of military slavery and women have no obligation even remotely comparable to it, how can anybody seriously claim that men and women are legally equal, or even have the nerve to suggest that women are being oppressed?

Another screaming obvious rebuttal of Model 1 (which applies even to societies which have abolished military slavery) is everything that is related to having and raising children.

In spite of the lip service paid to the parents' supposedly equal rights, having or not having a child is entirely the mother's decision. If a pregnant woman does not want the child, she has the right to have an abortion without the consent of the child's father. When he doesn't want the child, though, he has no legal means to force her to have an abortion. To bring an extreme example: a woman can take a condom that has been thrown into a trash can, stuff the sperm in it into her vagina and get pregnant, and the man whose sperm it is is still going to be obliged to pay child support to her, even though he did everything he reasonably could to avoid pregnancy. In the case of divorce, it is routine practice to give custody to the woman and oblige the man to pay child support. The child's father will have to hand a significant part of his income over to the woman, even when she has a new husband or boyfriend, and even when he himself has a new family to support.

And let's not forget the other side of the coin – a woman can give birth to a child and raise it without ever even telling about it to the child's father.

One could ask: why on Earth should one person be responsible for something that happens in another person's body, as a result of that person's voluntary and informed choice? But that is not the point of this article. The point is: even if we agree with the feminist theory that the system of child support payments is there for the child's and not the woman's benefit, it is still undisputable that, for all practical purposes, the rights concerning the child belong mostly to the mother, and the obligations mostly to the father. The claim of parents' equal rights and obligations is one of the most blatant, absurd, shameless, outrageous lies of our times.

There are numerous other examples of men's being discriminated in various countries' legislation and legal practice, but the above ought to be enough to crush the myth of women's being the oppressed gender – at least as far as Western countries are concerned.

Of course, I am nowhere near the first one to draw attention to those things. Indeed, the existence of obvious proof of blatant massive legal discrimination against men has long ago prompted men's rights activists to come up with the theory that it's women who actually rule our societies and men are the ones that are oppressed. The masculists argue that our societies are built up like this:

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According to that theory, the means with which women enforce their rule over men is their sexual attractiveness. As almost every male reader knows (and as hardly any woman is ever capable of understanding), men suffer horribly from the lack of sex, and a man who hasn't had sex for a long time, is usually willing to do virtually anything to get it. Any woman who isn't very ugly has the power to free him of that suffering. All she has to do is to take off some of her clothes, lie down and spread her legs. The benefit to the man would be huge, the cost to the woman is near zero. But she doesn't have to do it if she doesn't want to. That legal right gives women a near-absolute power over men.

The apparent male dominance in the government, in business and at home is, according to this theory, an illusion. Men who hold formal power positions, are nothing more than their sex partners' puppets. The latter actually rule the former with the threat of refusing sex. One can be sure that the overwhelming majority of women, even in the feminist Western countries, would much rather be the president's wife than the president. As "first ladies" they would get all the luxury and fame without having to do any work apart from looking good at official receptions. Same thing with members of parliament, corporate executives and so on. The women would even have the option of enforcing their own political ideas, should they have any. If an MP's wife inists that he vote in a certain way, there is a good chance he will obey rather that risk being left without sex for some time. (This may be different in those democracies where party discipline is extremely strong, but then the men who make party policies have also wives.)

Confusion

I think Model 2 has one huge flaw. It fails to answer this simple question: How can a woman refuse sex?

Suppose that a man and a woman are together, alone, and the man is determined to have sex with the woman. What on Earth can she do to prevent him? Fewest women are capable of defending themselves with physical force. I would estimate that in an unarmed combat, an average man could defeat three or four average women. So I've been asking: "how can a woman refuse sex?" and I'm still waiting for an answer.

Leaving aside the exceptional cases when the woman is unusually strong or skilled, or the man is unusually weak, or very drunk or something, the woman seems to have only two defences.

Firstly, she can scream for help and hope that someone strong enough (in the best case, several men) will come to her help.

Secondly, she can threaten the man that if he forces her to have sex with him, she will file a rape complaint with the police, which is almost certain to result in the police officers (usually several strong armed men) coming to him, forcefully taking him to the jail and locking him up for a very long time.

Imagining other conflict situations that can occur between a man and a woman, will lead us to the same conclusion. The only practical way a woman can force her will (like, not having sex) upon a man is by finding (or threatening to find) other men who would use violence against him. In the overwhelming majority of real-life situations, it is easy. After all, most men are more than happy to damage another, weaker man when a woman asks them to. (The reason why they do it is their hope of making the woman like them, and so increasing the chances of her agreeing to have sex with them someday.)

This insight reveals the main principle of the women's so-called power: a woman can exercise her power over a man only by finding other men who will enforce it for her. Now, what kind of a power is that? If there is no one to defend her, and if the man is too excited to reasonably consider legal consequences, or too desperate to care, the woman is completely helpless. All her sexual "power" is worth nothing.

Thus, Model 2 explains why a woman would have the power over a man in a one-on-one situation or in a small group, but it fails to explain how can all the world's women as a group have the power over all the world's men as a group.

Model 3

So, we are left confused. On the one hand, men's power over women seems much more real than women's power over men. On the other hand, men's military slavery and fathers' servitude still obviously exist. In other words: theoretically, men should have the power, in practice, women seem to have it. Which one of the Models 1 and 2 is right, then?

I say: neither. Those who have the power are men, and those who are oppressed are men. Our societies are built up like this:

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♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀

      ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂ ♂

The society is, of course, ruled by men. It can't be ruled by women, as women have no force to rule with. However, the men who rule societies are relatively few in number. (Less in absolute monarchies, more in modern democracies, but still a rather small minority.)

The primary goal of rulers is to remain in power. As they are a minority, they can't rule with brute force. All the men could subdue all the women with force, but a minority of men can't subdue the majority of men with force. Therefore, in every society thoughout history, the rulers have had to use some kinds of deception tactics, to keep the ruled population from directing their force against them. (This is, by the way, not my discovery.)

One of the historically most used tactics is religion. The peasants are made afraid that if they challenge the power of the nobility, they would go to Hell after death. In modern times, though, religion has lost nearly all its influence and is therefore being increasingly replaced by other tactics. One of them, very efficient as well as sneaky, is to grant privileges to weaker groups of the population, like racial and national minorities, women, children, cripples, the poor. The purpose is to make the stronger group experience discrimination and thus feel embitterment towards the weaker group, and at the same time to make the weaker group feel that they still haven't got enough, and feel embitterment towards the stronger group. When the rulers are clever enough creating enmity between parts of the population, nearly all of the ruled people's aggressive energy is directed against other groups of ruled people, not against the rulers.

A special case of that strategy is to create privileges for women, while continuing to tell women that they are still being oppressed and need even more privileges. Men, in turn, experience the actual oppression and feel anger towards the privileged ones – women. I am convinced that there are very few men in the world who realise that the oppression of men is not women's fault, and that the rulers want men to hate women, so that they won't hate the rulers. (I mean, look at the masculist websites. I don't think I have ever seen one masculist writer who realises that our enemy is not the women.)

Of course, the rulers can't make sexual discimination selective. A law that states that women are to be treated favourably in one or another situation can't make an excemption for a small group of powerful men. That is, on paper. In reality, the rulers can use their ruling status to largely or entirely avoid the effects of discriminating laws.

For instance, the rulers can pass legislation that enforces monogamy and prohibits prostitution. That will greatly decrease most men's access to new sex partners, but the ruling minority will retain access to plentiful women who desire them because of their powerful status, or are simply paid with the money politicians appropriate from the public coffers.

The rulers can oblige other men to take up arms and risk their life and limb in war, but excempt themselves from most or all of the danger and hardship – after all, somebody needs to plan and lead the war.

The rulers can enforce the law that public offices or even private enterprises have to employ equal numbers of men and women, without regard of the competence, but of course that doesn't apply to the members of the government, or party leaders who actually determine the country's politics.

The rulers can rule that women have to be paid as much as men, no matter if they are actually capable of producing as much value, but of course if doesn't affect the rulers themselves, as they have the entire nation's resources at their disposal anyway.

Needless to say, the above is taking place in pretty much all societies, no matter what the social order. Women's legal privileges in the former Soviet Union were somewhat different from those in the USA, but the general principle was the same. And I believe that the only reason why there isn't blatant legal feminism in Islamic countries, is simply because religion is still so strong there that rulers don't need to rely on sexual discrimination to keep men from challenging the system.

Now let's make things a little more intriguing

At this moment, I can see no flaw in Model 3. However, there is a different theory which is also plausible. The book "The Art of Seduction" offers a hypothesis that could justify Model 2 after all. The theory is that women's power is not based on their ability to refuse sex (which they clearly don't have), but their seductiveness – their ability to provide something hugely valuable that can't be taken by force. In simpler words, she can't actually refuse sex, but she can do things that make you feel so good that you want her to do it, but you can't beat her into doing it like you could beat her into stripping and spreading her legs.

The book is not about power relations between sexes. It touches upon it very briefly in the introduction and moves then on to describing different types of seducers (both male and female). However, the ideas in that introduction would enable one to make a very strong case for Model 2.

Now, one could argue that not many women are hugely seductive, and there are also men who are very seductive to women, but I don't think that would invalidate the arguments in that book. The thing is, seductiveness as described in "The Art of Seduction" is merely a special case of psychological manipulation. A woman can use a variety of means of making a man do what she wants, apart from making him feel so good that he's willing to do anything to get more. And I think it's undisputable that most women's skill of psychological manipulation greatly exceeds that of most men.

So it seems a plausible hypothesis that women do rule societies – by their superior skill of sneakily leading men's minds. They let men have external, formal power positions, because they (the women) don't care about them anyway, but they make sure that the men, while believing to be the masters, actually spend most of their energy on taking care of the women.

To put it bluntly – maybe the woman, being weaker but cleverer than the man, has succeeded in making him work for her, just like man, being weaker but cleverer than the horse, has succeeded in making it work for him. It's a horrible thought, but it's totally possible.

Conclusion

It would seem that Model 3 and the revised Model 2 are both theoretically justifiable, and it's not difficult to see (if you know what to look at) them both working in the real life. At this moment, I am not sure which of the two is the dominant one. My money is on Model 3, but there is still much to be figured out and I would greatly appreciate intelligent insights from my readers.

Sex is not only physical for men either

It is commonly believed that women's sexual pleasure consists of a physical component and a psychological component, whereas men's sexual pleasure consists only of the physical component. After all, it is well known that an average woman won't enjoy being fucked by just any man – she needs the feeling of emotional closeness to the partner in order to enjoy sex. An average man, on the other hand, would be more than happy to fuck any woman who isn't too ugly – he doesn't need to spend time with her, or to even know her name, and it's certainly no obstacle that it was less than a minute ago that he saw her for the first time.

However, that belief is shattered by this obvious paradox – why is sex more enjoyable than masturbation? The orgasm is the same – in fact, many a masturbation-orgasm can be more intense than many a fuck-orgasm. But still we desire sex. Why? Women often ask that question – if men can easily have an orgasm any time they want to, why they're still so obsessed with sticking it into a vagina? What's the difference?

The first time a girlfriend asked me that, I was shocked – how can she even say such a thing? But I was unable to explain to her what was the essential difference between jerking off and fucking. I just knew that the latter was a million times more desirable. But why? It had nothing to do with some stupid love because I knew I would gladly fuck every second woman I saw on the street. But there obviously was something I couldn't put my finger on.

It left me puzzled for years, until I finally came up with a hypothesis. I believe that men's sexual pleasure also contains a psychological component. The reason why it's easy to overlook is because it's not the same as women's. The psychological component of men's sexual pleasure is not emotional closeness. It's the feeling of conquest. Just like a woman (usually) needs to feel emotionally close to the man in order to truly enjoy the mechanics of genital movement, a man (usually) needs to feel that he has conquered the woman in order to truly enjoy the mechanics of genital movement.

That hypothesis would explain several paradoxes of human sexuality – starting with the question what is missing in the admittedly strong pleasure you get from masturbating. Or the paradox why men madly desire sex but still hate it when the woman takes too much initiative. It may be because a woman who asks to be fucked can't be conquered. That is especially true in the case of prostitution, which can be a very important reason why many men refuse to still their sex hunger with a prostitute even though it's available in their location.

Also my hypothesis makes it perfectly understandable (although there are other explanations which are just as good) why most, if not all, men lose the desire for their wives or girlfriends sooner or later. After all, if you have fucked a woman hundreds of times and made her do pretty much anything imaginable, there is obviously nothing left to conquer.

There are strong reasons to assume that there are two very different kinds of conquest, and thus two types of conquest desires. I call the types "body conqueror" and "soul conqueror" (and of course a man can well be a mixture of the two).

In brief:
1) the body conqueror desires to make a woman do what he wants;
2) the soul conqueror desires to make a woman want to do what he wants.

For the body conqueror type, to conquer a woman means to make her submit to fucking, no matter by which means. He wouldn't mind raping, and probably the most important thing that prevents him from doing that is that he would risk being put to prison – or worse in some cultures. Even when he's having sex with a consenting partner, he might enhance his enjoyment by imagining that he's raping her (or some other woman, for that matter). He would enjoy pressing a partner, who is consenting in principle, into doing things which she is reluctant to do and doesn't actually enjoy – such as anal sex. "I enjoyed it because she didn't want it," sums nicely up the attitude of a body conqueror.

The soul conqueror type is different. For him, conquest means making the woman desire him. He abhors rape. Even if he's suffering from the lack of sex so desperately that he has to rely on rape to get laid, he tries to make it appear as if the victim actually wanted it, or at least began to enjoy it during the rape. Research seems to indicate that actually three rapists out of four (74% according to one statistic I read) are like that. They would say things like "Come on, you slut, admit it that you actually like it," while fucking the victim. Some rapists are reportedly so deeply engulfed in their own delusions that they actually suggest to the victim after the rape that perhaps she would like to meet him again another time. The body conqueror would do nothing of the kind.

Both conquest types dislike prostitution, but for different reasons. The body conqueror can't truly enjoy sex with a prostitute because it's clear that the prostitute wants it – she doesn't even need to be convinced, let alone forced. (Also, and perhaps more importantly, prostitutes usually set very clear boundaries as to what they will do and what they won't, so there is very little room for pushing their limits.) The soul conqueror, on the other hand, can't truly enjoy sex with a prostitute because it's clear that the prostitute doesn't desire him, she's only doing it because of his money.

As in the case of rape, the soul conqueror type likes to pretend that the prostitute is actually a "decent" woman who likes and desires him. That is probably the reason why many prostitutes fake pleasure, like moan while you're fucking them. I don't think they would do it unless a great majority of customers wanted them to. A body conqueror type would find that disgusting. In fact, I know of cases where a man quickly lost his erection while he was fucking a hooker and she began to moan in obviously faked pleasure.

Another situation that illustrates the difference between the two types of conquest is BDSM (I mean the dominant role; the submissive role is beyond the topic of this article). Both types of men can enjoy it, but their expectations are profoundly different.

For the soul conqueror, it is essential that the "slave" consents to everything. There was this sadomasochist couple where the guy would spank the girl and made her do all kinds of humiliating things not only in private, but he also took her to S/M parties. She found it all profoundly disgusting, but she endured it because she loved him. The moment when she snapped was when he, in blissful ignorance of her feelings, told her that he wanted to get a second slave like her. Then she threw it all in his face, letting him know how she hated all his perversions. The point of the story is this: he was devastated. He would have never done the things he had done to her, had he suspected that she was only pretending to like it. The remorse seemed to be killing him. Obviously a soul conqueror type.

Quite differently in another true story about which I read in a submissive women's forum. One woman was describing her relationship which was very different from most cases, where the "slave" has a so-called safe word – a sort of a password previously agreed between the partners which means that she really can't take it anymore and he has to stop the whipping or whatever he's doing and free her from her bonds or whatever. That woman explained that she had nothing like a safe word. She said something to the effect of "You had a choice when you decided to give yourself away. After that, you have no way of telling him that you can't take it any longer. I hear myself screaming it all the time." Clearly her partner was a body conqueror type who would feel that agreeing to the use of a safe word would be equivalent to taking orders from a slave.

I absolutely don't mean to say that the desire to conquest is present only in the case of abnormal sex. I merely brought examples where the difference between the two conqueror types is most obvious. In the overwhelming majority of sexual relations, the difference would be subtle. The two types of men would act very similarly. Some would tend to get less excited when the woman seems too willing, some would tend to get less excited when the woman seems too unwilling, but there are so many other factors involved that for the observer it might be difficult to tell if one or another man is a body conqueror or a soul conqueror or something between them.

All in all, the feeling of conquest as the psychological component of men's sexual pleasure is the theory that explains men's sexuality better than any other I know of (at this point of time).