A recent story from The Washington Post, Cupid's Broken Arrow, says that more and more college-age men are suffering from erectile
dysfunction.
These fellas don't want to be pressured for sex, and they avoid it, by turning down dates and avoiding intimate moments alone with anyone.
The shocking reason, according to the article? Too many sexually aggressive co-eds are driving these boys into impotence, horny girls making insatiable demands, hard-driving sluts who only care about riding one turgid dick after another in their pursuit of screaming orgasms.
Yeah, DREAM ON.
In Bed with Susie Bright 253: Cupid's Broken Arrow
There's one spot of truth to the story, that I started reporting in 1993: it's true that young men are reporting and discussing antipathy toward sex in numbers we've never seen before.
I first noticed this in the early nineties, as I criss-crossed the country with my college sex surveys. Young people's sexuality has been seriously inhibited by AIDS fears, the subsequent abstinence campaigns that infantilized their generation, and a REAL SERIOUS prescription drug problem from years of well-intentioned Prozac, Paxil, Ritalin regimes. With young men, this goes right to their physical sex response.
The problem isn't just with intimacy. What the Post never asked, was, putting aggressive co-eds aside, how many of these non-fucking young men are masturbating?
If this had been the question, they would have found what I did: it's not about just "being" with someone that's stressful, it's access to your own sexual body and desires that's being denied.
The first time I heard from male undergrads that they didn't masturbate or experience orgasm, I thought it was a prank.
I was at Carnegie Mellon, a famous "science" school where students often joke that their sexual and social lives are under constant attack from too much time in the lab, homework overload, and intense competition.
But I had been to C-M a few times before, and I must say, everyone was making a valiant and fun-loving effort to enjoy life in spite of their demanding schedules!
My prank suspicions were exploded when a couple of serious young men spoke to me privately after my big-crowd event, and I realized their predicament was quite real. Since then, I've met and corresponded with dozens more, at high schools and universities all over the country. These 18-23 year olds don't masturbate, and they don't come, except sometimes in night dreams.
In some cases, they justify it by their faith, their belief that it's wrong, that they're waiting for God to choose the right partner for them, that it's a sign of abject surrender. Thank you, Moral Majority! These are the people who took the chastity pledge without even having to attend a mass meeting and pay for the plaque.
In other cases, they want to feel sexual pleasure, and they don't fear spiritual bankruptcy, but they feel like the distance between mild arousal and getting hard is so very, very far away. They might intellectually consider something is hot, but it doesn't translate into an erection. This something women have talked about for years, but it is a new experience for young men. In every one of these cases, the men discuss their prior or ongoing treatment with anti-depression drugs.
It makes me so alarmed and depressed myself to hear their stories... but I won't be taking a little blue or white pill for my remedy.
In my next post, I'm going to reprint a story about the "New Man's" ambivalence toward sex that we are seeing crop up in topical humor, newspaper stories, and advertising.
It's called "Men Who Love Burgers." I'll run it tomorrow!
Also, on my radio show this week, I answer a few questions from a MTF transsexual who wants to talk about starting a new job with a new figure!
Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests to get Susie's "girly card" to introduce your friends by writing [email protected] (Episode 253, June 9, 2006)
