If Most Men Were Bystanders — Teaching Sexual Ethics

If Most Men Were Indeed Bystanders

My website is a bystander free zone (read Part 1). Initially this may feel strange and unfamiliar to you. While I am sure that there are well-meaning and possibly effective educators who are practitioners of the bystander philosophy, I have little respect for the analysis which “proves” their theory. In the past, school administrators, parents, teachers, police, in fact almost all adults said some sort of variant of “Not our boys” or “Not here.” This was both a demonstration of their shockingly low level of understanding of the extent and virulence of the problem and an equally shocking refusal to hold any but a tiny few boys and men responsible when they committed sexual assault. Indeed, it can truly be said that none but a tiny few perpetrators of incest or other sexual assault in history have ever been held responsible for their behavior. This history of institutional denial and protection of perpetrators continues to this day.

Note: I use “he/she” and “male/female. This is not to aid in the effort to make people other than cis-heterosexuals invisible. But adding a salad of pronouns in every sentence is wrong as it pretends that the dynamics within all equally valid expressions of relationships are the same. Heterosexuals are not being disowned, fired from jobs, evicted, beaten, and killed for their sexuality, for example, or blamed for causing natural disasters and causing televangelists’ inability to maintain erections. There is of course a lovely spectrum of gender and relationship options. Sadly, far too many GLBTQ persons replicate the negative aspects of the dominant, presumed heterosexual paradigm. That assumed, forced model is the cultural blueprint for all relationships against which all other relationships are compared.

Whatever the intention of those who first developed and sold this system, colleges have embraced it as an extension of their age-old “Not our boys” refusal to confront any perpetrators. It is only slightly less objectionable than “Not our boys” to me and is, I feel, as dishonest. Instead of the absolute refusal to identify perpetrators with the direct lie “Not our boys; not here,” now identifying males as bystanders can continue the practice of avoiding confronting perpetrators, glibly making them disappear.

Naming most men to be bystanders is an insult to the males present in every educational session who are themselves survivors of incest or other sexual assault as if their putative bystander-hood were the most important aspect of their lives. It is also a slap in the face to the many males who have friends, partners, and relatives who are survivors of incest or other sexual assaults. The bystander system focuses on the presumed innocence of these secondary survivors as it invalidates their feelings of empathy, rage, and sense of helplessness and hopelessness about doing anything, let alone ending rape as they are lumped into the bystander camp.

The central problem is that perpetrators commit sexual assaults not that some men are disempowered to confront rape supportive attitudes and behaviors.

Crimes without perpetrators are not crimes. If most men are bystanders, where are all those pesky perpetrators? Whether or not this was the intention of those who created the bystander practice, at worst, the bystander designation erases the crimes committed. It is a cynical, intellectually dishonest practice. If your favorite rape prevention educator who employs the bystander practice does not state that present in every session there are bystanders who have perpetrated when this is statistically absolutely true, then those educators are missing a golden opportunity and are therefore part of the problem. We can fiddle while Rome burns and pander to males out of our fear or cynicism, but that is what we are doing. It is also profitable to reassure college administrators that, “You have been right all along, there is no big problem with sexual assault on your campus. No problem exists. Your perpetual inaction was the correct response.” Thus rape culture is defended and thrives.

This is why I react so strongly to those who employ the technique of addressing males solely as “bystanders.” Why not tell students the truth? Some of them have perpetrated. To name this helps them and further is not a slap in the face to the many survivors of male violence. How does identifying most males as “bystanders” contribute to the goal of ending any one males’ abusive behavior? What compromises are educators making to avoid defensive reactions from students, administrators and parents?

I have experienced hostility and defensiveness from some male participants. But some students would be defensive before educators open their mouths, indeed, some would be defensive before the speaker even arrived on campus! Some will be defensive no matter what educators say. Educators frightened of male defensiveness and resistance do not understand that frequently defensiveness and resistance are evidence that they are being effective.

In the early 1990s when the bystander stuff was introduced, one of the big “bystander boys” came to speak at the UW-Madison, in Madison, Wisconsin where Men Stopping Rape (MSR) was founded in 1983, and where I live. I joined MSR in 1986. I happened to be out of town speaking at a college so I missed his presentation. MSR members took him out to dinner. It was later recounted to me that as he warmed to his bystander discussion someone asked him, “What about bystanders who perpetrate?” He shrugged dismissively and replied “Well, if you cut it that finely, then we’ve all done problematic things, myself included.”

When I was told about his comments at the dinner I commented, “Ooh, that sounds like a good opening to discuss all of our personal responsibility-taking.” But no, unfortunately his comment was his way of cutting off further discussion and avoiding possibly painful self-reflection. I see this one sad example as emblematic of the weakness of the bystander analysis. Instead of being the opening for some substantive education, the reason for adoption of “bystander” became apparent: all males do not commit assault, but few if any (including bystander exemplars?) have learned and championed a practice of sex that is dramatically different from sexual assault. Few if any are able to offer an alternative to the selfish, coercive, hateful notion and practice of sex all of us males learn growing up.

If after the 30+ years since Bystander Education was introduced most men had previously been bystanders or had become bystanders, we would be living in a radically different world wherein a radically different sexuality would be taught, celebrated, and enjoyed. Bystander education would both reflect and have brought to fruition an entirely different sexuality than that which has been practiced in the past. It would have both caused systemic change and would be evidence that real change has occurred. In the same way that social norms intervention training was unverifiable as alcohol abuse prevention (how many bars and liquor distributors went bankrupt and became juice bars and coffee distributors as a result of the much-heralded significant diminution in drinking?), where is the exponential growth of consensual sexuality? Where? Social norms marketing is an unverifiable shell game wherein “success” is trumpeted when students report the “right” answers that they have learned with which to trick adults or please adults by telling them lies.

In 2000 I visited Edgewood College in Madison, WI. I had previously done a training with the Sexual Assault Peer Educators and some of them were active in student government. They felt I would connect well with students and wanted the school to bring me in. The dean demurred so, undeterred, the student government paid to bring me in as a speaker. In an effort to neutralize the visit, the dean required that first year students had to read a ten page document I wrote, write opinion papers on my writings, discuss them in small groups, and meet with Peer Educators to discuss my heretical beliefs. Additionally, the first years were required to attend my speech, and process that in small groups after my speech. While there, I was to lecture in many classes. These requirements were seemingly instituted to make my visit onerous to students. Instead they guaranteed that my message was deeply absorbed by a large group. That was wonderful. As part of the DOJ Campus violence grant, Edgewood agreed to survey students. I believe that exposure to me and my writings and the time spent processing all that information helped inspire an excellent survey turnout. That first year, over 50% of female and male students reported being victims of incest or other sexual assault at some time from their birth to days before filling out the survey. The administrators’ response when these shocking results were presented to them? They dispassionately and cavalierly announced, “We assumed it would be about that.” And on to the next line item in their meeting agenda, no institutional introspection or change necessary.
Evidently similar percentages were replicated in surveys in subsequent years at Edgewood. These numbers were reported to the Department of Justice. These outrageous numbers should have been trumpeted across the airwaves and should have resulted in Congressional investigations. That shocking percentage would be replicated at every college in the US, if only administrators and the DOJ cared enough to do so. As far as I can tell, these results and similar shocking results from the hundreds of colleges that received these grants were buried under the ocean floor in sealed lead canisters, never publicized. These and other results would give lie to the bystander argument that few men rape. The typical college administrator response is in essence, “Yawn, no big deal.” They’re only our kids, after all.

When a quarter of female students report being sexually assaulted, like at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018, you have to do some complex, male-exonerating mental gymnastics to not see this as one more proof that refusing to confront rape supportive attitudes and behaviors in all males has been and continues to be an unmitigated disaster. Feminists should be widely lauded and celebrated for creating the rape crisis movement and rape prevention movement and for carrying at least 98% of the burden for rape prevention education for the last five decades. But rape prevention was hijacked by a few men who “invented” rape prevention for their PhDs. Bystander education is feminist education drained of substance, drained of feminism, drained of passion, drained of the possibility of effectiveness.

If most men were bystanders, middle school and high school sex education would have finally begun to teach about sex and sexual ethics and consent. Would such a volume of erotic, torrid, mutually-pleasurable and consensual images (never enough) drive out the selfish, power-over, bad, unimaginative, non-consensual sex, that epitomizes contemporary porn? Most porn looks like it was made by ten year-old boys with little or no good, honest information about male and female enculturation, anatomy, biology, and desire. At the risk of sounding like an old guy rhapsodizing about the “good old days,” today’s porn has exploded in terms of virulence and pervasiveness and ease of availability. More than half of the pornography available on mainstream websites is self-described as rape/incest/non-consent/reluctance/painal (intentionally painful anal intercourse). We have a big problem.

Where are the ashes of the Patriarchy? Where is the brave new world where boys are confident in themselves and loved for themselves and not desperately, dangerously choosing to attempt to disprove the daily accusations that they are weak, female, or gay in ways that hurt them, hurt females, and hurt other males? Would there even be porn? Most depictions of sex in popular culture and in porn would be consensual. Porn would both reflect the omnipresence of consensual interactions and it would reinforce the practice of consensual sex. And the few non-consensual representations would be kept intact as a “quaint” historical record; a record of the bad old days.

Well, those bad old days are here today. For over thirty years in my rape prevention education workshops, teen boys and young men have described their and other males’ participation in the following acts. Perhaps you might expect the teen boys in juvenile corrections to have been involved in these acts. Some of them have described their involvement, but I have heard these described more often by “nice” teen boys in public high schools and in prestigious, private preparatory schools, and by fraternity men and other male college students. Gay men have confessed male-on-male versions of these acts to me, as well.

Boys and men have described “Switch.” Two couples are engaging in sexual acts in adjacent rooms. At a pre-arranged signal or time, both males get up and leave their room under some pretext (to go to the bathroom or another excuse). Under the cover provided by the dark rooms, they then “switch” partners, each returning to the opposite room than the room and bed they had originally occupied. As each “resumes” sexual acts with the female that the other male had previously been with, the “switch” has been “successful.” There are two attractions for this practice as described and defended by males who admit to having engaged in it. First, is the “hilarious” trick the males are playing on the females; in fact, by the rules of Switch, for it to succeed, both females must be unaware that their partners have changed. Second, is the bonding between the two males who have tricked the two females who have been rendered “generic,” interchangeable. The bonding is predicated on lies to females whose feelings do not matter.
Boys and men have described “Contests.” These “contests” are carefully planned in advance and are excitedly discussed at length afterwards. Males report having participated in contests between themselves and other males to fuck the fattest female; to fuck the drunkest female; to fuck the ugliest female; to fuck the youngest female; to fuck the most females; in a particular evening, for example, at a fraternity party. In my over 400 workshops with fraternities, if they didn’t first bring these up, and they frequently did, I would bring them up. They seemed shocked (and relieved) that I know about their behavior. Just beneath their surfaces was a swirling stew of guilt and shame and fearful ambivalence about their past behavior.
Depending on how drunk a female was, or on how young she was, those acts would rightly qualify as sexual assaults in most states. (Whether many of them would be prosecuted is another discussion.) At “best,” the rest of the acts are cruel and amoral. “Fuck” is the appropriate word to describe these other acts, which though legal, are still hateful. To use the phrase “make love” would be obscene and should stick in the throats of anyone using it to sanitize the ugly truth. What resemblance could there be between these hateful acts and any concept of sex that could build lasting relationships?
At a boarding school, an administrator expressed doubts that the problem was as bad as I was making it sound. He defended his male students. Surely they didn’t all need the education I was encouraging. I asked him did most of his male students join fraternities in college. “Yes,” was the answer. I described some of these contests and other rape supportive behaviors I encounter in fraternities. I asked him, “Do you think that your boys capable of those acts had been helped to develop a complex ethical framework for sexual interactions here in high school and just forgot them all during the summer before college started? Or maybe we could do more now?”
Boys and men have described a particular “Contest” to see who can cause a female to yell the loudest during sex. The male who causes “his” female to yell the loudest wins the “contest.” In this male “game,” hurting individual girls or women is crucial, not accidental. The expressions of pain by females who are deliberately being physically hurt is the whole point of the contest, it is not incidental or accidental. Several times, I asked the boy or man who brought it up, if he could let his partner in on the secret and ask her to yell loudly without being hurt to help him win. They looked at me incredulously. Females are targets, victims, the unknowable enemy, not potential allies.
Boys and men have described “sex” with highly inebriated and even unconscious females. Without a commonly accepted notion of “sex” such as this, bars as we know them would cease to exist. “Ladies Nights” would be revealed for what they are, mechanisms for the delivery of a steady source of inebriated and thus presumably malleable females to males for sex as males define and practice it. “Sex” with highly inebriated and even unconscious females is very common at all ages. Over the years, thousands of boys and men have described to me attending parties where there was “a girl passed out in one room and a steady stream of guys went in to ‘have sex’ with her.” This was never described as an anomalous occurrence; these sexual assaults were a predictable fixture of many, many teen and young adult parties. Why assume that boys automatically grow up to reject or transcend these patterns of belief and behavior as they age? Many don’t.
This is male-defined sex at its purest, most stripped down essence: his “partner” is something to be ejaculated into or onto. While administering a drug to someone to decrease their ability to resist or fight back, or taking advantage of someone who is drunk or even passed out due to their self-administering of alcohol or other drugs should be ethically indefensible, the behavior is very common. Separate from the moral and legal issues (these are sexual assaults), what is the quality of sex with someone who is extremely drunk or passed out? What an utterly nonconsensual, debased reading of sex this is. How does a male judge sex with an incapacitated victim to be “good sex?” At “best,” he is masturbating inside of her. If he is drunk as well, how does he appraise “good sex” for himself? If he ejaculates before he regurgitates? Even if she is conscious, there is no caring or love in these debased acts. And to this day, few males are being preemptively educated and confronted about even their most extreme, blatantly illegal (and immoral) acts.
Boys and men have described “Rodeo.” A male and female begin intercourse, he entering her from the rear. After a few moments, when he is situated over her with his penis inside her vagina, he “confesses” to her that there are male friends of his that are watching them. This “audience” is either hidden somewhere in the dark room or watching through a window, through a hole in the wall, or via a spy camera. Whether or not there are in fact any boys or men watching is not the point as the humiliated and terrified female “bucks” and struggles to escape. She tries to get him off of her and out of her. If he stays on her and in her for six seconds, he wins the “rodeo.”
Boys and men have described “Donkey Kick.” This begins the same way that Rodeo [above #5] does. A male and a female begin intercourse, he entering her from the rear. She is on her hands and knees. After some thrusting, the male reaches forward and hits the unsuspecting female in the head. Her vagina involuntarily contracts as she recoils from this completely unexpected jolt, and from her efforts to escape. Other than the transitory pleasure he receives from her vagina contracting, which is the intended result and rationalization for the battery he commits, clarify for me where in this brutish act there is anything other than hate of females. And what resemblance could there be between this attack and sex that we might fantasize sharing with a beloved partner? Seeing the female recipient/victim as less than human is a given, crucial to the successful execution of this act. “A female is a life support system for a vagina,” as I learned at age nine or ten when overhearing older teen boys posture for one another.
Boys and men have described “Pulling A Train.” This is “serial intercourse” with one female and multiple males, each taking his “turn” one after the other. These are also called “gang bangs” which are a staple of pornography and male locker room group discussions. This has been glamorized and eroticized. Instead of establishing consent to intercourse with each and every participant, in practice consent is rarely established with the first male and never with the subsequent males. Instead, as innumerable male “participants” have recounted to me, “She “cannot” say, ‘No,’ or ‘Slow down,’ or ‘Be gentle,’ or ‘Stop,” to any of the males and be listened to. One male college student said plaintively, “That would ruin the fun.” Without explicit, un-coerced, verbal consent to intercourse with each person acting in turn, these “sex” acts are too easily and frequently sexual assaults. I feel that without verbal consent established separately with each participant, any male who may have had verbal consent and then did not make sure that the subsequent acts were consensual is co-equally responsible for the assaults his “brothers” commit. Let’s call Pulling a Train to be what it really too often is—gang rape, not “sex.” This is what I have told over 300,000 male participants.
What resemblance could there possibly be between these acts of sexual terrorism and any conception of sex as we might know it and want our sons and daughters to eventually enjoy with their future partners? There is not one iota of caring or love here. These acts have absolutely nothing to do with the feelings of the individual females. Is there anything other than loathing of females in these acts wherein the humanity of females is denied and ignored? Does anyone believe that the perpetrators of these acts can compartmentalize these acts and somehow engage in loving, relationship-enhancing, consensual sex with a different, “serious” partner?
Initially, after hearing these repeated many times, in trying to make sense of these repellant acts, I wondered what if these were versions of stories they had read in pornography and not live acts with live people. That was not how they represented their participation or the participation of friends that they were told about, but my musing was not reassuring to me. And they do not have sweet, positive images of consensual, mutually-pleasurable acts against which to compare to these terrible practices.
In one week, I fielded questions from fraternity men in Florida, juvenile offenders in Wisconsin, and high school boys at a private boarding school in New England where they described their participation in two or more of the above acts. “Do you think that could be rape?” they ask with sick looks on their faces.

In a fraternity workshop, as part of my introduction, I mentioned that I regularly facilitated monthly rape prevention discussions in juvenile prison. A fraternity man asked me, “You’ve gone to prison and addressed convicted rapists. What is the difference between us and them?” I looked across the room at my co-facilitator. I cocked my head as if to say, “What do you think?” He shrugged and nodded. I responded to the question, “The difference between you and them? They got caught.” There was an audible intake of breath from the fraternity men, but no battles or thrown chairs as you might expect (or fear). I continued, “I believe that more than half of males including those of us here have done things that would legally qualify as sexual assaults. I am interested in how we learn rape-supportive attitudes and behaviors and how we continue to reinforce them in other boys and men generation after generation.

I told these young men who were 20+ years younger than I, “No one, especially males, ever talked to boys or teens of my generation, your fathers’ generation. That explains why so few fathers are any good at talking to their sons about sex.” I asked them, “Have any of your fathers improved?” “No,” they answered. I was the first older man (or male of any age) they had ever encountered who publicly cared about these “female” issues. “They got caught” was a great opening to discuss how for so many males do nothing to ascertain the interest of a potential partner or ignore clear communicated disinterest. Many males buy into settling for submission, or a lack of struggle, or the cessation of resistance, or a “token” (insufficient) resistance as defined by the male, as if those were enthusiastic consent. But these are not consent.

The only thing that keeps most males from being charged with sexual assault is that few females (or males) can imagine truly consensual sex—it is that uncommon. The only thing that keeps most males from being charged with sexual assault is victim’s positivity that they will be blamed not the perpetrator. And they will be. The only thing that keeps most males from the charged is the salacious and overblown media response to a false report of rape, which is given much more publicity than the attention paid to the tsunami of real assaults. The only thing that keeps most males from being charged with sexual assault is that we have never taught a life-affirming sex education so that our children would grow up to imagine and practice lovemaking; so that they would be able to see sexual assault as the absolute negative, utterly indefensible polar opposite of sex. The only thing that keeps most males from being charged with sexual assault is that not one college president has ever stated the obvious truth: that there are a significant number of male students, faculty and staff on their campus who have committed felonies.

I have seen the pain and fear on the faces of boys and men who confess their participation in these and other similar acts to me. I can tell when I am being lied to or “played.” There are few smiles or smirks during, or more importantly, following their confessions of their acts. And even if for argument sake the number of occurrences was small, which I disbelieve, should we be reassured? It has been argued that the absence of love is not necessarily hate. That is true, but these acts involve hating the female (or male) victims who have sex inflicted upon them.

Why are so many males attracted to the sad, cruel acts described above? When they describe another male as perpetrator, they admit to identifying with those “heroic studs.” If they had been exposed to images and descriptions, a multitude of loving acts that created a loving context against which to compare these dehumanizing acts, there might be less immediacy about confronting them. But as these debased acts individually or taken as a whole, normalize and epitomize the depiction of sex in pornography, big trouble ensues. We are not teaching a hot, ethical (and thus, safer) sex to our sons or daughters. We have never taught such sex. Sex education never taught about sex. Most boys graduate high school without being able to find a clitoris on a map, let alone on a female.

When the phrase, “hit it” was becoming common parlance, a boy in a workshop kept using the phrase. I understood what he meant when he said it, I had grown up male after all; I speak fluent Male. I wasn’t trying to win a debate but I kept using the phrase “make love.” He wouldn’t say, “Make love.” “What is the problem with saying, ‘make love?’” I finally asked him. He said, “You old people can’t believe in Santa Claus, we can’t believe in love.” When I have asked them directly, few boys and men report having seen loving adult relationships that they wanted to grow up to emulate. No wonder so few can even imagine a relationship wherein love was a celebrated element of the relationship.

Almost all of the information about sex that males use to base their subsequent acts upon were taught them directly by other males or from male-created and male-produced pornography. The sex which boys overhear older boys and men discussing and joking about only involves physical acts. Insulating themselves from emotional connections and attachments is the entire point of sex as it is practiced and taught to boys by older boys and men. “Getting in and getting out” unscathed or un-trapped is lauded. The most “emotionally divorced,” the most violent-sounding, the most exaggerated, the cruelest; these win the male contest. When most males act, impressing other males is foremost in their minds. Whether or not all boys and men will proudly report their participation in sad, hurtful, even illegal acts, those other males they want to impress are with them in spirit.

In each of these acts described above, the primary goal is to score points with the other guys, as he recounts his “conquests.” Receiving the acclamation of his male peers when he recounts in precise detail his participation in any of these acts, is the most important motivator for those males who inflict these and other love-less acts of “sex.” That he will receive accolades from his male peers, and many admit to receiving such approval, should give us pause. None of the boys and men who described these acts to me expected to be rebuked by other males when they first recounted their stories to friends, classmates, or teammates. Boys and men reported that no other males had ever questioned, let alone challenged their cruel, selfish or assaultive behavior, either in the group or later, when alone. I was the first to challenge them, to hold them responsible for their acts. I hold us males to a much higher standard than most other males do.

As we continue to refuse to teach a consensual, loving, respectful sexuality to our children, these acts described above (Switch, the Contests, sex with highly inebriated and even unconscious females, Rodeo, Donkey Kick and Pulling A Train) and others which are less grotesque, but are still problematic, will continue to serve as a default norm. Sweet, loving, mutually-affirming and mutually-pleasurable sex continues to be abnormal by volume. And so many males continue without question to exercise our privilege to define and control sex.

On one pornography web site that features “erotic” stories, the second, third and fifth largest categories of stories are Incest stories, Bondage/ Domination/ Sadism/ Masochism stories and Non-consent/Reluctance stories. Stories that are in other less immediately problematic categories also contain unlisted elements of incest and rape. Others, like upskirt videos, are by intention non-consensual and since they frequently feature minors are describing crimes. Attraction to sex with minors is represented as a valid sexual practice, a sexual fetish not a crime.

No consent!!!

We can endlessly differentiate between fantasy and practice and then throw-in a spirited if irrelevant attack on censorship to fully muddy the waters. I don’t trust the elected officials or police anywhere to censor and “protect me” from anything. I don’t trust their unexamined biases and prejudices or behavior. That said, that millions of males sexualize incest and other sexual assault, kidnapping, domestic violence and torture and painal (intentionally painful anal intercourse) is very troubling and very dangerous. When rape is increasingly the sexual paradigm, this overwhelms and makes boys’ and mens’ impulses to understand and practice consensual sex infinitely more difficult. When rape is “hot,” mere sex is not.

Some men have raped girls and women and told them afterwards, “Now you know the truth about men, what they are really like.” I challenge males: is this the truth? If not, what are you doing about it? Being nice (if you are) is a start, but it is not enough. How is it that we males allow this to be done in our name? Where is the outrage, the taking of action? Where is the alternative to the one-dimensional ideal of Real Masculinity to which all boys are forced to conform to generation after generation? When accused of being a “fag” or a “pussy” can you say, “Thank you” instead of frantically, violently trying to disprove the allegations? Who is teaching an end to the fear/hate of females as epitomized by hate/fear of menstruation, females’ genitals, breastfeeding, and female sexuality that so many heterosexual and homosexual males espouse? Where do we start to confront the hate and start to teach sexual ethics to all of our sons? Where are alternative models of sex being actively promulgated?

We males know about other males. Many of us want to protect our female friends, sisters or other females we care about from males we know to be sexist users. When females we care about ask us about other males whom we know or know about, in regards their decency and availability as potential dates or partners, many males warn females away from particular males who we know to be or have heard to be pigs. We may not be able (or willing) to enunciate just what we find problematic about him. We often can’t describe just how he is “wrong,” because we aren’t necessarily completely different from him. A thorough description of his abusive attributes would also implicate us at some level.

We may not be able to think of an alternative other male who is nicer, less of a user and hence appropriate to be date/partner, but we want to protect her from many of the males we know (or know of). We males know about other males: we know when we are walking somewhere and we “catch” the eye of another male staring at the female we are with—we know what he is thinking, who he is staring at—we are often staring at the female he is with. We males know about (and thus distrust) other males: Hey, I’m not trying anything with your sister that you aren’t trying with mine.

Females shouldn’t wait for guys to get it. All males will not change. We don’t need to. There is, as of yet, very little pressure on males from other males that is internally-generated from inside male culture to change even our most abusive and destructive behavior. What pressure there is upon us is from females and we grudgingly respond to their pressure, feet dragging and muttering all the way.

That they are responsible for being Mom in all their relationships with males of all ages isn’t fair to girls and women. But this is how males have set this up. Then we can blame females if we do the right thing. “She made me,” is our plaintive cry to those males whose censure we hope to avoid. We hope that “She made me” will hopefully explain our deviance from “normal” masculinity. (See “pussy-whipped” and other male rationalizations for our acts of which we believe other males would scorn or question.) “It wasn’t my idea; it was hers. She made me. I’m not really _______ (nice, polite or deferential). Mea maxima culpa.”

“OK, so a few males hate girls and women, I’ll give you that. But all boys and men aren’t like that. They are bystanders,” you insist frantically.

There is not yet a well-developed, alternative sexuality that boys see modeled widely, have fathers and father figures who themselves modeled and took the time to teach, nor do their peers understand, practice and celebrate this alternative, sweet male sexuality. Males who exhibit emotional sensitivity are still not appreciated and marveled at by other males. We have no non-pejorative name for these males. They are still “deviant,” out of the norm, the sad, limiting norm.

The girls or women who are the victims of the abuses described above are essentially meaningless except as objects to be acted upon. Little boys first vie with one another for “gross out” points. Many older boys and young men haven’t matured emotionally past that juvenile phase. Few adult men have healed themselves completely of the hate of females they were taught as boys. Need proof? In 2021, men haven’t yet created a language of sex that recognizes the complexity, mystery, emotional connection and joy possible in sex. That so many adult men still avail themselves of the language we learned in middle school and “perfected” in high school shows how our understanding hasn’t matured.

Quick: name me a positive word or phrase used by males to describe a sexually-active female? Sorry, that was a trick question. There aren’t any; none in my generation and none today. Meanwhile there are over 1,000 negative male words and phrases for a sexually-active female. The best that boys and men from the late 1980s through today can cite are, “slut,” “whore (ho),” and “nymphomaniac.” They cite these to me readily without irony or self-reflection. (Though I will admit to being highly amused the first time a high school boy answered, “generous” as a positive word for a sexually active female.)

When a male first heard about any of the acts from the front of this document and was titillated, he was not offering a critique of these acts when he excitedly told his male friends or peers about them. That the they did not all castigate and naturally reject these acts as being outrageous, offensive, and therefore impossible for consideration, reveals that neither did more than a few of them have a very well-developed sense of personal sexual ethics. But it should be as troubling that the males who initially “floated” the ideas did not expect to be challenged by their friends (and that few if any were challenged). These acts obviously did not conflict with the beliefs and understanding about sex and the sub-humanity of females that are still held by hundreds of millions of boys and men.

When I have discussed male socialization with high school girls and with college women, they brought up several very good points. They said, “It’s great you’re talking to males and teaching them right and wrong. But didn’t anybody talk to them before they entered high school or college? Why not? And why do they need to be taught not to hurt other people in the first place? No one talked to me about these things, and I am not hurting people. Why do boys and men need this ‘remedial’ teaching?” I don’t have the whole answer, but as I discuss male socialization and how boys are essentially abandoned to raise themselves and each other in a adult- and ethics-free vacuum, as were the boys described in Lord of the Flies, it becomes more obvious why males act as they do. Boys’ version of reality is based on their interpretation and imitation of the behavior of the older males to whom they’ve been exposed.

The truth remains: we have never taught boys the skills they will need so that they will be more likely to grow up to be good lovers, good partners, or good fathers.

In response to this discussion, some women have said, and some readers might be thinking, “Well, my husband, son, brother, father, boyfriend, date, _____ (fill-in the blank) isn’t like that. He’s never done any of those things. (I hope.)”

I am not saying that all males have committed these ugly acts. All have not. It’s great that some males have not done any of “those things.” The problem is that those genuinely nice guys have not reproduced. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. Even if he hasn’t gone along with the other males who have committed these acts (and I doubt that he would confess it to you if he had) he has heard these, or variants of these acts, described or alluded to by his peers and friends at times in his life. And he probably didn’t challenge their recitations, reinforcing the illusion that “all” males approve of (and practice) or wish they could practice their hateful acts.

He still measures himself against the single Real Man stereotype, the straightjacket. No matter how uncomfortable he is with the pressures to be a facsimile of that Real Man, no matter that he may be genuinely happier being more himself and not a compromise cartoon, he still uses that cartoon against which to measure himself. He is embarrassed by what he sees as his failure to embody that cartoon. No matter that they may love and appreciate him, his sons still compare him to the stereotype and to other fathers who try to live up to the stereotype. This is what prevents bystander education from working.

Initially, most males (including some who later come to commit these and other hateful acts) are at least conflicted, and even repelled, by these acts, which are so anti-human. But in a world where they have been directly instructed and have learned by observation that “might makes right,” and where they have never heard an alternative to the prevailing selfish sexuality described, these hateful acts become a “default” norm and are taken for granted as the way things are and should be. The hate we learned becomes grounded in our bodies.

In my speeches and workshops with women, I have asked college-aged and older than traditionally aged college women to think of their first experience of intercourse with a male and then to think of what they might tell their daughters, younger sisters, female students, and other girls and young women about sex with males. I am not a sadist (or a voyeur) so I discourage them from sharing any details of their experiences within the group that is present. Many though report memories of painful and depersonalized first, and often subsequent, acts of sexual intercourse. I have spoken with many women over the years. If they ask about my work talking to males about rape and sex, I bring up teaching consent. When I describe the definition of consent that I use with males, innumerable women have mused that they have never been treated truly consensually.

Define consent.

Not all females who have been sexual with males have memories of pain. Some have pleasant memories. For some, the sex was affirming, revelatory, and intensely pleasurable. Some realized that even if the sex was not great, not worthy of repetition, that the fault did not lie in sex, but in the particular partner, or that she needed to take more time exploring her sexuality so as to better enjoy sex in the future. So the sex was valuable. Some women report that they would want other young females to have an experience similar to theirs.

Most though report that they remember feeling “pressured,” “rushed,” “confused,” “along for the ride,” “taken for granted.” Many also recall a sense of “Is that it?” Not surprisingly, few of them experienced orgasm with males that first time; some rarely or never have subsequently experienced an orgasm with a male. Many came out of those initial experiences believing that, “That’s all there is to sex, he gets his.” Many females are not surprised to hear that boys are being taught not only that intercourse is “always” painful for females, but that “loving,” “kind,” “soft,” “sweet,” “sensuous,” “tentative,” “gentle,” “mutually-pleasurable,” are not words that are ever used by older boys or men to describe to boys how sex can and should be savored.

Some girls and women respond with anger at me in my discussions about this as they begin to realize how they have compromised and settled for a male-defined notion of sex, one where they are irrelevant to the main action, his ejaculation. It is as they are remembering their experiences that many females begin to brainstorm how they can protect young females about whom they care from the worst of what they went through. For two reasons, I encourage them to think about how they might help young females. First, to help them achieve some therapeutic distance from the painful experiences of their past. Second, teens of today, like teens of previous generations, think they “invented” sex. Many girls and young women today, sexually active or not, have no one “who has been there,” who will candidly share information about sex. Of course some do so, but more older girls and women could be great allies for today’s girls. (See document That Takes Ovaries elsewhere on my web site.)

If Most Men Were Bystanders, the world and all of our lives

would be radically unfamiliar to us.

If most men were bystanders, most sexual interactions would be informed by honesty, caring, real consensually. The aftermath of this brave, new sex wouldn’t be regret, fear, anger, trauma and the intervention of the authorities at any level. Imagine even if the interaction was a one time event or a brief interlude, having fond, unconflicted memories of the sex and of the other person. If anywhere near the same energy was expended in trying to make sure that a sexual interaction was truly consensual as is so frequently expended in cutting corners, “finessing” the stranger with whom we are inflicting sex upon, it would be a radically different world for all.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they work to end the Patriarchy, the system which disproportionately privileges males? Patriarchy is predicated on the presumption of male superiority, despite much evidence to the contrary. The welcome alternative to Patriarchy would not be male inferiority. What would true equality look like? More than what would we males lose—what would we gain, is the real question, but one that we remain frightened to ask. It’s evidently easier for most males to accept the benefits of living in the patriarchy, and perhaps feel a little guilty, than to stir ourselves to action. One high school boy said, in response to my question, “What keeps us males doing the same old meaningless, destructive traditional male things? His response, “I may be stagnant but at least I’m not confused.” The new, the unknown is frightening for many people.
Many fathers become quite hardcore when their daughters hit puberty or when the fathers think about their baby daughters eventually dating. The fathers warn their daughters “not to trust any word from any male. They want only one thing, sex, and will say anything to get it.” These fathers have never been compelled to examine their own problematic behavior before. And they still do not teach their sons to treat other fathers’ daughters, indeed, all females and males, with love and respect.
If most men were bystanders, would they have so identified themselves with the use/abuse of alcohol or other drugs in conjunction with sex? No. I am not talking about a glass of wine and Coc au Vin for dinner. Ostensibly a “lubricant of love,” alcohol is frequently used as a bludgeon to guarantee sex as he defines it. During one of my presentations at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a cadet repeatedly questioned the rationale behind making alcohol use a bar to legally establishing consent to sexual acts. “I just don’t understand why the fact that someone has been drinking alcohol renders them unable to consent to sex.” I responded to this and following questions patiently but finally asked him, “Just before you are scheduled to fly a jet, do they give you a 12 pack?” At that point he finally seemed to get it.
All men are not the Stanford swimmer, but large numbers have taken advantage of the inebriation ranging to unconsciousness of a “partner/victim.” For decades, this has been the most common cause of resistance from male participants to hearing how their acts have been or could be assaults. It was a constant discussion. Whether or not if the conscious intent was to disable the target, the effect was the same: taking advantage of someone’s incapacity to escape.
Even if some girls or women use alcohol or other drugs to deaden themselves because they know from experience that the sex will hurt or at “best” will not be particularly pleasurable, their effort to minimize their vulnerability to the male-defined practice of sex is submission not consent, and definitely not a justification for the continuation of that system. When I was in high school, some male peers shared their dating “wisdom.” Before we went out with a girl, we were told that we should eat French bread and swallow a tablespoon of olive oil. Why? “The French bread would soak up the alcohol and the olive oil would coat the stomach so alcohol wouldn’t be well absorbed.” This would supposedly give us an edge over the girl who was not similarly fortified. And yes, this was entirely spurious medical advice. It was unlikely that girls were hearing the same message on how to escalate the likeliness that there would be sex. Male peers didn’t tell us to rape, but they didn’t need to. This was the amoral precursor of the date rape drug.
If most men were bystanders, boys (and girls) would not continue to be taught the myth of Blue Balls by older boys and men. Blue Balls lies about male desire and sexuality and infantilizes male sexuality by keeping us helpless little boys not taking responsibility for our pleasure? Aroused? No male ever died from not ejaculating. I tell them that is why the Goddess gave us hands and arms long enough to reach our genitals. Worst of all, Blue Balls provides “justification” for males to extort sex under false pretenses, which is sexual assault.
If most men were bystanders, high school girls and middle school girls and even grade school girls would not be increasingly punished by sexist dress codes. Frequently these contradictory, hypocritical, unfairly enforced dress codes are represented as being necessary to protect females. Evidently males of all ages have hair triggers and are unable to control themselves. It has never been the practice to educate boys and men so that they were not a threat to the safety and integrity of females no matter what they wore. If most men were bystanders, they would have been taught that the way someone dressed was not an invitation to touch them; that there many reasons for someone to wear the clothes they wear.
I was once talking with the dean of students of a boarding school in New England, planning my upcoming visit. I was to address separate sessions for senior boys, senior girls, and faculty. First we talked about content for my hour and a half session with senior boys. He said that one of the largest problems was that every year senior boys would observe incoming first year girls and divide them up among themselves. “Fresh meat,” was how generations of senior boys enunciated it. I asked what were some of the things the school had covered with boys so that I wouldn’t just be repeating what has previously been said. He said that that’s what they were bringing me into do; that they had never spoken to the boys! I asked him if he knew that in his state sex between seventeen or eighteen year-olds and fourteen year-olds was sexual assault by definition. He repeated that he knew and that that was why they were bringing me. They had never spoken to the boys before.
I asked him what he wanted me to cover in my session with the senior girls. I asked him if he wanted me to address them as survivors since most of them had been “initiated” by senior boys when they were first years. No, no, he did not want me to do that. What then I asked? “Could you talk to them about their clothes?” he asked. I dress alright and clean up okay but have no experience or expertise in discussing fashion with high school girls. I asked what was the problem with their clothes as he saw it.
This was the early 1990s. He said that they were affecting the Britney Spears, sexy schoolgirl look. Now that I actually do have a problem with, the way clothing designers, the clothing industry, stores and advertisers were in such a rush to sexualize girls to enact the fantasies of adult men. But there seemed to be something unstated behind his question. “What is the problem that you see in how they dress?” I asked. “Well, it’s really hard on the younger boys, hard for them to concentrate,” he said. So will I get to address younger boys to tell them that the way girls dress has little to do with attracting them? And that even if the intent is to attract, there is a whole range of discussion which needs to take place before there is any physical contact. But there seemed to be more as yet unstated by the dean. “What else is the problem with how the girls dress?” I asked. “Well, it’s really hard on male teachers,” he answered.
Ding ding ding ding!! Finally we’re getting down to the real problem. Of course, any touching should be utterly forbidden, but even the staring adult male teachers and staff sends awful messages to girls. This is the real problem: male teachers and other staff staring at girls and inappropriately discussing girls’ bodies. I was to be at the school for one day but asked, “Do I get six months with male teachers?” That conversation is not mostly happening in teacher education courses, or inservices. So out of cynicism and desperation schools punish female clothing and behaviors instead of educating males and holding them responsible for their behavior. Sadly, it is easier to slut shame even grade school and middle school girls for their leggings or shirts instead of going right to the source of the problem, males, especially adult males.
If most men were bystanders, would they continue to practice a sex where for most there is a distinct difference between “making love” and “fucking,” and where fucking was far more common and far more lauded by other males than is making love? No. Would they continue to practice a sex where for most “making love” was an embarrassing, uncomfortable, unfamiliar phrase when talking to other males? No. We are suspicious of love, frightened of love, and hostile to even saying the word to our peers and other males. It is so difficult for most males to even utter the phrase “making love” because of the presence of the dreaded “love.” Yes, “fucking” can be sweaty, exuberant, mutually-pleasurable, and consensual, but why is it only rarely so?
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t there be consent porn? I know that might sound like a contradiction in terms. But imagine the medium (porn) which has long served as the default sex education for tens of millions of kids and adults teaching a loving, silly, happy, passionate sexuality: a consensual sexuality. We can discuss fantasy, and ask if porn is causal or a reflection of an evidently selfish, hateful, ignorant male-defined and controlled sexuality, but the fact remains that over half of present day pornography is incest/reluctance/non-consent/rape/painal (intentionally painful anal intercourse). Imagine porn teaching a loving sexuality. It emphatically does not do that now.
If most men were bystanders, would they have created a world where more points are “awarded” by males to males for “fucking her” than for caring about her, for caressing her, or indeed, being an enthusiastic co-conspirator in her orgasm. No. After a boy went out with a girl the other boys ask, “Did ya do her?” Never, “What was she like?” Never, “What did you two talk about?” Never, “What interests do you have in common?” Never, “Do you like her?” Never, “Do you think you’ll see her again?” No, just “Did ya do her?” In other words, did you ejaculate in her, on her, near her (or lie about it to us)? Not once in recorded history has the follow up question when sex was reported, “Did she cum?” been asked. Her pleasure is incidental, accidental, not crucial to the success of the act. When I was in high school in the 1960s, the female orgasm was accidental, incidental, an ill-proven hypothesis never mentioned. Over the years, hundreds of high school boys and college men have asked me, “You keep mentioning the female orgasm. Do they really do that?”
If most men were bystanders, would they have created a world wherein his ejaculating is mandatory and her orgasm is unimportant, optional and peripheral to the “main action?” No. For all its real issues, I will always love the first South Park movie. In it a boy who asks the Chef, “How do you get a girl to like you more than other boys?” He is told, “That’s easy child. You’ve got to find the clitoris.” That was the very first time on history this sage advice was imparted to males, never by fathers, teachers and other supposed educators.
If most men were bystanders, there would be as much cunnilingus as fellatio. In our theocratic, hypocritical country “oral sex” is fellatio and cunnilingus is sin. When I search for “Cunnilingus” on mainstream porn sites, almost all cunnilingus is performed by females on females (women’s work). The male porn performers at most give her “just a token lick.” This phrase is from the song, You Suck from the incomparable Yeastie Girlz. The rarity in porn (and real life) is cunnilingus performed by males to her orgasm. Her orgasm is not the “main course” of mainstream male-centric sex. A few grudging, token licks on the way to the real thing: vaginal or anal intercourse and fellatio.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of a system—the Patriarchy—wherein birth control was essentially the complete responsibility of females? No. Even worse, most birth control for use by females (birth control pills, etc.) is chemical “toxic waste,” with potential health repercussions. Hey, when it comes right down to it, the prime birth control for use by males is in truth just a harmless balloon. As long as we males get a condom that is XXXLarge, and we are therefore not strangled, there will be no health risks for males who take responsibility for our contribution to the potential creation of a child and spreading STI’s.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of the hypocritical belief system wherein it was all the females’ fault, not the males’ fault, when he impregnated her? No. Have you ever heard the phrase “She got herself pregnant?” Every one of your mothers, grandmothers and women further back were told that. Can you describe the pseudo-biology or “divine intervention” behind the “miracle” of self-impregnation? I thought not.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of a system—the Patriarchy—wherein the concept of child illegitimacy, which could only exist in a system wherein inheritance and other property rights are predicated on verifiable paternity continues? No. Illegitimacy cruelly and arbitrarily punishes innocent children for selfish choices made by the males who fathered them. It is these men’s refusal to help emotionally and financially support the children that is the problem, not the children. All children are legitimate whether or not they are planned for, loved or wanted.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they have created and rhapsodized over relationship models more complex, more recognizing of the humanity of both parties, than Friends With Benefits, Tinder Swipe Right, and the well-known “one night stand,” long the dream of high school boys, singles bars habitués, other “studs,” “wanna-be studs,” and politicians? The problem is not casual sex; the problem is that all male-defined and controlled sex is casual. Boys have never been prepared for sex more emotionally complex than casual sex. Little girls are continuously brainwashed with talk of love and marriage. Meanwhile, those words are used so rarely used with boys to teach about relationships and sex that so many men are utterly unprepared for the hard work and joys of longer term relationships.
If most men were bystanders, would female promiscuity ever been made a crime? No. Until the 1970’s, females in the US could be (and many were) imprisoned for promiscuity. By definition, promiscuity could have been being discovered masturbating or having engaged in sexual acts with even one partner of whom a parent or guardian did not approve. Oh, and “promiscuous” males? Then and now, this was the accepted, norm for males, so accepted as to be unremarkable. Promiscuous males? The majority of men voted for promiscuous men, electing them, their heroes, to public office.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of a system—the Patriarchy—wherein monogamy is a way to control and police female sexuality while never holding themselves or other males to the same standard? No. Males keep females as “brood mares,” with expression of their sexuality tightly controlled and regulated, while electing themselves to be “studs,” playing the field, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of a system—the Patriarchy—wherein modesty, chastity, fidelity and virginity were “universal virtues” to be forced upon females? No. Modesty, chastity, fidelity and virginity are control systems by which females are punished for their humanity, for their sexuality. Since the introduction of the patriarchy, girls and women have been and continue to be punished for acting on their sexual desires, and have even been preemptively punished to discourage potential future sexual activity. There are, of course, no male analogs for modesty, chastity, fidelity, and virginity. What is a virgin male? Slow? Males have long held females responsible for males’ obsession with them, for males’ needs for females, and hate females for their needs.
If most men were bystanders, would they collude in the continuation of a system—the Patriarchy—wherein it was all the females’ fault, not the males’ fault, when he raped her? No. As with pregnancy “She got herself pregnant,” the victim-blaming and perpetrator exonerating, “She got herself raped,” still predominates. Hundreds of millions of girls and women have been and continue to be held completely responsible when males have chosen to rape them. This is the context that all of our relationships and attempts at consensual sex exist within.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t those males who are offended by the persistent woman-hate enunciated in high school, college, and professional sports team locker rooms, web sites, talk radio, media across the US speak out forcefully against this attitude which slanders all males as if all of us espoused these attitudes? Wouldn’t all males be revolted by males who, because of our silence, speak and act for us, in our name.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t all those millions of males who are offended by the infantile and stuck-in-junior-high-school representation of male sexuality and desire epitomized by television and “men’s magazines” speak out? Puerile defense of these “exemplars” as “ironic” or “post-modern” intentionally ignores the fact that these monopolize the discourse, crowding out alternative sources of information. They have not won a fair competition for attention with quality, complex erotic images that are “hot” and respecting of the humanity of males and females. Quick! Identify three of those.
If most men were bystanders, not one would buy into the flatulence which “reveals” that women and men are from “different planets?” This “analysis” provides pseudo-scientific permission for males to continue to act as they always have. Once again, if anyone is going to change to accommodate themselves to the other partner, it had better be the female. This analysis teaches males that we do not need to listen to females, we do not need to take them seriously, and we do not need to be willing to learn from women. If we did open ourselves to listen to women, we wouldn’t any longer be able to pretend that women are “mysterious,” “unknowable,” “alien.” These typifications have allowed men and boys to trivialize girls and women as different, read lesser really, inferior, while pressuring females to make more excuses for males’ behavior. John Gray is from Mars; the rest of us—females and males—are from the Earth.
If most men were bystanders, they wouldn’t continue to consume pornography so avidly. Many/most of us males have based much of our understanding of women and female sexuality and male sexuality on the propaganda of the porn industry. While we should know these depictions to be untrue, at the same time we don’t either demand more accurate/honest (and respectful) depictions or examine how our understanding of women, sexuality and ourselves is skewed. The average male in porn is anything but “average.” The breathless descriptions of “rock hard, twelve inch cocks” which easily and invariably bring all females to orgasm every time is pure male fantasy. Use of porn is self-deception and leads to feelings of inferiority, resentment, anger, sadness, and hopeless alienation from ourselves.
If most men were bystanders, would there be so many Web sites available that sexualize incest through stories and photos? Would there be so many Web sites available where “rape” is used as a synonym for “sex?” No. Website disclaimers that these incest and rape stories and photos are “just fantasy,” are rationalizations that defend incest and rape as “sexually-valid choices,” “sexy,” “naughty,” and “transgressive.” They wink at and sell the abuse while pretending to disapprove. The depiction of incest in porn is that it’s normal, common, and sexy. America, your sons have seen these or have heard them described excitedly, in excruciating detail by other boys and men who have seen them. Your sons describe these to me as they try to sort out their conflicted feelings about males, females, sex, and life.
If most men were bystanders, would sex continue to be represented to kids by adults solely as “dirty,” forbidden, as adult? No. Rape would no longer be tolerated by other males as a punishment for sexual activity by females. Adults would educate girls and boys about rape. There would be no more castigation of rape victims as being “sluttish,” as there continues to be. There wouldn’t have been more forbidding of sex than discussion of rape. Sex wouldn’t be seen as “the real problem,” rape would. Discouraging sex would no longer be seen as the major challenge facing society. Teaching a loving (and torrid) sexuality would be seen as the major task facing society. Most adults would be prepared (and eager) to tell the truth to kids instead our present situation where most adults are woefully unprepared. It is just as well that most do not say much; they have little positive to share.
If most men were bystanders, boys wouldn’t be given pornography by parents (especially fathers) as default sex education. Further, neither would parents (mostly fathers) give their sons pornography to inoculate them to prevent them from becoming gay, nor as a medicine to “heal” their perceived gayness. Message to frightened parents: exposure to images of naked women will not “turn” your young sons straight. Message to frightened parents: you cannot immunize your sons against their nature. If they are gay, get over it. Love and accept them; stop fearing and hating them. All your sons—gay, straight, bi-sexual, transgender—deserve and need your love.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they have criminalized the rape and sexual assault of males by males? In all the thousands of years that men solely wrote, enacted, interpreted, and enforced the law, same-sex, male-on-male rape and sexual assault was never a crime. To repeat: men never made the rape of boys and men by other males a crime. This should not be surprising. Rape and the threat of that rape has been for long a tool to punish and extort acquiescence and subservience from males. I had a coach in high school (an ex-Marine) who told us that we should stop fooling around or he would “bend us over and use us like the bitches we were.”
Male-on-male sexualized violence has for long thrived in previously all-male environments such as the Boy Scouts, the military, athletic teams, boarding preparatory schools, colleges, fraternities, fire departments, and seminaries among many others. It is only since women have (rightfully, finally) entered some of these previously all-male environments that the sexualized humiliation and sexual violence that defines these environments and epitomizes the patriarchy has been revealed. But same-sex, male-on-male rape and sexual assault continue to be defended by the men in power by their refusal to address the problem. It is this denial that provides the template for the equally awful, rape and sexual assault of females by males in these environments that have relatively recently begun to permit participation by women.
I learned from Feminism that, “Rape is learned behavior.” All perpetrators are not survivors and all survivors will not perpetrate. But the time is long past due that we stop thinking of the sexual assault of males (by males or by males) as a separate, smaller, different problem.
If most men were bystanders, would they have created “sex tourism?” No. Sex tourism turns entire countries, indeed continents, into bordellos. Millions of men from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and the ruling class of other countries and continents have used their ability to pay enormous amounts of money, relative to the local standard of living, to be allowed to “legally” sexually assault children (or women or men). These men assault children with impunity since they commit these acts in countries with much lower ages of consent. Sometimes the child victims are younger than twelve years old. Obviously, most of the men able to afford vacationing outside of the U.S. (or other countries) in order to be able to inflict sex upon people without having to fear legal sanction, are relatively wealthy. But not to worry. Though the military, the U.S. government provides for middle class, working class and poor men, too. For them, the cut-rate sex tourism path to access to be able to do “anything” to non-U.S. children and women and men has long been service in the U.S. military. “Join the U.S. military. Rape, torture, and humiliate indigenous women, children and men, and get away with it. Have fun in the sun, (most recently, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Uganda, Syria, Yemen….).” This is one large reason why people all over the world support those who attack America. We call them terrorists, other people may call them people evening up the score. “At least they’re doing something about the vacationing assaulters.” No, George W. Bush, they do not “envy our freedom,” they hate our sexual imperialism.
If most men were bystanders, would millions bully, threaten, beat, maim and kill their partners? No. Men would not be able to go through with being sexual with someone they so obviously hate. If some batterers can separate the sex from the partner with whom they are sexual, that is further proof of their hate of females and willingness to debase sex, and not an excuse for their behavior. We have only finally in the last generation criminalized domestic violence (for the poor and working classes, anyway). Does anyone think that men who batter their partners for wrapping their lunches “wrong” or answering a question “wrong” are careful about finding out that she really wants to engage in whatever sex acts he desires. The debased sex many domestic violence perpetrators from all economic classes practice is indistinguishable from sexual assault.
If most men were bystanders, no male would be capable of being forced to commit rape? I am thinking of the movie Casualties of War. The character played by Michael J. Fox didn’t initially want to participate in a gang rape. The rape revolted him. But under pressure from his buddies, he finally capitulated and raped the woman too. The other men needed him to rape as well so that he was equally guilty and implicated in what they knew to be rape. They can’t have a witness who is not himself implicated as well, who's shared guilt protects the other men.
We can blame “peer pressure” or speak learnedly about the amorality of the mob. Let’s get to the crux of the matter. How could he maintain an erection and continue to thrust his penis into a helpless, quintessentially non-consenting human being? How shutdown his and other males’ moral compasses must be. Or put another way, how has our sexuality become so disconnected from our hearts and souls and our ethical sense that such acts occur so frequently, in war and in peacetime? In my workshops over the years, hundreds of men who have done military service have confessed participating in gang rapes and in solo rapes while in the military. Teen boys and men have confessed their participation in gang rapes and in solo rapes in every environment in which I have presented. How much has our hate become inexorably tied to our sexual response as it has deformed our sexual response?
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented age-imbalanced sex where some males, with no fear of sanction from other males, steal children’s innocence by having sex with (sexually assaulting) girl children and adolescents? No. If “sex” inflicted upon girls were really hated by males there would not be so many “humorous” sayings that normalize the abuse. Growing up, most boys have heard older boys and men say one or more of these. “If there’s grass on the field, play ball.” “Ten will get you twenty.” “Fifteen is worth twenty.” “If she’s old enough to bleed, she’s old enough for me.” “If she’s old enough to bleed, she’s old enough to butcher.” “If she’s old enough to pee, she’s old enough for me.” “If she’s old enough to go to the store, she’s old enough to get bred.” “Get her before the hair does.” “If she’s old enough to sit at the table, she’s old enough to eat.” “Only 13 and she knows how to nasty.” “She’s jail-bait.” While a frequent defense is, “Well, she looked mature; she looked over eighteen,” most perpetrators are intentionally looking for teens or pre-teens. There is no “mistake.”
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented age-imbalanced sex where some males, with no fear of sanction from other males, steal children’s innocence by having sex with (sexually assaulting) boy children and adolescents? No. The previous item refers to “sex” inflicted on girls. Sex with a girl is sexual assault as is the sexual assault of boys. The assault of boys has been promoted and practiced by some men as well. The National Association of Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is only one organization that exists to normalize and celebrate the sexual assaults of boys by men. Their motto: “Sex before eight, or else it’s too late.” This is not a question of sexuality. This is not a question of homosexuality. This is a question of sexual assault. Whether or not some of the boys become involved because they want to explore sexual relations with a male, and may even initiate the sex, their curiosity shouldn’t be punished by sexual assault. The age and greater experience and power of the older males who acquiesce to, or much more commonly initiate the “sex,” renders that “sex” to be sexual assault. Adult men rationalizing their assaulting boys doesn’t make their “sex” any less ethically and legally assaultive. Notice amidst all the hoopla about abusive clergymen, that very few abusers and others who covered up for their abuse were tried or imprisoned. No church was induced to examine itself to take responsibility and root out the institutional support for the sexual assault of children. The abuse goes on. The abusers are unpunished and unrepentant. And the institution languidly debates how many perpetrators can (freely) dance on the head of a pin.
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented and taught to their sons the practice of sex which is not distinguishable from sexual assault? Those “sex” acts (Switch, Contests, “sex” with highly inebriated and even unconscious females, Rodeo, Donkey Kick, Pulling A Train) listed above or the dynamic of “hate fuck,” for example. No. A man in a fraternity first described “hate fuck” to me. We were in the midst of a conversation about communication and sex. He stood and said, “You know what I hate; it’s when a girl kisses you and stuff and leads you on and then says ‘no’ acting like some kind of virgin. I hate that. Makes me want to give ‘em a hate fuck.” All the while as he spoke through gritted teeth, he was grinding his left fist rhythmically into his right palm. Some other men nodded emphatically, agreeing with him.
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented power-imbalanced sex where some males—doctors, therapists, clergy, coaches, teachers, professors, managers, lawyers, among others—with no fear of sanction from other males, extort sex from clients, patients, employees, or students who must submit to them? No. At the instant that the extortion is “successful,” and the sex is initiated, the acts cease being sex and become sexual assaults. Finally, broadening the rape/sexual assault laws to criminalize power-imbalanced acts has not stopped the assaults; indeed, it has whetted the appetites of some men for more, not less, such coercive sex. Porn created for boys and men is full of power-imbalanced interactions, sexualizing the acts of the powerful upon the powerless. This has normalized sexual assault and further blurred the line between sex and sexual assault.
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented, distributed and enthusiastically utilized the “date rape drug” which has been used on every college campus and high school in the US? No. Besides the morally bankrupt act of administering a drug to someone that renders them nearly comatose—attempted murder would accurately describe the administering of this drug—what is the quality of “sex” with someone who has literally been turned temporarily into a zombie. How can it be that any male can plan, execute, rationalize, and enjoy such debased “sex?” Hundreds of thousands have done so. Their practice cheapens all sex for all of us. Such “sex” reveals the belief system behind patriarchal sex: it all boils down to ejaculating on, in, or near a female. She needn’t be of legal age, consenting, enjoying, awake, conscious or even alive.
If most men were bystanders, for hundreds of years, rape would not have been known in men’s vocabulary (and hence in law) as a “sex crime?” Rape and sexual assault are not, and have never been, expressions of sex. “I am horny; I will hurt someone.” This is psychopathology, not sex. But most mens’ apathy towards examining and changing their (and other mens’) attitudes suggests that, at least, this conflation continues not to be “too” problematic in male culture. You could say that while rape is not sex, neither is sex, sex. Our Puritan culture (im-Puritan?) demonizes sex; it has never demonized rape and sexual assault in a comparable manner. These mixed messages have resulted in the practice of sex that for many is indistinguishable from sexual assault.
If most men were bystanders, no boys or men would use objects other than their penises, fingers, tongues or sex toys to vaginally, anally or orally penetrate females and those only with the enthusiastic, verbal consent of their partners. Bottles, baseball bats, broomsticks, knives, guns are only some of the objects used to hurt girls and women. When I recite even a brief version of this list, even boys or men who have been reacting defensively to my message respond with revulsion. “Ugh. That’s not sex,” they say, “That’s ugly.” Exactly. These acts are not informed by love; nor pleasure. They are not sex; they are about hate.
If most men were bystanders, would so many cheat on their partners? No. Infidelity is based on the belief that sex is the most important aspect of a relationship and that what differentiates people is their “sexual” attributes. Men who cheat make sex the definer of the relationship, not intimacy. This guarantees the practice of sex without feelings. From observing and overhearing older boys and men, boys learn that sex is the main object of a relationship, and so many adult males believe that finding a new person with whom to have sex will in and of itself guarantee a significant change. As if the sex with a different person will change what was wrong about the first partner (or really what is wrong about the cheater). If they do not love their first partner, frequently their relationship with a new person will replicate the worst of that initial “loveless relationship.” When that happens, there’s an obvious answer: it’s time to change partners again. Bolting when emotionality gets too real destroys the possibility of intimacy with the cheated upon partner.
If most men were bystanders, would men the world over fear unfettered female sexuality and power so much that they created female genital mutilation, restrictions on girls and women revealing their hair, arms, clavicles, legs and faces in public, restrictions on girls and women speaking, singing, driving, attending prayers, and reading in public? The same fear of female sexuality and power which is behind the forced cover up of females’ bodies in some parts of the world, has resulted in the creation of entire industries based on the exposure of females’ bodies here in the “progressive” West. The exposure is not always technically forced, but females too often have little or no control over the images.
Porn produced in the US is avidly consumed all over the world. Exposure to US porn has resulted in men around the world believing that all US women are the same and are the same as women in porn are. They see the porn women as a true depiction of the sexuality of all US women. Increasingly, porn is damaging how males around the world see the girls and women in their countries, through the lens of US porn.
Here we have the porn industry created and almost entirely run by men who control the images of the women. Counter that to the many arrests for “indecent” exposure that have ensued when women attempt to go topless. Look askance at the response to women breast feeding. Yes, there are some women who act to defend the Patriarchy by attacking women who breast feed in public, but the control of the discourse is still male legislators, experts and pundits who grant tacit approval to the breast feeding as problematic display argument while they assert and reassert their gawd-given right to decide for women what and who their breasts are really for.
The hate and fear are the same. Women-hating males of all religions put aside their “immovable” differences to link arms as brothers, united in their hate and fear of females. The fundamentalists define the terms of the male discourse. Why do other males continue to let fundamentalists get away with their brutal women hate? Objecting loudly is not at the top of many males’ “to do” list. Maybe the rest of us aren’t so different from the fundamentalist women-haters after all.
News item: In 2002, at the same time that the Bush administration was mobilizing support for a military invasion of Iraq, other administration representatives were working with Iraq (and Iran, Libya, Sudan and the Vatican, and against almost all of the US’s traditional allies) to resist United Nations worldwide support of “reproductive health services” (including abortion), sex education (except “abstinence”) and gay rights. One critic called it “perverse” to blame Iraq for “unspeakable acts of terrorism” while joining them “in the oppression of women.” I agree.
In the US many parents would rather their daughters and sons die of cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile, anal, and oral cancers rather than vaccinate their children against HPV (human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection. Over 90% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV, a cancer which claimed the lives of 270,000 women in 2012. Stunningly, there are opponents to saving lives. The discomfort and denial of some opponents finds the idea that their children have normal sexual urges disturbing. The other opponents to HPV vaccination are religious conservatives who advocate abstinence in lieu of vaccination. Their ludicrous contention is that without the fear of genital warts or cervical cancer, young people will become more sexually active, so that the HPV vaccine encourages behavior they find offensive. These opponents’ language is quite revelatory. They refer to young people becoming “promiscuous,” judging all sexual activity outside of (heterosexual) marriage to be sinful. Sadly, this extreme position teaches kids that all sex is dirty and tainted. If these adults felt differently they would teach how to make sex in longterm relationships hot. That is not the message kids get.
The CDC says HPV is down by 56% among teenagers since the introduction of the vaccine. But ignoring statistics and reality is the standard operating procedure and is profitable for abstinence hucksters. Abstinence programs just don’t work, and teens subjected to this approach begin sexual activity at the same stage as their peers—worse, teens mis-educated with abstinence education have more pregnancies than those receiving conventional sex education.
The safety of the HPV vaccine has been established by reams of clinical evidence and years of data, whereas the opponents side is comprised of anecdotes, emotional declarations and risible proclamations. Despite all the sound and fury from religious conservatives, anti-vaccine campaigners and clueless broadcasters, the unassailable truth is that the HPV vaccine has saved lives.
If most men were bystanders, would they frequent Hooters and other “breastaurants?” No. What do patrons hunger for? What need do these restaurants feed? These restaurants exist to facilitate middle-aged and older men ogling and propositioning women young enough to be their daughters and granddaughters, and by modeling their boorish sexism, normalizing such behavior for younger male customers. Just one more way that the sexism of previous generations is taught to boys of the next generation. Hooters restaurants that are intentionally sited near high schools, have resulted in increased sexual harassment of high school girls by adult men that are Hooters patrons. This is the raison d’être of Hooters; profit by selling and legitimizing sexism and only incidentally, “food.”
If most men were bystanders, would they have invented prostitution? No. Prostitution is a business arrangement where one purchases a commodity. Prostitution is part of the “script” for “ideal sex” that men imagine. It is the logical end of male fantasies—unintentionally honest and revelatory that many males aspire to, all emotional connection excised. Men write the script, hire the “actresses or actors,” judge the “performance,” paying to successfully achieve that which they think they want. Prostitution is a male-defined and maintained interaction wherein sex is stripped of love, wherein men pay to be lied to.

Prostitution is only about the male consumers’ pleasure; it is never about the sex workers’ pleasure. In a relationship, he has to at least pretend to take his partner’s feelings into account, to care, however slightly, about her or his comfort and pleasure. Men getting their needs met is the sole point of prostitution. He is hiring someone to masturbate him, for him. Prostitution is only about male power to control this commercialized sexual interaction. Any illusion of the sex workers’ power is just that, an illusion. The sex workers cannot expect to have her or his needs met, except by accident.

In this system of complete control, where the customer ostensibly gets all they can dream of wanting, all they can imagine, the paucity of their imaginations becomes inescapably apparent to them. Disappointment is inevitable as reality both kills fantasy and rightly reveals the flaws of the fantasies. In this way, disappointed rage is connected inescapably at the very moment they get what they imagine they wanted. They feel rage at having again settled for a pale facsimile of a real, intense, gloriously imperfect relationship with someone they don’t need to pay to care about them and stay with them and possibly, actually love them.

Yet even as men created this “perfect” (no emotional strings attached) sex, many men harbor fantasies of the sex worker “gratefully” falling in love with him. Their fantasies are merely the updating of slave owners’ guilty, conflicted fantasies of their slaves falling in love with them, appreciatively kissing their chains and whips, thanking and forgiving the Master for their harsh (but fair) treatment. As hateful and pathetic these fantasies are, they reveal a small tendril of hope. They reveal these men’s deeply-buried, long-denied, dormant desire for love, however twisted and impossible love would be in such a male-created, absolutely power-imbalanced environment.

If most men were bystanders, but were opposed to abortion, wouldn’t they teach their and other men’s sons to always wear condoms when engaging in vaginal intercourse except where both partners had previously consensually decided to try to make a child? Instead of solely demonizing and sexualizing the pregnant girl or woman (watch the lustful leers of male anti-abortion protesters and the religious leaders) we could understand pregnancy as resulting from a males’ refusal to use a condom. Sons would additionally be expected and made to always help emotionally and financially support the babies they do help make, in and out of committed relationships including marriage. Few men have talked to their sons in this way. As a result, the burden and onus continues to be as it has always been on the females, as if they become pregnant by themselves. By magic perhaps.
Speaking of abortion, if most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they automatically, naturally, gladly take responsibility for any and all results of their engaging in sexual acts including pregnancy? Abortion is necessary and a desperate, last resort because of men’s privilege and ability to divorce sex from its consequences, to divorce sex from the partner with whom we are sexual. Males’ sanctimonious display of fake virtue about abortion only reveals the hate and ambivalence about sex, females and what it means to be a man held by males, while providing a smoke-screen to defend business as usual for males. The very existence of and need for abortion shows starkly the systemic hypocrisy rampant in male culture. Male refusal to take responsibility for their contribution to making a baby is the problem. There has been little pressure exerted on teen males who impregnate their partners, and most of that pressure on poor and working-class males. This is a start. But there is no condemning of the males commensurate to the demonization directed at the impregnated females. I am not calling for escalating the demonization of males; I am demanding the end of the demonization of females. Growing up, few boys ever hear male voices about the joys of parenting, the joys of (and challenges) of being a father with loving instruction. So much of what boys hear is Married With Children-type stupid, sitcom hateful propaganda.
If most men were bystanders, and being in love with women, wouldn’t they be unthreatened by and celebratory of men who love men or for women who love women? How little love so many men must know, to fear and hate others’ love so. The fear/hate/terror directed at gay men and lesbians reveals how little love heterosexual males are used to receiving and expressing in our lives. Most heterosexual males are starved for love from fathers, other male relatives, and close male friends, and thus have conflicted feelings about homosexuals. Our sense that gay males especially are freer than are heterosexual males to express their feelings including expressions of love for other males sets us up to hate and resent gay males instead of—Heavens Forbid— emulate them.
Separately, a part of heterosexual males’ complex response to gay men and lesbians is due to our resentment and envy at persons who by definition practice a sexuality that is broader and isn’t reproduction-based. In porn, if you type in “cunnilingus,” you find a few videos of men delivering what the great Yeastie Girls called, “just a token lick,” rarely licking to orgasm. The “token lick” is just humoring her on the way to the “real action, ”penis in vagina intercourse, anal intercourse or fellatio. The vast majority of cunnilingus videos are female-on-female with orgasm inevitable. Yes, the depictions of “lesbians” in male produced and defined porn are invariably fantastical (Ginsu-knife long fingernails, as much anal/vaginal/anal sex play which will result in urinary tract infections, most wearing high heels to bed.) Hundreds of boys have asked me about this, “Do all lesbians wear high heels to bed to have sex?”
Vaginal intercourse, laden with Puritanical mixed-messages and dissatisfaction, isn’t the sole sanctioned sexual act for gays and lesbians like it is for heterosexuals. As a result, many heterosexual males envy gays and lesbians for their sex wherein intercourse needn’t block the possibility of more-egalitarian, pleasure-based sexual practices whether or not they can enunciate that envy and the desire which is buried by their fear and hate.
If most men were bystanders, they wouldn’t hate women’s genitals and research, produce, and market FDS and other so-called women’s hygiene products (hate substances) to profit as they teach generation after generation of their daughters to be embarrassed by and hate their genitals? In workshops, boys as young as sixth grade have authoritatively cited “the truth” about women’s “smelly genitals.” This is obviously ludicrous since the last and only time they were in close proximity to a female’s genitals was when they were born. Yes, I know about the rate of frequently unnecessary Caesarian births. But that rather proves my point. Male calumny about females’ genitals is not birth trauma. Nor is it constructed from good information. It is based on information overheard from older boys and men those dependable sources of old husband’s tales. Like other male lies, fantasies, and florid assertions, the young boys consider themselves lucky to have heard the “truth” from these fools.
If most men were bystanders, would so many have raped, tortured and killed hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of women and girls on the pretense that the females were witches? This gynocide took place with the at least tacit approval of the majority of men of that time. We can shake our heads over the patently silly, “quaint” superstitions of the past, but the threat to females who refuse to meekly comply with male authority still flourishes today. Listen to anti-abortion, anti-feminist, and anti-birth control rhetoric and you will hear the same fear and hate of female power and independence updated to contemporary threats of witch burning. “Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Actual quote from Pat Robertson, famed asshat. While he is admittedly a clown and a general embarrassment, evidently, unbelievably, some people do take his message, and other hateful televangelists seriously.

“OK, so men hate women and maybe themselves, and have for a long time, I’ll give you that. But things are getting better. In my community, it is better than it was.” Sadly, no. A few “woke” twenty year-olds do not a movement make.

If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they lovingly teach their and other men’s sons all they know about how to be good, caring partners and lovers? Few have ever done so. Boys would grow-up expecting to hear rhapsodies about love, sex, partnering and raising children, from older males and especially fathers who wanted young boys to grow up to be as happy as the older males are.
If most men were bystanders, would they have designated intercourse to be the “main” and most important expression of sex? No. Intercourse is perfect for making babies, much less frequently for pleasure. That is why organized religion stresses intercourse, while condemning masturbation, same-sex sex, and oral sex. The protestations of morality are a smoke-screen to cover the naked exercise of power and control.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t all know that most females rarely or never orgasm from intercourse alone? When I was a teen and to this day, when boys and men are grilled by other boys and men about the date, hook up interaction with a female, they are only asked, “Did you do her?” Not one questioning male has never asked as a follow up, “Did she cum?” Wouldn’t fathers or father surrogates have told their sons this important information. Then why haven’t they? Can it be that the little most men have imparted to their sons about sex and relationships, is all that they know?
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they imagine intercourse as beginning when a female invited a male into her body rather than focusing on intercourse beginning at the “all-important” insertion of his “Scud Missile of Love,” whether consensual or not? Waiting for such an invitation, or initiating discussion leading toward such an invitation, would make many more sexual acts truly consensual, as opposed to the non-consensual paradigm that thrives today. Since most men are not and have never been bystanders, sex is not seen as an absolutely consensual sharing of pleasure.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t all know that her clitoris is “her best friend?” Wouldn’t her clitoris therefore be his friend as well. Then why do so few males (10% would be my guess) know about (or care about) the care and feeding of this delightful and delight-producing “creature?” More males than that do know, you say. Then why are there no slang words or phrases for “clitoris” in male language. Males have slang expressions for everything else (that we recognize). All right. It is possible that more than 10% know what a clitoris is, but that they just don’t care. How is that any better?
If most men were bystanders, their most profane words and phrases would have nothing to do with how they conceptualize and refer to sex. “Fuck,” “Cocksucker,” “Cunt,” “Motherfucker,” for example. None of these is ever said sweetly or lovingly or admiringly. They are invariably angrily shouted or spat out at another driver in traffic for example, not to a lover. The infamous words that were forbidden from being spoken on the television in 1973, “shit,” “piss,” “fuck,” “cunt,” “cocksucker,” “motherfucker,” and “tits,” all refer to sex and the body. Humans have made religions out of their discomfort and hostility to their bodies.
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they repudiate the teaching of reductionary, selfish concepts such as “Best Friends With Benefits?” This practice is sweeping America and is seen only minimally as a problem. This adult male-imagined concept of sex teaches boys and girls that sex can and should be separated from relationships. Girls, who are a “Best Friend With Benefits” of a boy, are available for sex any time he wants, especially performing fellatio and submitting to anal intercourse. It is through this and other equally sad practices are how girls learn that, “You play; you pay.” If you engage in sex with boys (or men) you get status, temporarily. While some girls take or receive pleasure from their participation, girls learn to not expect orgasm from sex with males, not to expect much pleasure in fact. Boys learn that getting their desires met is paramount. And boys and girls learn that sex is a casual act that needn’t “mean” anything. Adulthood, here they come.

As a society, we are so cynical and hopeless about teaching sexual ethics especially equality of fellatio and cunnilingus to any males including middle school boys, that the major effort to confront the practice of fellatio focuses on increasing pressure on the middle school girls! Hello. Some of these acts are coerced; few are reciprocated. If there were a reciprocal “outbreak” of cunnilingus, then America would snap into action. The National Guard would be patrolling every middle school in the country.

If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t they lovingly teach their and other men’s sons the phrase “make love” to describe intercourse? The phrases: “doin’ her,” “fucking,” “boning,” “screwing,” “nailing,” “ripping off a piece of ass,” “banging,” “burying the hatchet,” “hitting it,” are still used to refer to intercourse. I learned these in the 1950’s and 1960’s; they still thrive. If most men were bystanders, we would have wonderfully romantic and erotic expressions for this act about which we would not be at all ambivalent and hostile.
If most men were bystanders, they wouldn’t have made fellatio the equivalent of a handshake to celebrate closing a business deal, meeting or exceeding sales goals, etc. If men loved sex, cunnilingus would seen be as being as wonderful as fellatio. Cunnilingus would seen be as being as good as intercourse, not only as good, but better. An enthusiastic cunnilinguist needn’t worry about insufficient penis size or premature ejaculation, while making her orgasm much more likely. Win; win, I’d say. Though, I suppose then we would be bombarded by email spam offering us nostrums to dramatically increase our tongue length and girth, creating and playing on our insecurities about our “little tongues.”
If most men were bystanders, wouldn’t our male language have many positive, celebratory words or phrases for a sexually active female? With all women’s hard fought and undeniable progress, there are still, in 2021, no positive words for a sexually-active woman in male language. No males, including nice bystander guys, have yet created any.

Our Patriarchal system is one that is hostile to women. When some men say, “We love women,” read “We only want to have sex with them, not care about them or take them seriously or heaven forfend, vote for them for president.” Other men say, “We are all looking for sexually-active women.” But if we actually encounter such a woman she frightens us, confuses us, and we respond with hostility and anger, for which we have a vast expressive language. She does not fit any paradigm we are familiar with—not the Madonna or the whore. When will there be a paradigm of woman as equal, as peer?

There are a few positive words for women but none that legitimate any sexual activity. Many heterosexual men have been in interactions and relationships with women that have a healthy, spontaneous, ecstatic and rollicking sexual appetite and who act upon it. Some men have been appreciative, respectful, in awe of, pleasantly scandalized by, thrilled, or exhausted by a range of relations, including sexual with these women. Since we cannot express these women’s complexity and fullness through language, we cannot even conceptualize, much less celebrate, them. Women are, therefore, on thin ice, in borrowed space. The allowable range of female and sexual behavior is severely constrained. A 14-year-old high school girl described the double standard she lives within, “If I say yes, I’m a slut; if I say no, I’m frigid.” This neatly sums up the range of options available to females in the patriarchy.

I still get the feeling that, faced with real female empowerment, men will put aside our differences (black/white, gay/straight, young/old, etc.) and link arms to try to block the women. This is Trumpy factory workers and lefty college professors, politicians of all stripes, heterosexual and homosexual, most men. As female progress is undeniably being made (Good!!) it is coming despite male allies. And in response to female growth, porn is getting more virulent (rape/non-consent/reluctance/painal/incest comprises more than half of mainstream porn). Our insecurity and unpreparedness for egalitarian interactions with women grows the divide between us and them. Boys are still being raised with the taunts that they are pussies, weak, little girls; evidently the worst possible fate. This is still the norm. Where are the fathers—who having healed the hate of females and femaleness they learned growing up—are generously teaching their sons a truly different way of being in the world?

If Most Men Were Indeed Bystanders

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