Battle of the Sexes
“If I was gay, I would be having so much more sex” my adamantly straight friend told me once. On top of this being a hilariously Freudian statement, it made me think a little more about the meaning of what he was actually saying. On the one hand, I instinctively agreed with the statement, but on the other, I wondered why casual sex is not as common in the heterosexual dating community as it is in the homosexual one.
Perhaps there exists a fundamental disconnect between men and women. It’s generally difficult enough articulating your desires in a coherent matter, but even more difficult trying to do so to a partner of the opposite sex.
“What do you want for dinner?” he might ask, to which she replies “I don’t know, what do you want?” The reality is that we don’t really understand what the other wants or how the other might think. Maybe it’s due to a breakdown in communication, or a fundamental difference in neurobiology between the sexes.
Being naturally curious about the question, I asked a gay friend of mine why there was no heterosexual version of the popular dating app Grindr, to which he replied that it would be impossible for something like that to exist in the heterosexual community. “We’re all out here for the same thing.” A casual greeting on Grindr may warrant the response of a solicited dick-pick, something that is quite common and not unwelcome on the app.
Why does there exist said expectation of sex on an app like Grindr, and not on Tinder?
It’s naturally easier to understand the mind of a man if you are a man. This is why same-sex friendships are often characterized as being different, and perhaps more visceral in some ways, than those of the opposite sex. It’s easy to communicate with friends of the same-sex about topics that are easily influenced by biology; among heterosexual men including women, sports, gambling, etc.
These sorts of commonalities that bond men are even stronger in cultures where gender roles are more clearly defined. When I was traveling in Brazil, for example, I had difficulty communicating with a male taxi driver in my broken Portuguese. I found it difficult to hold a conversation with him until we got to the topic of Brazilian women. “Ahhhh” his eyes lit up as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. There was an implicit understanding of sorts in that moment that made the conversation flow seamlessly from that point on. Despite the language barrier, the male connection that transcends language had already been formed. We laughed and communicated without talking.
Said group connections exist within groups in the gay community as well. Gay men who go to a gay nightclub have little trouble getting laid with other men because of the same implicit agreement. It is the belief that despite the unfamiliarity of strangers coming into contact with each other, a non-existent consent form has already been signed.
This is not meant to underwrite rape in the gay community, which certainly exists. It’s only to say that the implicit understanding of mating preferences is less common between genders in the heterosexual community. Of course women know that men like big butts, I cannot lie, something my other brothers can’t deny…but beyond this superficial understanding of what features men are attracted to, women often miss the point as to what men really want.
The same can be said vice-versa, as men are sometimes seen as incompetent bafoons when it comes to dating. No wonder women often complain about how many shitty guys there are out there. We often are saying things that get interpreted in a completely different way than how they were meant to be communicated, creating a gap in understanding that never gets filled.
I’m not really in the position to answer the question about what women really want, unless I want to start a war in the comment section of this article. All I can say is that after having spoken with many (male) friends about the topic of dating, we’ve also missed the point for a very long time.
Men often lie to save their own ego. We over-inflate the number of sexual partners we’ve had, while women lie by understating their number. Despite the emphasis on self-improvement and humanistic psychology over the last couple of years, we still very much care about our image, thanks to social media.
A whole community has sprung up to challenge men to move outside of their comfort zones and approach women they are attracted to. Male confidence and boldness, in a certain sense, became less common the more we treated women as delicate objects of admiration rather than human beings to connect with.
Stereotypically speaking, men have been told to repress effeminate displays of emotions, like vulnerability, as if it were “un-masculine” for a man to show his true feelings. This not only applies to intergroup communication between men and women, but among men as well. This attitude is aptly epitomized by phrases like “Suck it up” “Be a man” or “Don’t be a girl.” The motif of the emotionless male has become ubiquitous in developed nations, where both men and women are expected to conform to their gender roles.
Women, on the other hand, are able to show authentic displays of human emotion, but sometimes at the cost of being mocked for being “hysterical” or “bitchy” by others.
Men bear an entirely different set of responsibilities, which possibly leads them to mature at a later age in life. Modern society has created a generation of men devoid of responsibilities, giving way to many who know little about taking care of others let alone themselves. The advent of contraceptives has created a reality somewhat like the dystopian future described in Brave New World, yet the bi-product of this hedonism is a generation of people with no meaning in their lives.
Listen Up Ladies - What Men Really Want
Ultimately, men want the enthralling combination of tranquility and unpredictable excitement that injects vitality into most modern relationships. Relationships often start off with exciting infatuation only to lose the spark a few months later. Shows like Married… with Children poke fun at the monotony of marriages and the acquiescence to these types of social norms.
A lot of millennials are afraid of commitment for this very reason, a fear of abandoning the certainty of an ambiguous dating life for the uncertainty of getting to know one person intimately for the rest of their lives. The greater number of sexual partners you have generally equates to a lower degree of self-understanding due in part to the transient nature of casual sex.
What men really want is something we’re generally afraid of: Vulnerability, commitment, intimate affection; feelings that were often withheld from them growing up, either due to external inhibition or factors within our own control.
The dating community is undergoing a shift from the traditional norms of monogamous dating to a more ephemeral exploration of intimacy. This is generally a good thing because of the minimization of suffering to both partners involved. Author Mark Manson speaks on the subject of attracting women through vulnerability in his book Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. Manson details that you do not need to change who you are to attract women, rather, this can be done by learning to boldly accept your flaws and imperfection.
As is the theme with a lot of my writing, I think the problem can be directed back to social media for having created a world devoid of authenticity. As Marshall McCluhan once said, “The medium is the message.” What he meant by that is that the medium in which we engage with people changes our perception of the actual message delivered. Being limited to a 140-character Tweet changes our perception and communication on platforms like Twitter. Similarly, dating apps kill any form of authentic communication due to the multitude of possible suitors asking for your attention on the platform.
Essentially, the result is a medium of soliloquies vying for each other’s attention in order to relieve their own sexual frustration. The more we engage with the medium, the more we lose our ability to communicate with each other authentically, characterizing the fundamental disconnect between the sexes in the 21st century.