Those Manly Men of Yore

Op-Ed Contributor

By SARA LIPTON

Published: June 16, 2011

“WHAT was he thinking?” That’s the question columnists, talking heads and my (mostly female) friends have been asking about Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York, who announced Thursday that he would resign, just over a week after admitting he’d sent sexually explicit photographs and messages to women over the Internet.       

Sadly, that question has been asked of a dizzying number of unfaithful men in recent memory: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton ... the list goes on and on.

The conventional answer is that when it comes to sex, a certain kind of man, no matter how intelligent, doesn’t think at all; he just acts. Somehow a need for sexual conquest, female adulation and illicit and risky liaisons seems to go along with drive, ambition and confidence in the “alpha male.” And even if we denounce him and hound him from office, we tend to accept the idea that power accentuates the lusty nature of men.

This conception of masculinity is relatively new, however. For most of Western history, the primary and most valued characteristic of manhood was self-mastery. Late antique and Roman writers, like Plutarch, lauded men for their ability to resist sexual temptation and control bodily desire through force of will and intellect. Too much sex was thought to weaken men: a late-15th-century poem mocks an otherwise respectable but overly sexually active burgess who has “wasted and spent” his “substance” until there is “naught left but empty skin and bone.”

Rampant sexuality was something men were supposed to grow out of: in medieval political theory, young male bodies were used as symbols of badly run kingdoms. A man who indulged in excessive eating, drinking, sleeping or sex — who failed to “rule himself” — was considered unfit to rule his household, much less a polity.

Far from seeming “manly,” aggressive sexuality was associated with women. In contrast to the Victorian view of women that is still influential today, ancient and medieval writers described women as consumed by lust and sexual desire. In 1433, officials in Florence charged with regulating women’s dress and behavior sought “to restrain the barbarous and irrepressible bestiality of women who, not mindful of the weakness of their nature, forgetting that they are subject to their husbands, and transforming their perverse sense into a reprobate and diabolical nature, force their husbands with their honeyed poison to submit to them.”

Because of this association of sexuality with femaleness, men who failed to control their sexual urges or were susceptible to feminine attractions found their masculinity challenged. Marc Antony was roundly mocked as having been “softened and effeminized” by his desire for Cleopatra. When the king and war hero Pedro II of Aragon spent the night before a battle not in prayer or council but in bed with a woman, he was labeled effeminate.

Few of us would wish to revive these notions or endorse medieval misogyny. But in the face of recent revelations about the reckless and self-indulgent sexual conduct of so many of our elected officials, it may be worth recalling that sexual restraint rather than sexual prowess was once the measure of a man.

How and why have we moved so far from this ideal? Why do so many powerful men take sexual risks that destroy their families and careers? Contemporary worship of youth is one explanation: rather than shunning the idea of childishness, many adults, male and female, now spend much of their time clinging to an illusory and endless adolescence. The ability to be a “player” well into middle age thus becomes a point of pride, rather than shame, for the modern man. Perhaps the erosion of men’s exclusive status as breadwinners and heads of households also figures in: when one no longer “rules the household,” there may be less motivation for or satisfaction in “ruling oneself.”

But in the face of recent headlines I find myself less inclined to analyze or excuse current mores than to echo medieval ones. The critics of Pedro II of Aragon would have turned Arnold Schwarzenegger’s own words against him and his kind: Who are the girlie men now?

Sara Lipton, an associate professor of history at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, is a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 17, 2011, on page A35 of the New York edition with the headline: Those Manly Men of Yore.

What makes the concept of 'homosexuality' valid in the West

This article analyses how the western religious, cultural and scientific obsession with reproduction, mistaking it as the primary purpose of life (an obsession that is truly pathological), has created the myth of 'homosexuality,' i.e., of 'male's desire for men' as a distinct human trait (considered an abnormality for all practical purposes!) that deserves a separate terminology, and category. And the lack of this attitude towards reproduction is one of the primary reasons why none of the non-western or indigenous societies have anything even close to the concept of homosexuality or homosexuals, even when the incidence of sexual intimacy between males is far larger in these societies.

'Homosexuality' is NOT just a term to denote 'sexuality between males.' It's an entire concept, with a whole set of baggages, which is unique to the west. This concept cannot exist without the 'unnatural' assumptions that pre-empt it and surround it, and that is rendered invalid under more natural circumstances, including in non-western and indigenous cultures. It's a term made possible by a particular set of social/ political developments in the west, triggered by immense social engineering, often through violence and bloodshed, by Christianity. Its this base of conditions and attitudes created by Christianity, over two milleniums -- and then pursued vigorously and built upon by science (which has developed them beyond recognition), by employing/ abusing highly scientific tools.

It is not that the non-Western societies have not been obsessed with reproduction. But, they only forced it upon men as an important social role of manhood, never gave it a 'scientific' or biological facade like they did in the West, where everything, especially concerning males, is expected to compulsorily revolve around reproduction, or it is held to be there by mistake. Christianity has created a mindset, inherited today by western science, where they artificially create non-existing notions about nature, start believing in them zealously, and then expect nature to fit into it. When it doesn't, as is bound to happen, then they browbeat nature to fit into their preconceived notions. No method is held unfair in order to achieve this -- and both, the Christians as well as the scientists feel they're actually doing god/ nature a favour when they employ these unfair means. They ignore nature, suppress nature, even destroy nature -- without as much as a tinge of guilt -- so that it fits their pre-conceived notions. Whatever of nature remains after this strong persecution, they isolate, marginalize, penalize and stigmatize. When the enemy is male's sexual need for men, then its especially a "no-holds barred" war for the western society -- and after all, as westerners believe, everything is fair in love and war. While religion made man's need for sexual intimacy with a man into a sin, and succeeded to remove it from the formal, dignified scene, science, with its highly sophisticated tools, has converted it into an 'anomaly' and quarrantined it into the 'gay' pocket, together with the third genders. With its advanced technology, science has been able to achieve in this war against men, what religion could never achieve.

No wonder, western science is obsessed with finding out the 'cause' of homosexuality. This obssession quite clearly reflects the western cultural attitude towards male sexuality mentioned above, that treats sexual desire between men as something that got there by mistake. And, what can be described as the typical western attitude, when science starts to research male sexuality on this, it starts with this assumption that such a desire is an anomaly (esp. if its exclusive) and occurs only in individuals in whom some part of biology goes awry. So, it takes for given that there is a separate biological category of individuals and so it uses, without any qualms, the third genders who constitute the homosexual category, as its samples to study male sexuality for men. With this kind of predetermined research, when they already know what they want to find, the results will be predetermined as well. You find what you seek.

People in non-Judeo/ Christian/Islamic societies just don't have this concept of god wanting to run our lives through diktats that go against our natural needs and desires. For those who are in-charge of these medival religions, human beings are just slaves to fulfill the whims and fancies of what they hold to be the 'god.' The non-Judeo/Christian/Islamic cultures also don't understand the immense zealousness of the Jews, Christians and Muslims -- as a people -- to go to any extreme, unfair violent including that which is most obviously inhuman (like terrorism) to force human nature to fit into how their 'god' (who is the one and only 'one') wants nature to be.

One of the wrong assumptions that the western concept of "Homosexuality" is based upon is that the "normal," natural or biological sexuality of males is towards women, and furthermore, exclusively so, (the reason given being, that only male-female sex leads to reproduction and reproduction is pre-determined by the western culture to be the primary and only purpose of sex -- indeed, of life itself) and for male sexual desire to be towards men is an anomaly, and occurs only when something doesn't go in the natural direction, where it should, especially, if there is a lack of desire to copulate with women.

Along with the sexual desires, then every other male desire for men that usually accompanies sexuality --including social, physical and emotional desires -- also become unnatural, abnormal or simply an anomaly (a more politically correct term for 'abnormality'), even when they're purely non-sexual.

A lack of such an attitude towards male sexual needs and desires is one of the primary reasons, why the concept of 'homosexuality' becomes invalid in the non-West, or in the pre-modern west and in indigenous societies. In all these cultures, even though, men are expected to reproduce as well as to perform sexually with women, they are not really expected to have a desire for women -- its the performance that is important, not desire. Having sex with women is rightfully seen, just as the most important gender-sexual role of men, not something that is necessarily their desire. In fact, in a way, men are only expected to have only reasonable amounts of this desire for women, and excessive desire, whether it is sexual, social or emotional, is seen as problematic. (In the west, the more the desire the more powerful the man is made in the race for manhood, the more his social status amongst his peers improves -- and this strengthens men's heterosexual identities).

At the sametime, unlike in the Christian west, in the non-West, a desire for sexual and social intimacy, even emotional intimacy with men is seen as a universal male trait, something that is an integral part of manhood. It is the desire to be penetrated which is heavily stigmatised for men in the non-west, especially, if it is exclusive (as only those with a female soul are beleived to have such exclusive desires). It is not that a sexual desire for men is not stigmatized per se, BUT, it is not seen as 'unnatural,' or an 'anomaly' like in the West. It is just seen as something that although all men have, men ought to fight against and not give in to, for upholding social mores. Therefore, it gives a lot of psychological space to men to desire other men, which the west denies to men, by making men feel that desiring men biologically makes them inferior. Thus, in the non-west, 'straight' males routinely have not only sex, but also long term secretive romantic liasions with other men, especially in their youth, till they're not married. It's only that, they don't talk about it or acknowledge it openly or in formal spheres.

What also gives them a strong social space to develop such romantic liasions with each other is the immense social freedom to be 'socially' and physically intimate with other men that they enjoy -- because the men's spaces are pretty strong. Strong and committed sexual liasions between males flourish unspoken, behind this socially allowed intimacy between men. It is no wonder that the anti-man forces in the west, that want to use 'scientific' tools to make men heterosexual by denying them any social or pscychological space to be sexual with men, target specifically, the social and physical intimacy between them as well.

Although, western scientific institution restricts itself largely to rendering 'abnormal' or 'below normal' the sexual part of male to male intimacy, this groundwork created by it (as its contribution to the conspiracy to break men from men) is stretched far beyond by other western social institutions and psycho-social mechanisms (which all contribute to this anti-man conspiracy), including the powerful media and male 'peer-pressure.' This marginalization (in the form of 'homosexualization) of sexual intimacy between men is then further, aggressively built upon to marginalize the social and physical intimacy between men (as 'gay' too). A strongly Christian cultural background has given the western society a kind of zeal to work against male to male intimacy that is unimaginable under normal circumstances.

Thus, the western society conspires to create psycho-social mechanisms where men are afraid to hold each other's hands, when this comes naturally to men who live under more natural circumstances. Men feel insecure in westernized spaces, unless if they're all by themselves, unless, they're accompanied by women. As long as they are without female company, they become much more guarded about their behaviour towards each other -- due to extreme fearful environment created by the western culture.