Alexa Campagna's response to Gentleman or Beast?

In this article, Bordo examines society’s views of men as “primitive” beasts who cannot seem to control their sexual desires and impulses and women as sexually passive and emotionally charged “guardians of civilization.” Many, like John Gray, believe that men have innate characteristics that lead them to be these untamed, “promiscuous brutes” who are inhabitants of a planet that is foreign to the female species, despite the existence of women who exhibit the same “masculine” traits. To say that a man’s tendency to be aggressive, to have an unrelenting urge to procreate or to have a natural inclination to express his sexual impulses whenever the opportunity arises are all hard-wired traits are all misguided assumptions that fail to take historical and societal factors into account. How, then, can we explain the ancient view that men are virginal and sexually withdrawn while the women flaunt their sexual promiscuity? How, then, do we explain the men who remain in committed, monogamous relationships, who do not lead polygamous lifestyles or do not engage in acts of rape? The answer, according to Bordo, does not solely lie in a man’s genetic makeup or in his fluctuating hormone levels, but in the society that constructs it.

The double bind of masculinity is a concept that resonated with me because it emphasized the mixed messages received and social pressure felt by men to maintain a contradictory balance between sexual aggression and docility. When men fail to meet these standards, they are held accountable for their inefficient sexual prowess or their inability to “bow down to civilization when a girl says ‘no.’” Men, according to this masculine mandate, seem they must remain civilized and uncivilized all at once and, unfortunately, this mandate is inescapable. Athletes receive positive reinforcement for their aggression in the form of attention, praise, and sexual advances (by female admirers), yet are expected to bottle up these primal instincts and say no when a woman seems sexually ambivalent. This pressure extends beyond real-life situations and to media images to which boys are constantly being exposed. These visions of cinematic male protagonists who are vicious killers by day, but intellectual, kind, and tender lovers by night perpetuate this double standard. How could this double bind be minimized? Should men learn to place greater restraints on their sexual impulses or should women/media send more consistent messages regarding a man’s “instructions” of masculinity?

What I find most intriguing was the changing definition of male sexuality over time and the stability of each definition’s purpose: to oppress women and bolster the superiority of men. If today’s view of men as inherently sexually ravenous and women as inherently chaste is truly accurate then men and women would have retained these characteristics from the beginning of human existence. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Today, it is nearly unfathomable or impossible to imagine a civilization in which women are viewed as sexually dominant and incapable of controlling their sexual appetites and men as pure and virginal, but these labels existed and were designed to control the “inferior” sex. What was once considered to be a sign of weakness in men, sexual promiscuity, is now lauded as a sign of manliness. Shifting cultural and societal perspectives have constructed today’s “demonic,” primal male, so is it possible to reconstruct this perspective into one that holds men to lower standards and that allows for a more egalitarian, co-dominant society?