Men want to be sexualized more. They should talk to women about that.
Your friend Brytneigh posted another TikTok thirst trap. She is getting really good at these.
You watch as all your friends — and also some randoms — absolutely annihilate that Heart button. She enjoys showing off what God gave her, and congratulations to her.
Why can’t you do that?
A long, yet concise, contextual frame for the guys reading this
You are allowed to want things.
Even if you’re told actually, [thing] sucks, you’re allowed to want to try that thing for yourself.
Many of the frustrations women express about their sexualization have corollaries for boys and men. I’ll toss a counterpoint on some of the entries below; your struggle is valid, too, even if this article only addresses them tangentially.
Because we live in Hell, you’ve likely read about the attention economy. In my experience, young guys process their female peers’ sexualization through the lens of attention.
In the attention economy, being a guy between 12 and 24 is a nightmare. The only way you’re seen is negative; you’re horny, hormonal, and smelly, and women three times your age will happily tell you how you suck and they’re terrified of you.
This is, of course, the exact time in your female peers’ lives that they start receiving inordinate amounts of attention. And you notice. The confluence of you being invisible and them suddenly becoming hypervisible sits uneasily on young dudes. You can’t really blame them for some grass-is-greener thinking.
(as a note for the reader: I will refer to gendered expectations below. If you’re a woman and you’ve never enforced gender roles on men in your life, and if you’re a man and you’ve never enforced gender roles on women in your life, congratulations! I’m not talking about you!)
So what do men need to learn from women about sexualization?
Girls and women can’t opt out
There’s no off switch when others sexualize you. They are the subject of their own desires, and you are the object. Women are on the hook for fuckability all the time.
In isolation, that’s not a big deal. We all have uncontrollable thoughts. Sexualization in someone else’s mind, though, tends to be uphill from action, and most women have been acted upon (sometimes violently) as a result of Just Being Too Damn Sexy.
In the workplace? Well, we had to invent a whole type of workplace functionary just to keep leering men from chasing off professional women.
Or family? It’s not hard to find a dozen stories about a given woman’s ex-half-step-brother-in-law being overfamiliar during Thanksgiving dinner.
Public? I’m sorry, did you expect to just exist on the sidewalk?
Being sexualized necessarily means being out of control of who’s sexualizing you. Sometimes that’s fine; very often it is terrifying for women.
And the counterpoint for men: in times when attention and sexualization would be fun, it is nigh-impossible for men to “opt in”. Doesn’t matter what you wore that day or how passively “flirty” you try to be; you’re on the hook for action, and sexualization is passive.
The physical power differential
Men reading this: women are well-aware that every physical interaction with you has a potential physical cost for them. From a many-years-old reddit post that I cite frequently:
You are bigger, stronger, and faster than she is. You might forget this or not think about it most of the time, but women are ALWAYS aware of it. This is the first truth and underlying principle of all male/female interaction. When you know each other, and more particularly when you’re in a relationship, it’s fun or helpful or even a source of amusement. When you don’t know each other, it’s a potential danger. Women usually learn this fear in their early teens or when they start developing. I learned it at 14 and that’s pretty standard.
You are imagining a context in which a given woman who’s gazing at you has functionally zero chance of overpowering you or otherwise physically threatening you.
Women don’t have that privilege. Women, by dint of existing in public, are well-aware that there is such thing as the wrong kind of attention.
Those other privileges, too
Who do you think is doing the sexualizing?
Sure, Brytneigh on TikTok has a bunch of Breighdyns and Liams tapping that ❤️❤️❤️ button. Those are probably validating to her, or at least not weird.
You know who else is mashing that heart? Her uncle. Her ex-boyfriend-from-highschool’s dad. Some random middle-aged dudes from overseas, she thinks?
This happens in meatspace, of course. Ask any beer hall girl how many times dudes forty years older than they complimented the head on that beer. Then ask how old they were the first time it happened.
These are ostensibly minor transgressions that society demands women just deal with.
And the counterpoint for men: of course, there’s a unique pain that comes from isolation, and loneliness trends male. At least one guy will read this and say to himself, “actually, it would be really nice if my neighbor’s step-uncle’s grandnephew commented something on a selfie I took!” He really means that, because he never gets any feedback at all.
Young women are well-aware that there’s a timer counting down
Father time is undefeated.
The advantages built into being an attractive young woman are aggressively timebound. In 2021, the global anti-aging market was estimated to be worth about 62.6 billion U.S. dollars, most of which comprises women who learned that whatever advantages beauty confer are conditional.
Compare that to how men have their masculinity policed: careers build upon themselves and wealth can be earned for most of a human lifetime. Is that problematic too? Of course! It’s just different from “peaking” before your brain has even fully matured.
Guys, sixteen year old girls read posts by dudes on the internet who explain how women are washed up by thirty. Imagine how that feels.
And the counterpoint for men: many of the gendered expectations for men come with age, and your female friends are at the “right” age when you’re not. You’re broke. You have no power or influence. You dress like you’re barely past childhood, because you are. You have the wisdom of an overgrown toddler. Nobody likes you when you’re 23!
Your body is public property
You ever wonder why “what was she wearing” is the classic trope-question after a woman is assaulted? It’s because wearing anything less than a muumuu and sweatpants means you’re in public with skin showing, and that means you were choosing to be sexualized.
This example works even if a woman’s fully clothed, too! Wearing anything vaguely tight? Now men can leer at your curves.
Nice ass, did you poop out of it today? Bowel regularity is important! So is having nice tits!
Walking down the street and feeling eyes on you, especially eyes owned by strange men who may or may not be dangerous? It’s like you’re a fixture at an open-air museum.
And the counterpoint for men: men are excluded from the concept of beauty, especially young men. The female body is a work of art. Men’s bodies are utilitarian, they’re for gettin’ around! They’re like a Jeep!
It takes more work than you think
Body preferences and beauty standards evolve, but not in a straight line, and not always in a way that makes life easier. Have a hot glass of Tina Fey:
I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom — Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful.
Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.
“BUT!”, you say, “we have BODY POSITIVITY campaigns now! I saw a size-8 Victoria’s Secret model the other day!”
Brothers, we gotta know that Yumi Nu could be on every magazine cover and the Jordan Petersons of the world would just keep being publicly mad at her existence.
Most women living right this second either cannot or do not use men’s sexualization of their bodies as a weapon. That power is denied to, for various reasons: “old” women, fat women, nonwhite women, non-femme women, women with disabilities, non-neurotypical women… I could keep going, but you get my point.
Brytneigh is, statistically, a young, thin, white woman. If you’re outside that box, tough nuts.
And the counterpoint for men: as Calvin alludes to, men’s value is derived from what they do. And if you’re undereducated, or poor, or disabled, or otherwise cannot “contribute”, you may as well not exist as a man at all.
Power dynamics
Here’s one that’ll get me in a little trouble: yes, beauty and sexualization affords its objects a measure of power.
We all know that’s true because we’ve all seen the pull that beautiful women exert over hapless men. Every guy has a very good-looking female friend who just so happens to have many things in her life go right.
All that power, though, is conditional. She does not wield it herself; she must act through a male intermediary. And the moment she stops being fuckable, or perky, or, by god, thinks for herself? She’s now hit “the wall”, and she gets to sink or swim without any of the trappings of power or wealth.
Money spends. Beauty and your sexuality may get you in proximity to it, but rarely money and power itself.
Sometimes, there’s no good or simple solution.
We’d all like a medium place. Women would love to opt in and out of sexualization, same as men. Men would love attention just for existing well, same as women.
Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you that you don’t struggle. You do, and you’re entitled to your feelings. The best thing to do is take those feelings and channel them into action. At the very least, be a good bystander.
