How often do you hear that most men enter relationships looking for sex rather than love, while women seek love and not sex? Perhaps this narrative leads us to believe that men are obsessed with the idea of having sex. 

In our daily lives, we often observe men talking more openly about their sexual activities than women. For men, “naughty conversations” are common, including their imaginations about women’s bodies or sharing dirty jokes. For example, it’s not unusual to hear men express a preference for “big women,” meaning large breasts or buttocks, or to hear them openly discuss their sexual habits, like masturbation, with their male friends. Sometimes, as women, we overhear these conversations.

I don’t want to generalize or assume that this experience applies to everyone, but in my life, I’ve encountered many men who fit this description, even those who are well-educated or respected individuals. This phenomenon has existed since I was a kid, and it has always made me curious: why are men so seemingly obsessed with sex?

I tried to find the answer to my question and until now I am still processing it, but I want to share some opinion or view from the book/article that I had read.

1.Men See Sex as to Release Their Emotion, Loneliness, Stress and Anger

Justin Baldoni, in Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, shares his story about how society often teaches men to associate sex with power, validation, and emotional release. Being a man in a patriarchal culture means not crying, always being strong, avoiding excessive emotion, and suppressing the expression of feelings. Baldoni refers to this as a “lack of emotional education,” which means that men are rarely taught to identify, express, or manage their emotions. As a result, sex becomes an instinctive way to channel emotions like loneliness, fear, or stress instead of addressing them directly.

Similarly, sex often becomes for many men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting to someone else but rather about releasing their own pain. The addict is often an individual in acute pain. Patriarchal men have no outlet to express their pain, so they simply seek release.

In The Heart of the Soul by Gary Zukav and Linda Francis stress that the sex addict fears being inadequate and he fears rejection: ‘’The stronger these emotions are, when there is no willingness to feel them, the stronger becomes the obsession with sex.’’ In a patriarchal society, where men are discouraged from acknowledging or expressing their pain, they seek solace through sexual activity as a form of escape Male sexual obsession tends to be seen as normal. Thus, the culture as a whole colludes in requiring men to discount and disown their feelings, displacing them all into sex.

2.Patriarchal Sex Value

According to bell hooks in “Male Sexual Being,” children today learn more about sex from mass media than from any other source. Whether it’s through watching porn channels or X-rated movies, children of this generation are more aware of the body and sexuality than ever before. However much of what they learn about sexuality conforms to outdated patriarchal scripts about the sexual nature of men and women, as well as masculinity and femininity.

Patriarchal sex value are taught that in the realm of sexual relationships, there is always a dominant party and a submissive party. They learn that males are expected to dominate females. They learn that whether he is heterosexual or homosexual, a man deprived of sexual access will ultimately be sexual with anybody. Again, and again children heat the message from mass media that when it comes to sex, ‘’he’s gotta have it.’’ Adults may know better, from their own experience, but children become true believers. They think that men will go mad if they cannot act sexually. Males, whether gay or straight, learn early on in life that one of the primary rewards offered to them for obedience to patriarchal thought and practice is the right to dominate females sexually.

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For the patriarchal male, be he straight or gay, addictive sexuality is fundamentally about the need to constantly affirm and reaffirm one’s selfhood. If it is only through sex that he can experience selfhood, then sex has to be constantly foregrounded. In Robert Jensen’s essay ‘’Patriarchal Sex’’ he defining patriarchal sex, he writes: ‘’Sex is fucking. In patriarchy, there is an imperative to fuck— in rape and in ‘normal’ sex, with strangers or girlfriends or wives. What matters in patriarchal sex is the male need to fuck. When that need presents itself, sex occurs.’’

When watching movies or in real life some of us maybe familiar with the meaning of the common male slang term for sexual intercourse ‘’fuck’’ — is instructive which means to fuck a woman is to have sex with her. To fuck someone in another context means to hurt or cheat a person. Sex in patriarchy is fucking.

3.Male Brain 

I read an article by Jed Diamond “Male Brain: Why Men Obsess Over Sex”. In the last paragraph, he wrote, “The best advice I have for women is to make peace with the male brain. Let men be men.” At first, I wasn’t interested in his article because I found the medical and scientific explanations about the male brain too complex and difficult to understand. However, the final sentences, where he directed advice to women, caught my attention. This made me reread the article carefully and take some notes.

According to Jed Diamond, one of the most significant differences between the male and female brain is that men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain. Additionally, starting in their teenage years, males produce 200 to 250 percent more testosterone than they did before adolescence. To illustrate, if testosterone were beer, a 9-year-old boy would consume the equivalent of a cup per day, while a 15-year-old would be consuming two gallons daily. This surge of testosterone fuels their sexual drive, making it nearly impossible for them to stop thinking about female body parts and sex.

Jed explains that this testosterone overload triggers what he calls the “man trance”, the glazed-eye look men get when they see breasts. Their visual brain circuits are hardwired to constantly scan for fertile mates, and whether or not they intend to act on their impulses, they feel compelled to “check out the goods”. Furthermore, Jed contrasts male and female brains in their approach to relationships, while the female brain seeks security and reliability in a mate before engaging in sex, the male brain is biologically driven to seek multiple mating opportunities, at least until he commits to a lifelong partner.

So, The Answer Is?

I won’t judge if being obsessed with sex is bad or not for men but knowing the scientific explanation about male brain makes me try to understand why men are so obsessed with sex. For me the important thing is that we need to pay attention to the number one and number two points that i wrote above. Due to society’s long-standing views on men and women, most men look down on them women over and over again, in part because of the toxic masculinity I’ve talked about so much in my previous writings. 

It follows that this outdated view of what it means to be a man harms women as well, because women are almost exclusively seen to be sexual objects to those who abide by societal views of masculinity. In this culture, for a man to be viewed in the same way as a woman would destroy his reputation and social status. Men consistently learn that it is not okay to be anything other than violent and dominating, to be anything other than masculine, which helps explain some of our harmful attitudes towards sex.

It’s no surprise that men seek out sex constantly, but many people don’t ever ask why men are constantly trying to have sex. According to Justin Baldoni’s book, for men sex is provided as the ultimate answer to all of their emotional isolation suffered as a result of trying to attain manhood. This emotional isolation is a result of constantly having to hold back any feelings that aren’t deemed masculine by society, which is almost all of them. So for me we need to make men aware and believe that they can live fuller, more meaningful lives by seeking authentic emotional connections and learning healthier ways to cope with stress and emotions.

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Lastly, I want to quote Steven Bearman to remind men that, “No matter how much sex you encounter, it will not be enough to fill your enormous need to love and be close, to express your passion and delight in your senses, and to feel forces coursing through your muscles and skin.” If large numbers of men could rediscover this fundamental passion for their own bodies, the shift away from patriarchal sex might lead us toward a true sexual revolution.

 To reclaim the power and passion of male sexuality, unsullied by patriarchal influences, men of all ages must be allowed to speak openly about their sexual longing. They need a space where patriarchal thinking no longer equates violation with the only means of attaining sexual pleasure. This is a challenging task, but until men learn to embrace this transformation, they will continue to feel dissatisfied.

Editor: Anita Dhewy