Below are some sections which I found interesting in the article "Masculinities and the Phenomenology of Men's Orgasms" by Jørgen Lorentzen. The online version of this article can be found at:
http://jmm.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/1/71 “Can anything be said about male sexuality? Does not male sexuality follow the simplest logic: seduction—erection—penetration—orgasm—withdrawal? And that is all. Moreover, no more can be said precisely because male sexuality is not commonly associated with speech—it is an act. It is concerned with action, and thus is not a topic for discussion or, therefore, critical examination.”
“In the wake of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, discussion of female sexuality has been intense. Debates have considered female orgasms, their absence, and the link between female emotional life and sexuality. In the Scandinavian countries, men have regularly received public instruction on how to stimulate a woman and about any and every female erogenous zone. Today, most men know far more about women’s bodies than they do about their own—at least if they have been reasonably attentive in class. Accordingly, polls in Norway on men’s views on sexuality show, among many other things, that men prioritize women’s orgasms ahead of their own. It is more important for a younger man today that his partner has an orgasm than that he himself does. Possibly men think this way because they feel that they will always attain orgasms anyway and that their problem is that they orgasm too easily.”
“The problem with this way of thinking is that it confuses orgasm with ejaculation. The fact that a man reaches ejaculation does not necessarily mean that he has an orgasm. It is important to stress that orgasm should not be confused with the sensations of overspilling or bursting, terms often used to describe ejaculation and how that feels. An orgasm occurs when this ejaculation is linked to a more comprehensive and deeper emotional reaction or bodily explosion. An ejaculation has an emotional circumference, which includes the genitals and at most, the groin, whereas an orgasm includes the whole body and not least the brain. Men can ejaculate at appropriate and inappropriate times. It can happen while they sleep (usually at a very young age), in erotic encounters before they have managed to undress, or after prolonged sessions of intercourse in which sensitivity may have been reduced or hypersensitization may have occurred. In none of these instances can we speak of orgasms. Some men will have their sensitivity reduced to a point at which they have great difficulty in achieving orgasms at all, whereas others will experience both situations. The problem is that little research has been done on the extent of men’s problems with orgasm and on men’s subjective experience of sexual release.”
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“The combination of a hard body and the lack of a vocabulary for male sensitivity inevitably results in a dry and unresponsive skin impervious to caresses. Men are developing a parchment-like sensibility, impervious to touch, as opposed to a porous sensibility in which the skin allows for openings and intimacy. For such men, stimulation of the body as a whole, including sexually sensitive areas such as toes, nipples, and neck, is perceived as a waste of time. Focused on genital pleasure as the source of sensuality, other forms of physical stimulation remain underexplored, while the genitals themselves become oversensitized. It is as though all the body’s thousand areas of pleasure are being centralized and stored in one place, which works as an overfilled drawer, its contents spilling out even when it is opened very carefully. “
“This is made no better by the circumcision that millions of men around the world are subjected to as small children, cutting off the natural protection of the most sensitive area of the body. However, although there are comprehensive initiatives in place against female circumcision, the same is not true of male circumcision. As a consequence, many men are exposed to hypersensitivity at a young age and reduced sensitivity at a later age. However, when genital disfigurement is linked to power, it becomes harder to establish it as a theme for discussion than when it is linked to powerlessness.”
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“Men’s sexuality is, to the same extent as its female equivalent, governed by the brain’s pleasure centers, which must be stimulated in various ways through sight, smell, taste, touch, and so on. That physicians, biologists, and cultural fictions have caused men to turn this upside down, associating the experience of pleasure with the penis, and referring to their penises as their brains, has created the basis for misunderstandings, self-deceit, a lessening of the real brain’s capability of pleasure, and the potential for sexual abuse. Sex becomes not just a weapon but a weapon that controls itself.”
“Additionally, when impotence is attributed to a physical or biological indisposition or flaw, anxiety increases for what is mostly a temporary incidence of impotence. Such impotence is commonly linked to the fact that a man does not want sex at a particular moment but nevertheless feels under pressure to perform. Impotence is therefore paradoxically the greatest problem in pornography and partly in prostitution—areas in which one would think that male sexuality is at its most masculine or in which the situation seemingly is tailored to the virile and superpotent man.”
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“If pleasure were central to their sexuality, men would not be satisfied with a quick discharge but would have to engage in more time-consuming processes of enjoyment. In addition, it is this pleasure that provides the basis for a possible orgasm. Unfortunately for most men, the culture bolsters a myth of masculinity in which quantity is valued more highly than quality and the conquest of a new woman builds more masculine capital than the continuous conquest of the same woman over the course of twenty or thirty years. To satisfy the requirements of such masculine myths, men must be willing to perform according to given demands of a market all the time (often through the use of Viagra, penile enlargements, hormone products, silicone injections, and pornography), which gradually creates a separation between intimacy and sexuality. The problem is not necessarily that it should not be possible to have sex without or with limited emotional investment (there is no need for moralizing, either in relation to one-night stands or multiple partners) but that men’s relations to themselves, their own bodies, their own emotions, their own sensitivity, are gradually being weakened and worn down in a way that hinders a full and complete sex life.”
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“Even though much could be said about the taboo in our culture against masturbation (which is still quite strong), attention should be drawn to the absence of something else: the absence of descriptions of the male sexual organ. Few things have been so seldom depicted and described and perhaps as strongly tabooed as the erect male member. Perhaps there is a connection between the psychoanalytical link between the most vulnerable part of the male body and the power (phallocentricity) that has made it impossible to approach the penis with tenderness and love. The male member all too easily becomes a tool or an instrument in the description and understanding of it. It becomes the necessary instrument of reproduction, an objectified part of the male body.”
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“Very few philosophers or psychologists have examined the question of the importance of the concrete physical preparedness for the act of reproduction or for sex may have for men’s mental health. Montrelay does this by combining phenomenological and psychoanalytic points of view. Masculinity is supposed to be able both to produce an erection and to send out parts of itself on an unsafe journey toward union with the other. This involves two important things: pleasure and trust.”
“Additionally, it is not the case, as many people believe, that there is a connection between erections and male aggression or will alone. The sensation of pleasure is a more comprehensive physical readiness, which is not linked to the lust for a woman alone but is built up through participation in a network of pleasure, which the man feels part of, according to Montrelay. (All references to Montrelay refer to a two-day seminar she gave in Oslo in 1993.) This network of pleasure is established in malecommunities in which men see themselves as part of the symbolical heritage, which is passed from father to son or from man to man through the generations. Montrelay calls these networks of pleasure “fluid communities,” in which lust is transferred as a part of life without necessarily becoming an explicit theme. These fluid communities may be anywhere men gather, either in action, prayer, or meditation, and they are fluid because knowledge, experience, and feelings of lust flow between the men on a conscious as well as on an unconscious level. These fluid communities are, however, vulnerable to various kinds of breaches, which can have disastrous consequences for individual men. Breaches may occur through fathers leaving their families and leaving voids, through violence, or through other forms of interventions or invasions, which hinder the free communication of ideas on an unconscious level. A community of men will therefore be as important in developing the ability to feel pleasure as the relationship between a man and a woman.”
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“ Our language and our very anatomy enable the woman to let the other come in. She opens herself up in such a way as to let the other in—into her body and into her soul. She surrounds the other and cares for the other’s body. The man is built to enter, to abandon himself in such a way as to give his body to the other. This situation contains an important existential question. Men are tricked into believing that their sole task is to penetrate, pierce, plunge into, or otherwise invade the female sphere, while not recognizing or opening up to the fact that they have an equally important choice to make about allowing the other into themselves. This is in a sense in direct opposition to the basic anatomic structure. How the man is to let the woman into himself in the sexual encounter is the man’s challenge. To be both physically and mentally prepared, and equipped, to set sail toward the other in a genuine coming together, the man must also have an idea of how to let the other into himself in the sexual encounter as such. This will be nearly impossible to achieve through the constant building of a hard body. The skin will become impenetrable, and the psyche intent on pushing away and penetrating the other. The porous structure of the body must be such that it is possible to let the other in. This requires the man to be hard and soft at the same time, both directed at the other and able to care for the other’s journey over to and into himself. Only then will a true meeting between an “I” and a “you” be possible.”
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