The narrative is all wrong…when a woman chooses a man and grooms him sexually, she is filling him with testosterone–it is her choice and consideration which makes him into a man…
We’ve been swallowing a line for years. “The alpha male gets the girls.” The alpha male is alpha because he’s dominant, awash with the dominance-making hormone, testosterone. The cult of man is positively bathing in the glory of testosterone. We fetishize the stuff.
“He’s got a lot of testosterone,” has been said of the chiselled and dominant male who seems to “pull” the girls. Well, it turns out that this is simply not true.
Yes, testosterone is absolutely linked to male sex drive (as is estrogen), but not how we think it is. You don’t get to have sex because you have high testosterone levels. You get to have high testosterone levels because you have sex. Just think about that for a moment. Testosterone, the male sex hormone, is a by-product of sexual activity, not its root cause.
This makes evolutionary sense. If you’re a male out in the bush, and you aren’t getting any, you don’t have anything worth stealing. But if you are a male quite literally “in the bush” then you have something very precious worth fighting for. Quite simply, you are fighting for reproductive privileges. You are fighting to defend your biological imperative, the right to reproduce, the right to bear offspring. And right there is the only true purpose of physical strength—but we lost that need as a species about as long as we organised into societies.
And what does testosterone do? It makes men aggressive. More prone to fight. And just think for a moment of all the posturing that goes into male aggression before fists start flying…they pump up their chests, talk big, and try to intimidate their way out of a fight. Because who wants to fight anyway?
Testosterone also does something else. It helps to build muscle, the body to recover faster, to make you more of a physical specimen. It also triggers the release of sexually laced pheromones, designed to make you attractive to women. Gosh.
That means that you owe your libido and your sex drive to the woman who gives it to you. Who ever knew she was so powerful?
And what of the man who self-plays his way to orgasm? Get a load of this. Self-pleasure does not lead to an increase in testosterone levels. And this straight from Healthline. “No. Masturbation hasn’t been shown to have any long-term or negative effects on testosterone levels.” In fact, frequent masturbation in males has been shown to actually decrease the availability and number of androgen receptors in the brain. Better still? It is oestrogen, even in the male brain, that determines the masculinization of the male.
What does all this mean? For one, if you are having sex as a “male”, then your body will be growing its base of androgen receptors, and the complex interactions between testosterone and oestrogen that turn you into a “desirable” (for both pro-creation and for long-term gene security—both blogged about previously here) male. Desirable, that is, for a female who wishes to procreate with you [which deserves its own post]. And although this is not the narrative we are fed, it also makes complete sense. Imagine, it is thanks to the woman who chose us that we have the testosterone in the first place…the level of testosterone that makes us succeed as men.
It isn’t the other way around. We don’t get to have sex because we are manly; we become manly because we satisfy a woman, we please a woman, we make her happy. That’s what makes a man, the quality of satisfying a woman.
The male that is “having sex” with a female is a “desirable” male—for whatever reason. It follows that this “desirability” is what the gene pool wishes, needs, to propagate. And indeed, as evidenced by this copulation, is exactly what is going on.
And no, it is not some stupid idea of what an “alpha” male is. The ones who get to be true alphas are the ones who were chosen by women, groomed by women, developed by women, selected by women, and were rewarded for their je ne sais quoi, and that is a biological fact. No room for the chest beating, wife beating, self-absorbed fool who thinks that the cart comes before the horse.
There is something deeper at play here. It is ultimately the woman who determines which man is going to have his genes live on…and that is why men are so scared. The idea that your success and preservation is not just what you do for yourself, this maddening doctrine of self-sufficiency and manifest destiny we are fed, but that a man’s success is not just that he is accepted by a woman, but that he and she have chosen each other well, and that their union will be more than 1+1=2…after all, the purpose of the genetic lottery is exactly that.
I always enjoy your posts, my friend…very thought-provoking!
I aim to please! Oh nora, and how. I hope you are well. Did you get that spanking clip I sent you?
Oh, I’m so sorry. I did, but I didn’t open it as I didn’t recognize the email address. Now that I know it is you, I will go and look at it
Interesting article. Fundamental human nature, especially the male and female Id, has long both intrigued and frustrated me. …
Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn-in as president, a 2016 survey of American women conducted not long after his abundant misogyny was exposed to the world revealed that a majority of respondents nonetheless found him appealing, presumably due to his alpha-male great financial success and confidence. … Perhaps society should be careful about what it collectively wishes for.
Ergo, I sometimes wonder whether general male aggression and/or sexist behavior toward girls/women might be related to the same constraining societal idealization of the ‘real man’ (albeit perhaps more subtly than in the past)? He’s stiff-upper-lip physically and emotionally strong, financially successful, confidently fights and wins, assertively solves problems, and exemplifies sexual prowess. (Meanwhile, there’s the Toronto Now article headlined “Keep Cats Out of Your Dating Profile, Ridiculous Study Suggests” and sub-headlined “Men were deemed less masculine and less attractive when they held up cats in their dating pics, according to researchers”.)
I believe there also stubbornly remains an outdated general societal mentality, albeit perhaps subconsciously held: Men can take care of themselves, and boys are basically little men. It is the mentality that might help explain why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse. Could it be evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset? One in which so many men, even with anonymity, would prefer not to ‘complain’ to some stranger/author about his torturous childhood, as that is what ‘real men’ do? I tried multiple times contacting the book’s author via internet websites in regards to this non-addressed florescent elephant in the room, but I received no response.
Thanks for this wonderful questioning response. My inner cynic tells me that there is some biological basis for these tropes and roles the sexes inhabit, but I also know that the essence of culture is to overcome our animal selves. It just happens that our overcoming of our animal selves has followed the lines of patriarchy. Patriarchy arose with a shift from hunter-gatherer (read egalitarian) society to farming. This was only 11,000 years ago. So, this is just a recent blip. It’s time we shake it off.
On a more personal note, growing up, dating, being interested in girls, then women, carried a good deal of frustration. So many who I was attracted to wanted a superficially “strong” man, aggressive man. Women were not predators. Thankfully that has changed. But although I had my submission and gender bending as potential strikes against me, I still managed to find my way into the hearts of the prettiest, smartest, and most successful women. Once a women knows her own strength and power, a sensuous, soft, emotional and loving man is preferred. And that confidence and strength is what I have always looked for, and what I believe as woke parents, we must teach our children, whether they are make or female.
Thank you for your thoughtful, informative reply.
Regarding the guys some would describe as being on the other end of the ‘real man’ spectrum, the author of The Highly Sensitive Man writes in Chapter 1 (2019, Tom Falkenstein, pgs.11-13) that: “You only have to open a magazine or newspaper, turn on your TV, or open your browser to discover an ever-growing interest in stories about being a father, being a man, or how to balance a career with a family. Many of these articles have started talking about an apparent ‘crisis of masculinity.’
The headlines for these articles attempt to address male identity, but often fall into the trap of sounding ironic and sometimes even sarcastic and critical: ‘Men in Crisis: Time to Pull Yourselves Together,’ ‘The Weaker Sex,’ ‘Crisis in Masculinity: Who is the Stronger Sex?’ and ‘Search for Identity: Super-Dads or Vain Peacocks’ are just a few examples. They all seem to agree to some extent that there is a crisis. But reading these articles one gets the impression that no one really knows how to even start dealing with the problem, let alone what a solution to it might look like. One also gets the impression from these articles that we need to keep any genuine sympathy for these ‘poor men’ in check: the patriarchy is still just too dominant to allow ourselves that luxury.”
Additionally, “numerous psychological studies over the last forty years … tell us that, despite huge social change, the stereotypical image of the ‘strong man’ is still firmly with us at all ages, in all ethnic groups, and among all socio-economic backgrounds. In the face of problems, men tend not to seek out emotional or professional help from other people. They use, more often than women, alcohol or drugs to numb unpleasant feelings and, in crises, tend to try to deal with things on their own, instead of searching out closeness or help from others.”
The crisis of masculinity begins when the boy is kicked out of the women’s domain, and is pulled, screaming from the arms of his mother by a patriarchal society. And yet, the “peacock” is born in nature…just watch the pigeons in the park, the male puffing and strutting to attract the female–indeed, throughout the animal kingdom, it is the male with the bright plumage who is trying to attract the female. Thanks for chiming in!
Interesting. Yet, maybe there are guys who’d actually prefer to abstain from vainly displaying their masculinity and attributable success, and the societal pressure to conform takes a notable toll on their mental health.
Psychologist/psychotherapist Tom Falkenstein writes (pg.13 & 14): “So it seems everyone is talking about a ‘crisis in masculinity.’ It is a crisis marked by men’s insecurity about their role in society, their identity, their values, their sexuality, their careers, and their relationships. At the same time, academics are telling us that ‘we know far less about the psychological and physical health of men than of women.’ Why is this? Michael Addis, a professor of psychology and a leading researcher into male identity and psychological health, has highlighted a deficit in our knowledge about men suffering from depression and argues that this has cultural, social, and historical roots.
If we look at whether gender affects how people experience depression, how they express it, and how it’s treated, it quickly becomes clear that gender has for a long time referred to women and not to men. According to Addis, this is because, socially and historically, men have been seen as the dominant group and thus representative of normal psychological health. Women have thus been understood as the nondominant group, which deviated from the norm, and they have been examined and understood from this perspective. One of the countless problems of this approach is that the experiences and specific challenges of the ‘dominant group,’ in this case men, have remained hidden. …”
Fascinating. By stating that the dominant group is the norm…but how did the group become dominant with the insecurity? Some would say that male insecurity is a new thing, but I think it’s as old as sexual reproduction and male fear is founded on paternity. For time immemorial, men have needed women’s approval. The dichotomy between this need and resentment for it is the contradiction that sits at the heart of patriarchy. Men deny women agency because they are afraid of being found out, and even more so, a woman may use her agency to assert her independence.