The Gender of Desire Quotes

“Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, being a man means "not being like women." This notion of antifemininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“Masculinity must be proved, and no sooner is it proved than it is again questioned and must be proved again-constant, relentless, unachievable, and ultimately the quest for proof becomes so meaningless that it takes on the characteristics, as Weber said, of a sport. He who has the most toys when he dies wins.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“Since many men believe that adequate sexual functioning is being able to delay ejaculation, some develop strategies to prevent what they consider to be premature ejaculation-strategies that exaggerate emotional distancing, phallocentrism, the focus on orgasm, and objectification.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“That men prove their manhood in the eyes of other men is both a consequence of sexism and one of its chief props. “Women have, in men’s minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it’s useless to define yourself in terms of a woman,” noted playwright David Mamet. “What men need is men’s approval.” Women become a kind of currency that men use to improve their ranking on the masculine social scale.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“Parents remind us that the bully is the least secure about his manhood, and so he is constantly trying to prove it. But he “proves” it by choosing opponents he is absolutely certain he can defeat; thus the standard taunt to a bully is to “pick on someone your own size.” He can’t, though, and after defeating a smaller and weaker opponent, which he was sure would prove his manhood, he is left with the empty gnawing feeling that he has not proved it after all, and he must find another opponent, again one smaller and weaker, that he can again defeat to prove it to himself.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“During the early waves of the women’s movement, lesbianism was seen as a political alternative, a decision not to give aid and comfort to the enemy (men). How could a woman be truly feminist, they asked, if she shared her life and bed with a man? (..) “For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture,” wrote one woman, “is an act of resistance.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality

“One study of gynecology textbooks published between 1943 and 1972 bears this out. The authors found that many textbooks asserted that women could not experience orgasm during intercourse. One textbook writer observed, “sexual pleasure is entirely secondary or even absent” in women; another described women’s “almost universal frigidity.” Given such assumptions, it’s not surprising that women were counseled to fake orgasm; after all, they weren’t capable of real ones.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality