The Male Perspective

Yesterday someone tweeted a link to something I wrote over 18 months ago now, about sex and periods. I don’t generally enjoy re-reading old blog posts, in the same way I don’t like listening to recordings of my own voice, but in this case it was useful for two reasons.

On a very basic level, it was good to realise that I still stand by every single word of something I wrote right back at the time I started blogging in earnest. I know for a fact that there are posts from early 2014 that I’d probably write quite differently now, but that isn’t one of them.

More importantly, reconsidering period sex nudged me to act on a conversation I had recently about other areas of sex and sexuality where a positive male perspective might add value or challenge conventional wisdom. Male desires and sexual attitudes tend to be represented in mainstream media in a way that ultimately harms both men and women. It’s simplistic, reductive, and laced with misogyny – I’m also pretty sure it’s wildly inaccurate.

That’s something I’ve thought about quite a lot over the last couple of months, especially after doing the dick pic interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel in August. I’ve always been wary of writing anything that implies I speak for all (or even most) men, but at the same time I recognise that sex blogging is not an area rich with male voices – and that as a result, there is a pretty healthy appetite out there for more insight into how and what men actually think about sex, about their own bodies, and about women’s bodies too.

That appetite is evident even in the search terms that people use to find my blog. Over the last 12 months, I’ve had countless hits from people clearly seeking information or just trying to satisfy their curiosity about men and sex. ‘How men feel about nudity’ is one that I see on a fairly regular basis, as are variations on ‘men who enjoy showering together’ and ‘male attitudes to oral’. More recently, my heart ached when I saw that someone had felt the need to ask a search engine ‘what does “you’re too wet for me” mean?’ – if that person is reading this post, let me tell you right now that it probably means you’re sleeping with the wrong guy…or at the very least, one who has a few things left to learn about how this whole sex business actually works.

These two posts about cock rings were sort of an initial attempt to dip my toe back into more informative/revealing waters. I’ve got one other thing sitting in my Drafts folder, waiting to be written up, but I’m also curious to know whether any of you have suggestions for topics I could pick up and run with over the next few weeks. Perhaps there’s a sex myth you want exploded (or confirmed), or a question about men’s bodies that you’re tired of getting the same, boring Cosmo answer to. Maybe you just want to know more about how guys masturbate, or what it feels like when you finger us during oral.

Either way, this isn’t just a lazy way to get other people to supply me with blogging material – I’d genuinely love to hear from anyone who has a ‘thing’ they’d like me to write about. If that’s you, just pop me an email, or leave a comment on this post, and if I think I can do your suggestion justice I’ll respond to it here at some point very soon!