Men In Love

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Every day, I hear from saddened or angered men about the averted feminine eye, the hand withdrawn as if from a red-hot coal. It tells us how men do love–a stunning insight into the desires that dwell within men’s psyches… and their hearts. I expected the variations to be about different psychological elements, but the variations were more like: women having sex with women, having sex with two women, having sex with a man and a woman, wife swapping, having sex with a family member, having sex with a man, having sex with an animal, a woman having sex with an animal. In the mean time, it gave me and my partner lots to talk about and each conversation was fun if not surprising. I try to keep an open mind, but that doesn't mean that I have to put up with more than I can, so understandably I skipped over some chapters (the amount of men fantasizing about doing their mothers or other female relatives is too damn high!

It is women controlling our own reproduction - not women talking themselves into having more sex in the name of "liberation" - that is where our power against patriarchy lies. Most of the fantasies were between vaguely and actively repulsive to me to read, and they were all so.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my guy to read this but I did manage to lend it out to a male friend and I'll be interested to hear his take on the book. Here begins one of the most highly charged (and misunderstood) themes in male sexuality: homoerotic emotions. Having read Nancy Friday's MY SECRET GARDEN year's ago, I was keen to see how this study of male sexual fantasies compared. Another fascinating aspect of fetishistic thinking is the extraordinary amount of detail connected to the object.

However, there were some interesting psychological insights mixed in among the BS, enough to have made it worth reading. I'd be lying if I had said I'd never thought of something wild and inappropriate while in a relationship. As we grow older, become socialized, and develop identity, the satisfactions we pursue become more specific. Having this unconsciously remembered evidence of mother’s warmth and reassurance with him, he is encouraged to go forward into sexual pleasures. The point is we all fantasize about things that are unlikely to happen or will never really pursue in reality but hardly ever talk about and that's why I love this book, if not all of Nancy Friday's books, because you get to hear all those nitty gritty details.Consequently, in the long pre-sexual years she has no chance to develop the association between a naked man and the erotic. They were less like "I will take my pleasure on this woman whether she likes it or not, disgusting weak woman, I am so superior, fear my power" and more like "I will force this woman to agree to have sex with me, and I will force her to like it, because she is too inhibited to be able to say Yes to what she wants and to know what she will like.

In creating this historic study, Nancy Friday listened–without disapproval, apology or censorship–to the candid responses of thousands of men aged fourteen through sixty. Nancy Friday, best-selling author of feminist and erotic literature, psychoanalyst and socio-sexual historian, has been the leading witer on women’s and men’s sexual fantasies since the publication of her first best-selling erotic book, My Secret Garden .I guess fantasies are not intended to be judged; but when the so strongly reflect half the population's stance to something as vital as sex? The wonderful part about the section where straight men fantasize about sex with men is that it shows two things at once--men who identify as straight and men who at the same time fantasize at times about sex with other men. Men in Love goes beyond the cliché of woman seen as either madonna or whore to reveal the conflict of love and rage at the centre of men's emotions. If you are a reader that is easily put off by vivid descriptions of sexual acts and if issues like Oedipus complex unsettle you, then I would not advise it.