The Male Libido ... Is It Brutal?

Stephen Marche

In "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido" in the New York Times, Stephen Marche has it that: "For most of history, we’ve taken for granted the implicit brutality of male sexuality. ... How are we supposed to create an equal world when male mechanisms of desire are inherently brutal?"

I think Marche is wrong. Male "mechanisms of desire" are not "inherently brutal."

Yes, the recent upwelling of powerful men being credibly accused of sexual abuse against unwilling women shows that some men are sometimes brutal in their sexual expressions. Men "from Bill Cosby to Roger Ailes to Harvey Weinstein to Louis C.K. to Al Franken and ... Charlie Rose and John Lasseter" have indeed acted brutally at times. But I'd be willing to bet those same men have most often acted gently in expressing their libidos. So have virtually all of us men.

Yet the questions Marche implicitly raises are valid ones. Why do some men's sexual and romantic lives sometimes turn brutal? Is that happening more often today than it used to? (Keep in mind that most of the allegations against Weinstein et al. go back many years, even decades.) How can we men, starting right now, arrange for it to happen less often, en route to some virtual vanishing point? If, as Marche says, sexual and social norms have been changing, what further changes would be needed to tamp down sexual predation? And is not the current discussion a fitting prelude to their much-needed arrival?