Monday, July 4, 2011

Men are entitled to fully experience and express all forms of nonsexual love.

Found via Reddit and certainly something that makes you think:

We have rendered the modern male incapable of platonic love, incapable of experiencing romantic feelings without sex, incapable of valuing physical affection outside of sexual relationships. We hold him to the sexual standard of traditional, mainstream masculinity.

He is free to fuck whoever he wants—but when it comes to emotions, when it comes to love, he is in bondage. He must feel according the rules, love according to the rules. He can either love a person sexually or feel nothing for them at all, with the exception of anger, hatred, and tendency toward violence.

You may sit there and say, “Well, that’s an exaggeration, of course men love their families and their children and, yeah okay, probably, maybe their friends.”

But love is more than just a word. It’s more than an assumption. Men must be allowed to express that love as much as they want, however they want. They must be allowed to really feel it, however the feeling comes, whether it’s for a friend or a family member or someone that falls into a totally different category yet still is not a sexual interest. They must be given the freedom to make any given nonsexual relationship as emotional as they want it to be.

[...]It is time that men are allowed by society and also by themselves to function at their fullest emotional and relational potential, without the world making interpretations about their emotional connections through a sexualized lens. It’s time that men are seen as emotional beings first, sexual beings second. It’s time that men realize they are free to have relationships of emotional depth and significance that are also completely nonsexual; it’s time they realize they’re free to have social lives that are a hell of a lot more complex than “One very emotional romantic-sexual monogamous relationship/many sexual relationships and a bunch of emotionally shallow nonsexual relationships.” It’s time men are freed to experience romance outside of sexuality, if they are so inclined to explore that. It’s time we stop expecting men to sexually perform as justification for their emotions. It’s time we all understand that the emotional content of a male’s relationships has absolutely no bearing on his masculinity.

1 comment:

  1. incapable of valuing physical affection outside of sexual relationships


    As a Massage Therapist I see this all the time. It is a travesty for sure.

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