Do those who say hetero cis male sexuality is sometimes stigmatised have a point?

[Amikriry]

First disclosure. I am referring to consensual, non transactional romantic/sexual encounters between hetero men & women.

I had a conversation with a middle aged male friend recently. He has and has had positive relationships with women
,.both romantic & platonic. He said he had always felt that there was a relative lack of celebration, or positivity around the romantic approach or interaction between a straight man and a woman. He cited his Catholic upbringing, which emphasised all sexual feelings were bad. When he arrived at university after single sex schooling and looking forward to meeting new people, he felt the narrative was all.about the dangers of harassment, bad, negative, upsetting or criminal situations involving sex and romance. I did of course mention that the prevalence and damage done by some straight male.behaviour towards women necessitates this vigilance. Also that not harassing or abusing women does not mean pretending to be asexual. Thoughts?

A man brought up in a sexually repressive culture wants to blame women for his inability/problem to get his leg over and you want to look progressive so use the word cis?

The problem is you are both sexist and think women owe you sex and are trying desperately not to look and sound like incels.

You failed.

Yeah-sucks to be a straight white man!🤣

So. Very. Oppressed

I'm glad others have debunked that nonsense before me.

I blame that magazine Psychologies for posts like the OP's.

I do feel a bit sorry for young straight cis males these days, I think the world and dating must be difficult for them to navigate

I disagree, it's so easy because the bar is so astonishingly low.

If a young man is polite, hygienic, not a drug user, employed, keeps a tidy house, non-violent and physically fit he's already exceeding expectations.

And most women achieve all that as a bare minimum.

Your friend sounds quite inadequate as a person and is projecting his inadequacy onto the world. That is extremely unattractive. Also pretty telling that he’s in middle age and harming back to his college days - certainly wasn’t the narrative when I was young and I would that it were. It all sounds a bit he’s pinned his colours to the incel movement as a convenient fiction for not being where he wants to be in life.

No I don’t think it’s difficult to be a straight man. How strange he exists in a world that’s not penetrated by the wide cultural canon of cishet romantic love.

Edited a typo for clarity.

'Cis': meaningless drivel.

Your entire post is a word salad...

And no, men are not oppressed by society.

So historically, if we are generalising...

Men have had to worry about:
A woman marrying him for money.

Women have had to worry about:
Her partner being the person most likely to kill her
Public harassment from strangers
Harassment from an intimate partner
Private coercion
Being used as a domestic slave
Being the default parent
Potential of physical abuse
Potential of financial abuse
Being stigmatised as a single mother
Being stigmatised as a whore

Yeah, i think men can cope with another thing to worry about tbh.

Yeah this makes me so cross. I work in a well paid field, and all the top bosses are men. Men are still promoted over women and I work with so many lame men who just have the job coz they are men, a woman with the same skill set wouldn’t get a look in.

so no, white men are really NOT oppressed.

Neither he nor I think that being a straight white man is the hardest combination of things to be, in a society historically set up by and for those in all 3 categories. But that is not all he is. It does nor male you immune to mental nor physical health issues. It does not exempt you from challenging financial situations or family members causing you stress. Nor loneliness. None of these are the fault of women, nor wider society neither does he blame.them on him.

I have already said his religious and educaton upbringing were at fault here. He's also at fault, for not having noticed the positive media depictions and social encouragement of hetero romance. I have met plenty of misogynists and don't think he is one. He wants to change. I was trying to understand his position, which is different from my own. Some of rhe posts on here, including those critical of what and how I wrote, were insightful amd entirely justified. Others I found unfair and unhelpful.

Your thread title wasn't about his mental or physical health, or his loneliness, his financial situation or his catholic background. It was literally about him being a straight man. We replied accordingly.

If you'd started a thread saying "isn't dating harder for a man who is poor/ill" then yes you might have got some agreement

I think if he hasn't noticed the overwhelming fetishisation of straight romance in mainstream arts and culture, then something else is going on.

You say he's not a misogynist but to be perfectly honest, I think he might be one of those men who seems to think that womenkind are thwarting him in various ways and it's deeply unfair. I unfortunately grew up with his sort of covert misogyny and I think it's so deeply ingrained in society that men don't recognise it.

I have already acknowledged the poor wording of the initial post, and yes your point is fair. I don't need people to agree wirh me if they don't.
I thought some of the posts seemed unnecessarily rebarbative. If there's a perception that a group has.enjoyed unearned privilege over others, or members of that group have behaved poorly. In some cases criminally towards others, is an attempt to see the point of view if some of them (while.not accepting it) not a necessary part of creating a healthy, mutually respectful society?

It isn't even that deep. Straight men are such an enormously diverse group of people, as you say, some poor/rich, some ill/well, some criminal.

Therefore it's pretty meaningless to group them and make sweeping generalisations, either in sympathy or recrimination.

No, I don't blame all men for the ones who rape and steal. Nor does my heart bleed for them as a group when some of them feel entitled to romantic partners they can't find.

As a heterosexual male since birth (I refuse to use the ridiculous term "cis-"), I have to say I do not recognise anything in your friend's description of male/female relationships.

I think the key words in your post may be: "He cited his Catholic upbringing, which emphasised all sexual feelings were bad."

I was raised C of E.

When I cba to date men, the one thing that I couldn’t stand, was white privileged middle aged men who are absolutely oblivious to their privilege.

If there was any truth to the title of your thread then there would be evidence like teenagers dating less and being more secretive that they had a boyfriend or girlfriend.

It sounds like your friend’s Catholic upbringing held him back romantically if he still feels guilt about fancying women but his issue is niche as most people in his position still date like non-Catholics do.

People talk about consent and harassment but they still date as much as the past so your friend is unfairly using it as a reason why he didn’t get more sex at uni. The fact that it still bothers him suggests quite an incel mentality - men aren’t owed sex and if other men are getting more sex, it’s not because there’s some conspiracy to withhold it.

Male sexuality is centred in both porn and film- if I had to name gay, lesbian or bi characters in movies and tv, I would quickly run out of characters. I think that women tend to watch more of that kind of content though- eg reality shows like Love Island, romcoms..

Also op - I remember learning this in primary school- in these kind of situations - don’t use a long word when a short word will suffice.
its fine to use flowery words if you’re writing an essay.
but what you’re doing it replacing a correct short word, with a slightly incorrect long word, i presume in an effort to appear intelligent, but it just turns your posts in to meaningless word salad.

A balanced man would have asked “My Catholic upbringing held me back romantically - how can I get over the feelings of guilt around sex?” because it held him back in life rather than blame talk about consent and straight relationships not being celebrated (ie women and society) That’s a question that some people might have had advice about.
I’d be asking about his parents relationship. Many couples will have a wedding photo on display and celebrate their anniversary which is surely a celebration of a straight relationship.

OP to get to a mutually respectful position I think your friend needs to recognise that his position is nonsensical. His hang ups from Catholicism are his hang ups they are not society’s. The construct he’s invented is not real. The majority of people are heterosexual as are the majority of cultural and societal reference points. If he looks around him he’ll see poor and ill people in successful happy relationships. Even other catholics!

I do not believe that anyone who is middle aged grew up with a narrative about avoiding harassment and the potential criminality in relationships because that is not even the “narrative” now. He might have perceived a message or he is retconning the message from his youth because he hasn’t had success in his romantic life and does not feel he can approach women. I would assume that a man that truly believed that “men don’t know how to behave around woman” isn't comfortable with social mores/ and or spends time in the Manosphere which perpetuates these types of belief.

It might be painful and confronting for him but if he is capable of accepting that the issues are his, then he will start to notice that all sorts of people are in happy healthy relationships. What’s more he stands a chance of joining them.

I think this is more of a him problem than a Catholic upbringing problem. I come from a Catholic family, diluted each generation. My uncles (in their 70s 80s) were brought up v strict. No issues.
I met boys in uni who had been to single sex, Catholic schools. No issues.

Yup. I am only assume that the guy in question has never read a book, seen a play, watched a movie, read a poem, or been to an art gallery. He's never walked down the street and seen straight couples enjoying each other's company, ever? Never been to a straight wedding, had friends and/or family in happy straight relationships?

He must be very isolated. Or very stupid.

Catholicism getting a hard time here. Obviously being brought up Catholic didn't seem to repress Italian and French men and prevent them being celebrated for their romantic heterosexuality. None of the middle aged Catholic men or women I know (ie those born in the 60s/70s - hardly a peak era for sexual repression) seem to have much trouble getting a partner.

That said OP, 'rebarbative' is a great word and cancels the sin of 'cis' out.

I find it odd that braised catholic or going to a boys school means you have no interaction with women until you are at university?!

surely he had female relatives, left the house and encountered women in the wild, saw women around him? It all sounds a bit blamey and woe is me.

Hmm, his train of thought gives me incel vibes- a lot of self pity.