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?

Agree re ‘Rebarbative’

What are you getting out of this @Amikriry being your friend's spokesperson?

I think that your colleague is an idiot. Almost every single romcom, classical love story or love song celebrated heterosexual love. What more does he want? Straight love is still the Default.

In my experience only men who routinely harass women make complaints like this. Safe men know how to talk to a woman so that both people have a positive experience from the interaction.

Mumsnet aren't really your primary audience.

You'll have the TERFs who will be up in arms because you used the term cis. They hate it regardless of it being a widely used word.

Then you'll have the average MN users, women who are sick of putting up with shit at the hands of men.

If you're really lucky, you might get a happily married MN user, who might consider the POV under discussion.

If I take your comments (or your friend's comments) at face value, I'd say this is the unfortunate result of a world where men mostly use women. Of course, not all men are dangerous to women. But most men want to use a woman in one way or another. For sex. For domestic reasons (because men don't pull their weight in the home). For parenting (because men don't equally share in raising their children). For free time (women carry the domestic / child load) so men can have downtime at the expense of their female partner. For attention (men talk a lot more than women, and listen less). For emotional support (while not being as good at returning the emotional support). For life admin.

The end result of all of this is that women are not sympathetically inclined, most of the time, towards mens experience. Romance is just a way to trick women into falling into the domestic role.

Like I said, MN isn't really your target audience.

Why do you see them as one cohesive group? And what do the straight white men of the past have to do with those alive now? This demographic is actually the most likely to die in the workplace and to commit suicide.

Whilst I’m sympathetic to any demographic that’s more likely to die or kill themselves, whose responsibility is it?

it’s mainly men historically in charge of labour conditions.

it’s men who are putting women off men.

im truly fed up of every single thing in my life being decided or affected by men, and here’s another set of reasons why I have to defer to them in some way. I’m exhausted

Don’t use that made up term.

Ignoring the 'cis' nonsense, it's a shame your friend is such a poorly catechised Catholic.
The church celebrates sex between a man and a woman and positively encourages it with marriage. Sex is seen as special, sacred, and a real gift for married couples.

He sounds like he needs therapy.

The Catholic thing seems like a red herring to me. Half the world was raised Catholic (slight exaggeration maybe, but it is literally one of the world's biggest religions). It clearly hasn't hurt the romantic reputation of Italian, Spanish, Latin American (etc) men.

Heterosexual romance is celebrated everywhere so I genuinely don't understand what he is referring to. What exactly does he want to be celebrated that isn't already? Promiscuity for example is judged much more harshly in women than in men.

So long as every act of intercourse has the potential for procreation. And “within marriage” is a stumbling block for very many young Catholics…