This essay was written while listening to this song.
Women are Born, Men are Made
Vanishingly few men are so attractive they drive a woman wild by lying there, whereas women reliably elicit male infatuation by occupying space. If you can get what you want by simply being, versus having to perform for it, your actions will be dramatically different. It isn’t a question of effort, but need.
The sexual leverage is skewed because the desire is; men want it bad, and she wants it a certain way, so she dictates the terms. Your standing in any exchange, be it explicit negotiation or embodied mating ritual, is predicated on your ability to say “no”. The more options you have, the greater your ability to walk away and be picky. She does not lack sexual options. Women are the gatekeepers of sex and reproduction, men the gatekeepers of commitment and violence; a gatekeeper decides who comes into the garden, and on what grounds.
This means men must perform to get what they want, and women select, enjoy, and judge the performance. A judge can ‘lie there’ while the competitor executes, but to mistake this as passively doing nothing is to tell on yourself.
Male sexual delivery is more measurable: stamina, rhythm, calibrated aggression, whether he knows how to manhandle just right. Her body is the focus, and they both prefer it that way: you like sucking on her breasts, she likes when you suck on her breasts. You’re infatuated with her ass, she likes when you do the ass worship thing. You’re making love if one feeling good makes the other feel good; you’re having sex if all you’re doing is playing with nerve endings.
He must deliver both to gain and maintain access. Even in marriage, where access is all but codified, protracted lackluster display eventually takes its toll. All demand (and access) is elastic over a long enough timeline. Some 70-90% of divorces are initiated by one party…
Due to most men not being physically desirable, women are less preoccupied with what guys look like than what they do. She finds his deeds attractive, less so his appearance. Women lionizing success brings out men’s drive to achieve it.
Men must generate productive motion to be valuable. He must act and take risks.
Ancestral environments killed off huge percentages of men through violence and war, while 90%+ of women successfully reproduced. Historically, twice as many women passed on their genes as men. Guys compete to propagate themselves; women carry no such burden. Nature intended it this way.
In modern times, male sexual market value is determined via female hypergamous selection. This lady Darwinian pressure cooker serves as a gentleman nobility galvanizer. Male economic performance is recognized with the right to put on a sexual performance.
Women do not find male essence intrinsically valuable, but they greatly respect male accomplishments and abilities. Nature deems men must demonstrate worth, and women follow these orders. This is why men are not born, they are made.
Female sexual market value is determined by how cute she is, how feminine and playful her demeanor, her nurturing maternal warmth, how wide her hips, how fat her ass… “When she eats almonds she chews them like a lil’ chipmunk it’s so adorable ugh I love her”. These are all innate characteristics: temperamental, physical traits, what she’s born with. Heterosexual guys don’t give a shit about female credentials or annual income; they’re enamored by feminine spirit.
Women do not need to generate motion to be inherently valuable. She does not need to act, because she is the reward.
Men do find female essence intrinsically valuable. Women do not possess the same hypercompetitive, achievement-oriented drive as men because they didn’t evolve requiring it to prosper. Women are valuable simply just because. This is why women are born, not made.
Men are obligated to act to demonstrate utility and merit, both in the eyes of women and other men. Men can never ‘lie there’, yet women often can. No one pities a weak man, but a weak woman is another matter. Women are born, men are made.
Lying On Your Back
An athletic display is more objectively quantified, but a theatrical one shouldn’t be discounted for lacking the same metrics. Masculine and feminine worth manifest with contrasting optics, satisfying what the other desires.
Female sexual know-how is closer to artful expression. A tastefully slutty experience.
A woman being ‘good in bed’ emerges through dirty talk, animalistic moaning, and whimpering that turns you to stone. She ‘performs’ by letting you do whatever you want and relishing every minute of it. It’s hot when she groans loudly the whole time. You... less so. When she gets off, you both get off; the male ego ejaculates alongside her. Her pleasure validates his competence; his pleasure confirms her presence.
When she briefly removes his cock from deep down her throat, begging for it inside, that's her being amazing in bed. All it takes is words and want, not form or rhythm. Peak female performance is enthusiastically welcoming him in; her body and reaction are the prize. It’s why she can ‘lie there’ and not only doesn’t need to put forth the effort of a man, but it’d be unattractive and bizarre if she did.
Uninhibited visceral lust is her version of ‘being 7 inches with great endurance’. Female sexual excellence isn’t so much an action as an erotic state of mind, how passionately she relishes his efforts. To believe a woman has to thrust just right to be ‘good’ is like thinking she needs a six-figure salary to get any play. The standards are simply different.
If a woman is good in bed, it's fundamentally a lens into your chemistry; if a man is good in bed, it's a lens into his sexual competence. She’s good if you’re good.
When your gifts have inherent worth, you’re selective with how you distribute the gift. Women understand this, and men recognize it. Being a whore is incredibly prized, but only for him.
Women don’t volunteer this consent as their baseline, it’s earned. When she provides it too easily, an indelible mark is placed on her. Body count is a notch on a belt for men, and a sign of wear and tear for women. Men must produce, and women must show constraint. A weak man isn’t pitied, and neither is a loose woman.
The double-edged sword of having intrinsic value: it’s incumbent on her to preserve it. Something is always expected of you; if you’re in denial of this, juvenile ideology has led you astray.
Feminism’s Disdain of the Feminine
Presuming women have the same expectations as men, needing to behave the same to excel, is rooted in an entirely androcentric worldview: not far removed from how Third Wave Feminism perceives the feminine. Because male metrics are more legible and measurable, they’re treated as all that matter; it judges her on his terms, implicitly framing her role as inferior. It’s a pervasive form of rationalism that injects toxic political dogma into a divine, primal sexual dynamic.
One of the most caustic elements of contemporary feminism is its attempt to erode boundaries between masculine and feminine domains, painting everything with an androgynous gray goo and creating a pernicious facade that both sexes face identical judgments and privileges across all arenas. Both equally proficient at everything. Santa Claus for academics and ideologues.
College departments treat these biological distinctions as hate speech. The same ideology that demands quotas in Fortune 500 boardrooms shows zero interest in quotas for garbage collectors or welders. Curious!
Many territories naturally advantage the masculine, others the feminine. Attempting to crush that salutary delineation (and only when it serves you) because a religion of equality thinks it knows better crushes the essence of man and woman. Luxury beliefs that breed impotent rage against nature and drive schisms between men and women. There is no surer sign of pathological ideological possession than when your political stance leads you to object to biology. These corrosive fictions find eager believers on Reddit, Tumblr, Yale, and other rationalist fairylands.
Behind closed doors we all know how it’s supposed to be, even if most can’t articulate it. We express it through behavior, not words. The embodied understanding always supersedes the verbal.
I’m Hard, I’m Wet
Hardness is a reflex, wetness an invitation.
I'm Hard
A man whispering into a woman's ear "I'm hard" doesn't spark excitement, because it doesn’t communicate anything useful or sought after. Rather, if you’re not hard… is there something wrong with you? Male arousal is so common it’s assumed, seen as a defect if it doesn’t happen.
A woman who needs lube faces no such shaming. It’s implied he didn’t do a good job if she’s not wet, and he’s seen as deficient if not sufficiently erect! If both sets of genitals aren’t working, the finger is mostly pointed at the guy. This is not a social construct but an instinctual one; there’s a lot of information embedded in subconscious expectations.
Men always want it, thus our sexual stimulation isn’t any kind of feat. In fact it’s so prevalent, and often unwanted, that societies create rigid rules to keep it in check. Industries aggressively monetize it (porn) because it’s so easy to manufacture. Men are reproductively dispensable for species propagation, and societal views toward male sexuality implicitly convey this in how they judge it. Dick pics are a scourge, tit pics on the other hand…
Being horny is a baseline for men. This is why men cannot be the custodians of sex; we are not programmed for intimate restraint. Male sexual demand is infinite, and female sexual supply holds the reins.
Unpaid sex is a seller’s market. Paid sex reveals the same: prostitution exists almost exclusively to serve male demand. Female sex workers outnumber male ones ~100 to 1. When women want to monetize sexuality, they sell access to their bodies. When men want to monetize sexuality, they sell access to other women’s bodies.
A woman’s worth is fundamentally not found in her accomplishments, and we have a society-wide understanding of this in the rules, protections, and standards we set; women and children first off the sinking ship and such. Hitting a woman inspires an immune-system-like reaction from bystanders and lawmakers. Only one sex is pitied and protected when it shows weakness.
I'm Wet
A woman whispering into a man's ear "I'm wet" communicates far more than a physical response. It says, “Your actions make me want to reciprocate. If you keep it up we’re going to have a great time”. Her being wet is not assumed, it’s an indication of chemistry; whereas his erection is an indication of a pulse.
Women are the arbiters of sex, making their arousal coveted. Their stimulation and desire are quite possibly the most sought-after thing in human history, next to land.
Foreplay is mostly for women, and her sensual ignition is readily found through adoring her body. The female form is the orienting focus of mutual stimulation. Sexual emphasis and admiration of womanly contours are hardwired within both sexes. No matter how straight she is, all women are just a little bit gay...
It’s not particularly difficult to titillate her, you just have to try. Turning on a man is like flipping a light switch; turning on a woman is like assembling a 20-piece puzzle. Is a 20-piece puzzle particularly challenging, really? It’s not a matter of esoteric knowledge but one of simple effort. If you can’t figure out how to put together a 20-piece puzzle, some internal reflection is required; or more likely, it wasn’t that important to you.
Men are pleased by the mere existence of the act, whereas women are pleased by the intentionality and effort behind it. This is why a man being ‘good in bed’ is seen as a sexual accomplishment, something she’ll brag about to her friends (they all talk about their sex lives and you definitely come up, for better or worse). Female trembling is what’s prized, and you’re a stud for supplying it.
Concluding
Men are the agentic ones in bed: expected to initiate, perform, dominate. He acts, she reacts.
“That’s not true! I know a guy who likes to be pegged and is a findom paypig!”
Yes, exceptions exist, and they prove the rule rather than refute it. That these exceptions are communicated as kinks illustrates how atypical they are. For the same reason liking boobs isn’t a fetish, femdom is not the baseline dynamic of the boy-girl yin yang.
Humans fit into dominance/submission hierarchies sexually and socially as effortlessly as ice accumulates on a windowpane in Alaska. This is especially true erotically. Dom/sub, DD/lg, do you both whip and tie each other up in BDSM? Does she bend you over after you do her? “Good girl” and “good boy” don’t exist within the same sexual encounter. Only one party consistently asks to be choked and has well-documented violent sexual fantasies. Revealed preference really does a number on ‘socially constructed’ gender roles when allowed to express candidly without ridicule or lecture.
The agentic element must be the dominant one. She submits to his sexual will and wants; it’s her body that’s being acted upon, not his. The more naturally dominant he is, the more effortless this dyadic interaction is. However in that submission, she’s topping from the bottom in some respects. Her reactions guide his actions. Consenting dominance and submission have a synergistic feedback loop. Having agency doesn’t mean no accountability. It takes two to tango: one leads, one follows. One acts, one reacts. Men are the head, women are the neck, societally and sexually. Neither works without the other: embodying distinctly different, critical roles.
On an aside: I lived in NYC for seven years, and it was reliably the girl-boss feminists who enjoyed the most extreme displays of submission, physicality, and debasement. The women who whine “patriarchy” loudest in public crave subjugation most in private. I’ve never been called “Daddy” more in my life.
Ideology and instinct wage civil war inside the progressive female mind. Once in the bedroom, instinct wins decisively. Ostentatious political zealotry overcompensates for something else lurking beneath… the she/hers have a lot of Freudian urges to unpack.
So many philosophers obsess over sex because the carnal is such a raw manifestation of inborn hierarchical behavior and value expression; they implicitly understand it as a proxy for a vast amount of seemingly unrelated human interplay. Sexual energy motivates male power, female beauty, and makes the world go ‘round. It subconsciously lurks in most we do. Nature intended it this way. One delivers, one receives. One is, the other becomes.
In the stories, the hero is known through his actions, power acts, and he gets the girl, because beauty is. Male competition earns female consent. Masculine obligations, because he must; feminine options, because she may. One of these has to perform, the other does not.
Who is valuable just because? Who must act and who is acted upon? Much can be extrapolated from who needs to move, and who gets to ‘lie there’.
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This so perfectly captures the unspoken sexual dynamic. Except...
"A woman who needs lube faces no such shame, in fact it’s implied the man didn’t do a good job if she’s not wet"
This part doesn't ring true for me, and I wonder if other women would agree? Becoming wet is part of the female performance, and failing to do so feels terribly unsexy (which renders the whole encounter doomed!). It's such a huge part of female eroticism, and certainly plays into the worship element: driving a man wild over how wet you are - there's no sexier feeling! Failing to become wet feels like failing to be the sexy. It diminshes the female power. It's a source of anxiety for sure, and though I'd agree no where near the pressure of the male erection, it definitely brings about feelings of shame when not achieved.
Kudos to this writer. This is the best essay on human sexuality I have ever read: well thought, and well written. It makes explicit, in ordinary yet well crafted language, what I believe most adults come to understand subconsciously during their lives; hence the sort of cognitive dissonance (if that's the right term) produced in us by being constantly subjected to post-modern "theorizing" on human nature, which "theorizing" is no more than a deliberate, simplistic negating, solely for the shock effect, of millennia-old, cross-cultural understanding of human nature. And while homosexuality and other non-heterosexuality are significant factors in human civilization, and deserved to be treated respectfully and decently by heterosexuals, the plain truth is that the male-female sexual dynamic is the essential (as in essence, a term the writer uses well) force governing human social life. Well done!