The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks Page A

sexism, he explains:
    Sexual pleasure is rarely the goal in a sexual encounter, something far more important than mere pleasure is on the line, our sense of ourselves as men. Men’s sense of sexual scarcity and an almost compulsive need for sex to confirm manhood feed each other, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of sexual deprivation and despair. And it makes men furious at women for doing what women are taught to do in our society: saying no.
    Despair and rage are the feelings men bring to sex, whether with women or with other men.
    Encouraged to relate to sex in an addictive way by the patriarchal thinking which says “he’s gotta have it,” males must then adjust to a world where they can rarely get it, or never get it as much as they want, or where they can get it only by coercing and manipulating someone who does not want it, usually someone female. In The Heart of the Soul Gary Zukav and Linda Francis describe the characteristics of individuals addicted to sexual obsessions: “They cannot rest from thoughts of sex. They move from one encounter to the next. Each sexual experience brings only temporary relief from their craving, and it quickly returns. No amount of sexual activity can satisfy it.” They explain that the “sexual craving is not for sex, but for something deeper.” The fact that the craving always returns is the clue that addictive sexuality is not simply about getting sex. For the patriarchal male, be he straight or gay, addictive sexuality is fundamentally about the need to constantly affirm and reaffirm one’s selfhood. If it is only through sex that he can experience selfhood, then sex has to be constantly foregrounded. Zukav and Francis explain: “The more intense the pain of fear, unworthiness, and feeling unlovable becomes, the more obsessive becomes the need to have a sexual interaction.”
    Sex, then, becomes for most men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting to someone else but rather about releasing their own pain. The addict is often an individual in acute pain. Patriarchal men have no outlet to express their pain, so they simply seek release. Zukav and Francis stress that the sex addict fears being inadequate and he fears rejection: “The stronger these emotions are, when there is no willingness to feel them, the stronger becomes the obsession with sex.” Male sexual obsession tends to be seen as normal. Thus the culture as a whole colludes in requiring of men that they discount and disown their feelings, displacing them all onto sex. Steve Bearman makes this point in the essay “Why Men Are So Obsessed with Sex,” explaining that “even if we do not engage compulsively in anonymous casual sex, pornography, masturbation, or fetishistic attempts to recover what has been forgotten, sex nevertheless takes on an addictive character.” Whether straight or gay, male sexuality assumes this addictive character.
    Since it is neither possible biologically nor practical, given the few hours in a day available for leisure activity, for men to be in sexual interactions constantly, patriarchal pornography available in myriad forms becomes the site of sublimation, the place where the sexual addict can get a quick fix. Patriarchal men can do pornography anywhere all day long. They can watch movies, look at magazines, look at real females with a pornographic gaze, undress them, fuck them, dominate them. Kimmel contends that male consumption of pornography is fed by the sexual lust males are taught to feel all the time and their rage that this lust cannot be satisfied:
    Pornography can sexualize that rage, and it can make sex look like revenge…. Everywhere, men are in power, controlling virtually all the economic, political, and social institutions of society. Yet individual men do not feel powerful—far from it. Most men feel powerless and are often angry at women, whom they perceive as having sexual power over them: the power to arouse them and to give or withhold sex. This