“… that we’d spend time with you?”

by An Ordinary Man (the novel)

This isn’t going to come out right, but it is in line with thoughts I’ve had as I contemplate the tensions between men and women with respect to sex.  I happened to be watching Michael Che Matters on Netflix the other night and he, a young urban black male, had almost the exact same thought that I, an older suburban white guy, have had.  He had gotten to talking about sex toys and the fact that for some reason it was more, what – socially acceptable? – for women to have them then for men to have them.  If I find your vibrator, that’s not near as embarrassing as if you found my artificial vagina.

He got a little crude, noting that women could even use things available in the grocery store produce aisle, with the audience laughing at the outrageous truth behind this.  But then he stopped and asked a simple question: if there was a vegetable out there that felt as good to a man as a woman does, do you think we would waste our time dealing with you?  Or something like that.

We are forced to engage with you because you control our sex life, and although in many, many cases, it is wonderful to engage with you for many, many reasons, there’s a fundamental truth in this that sometimes gets lost in the discussion.  As a straight male, I am pretty much 100% dependent upon a female for sexual satisfaction, but as a straight female, you are not nearly as dependent upon a male, who might not, in fact, be as good as that thing you happen to have in the drawer of your nightstand.

Wherever there is an inequality of power, there is the potential for the abuse of that power.

Like I said, that didn’t come out quite right, but I hope you understand nonetheless.

Note: the image is of the famous coco-de-mer palm nut of the Seychelles