Here’s part of an interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald by Monique Roffey, author of “With the Kisses of his Mouth”, exploring why women write sex memoirs and men – on the whole – don’t:
“…Personally I’m glad of these books; they are valuable social documents and they show that the times are a changing. Yet sex is still riddled with social stigma and taboo. Church and state still patrol what is deemed OK, moral, loving and safe. Anyone who chooses to write about sex will attract stinging criticism from the moral right and so, relatively speaking, sexual memoirs are still rare.
And they are mostly written by women.
Men, by and large, leave this subject alone. Somewhere, it’s a given that men don’t have anything too reflective to say about sex, or they feel silenced by feminists. Where is the male Suzanne Portnoy, the male Melissa P? What men will write honestly about their highs and lows, their triumphs, their sexual sorrows? What man is brave enough to express himself freely about his desires? Few.
My guess is that male sexuality has been so heavily associated with violence that men suffer an even stronger taboo than woman. Best keep quiet. Male sex writers do exist, but in much fewer numbers.
I met a shy man once, Karl Webster, who made a humorous reply to Belle de Jour. But his Bete de Jour, the Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man, didn’t have comparable sales figures. Similar attempts seem to create less buzz. It’s as if no one cares about what men do, think or get up to sexually…”
Full article here.
