Customer Reviews

Male Lust: Pleasure, Power, and Transformation

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A woman looks at how her father's poor sex life led to frequent family rages. A thirty-something in a vanilla marriage works through his masochistic fantasies and a religious young man tries electric shock therapy in the hope of eradicating his gay desires.

Reading about other people's sex lives is always fun, though I suspect that some of the essays will appeal more to male Californians in consciousness raising groups than it will to your average Page Three ogler. The contributors to Male Lust have worked through their particular sexual issues so aren't representative of the man in the street.

As a British CP writer, I was especially interested in the extensive confessions of the intelligent, masochistic David and his uncomprehending vanilla wife. Let's face it, most of us have been there and got the T-shirt. It takes enormous courage to confess your power exchange fantasies to a more conventional lover - and that courage is often poorly rewarded when they laugh, refuse to participate or simply walk away.

I've had men write to me after reading my novels to say that they asked their wife over twenty years ago if they could lovingly chastise her. She laughed - and they never had the nerve to mention their innermost desires again.

The other punishment for pleasure essay in Male Lust is a cutting edge (almost literally) confession by respected erotica writer Thomas Roche about acting out a pre-arranged corrective scenario with a submissive girlfriend. It's a dark but very honest piece.

Male Lust is a valiant attempt to explore beyond the anytime, anyplace, anywhere image of mens sexuality. It's a well produced book that admittedly has its dull and rambling moments but also offers some genuine insights that are clearly written from the heart. Many of the writings are about what it means to be homosexual so it will prove especially useful to any young gay male who is still coming to terms with his sexual identity.

As for anyone still coming to terms with a powerplay sexual identity? Just accept it and enjoy it. It's a waste of time feeling guilty or ashamed about thoughts and consensual actions that can bring overwhelming delight.

As a white heterosexual male that grew up idolizing John Wayne and wanted desperately to be Roger Staubach (or maybe an astronaut) I am probably symbolically what Kerwin Kay means when he writes of the privilged white male. Personally, I have never accepted the argument that I, or any other white male, are automatically privilged based on race, but I understand the argument.

I never thought once about my sexuality growing up and never had the gender confusion that so many others had. All I knew, was that I didn't have a chance with the girls and that the guys that did, were the guys on the football team that could barely string a sentence together. It was only after becoming a father, after my first son was born and survived an intense six-week ordeal in the Neonatal ICU wing of the local Hospital, that I began to contemplate being a male and my sexual role or identity.

As noted in the introduction, questions of sex and power are irretrievability linked and form the image of male sexuality. The argument is made that because the privilged male cannot recognize his own male sexuality because he is in power and he therefore must examine those that are "marginalized" or on the edge of society. He can only learn by examining the sexuality from the viewpoint of the disabled, transgendered, minority and others. He has to understand the "marginalized" view of sexuality before he can begin to contemplate his own.

This is done in the anthology through the use of essays, stories and poems from all points of view. This collection covers a wide range of male sexuality and desire from both genders and various persuasions. Everyone has a voice and these voices are freely and deeply expressed. Sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking, but every perspective is covered. All brought together to make the reader think.

It would not be fair to single out one or two essays or points of view and comment on them. Not only would it inappropriate to consider just a couple of works, but also it would not be representative of the whole. There is an incredibly broad spectrum of work here and it needs to be considered as the whole and not as isolated bits.

In a textbook style format, this anthology is complex and definitely not relaxing reading. Serious work went into this well written collection and every piece of it is guaranteed to provoke inner thought and debate.