Skip to content

Answering your own question

Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating?
Imogen West-Knights

Hmm. If a woman who writes about dating doesn’t know this well, then……..

Do I think a trailblazing men’s dating column is going to suddenly solve the so-called crisis in male emotional communication? No. And I confess to feeling a bit sorry for straight men in this regard. I love the way women talk freely about this stuff. But not even an imagined – and it seems pretty impossible – golden age of personal writing by men is going to force straight guys into hand-holding, tear-shedding summits with their friends when the truth seems to be that, whether for societal or biological or whatever reasons, they don’t want to.

Men don’t do this*, men don’t write about it because men don’t want to read about it either.

It’s a terribly, terribly, female column, isn’t it? Not in the sense that it’s wrong or anything, but in that it’s hundreds and hundreds of words of flabbling when the answer is already known.

*OK, a sufficiently large portion of men to make it a going economic concern.

26 thoughts on “Answering your own question”

  1. Men do talk about this sort of thing, but when it’s the likes of Andrew Tate doing the talking, the lefties (and that means most single women) don’t want to listen.

  2. Yeah, well it’s worth listening to women when they talk about this stuff. Because almost all the time, the subject of conversation is themselves.
    Said this before. Despite what they’ll always tell you, women aren’t particularly strong on empathy. They have difficulty on seeing things from another’s point of view. Men know that others think differently to them. It’s neither surprising nor particularly interesting.

  3. For every date a heterosexual woman goes on there is, for better or worse, a man there

    That’s a courageous assumption for a Guardian columnist to make in 2023.

  4. Steve
    They can’t help themselves, can’t pass up any opportunity for a dig at men. That a comment is gratuitously stupid or inconsistent with some other narrative counts for nothing.

  5. “Why do hardly any straight men write about sex and dating?”

    Because if they write the truth they don’t get published. See the late lamented Chateau Hartiste blog.

    And if they write the ‘allowed’ version, men reading it know its b*llocks, and point it out to the author, quite vociferously in this day and age of universal communication.

    Ergo men don’t write about sex and dating.

  6. Steve

    I would have changed the word ‘heterosexual’ in solidarity with the various letters of the LGBTQ alphabet soup…

  7. Perhaps the answer for Imogen Wasted-Nights is to have long feely (but not touchy) chats with gay men and save the straight ones for pudding.

  8. Dating advice for men is simple. Tony Montana gave the best dating advice: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women. Everything else is bullshit. Look at Bashar al-Assad. He’s a war criminal who looks like an accountant. But his wife’s pretty. Putin is an ageing bald bastard who might have lost his marbles, but his girlfriend is pretty.

    And women will utterly BS about this sort of thing. They’ll go on protest marches to stop factory farming, but they’ll marry a guy who is the CEO of Kitten Stomper Inc. You have supermodels saying they’d have married a footballer even if they were poor, but you know, name a model who hooked up with a plumber after she got to be a successful model. So you have to ignore all the signals around that. They will marry a man who gets them a castle and servants, even if he has infants digging for blood diamonds.

    My advice to young men is to work hard, get extra money, get really good at what you do. Hire people so you can specialise, like a cleaner. You can’t change your genes. Exercising so you aren’t Orca Fat is a good idea, but women don’t actually care that much about that. What you can change is what you offer financially. So, work hard. And then spend good on dating. Take her to a nice place. For god’s sake, do not expect her to pay half, or you look cheap. And be kind and agreeable. Arguing about whether horoscopes are bullshit or not might stop you getting a blowjob later, and is that really worth it?

    And cut back on your time-draining hobbies that are basically being a child, or where you spend a lot of time with lots of men. You aren’t going to meet women at the football, or at a beer festival. Working that day so you can take a woman out to Le Manoir instead of Pizza Hut is going to get you further.

  9. Is this woman for real? How many people want to read an article by a straight bloke talk about sex and relationships? Practically none, but blokes don’t often talk about this stuff in public. They might chat with their mates in private from time to time, but writing a column about it? Yeah, nah.

  10. mjohnm – I think you’re right, women can’t help themselves any more than Lot’s wife did.

    VP – especially since some people are pansexuals these days (they have sex with bread)

  11. There are and always have been plenty of men writing about hetero dating from a male perspective. Yes it was a staple of FHM etc as well as the Pick Up Artist types, but there were lots of more ‘mainstream’ male writings about love, dating, sex etc. The fact they don’t appear in national newspaper columns is not a sign that men aren’t willing to write this stuff, but rather that the editors aren’t commissioning it!

    Now they may be not commissioning it because they know it won’t sell. But it seems perverse to blame men for not writing about it. I bet if it was a subject she felt women’s voices were not being heard, she would be blaming the editorial class immediately, not blaming women for not getting columns to write about it!

  12. You want a bloke to talk about sex and dating, luv?
    OK.
    Turn up naked, with a six-pack and a bag of chips.
    Sorted.

  13. @Jim: See the late lamented Chateau Heartiste blog.

    He was brilliant and honest, but that seemed to make women angry.

    Of course, the real thinking behind this piece is for a man to write a dating advice column for men but that he must get women’s approval for everything he writes first.

  14. Well that’s obviously not right, Anon, because there’s plenty of extremely desirable women who end up with penniless assholes who treat them like shit. And they cling to them like barnacles.
    The answer being, of course, to make them feel that they don’t quite deserve the privilege of your company & it’s something they always have to be working for. Their insecurity is your greatest ally.

  15. As I have said here before, women ask what you are thinking or how you feeeeel about something. NEVER tell her. She’ll use it against you for years in the future. Useless to feed an emotional vampire a little bit.

  16. I imagine they would be written with a similar outlook on life as that given by Viz magazine’s agony aunt Miriam. For example.

    “Miriam,
    The other day I set off for work, leaving my husband in the house watching the TV as usual.
    I hadn’t gone a hundred yards down the road when my engine conked out and the car juddered to a halt. I walked back home to get my husband’s help. When I got home I found him in the bedroom. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was parading in front of the wardrobe mirror dressed in my underwear and high heel shoes, and he was wearing my make up.

    I am 32, my husband is 34 and we have been married for 12 years. When I confronted him, he tried to make out that he had dressed up in my lingerie because couldn’t find any of his own underwear. But when I asked him about the make up, he broke down and admitted that he had been wearing my cloths for six months. I told him it had to stop, or I would leave him.

    He was made redundant from his job six months ago, and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but ever since I have him the ultimatum, he has become increasingly distant, and I don’t feel I can get through to him any more. Please can you help?

    –Mrs. B, Essex

    Miriam says… A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults in the engine. Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it is clear, check the jubilee clips holding the vacuum pipes onto the inlet manifold. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburettor float chamber.”

  17. Chateau Heartiste? Misogynist af but funny. I could never work out how sincere it was or if it was a parody.

  18. There used to be social conventions about this sort of thing, talking about ladies in public, particularly bars.

  19. The big problem for a man writing about a dating experience is if the woman concerned reads it. The writing will be examined in minute detail discussed with her best friend and every hidden meaning real or not would be deveined. Exception would be taken and further dates would not happen.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *