Not tonight honey

by Rosie Kaloki

“Not tonight honey I have a headache.”

Contradictory to popular belief more and more men are using ‘get out of sex cards’ like this simply because they don’t want ‘it’.

Media and society have always depicted men as being sex mad, and with numerous reports and studies being produced to validate the notion, it’s not hard to see why this is a common belief.

One example being the Kinsey Report, in 1953, which said that 54 per cent of men think about sex every day, several times a day.

Stereotypes

But, does this stereotype still hold true for most men today?

How many men out there fake headaches with their girlfriends simply because they don’t actually want to have sex, or at least shag like the proverbial bunny, on a daily basis?

A study carried out in 2007 by the University of Guelph in Canada showed that men are almost as likely to be coerced into the bedroom as women.

The study of 518 university students found that 38.8 per cent of men and 47.9 per cent of women reported being “pressured into a range of sexual activity, from kissing and cuddling to intercourse and oral sex.

"Of the 251 males and 267 female respondents who completed the anonymous questionnaire, 23.3 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women related to being pressed into kissing and fondling, while 18.3 per cent of men and 21.1 per cent of women said they were strong-armed into intercourse and 5.8 per cent of men and 4.2 per cent of women complained of being cajoled into oral sex.”

Complaint

Leading Canadian ‘sex-pert’, columnist and author Josey Vogels also admitted to rarely hearing of men complaining about being pushed into sex, stating however:

“Given our culture’s belief that men want it anytime, all the time, I suspect it would be much harder for a man to admit he didn’t want it.”

The stereotype of the macho man as some sort of a sex god – due to his ability to ‘pull’ lots of girls – is reinforced by popular films such as American Pie, where having sex is all that matters and is the key to popularity.

So can this be true? Is the stereotype of the hedonistic, sex- obsessed young male becoming slightly more fiction than fact?

”I don’t feel the need to have sex all the time,” Ben Atkinson a graphics student from the Uiniversity of the Arts London (UAL) told us.

“It’s not an issue of performance or there being anything wrong with my equipment, but it doesn’t rule my life and like a women sometimes I’m simply just not in the mood.

"This can be hard, as for a woman it’s acceptable if they want to refuse sex, and men are then supposed to be understanding, but when a guy is the one doing the refusing suddenly it’s an issue and I’m accused of cheating etc and in certain cases mocked.

"It’s definitely something guys don’t share.

"When all your mates are out on the pull you can’t just say 'I’m not really looking for meaningless sex', for it feels like in their eyes you become less of a man.”

But not all men saw it this way.

Alex Jenkinson, a recent Central Saint Martins graduate, commented:

“I think men want it at all times. My body wants it constantly, I always naturally want to do it, and I don’t know why.”

Evolution

Guardian columnist Annie Kelly says: “A lot of men have many sexual partners because this is what is expected of them. Masculinity is very much instilled by culture and by tradition, which says that men have to be studs.”

Even though, evolutionarily speaking, males are driven to reproduce there seems to be almost a taboo about men who refuse sex.

Perhaps it is time to discuss it once and for all, guys?