Men's Heterosexual Initiation: Sexual Agency and Empowerment in Post-World War II American Culture

Abstract

Scholars suggest that heterosexual initiation is a social process that inhibits women yet entitles men to shape and control the pace and practices within sexual interaction. Radical feminists in particular have successfully detailed the patriarchal organization within the institution of heterosexuality. Yet their critical insights have tended to neglect or minimize the changing contours of the sexual landscape as well as the question of what exactly makes men's sexual agency patriarchal. Studying 60 white, non-Hispanic, middle-class men from Philadelphia, this article highlights the possible conditions for men to assert various patriarchal configurations of sexual agency in post-World War II American culture during initial forays into heterosexuality. The social psychological analysis suggests that younger men perceive women today as the symbolic keepers of masculine sexual standards, enabling them to judge sexual performances through their previous experiences with other men. While men appear more aware and concerned about women's sexual pleasure, they still use women's orgasms (as opposed to vaginal penetration) to bolster their masculine identities. The changing sexual landscape offers hope for both men and women to approach sex as a mutual, nongenitally focused, sharing of bodily pleasure, instead of using sex as a way to gain a gender.