Sexy Time: Are We Too Hard on Guys?

I’m always interested in males’ perspective on sexytimes. I ask my boyfriend questions, and I peruse AskMen a lot more than maybe I should admit. I love when guys comment on my articles because they often address issues I wouldn’t have thought of, or have a completely different take than I would have anticipated. Last week, I discussed my low libido, and a guy commented bringing up the fact that men feel a lot of pressure from women to be high performers and we don’t understand when they go through periods of a lowered sex drive. I was immediately struck by this assertion.
As much as I wish I could vehemently defend my fellow ladies, I have to admit that sometimes, we can be pretty rough on dudes. A lot of this stems from our collective sexual culture – there’s the pervasive notion that men are oversexed, horny, always ready and excited to get it in. So when we’re confronted with a guy who’s not, it’s easy to immediately judge him, or question his masculinity. There have been numerous occasions where I’ve had girl talk and we’ve mocked guys for everything from ejaculating too quickly to less than impressive penis size to (and I’m guilty for this one) mocking guys who weren’t as sexually aggressive as we would have liked.
It isn’t fair to reduce guys to, for lack of a better term, sex machines. They are human too, subject to stress, medical side effects and performance anxiety. Granted, if a guy presents himself as being a god of all things sexual, and then fails to live up to the expectations he created for himself, it’s natural to judge him for being a failure. But I don’t think most guys are interested in putting ridiculous expectations on themselves. They just want to have fun, get off and get their partner off. If you encounter a guy who isn’t sexually satisfying you, and you don’t make an effort to communicate your wants (or in the case of a premature ejaculator, invite him to use his hands or mouth to please you), that’s not his fault.
Just as I don’t support slut shaming or guys expecting women to be and act like porn stars all the time, I also cannot condone the idea of putting excessive pressure on men. We should all relax and keep judgment in the bedroom to a minimum.