STRONG SILENT TYPES-STUFF ABOUT MEN

Johnson, M. (2010). “Just Getting Off”: The Inseparability of Ejaculation and Hegemonic Masculinity The Journal of Men’s Studies, 18 (3), 238-248 DOI: 10.3149/jms.1803.238

I was at first attracted to the title of this article (2010), probably for its titillation value. I mean, the only thing better than being dead boring is being stage-managed, controversial and so, mixing up ejaculation with hegemonic masculinity seems at once like Sarah Palin kissing a black man but then, perhaps, is a tad less auspicious. I think. I think I agree with Johnson (2010, p.238) that much truck, if not also much taboo is associated with the male’s capacity to spunk with gusto. We attribute laudable dominance to (straight) men who can come and go and come and go and worry sick about men who can’t get it up and shoot like a rocket (2010, p.239). The cum shot even moves beyond mere mortal men to become advertising’s best friend, from suburban real estate to soda pop to Swedish vacuum cleaners.

The author (2010, pp.239 & 244) refers to ejaculation as being synonymous with success, which sounds half-right to me. That, in its utmost glory the ‘act’ might last for no more than 60 seconds does make me wonder why anyone would bother counting but pro-rata amounts do seem to indicate ever-increasing emasculation (2010, p.241). Snigger, snigger, grunt, and groan. Those men who come too quickly and those men who struggle to come at all are placed under enormous social pressure to try harder, to finish with more flourish or to land on target and on time (2010, p.241). Urban myths account for even more conflicted neurosis and the untold grief that the man in the next cubicle has to be better than me at doing what every man should. Egad, the silent perils of manhood include our feverish reluctance to share our performance anxieties with anyone, ever…

Numerous are the condemnations for men who delay or have delayed their entry into the cum shooters gallery (2010, p.242 & p.247)…

In the digitally connected world, we might easily assume that ejaculation is a universal feast experienced or at least, striven to be experienced generically by every man, everywhere. However, Johnson (2010, pp.242-243) declares that how we come to come can be culturally bound, such that a man in Japan might compare the act to having a long overdue piss or some other man, somewhere else might feel repulsion or disgust after the waste of this obligatory bodily function. Many men love it (2010, p.243). Funny, camp as a row of tents though I have been for years, I nonetheless still feel a tinge of shame every time that act comes upon me or I, come upon it, marking me as it does eternally as a dirty twisted fag. The residual hegemon in my mind is that ejaculation belongs to straight men and the rest of us are only sneaking it in as second-rate cheats (2010, p.244).

So, it would seem, that breaking the semen rules is characteristic of the gay experience…

‘Discussing the social importance for some queer men in ‘bareback sex’ acts as a mechanism of identity making. Holmes noted that queer masculinity is intimately related to the ejaculation imperative. He states, ‘It is clear that semen exchange is not an accidental byproduct of the practice of bareback sex, but in many ways is the very raison d’etre of the activities held by our interviewees. Men need to share semen, and healthcare workers try to ‘stop’ the sharing…many men commented that semen exchange was necessary for a feeling of ‘connectedness.’ The semen given to a partner was a ‘gift,’ and [to] refuse it was a kind of affront to their practices’ (Holmes, 2005)’ (2010, p.243).

While gay men who bareback stand distinct from the hetero-normative essentialism which privileges ejaculation of specified types, the author (2010) bemoans those many straight men who, alternatively, choose to remain deeply rooted to that essentialism (pp.244, 245 & 247). It is those men who delimit how, why, when and with whom they will ejaculate and, therefore, they perpetuate a restrictive form of masculinity that has little scope for deviance or transformation (2010, pp.244-245). In that regard, Johnson (2010) argues that only when straight men start to seriously bend the semen rules will we see a diminution of hetero-normative essentialism and all its inherent flaws (pp.244 & 247). A fundamental task in pursuit of that worthy endeavour is for straight men, gay men, all men not to merely come at will but to actually think about their will to come (2010, pp.245 & 247)…

‘‘[T]heory has so infrequently addressed the question of how we inhabit our various bodies especially how we fuck, or rather, what we think when we fuck’’ (Reid-Pharr, cited by Halberstam, 1998) (2010, p.245)…