Male Lust

Book excerpt: Men from a variety of sexual orientations and ethnic backgrounds overturn myths about male sexuality and desire! Male sexuality comes of age in this provocative collection of personal essays and poetry. Male Lust's nearly 60 contributors explore emotional, social, and political aspects of sex and desire from a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and sexual orientations. Answering the long-standing challenge for men to finally theorize the complexity of their own sexual desires, Male Lust (a 2001 Lambda Gay Studies Literary Award Finalist) delves into topics such as commercial sex, sadomasochism, feminism, and white supremacy without lapsing into reactionary, knee-jerk or misogynist stances. This book offers a positive sexual vision that moves far beyond the narrow messages offered in mainstream media. Male Lust reveals thoughtful, detailed realities of gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, and same-gender-loving men's personal experiences with sex that lurk behind the stereotypes. Among the many topics that the essays, stories, and poems herein chronicle are: various facets of men's and women's experience with commercial sex, both as consumers and providers social and hormonal phenomena involved in transitioning from female to male handling the impact of white supremacy on male lust as a man of color the transformational possibilities of S/M women's responses to the lusts of the men in their lives coming of age with a “deviant” gender or sexual orientation healing from rape and other forms of sexual abuse coming to terms with loving and desiring women within a misogynist culture lust and desire within a disabled body Together, the contributors break the noisy silence surrounding male lust, challenge the dominant images of men as unemotional sexual predators, and expose the live, beating hearts, minds, and souls of real men loving, healing, and revealing themselves, each other, and the women in their lives. Male Lust heralds the next generation of thinking men--a must-read for anyone seeking cutting-edge ideas on sexuality and desire.