I'm stirring up trouble

So I was over at Bitch Ph.D where she's having a big sex talk. I didn't have much to add, but to discuss the reasons why men are less likely to have serious sex talks with other men. My thought (among other things) is that men are usually homophobic (in that they never want to be thought of as gay), and that in general men are taught not to consider their bodies attractive. This kicked off a big discussion (probably not helped by my initial wording on my comment), so I thought I would put here my full thoughts on male body image.

Basically I know that I don't really consider myself attractive, and I know that many guys that are don't either, however it is more than that (and here is where it differs from women's body image problems), men don't usually think that the male body can be considered attractive (probably as a result of the earlier mentioned homophobia). The end result tends to be misogyny: basically the guy wonders how women can be attracted to men, and decides that they aren't really, they just use sex as a way to get what they want, thus leading to the "all women are whores" sentiment. The solution seems to be convincing men that they too can be attractive, and/or using imagination to imagine that someone can be attracted to something you don't consider attractive.

However most people are products of their environment, and don't have a great amount of imagination, so until society changes there seems to be not much to do. On the other hand society does seem to be changing, and increasing number of men don't follow traditional gender rolls (although metrosexuality doesn't seem like a great thing to aspire to).

anyways, enough on this.