Good men: this is for you

Good men are in crisis. These are men who are waking up to the existence of the Manosphere, and realising with horror how it’s seeping into their day-to-day lives. Men on whom it’s dawning how they’ve enjoyed the privileges of patriarchy, but also how it has cost them genuine intimacy. These men are fearful that women may not ‘need’ them any more and feel a desire to step up and be worth ‘wanting’, rather than to disempower women through aggression. These good men are disgusted at Epstein, Pelicot et al… but secretly haunted by their own potentially flawed understanding of consent in the past.

These men want to be better. But how to be so in the current landscape is a source of confusion, guilt and fear - especially around sex and intimacy.

As a sex coach I believe we need a revolution in how heterosexual men are allowed to be, sexually. The archetype of the chaser, the dominator, the initiator – the predator in predator-and-prey, which chilling has become all too real through Epstein’s use of those exact words in his emails - needs to be demolished.

I know as a long-term confidante of men when it comes to sex, that this archetype was never a great fit for many of them. The root of so much unhappiness for the men, women and couples I coach, is this inflexible template of ‘heterosexual man’ that the patriarchy, media and porn have pushed on us. It impacts how men behave, puts them under immense performance pressure and reduces their access to authentic pleasure. It impacts women’s expectations of how men should be, and of their own options in that dynamic, disempowering them and reducing their access to pleasure too.

Men, here’s what I ask of you. Feel the horrors in the sexual world right now. Pledge to be an active part of the solution. Start again, sexually: educate yourself from a place of curiosity and open-mindedness, about women and yourselves as men. Be prepared to be vulnerable and honest. The bravest, strongest thing you can do, is be part of this change – especially if you have a young son who’s looking to you for his templates around women and intimacy.

Good men, I have faith you can do this. I believe in you. I was a stripper for over a decade, exposed to men’s deepest desires, a priestess-in-lingerie holding nightly confessionals. Did that make me hate men? No. It taught me that the things I’d heard my whole life about “All men…” were wrong – that there was a softness, vulnerability, creativity and radiance, seldom allowed to shine. Then I was a personal fitness trainer, witnessing sweat mingle with tears as my studio mat got used as a stand-in for the therapist’s chair. While my male clients were building physical strength, they admitted their increasing feelings of weakness in the realm of intimacy with women.

Now, as a sex coach since 2019, I’ve heard in great detail the fears and frustrations of hundreds more men. The patriarchal template of the ‘heterosexual man’ has become a curse.

What’s needed now isn’t more ‘How to be a better lover to a woman’ workshops. It’s time instead, good men, to turn the lens on yourself: to understand how desire and arousal actually work for you, broaden your landscape of what sex can be, give yourself permission to show up differently as a heterosexual man. To release the guilt, fear and pressure that’s been destroying your pleasure, presence and authentic connection in bed. To create a space of possibility and hope… and for you to realise this will lead to the hottest sex of your life.

Start this work with me in my Better Sex For Men workshop. Join me Thursday 16 April, 8pm BST, online. Find out more here: https://app.wearexapp.com/even...

I’ve always said as a coach that change needs to start with our individual selves. When couples come to me concerned about learning how to please each other, the coaching journey always begins with them learning about themselves. From there, they can share authentically with each other.

Men, are you ready for this process? As a coach, I am here for you, and I will say it again:

I believe in you.

Ruth