Why Men Hate Women/The Male Brain

This past week, Cracked.com came out with an article titled "5 Ways Modern Men are Trained to Hate Women." It prefaced by referring to the Sandra Fluke story, and talks about all the nasty comments people left about Fluke, and women in general, under the news article. It says society has trained men to believe that they are "owed" a beautiful woman by life, and those who do not have the ability to see past societal brainwashing end up resentful of the women for not acting like the "rewards" they are meant to be. In addition, women are first and foremost judged by their appearance regardless of all their other accomplishments. Society's designation of men as the "watchers" and women as the "watched" has made beauty a mandatory trait in all women, or they would get made fun of no matter what they have managed to do. In the article, Wong cites the news article covering the controversy over Elena Kagan, in which comments at the bottom of the page are overwhelmingly focused on how unattractive she looks, as opposed to the points the article itself actually makes.

The rest of the article talks about the oft-cited male obsession with sex. One of the entries says that men have this belief that attractive women and their own penises are conspiring against him to make his life miserable, because his sex drive acts on a totally different system from the rest of him. When I shared the article on Facebook, one of my female friends actually became surprisingly incensed at how often she is subject to the "I'm a man I can't help it" excuse, and blatantly does not believe the sex drive to have so much power over the male brain. However, that part of the article is consistent with everything I have heard up until this point, so I went to a male friend of mine and asked for his opinion. He said that while it is true sex is always right beneath the surface on the male mind, saying all men are obsessed with sex is like saying all hungry people are obsessed with cheeseburgers, and that some people are better than others at suppressing that urge. However, it was interesting that he compared the sex drive to hunger. Is it really so pervasive? In our first world country, it is not difficult to find something to eat when hungry, but sex works much differently. Most people eat at least once a day, but people don't normally get the opportunity to satisfy their sexual urges whenever they want to. Besides, I've personally always imagined sex is a pleasurable luxury, but if it's more "need" than "want," then it seems the male and female brains are actually fundamentally wired differently.