He was so horny, he just couldn’t help himself ... yeah right.

So we know that the idea of male lack of sexual self control is used to hold up rape culture. We also know that women, on average, get just as horny as men do (though within both those genders and among intersex people there is a whole range of horniness and all sorts of things affect horniness apart from gender). But lets get to the heart of why the idea of male lack of sexual self control is complete bullshit.

Imagine you are obsessively crazy for chocolate. You need chocolate, now. You need it an hour ago. You go into the supermarket and there is a long aisle full of incredible chocolate. Despite how much you want it, you don’t eat the chocolate right there in the aisle, do you? No one does. And the reason why we don’t, is because 1) We’re taught to respect private property more than we’re taught to respect women 2) There is a whole big social fabric in play that doesn’t give us permission to just take what we want from the supermarket. This normalised way of doing things and this respect for property is strong enough that despite our cravings we don’t need any self control what so ever to not rip apart that chocolate right there. It doesn’t even cross our mind.

Men do not do cheat or touch women or do other things to women because they can’t help themselves. They don’t do it because they are filled to the brim with male hormones and because they are “just being men”. They do it because they feel entitled to women in a way that we do not feel entitled to eat stuff in the shop. They do it because the social norms and legal structures protecting private property are much stronger than those protecting women. They do it because women are prizes, not fascinating powerful individuals with ideas. They do it, because this wacko, unequal society gives them permission to. Because others do, and its normal, and other men don’t question that normality. They even do it because they’ve grown up to feel like they are better men if they do. Not because they are horny. Horniness and the right to violate the humanity of other women, are two very very different things, and people need to stop equating them, and stop making excuses for male lack of respect.