Sex Across Cultures

During hooks’ discussion about Patriarchal Sex, I began to think about how our culture views men as sexual beings. While it does tend to see men of color as sexually aggressive, it also recognizes men as the dominant group when it comes to sexual activity. To members of American dominant culture, this is normal, but when we critique other cultures and the way they act with regard to sex, male domination is somehow viewed as immoral or unjust.

When Americans think about the way women are treated in Middle Eastern cultures, they are often appalled at the way they are “required” by men to dress in burkas and hijabs as a way to assert their dominance and to avoid sexual temptation. What we often do not realize is that women in our culture often dress in a specific manner to appeal and please men as well. It is easy for us to judge the way men in other cultures treat women and create specific expectations, but we often do not see how normalized it is in our own culture.