Sexual Politics: A Man's View
by Richard Ehisen

I turned 34 years old a few months ago, and with few exceptions I don't really feel any different than I ever have. I still throw my body around in competitive sports as if I can afford to be injured and off of work for a week, I truly like most alternative music, and I have yet to feel any inclination to discuss my bodily functions with total strangers. I presume this means I am still relatively up with the times. Notice I said relatively.

That birthday I mentioned was an odd one, as it marked the first full year of single life I have lived since the early days of the Reagan administration. In the course of global time I suppose 12 years is less significant than Milli Vanilli's place in the music world, but for me personally it marked a dramatic change of interpersonal styles that I have yet to really adjust to.

One of the enduring standards about gender is that we men just want sex and women want a relationship. Now I admit this may have been true when I was a teenager, but if age has brought me anything it is the realization that we all have a bigger purpose. I'm sorry it took spending several years in a loveless union marked more by conflict than by romance to make me realize this, but then nobody ever said knowledge or growth are easy grabs from the bag of living. After all, we all have to get there regardless of the road we take. But I digress.

Over this last year, armed with my preconceived notions of how the male/female game is played, I have ventured back into the waters. Imagine my surprise to see some of those old comfortable thoughts have become positively prehistoric in nature, none more so than the sex vs. relationship question. In my brave new world I have found that black is white, up is down, and at least in thought women have become men. In short, it seems like women now are just as sexually driven as men, and even less likely to want a steady emotional commitment.

I suppose I've done my share of dating over the last 16 months, and some of these women I have slept with. But I don't just glean all of this from these encounters. I am both blessed and cursed to have a large number of female friends who have shared with me many of their own experiences with the dating scene, and much of my opinion comes from this. (I say cursed because I have learned a lot about myself through these discussions, and not all of it I like.)

It is very hard at times for me to fathom all of this, not so much for the situation being what it is, but for my own reaction to it. There was a time when I honestly thought casual sex with no strings attached was the absolute way to go - no baggage, no fuss, no muss. Who could ask for more? Well, I guess I can, and I'm more than a bit stunned by it all. Surprisingly enough I am finding more and more that I want to have some deeper meaning to what I do, including sex. Just as surprisingly I know more and more women who don't want any meaning attached to it at all. The trick I suppose is figuring out who is who and what is what. But trying to do that has proven to be the most surreal experience I have ever faced. There are days when I honestly feel like I am trying to ski uphill in a blizzard.

In truth I can't blame women for feeling this way about men. Women have been taking the short end of the stick since we all had giant sloped foreheads. Too many instant endings have assuredly convinced women to hold on to their hearts just a little harder, too grab a little more of the fun out of life and less of the burdens. But at the same time those of us who learned to play by a different set of rules are floundering a bit trying to see life through this amazing prism that sometimes distorts our own view of reality. I and others like me will of course survive, and maybe we will even thrive. It just may take us a while longer to get used to it all.

Richard Ehisen is the creator and editor of his own monthly periodical, The Norcal Sports Report, as well as the co-host of The Sport Authority, a radio and television sports talk show on KCBL FM 88.7 and KCBL Public Access Television Channels 17 & 18 in Sacramento, CA. Having been involved in organized sports since the age of nine, he is still looking for his first ever sports trophy. Until then he'll have to settle for buying them and faking it.