Male phobias: what are the bravest men afraid of?

Men are not afraid of anything. They are not afraid of mice, cellulite, or sexual harassment. However, men do have their secret fears, the ones they would rather keep to themselves. Women can only speculate about those phobias.

Photo: Male phobias: what are the bravest men afraid of?

“Much has been written on the subject of female orgasm. Still, no one can clearly explain what it is all about.”

Nataly is the first link you are most likely to find on the Internet if you type “male sexual phobias” into your search engine in Russian. The ladies who log in the site seem to be aware of only one fear specific to men. Therefore, we dare refer to it as hyped phobia.

Hyped phobia

Sexual impotence is more than a disease. An impotent man is stripped of his right to be part of the superior creatures, the male of a species.

Many a man ended up severely depressed from the fear of sexual impotence. Throughout the human history, millions of bridegrooms on a night of nuptials would be on the verge of passing out due to sudden realization of responsibility related to the fear of “misfiring.” Failure to achieve a desired result between the sheets would result in a sigh of despair heard all over the place: “My goodness! Is something wrong with me? Maybe she just don’t like the way I do it to her… How on earth am I going to live my life after that? What if the bloody problem will never go?”

The Health Ministry officials contributed to the hype of the great and mighty fear. Propaganda campaign posters and leaflets for the prevention of alcoholism and drug addiction have always mentioned the risks of sexual impotence. The terrible beast was ubiquitous. You could see it while looking though the popular Soviet-era magazine Health, in numerous scientific or pseudoscientific books and reviews. The message was: behave yourself or you won’t get it up.

The term “impotent” became one of the most common curses. In fact, the impotent men felt as if they had been the lepers, the lack of a warning bell being the only difference.

The deplorable situation bettered only when the doctors and pharmacists addressed this highly sensitive issue after winning the war on plague, anthrax, and foot-and-mouth disease. A number of over-the-counter drugs including Viagra and synthetic prostaglandins became widely available. These days sexual impotence is referred to as an erectile dysfunction. Sexual impotence is no longer a major male phobia, it is a medical condition, which can be and should be treated.

The hyped fear is gradually becoming history. It will soon be completely overcome as the pharmaceutical industry makes further progress in the development of new effective drugs.

Commercially profitable fear

It is a fear of underperformance, of not being up to standard. Up until the 1960s, men were far too busy to focus on such trivia as the length of one’s penis or the span of sexual intercourse.

Men were busy joining such extremist political organizations as CPSU or NSDAP, men had other important things to do – like killing one another in numerous wars and armed conflicts. The worldwide stag party was suddenly over when the Great World Sexual Revolution came splashing all over neighborhood.

The porn movie stars on cocaine and alcoholic directors made quite a few skin flicks featuring incredible sex marathons and male genitalia of gigantic proportions. The man in the street simply got off his rocker as he watched the feast of flesh on the screen of an adult movies theater.

Some men spent years trying to imitate their favorite studs, but to no avail. We can list several reminders of those futile years: a feeling of inferiority, vacuum pumps for penis enlargement, assorted weights attachable to the penis for the same purposes, and thousands of techniques purportedly enabling you to make love “all day and allof the night.”

Archetypal fear

Fear of castration was invented by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century. The people in Austria and Germany were quite barbaric and ignorant at the time. They were awestruck when dealing with the doctors, and spoke openly of all their fears, which would later be tagged as subconscious. Half of the male population never doubted that women were subjected to castration in childhood, while the other half believed that vagina dentata really existed. And all of them were confident that women took revenge by urinating into the penis by means of the vagina.

It took two world wars to significantly reduce the percentage of the ignorant ones.

Nowadays the fear of castration has transformed into a rather rational fear. It has to do with a rare possibility of making your girlfriend so angry that she may bite off your wiener or slash it with a knife. Unfortunately, accidents of this kind happen sometimes, and they seem to give rise to more speculation and rumors than those involving a girl who sticks a kitchen knife into her date’s belly.

Practical fear

What if a reckless woman breaks and damages her partner’s erect penis during sex?

Everybody has heard a couple of things about the fracture of a penis, but no one is aware of any details except for the urologists. In actuality, it is a very rare medical condition.However, the man would like to be on the safe side, and therefore he wants his partner to handle his penis (especially during an erection) with utmost care, as if it were a precious china vase.

Homophobic fear

In the 1950s, one Dr. Quinsy is rumored to have conducted an opinion poll among the male residents of the United States. The poll results showed that 50% of men had homosexual tendencies. “Oops!” gasped The American heterosexual men. Later, by virtue of some mystical action, the figures went up to 70%-80%. “Good Lord!” sighed the American heterosexual men and started sizing up each other apprehensively.

Then somebody carried out a study in which homophobic males watched gay porno movies. Well, the homophobes had a robust erection during the screening. Following the results of the study, everybody fell silent, everybody got scared.

God forbid us from showing a display of tenderness in public, e.g. hugs or kisses (remember the Soviet-era movies?), or take a random look at somebody while in men’s room.

“Becoming a faggot is the worst thing that may happen to me,” as Sergei Shnurov puts it in one of his songs. The aborted gay pride parade in Moscow reminds us that the degree of paranoia is still very high.

Civilized fear

The above took root after it became clear that women enjoyed having sex too – feminists are again the usual suspects in the case. The fear grew into a full-blown phobia following the discovery of the mysterious phenomenon of female orgasm in the mid-twentieth century. Much has been written on the subject. Still, no one can clearly explain what it is all about.

Men started feeling pretty uptight once they realized that their partners could experience something too during an act of carnal knowledge. Ever since that day, men have been asking women silly questions like “Honey, did you like it? Did you come?” And men are, without doubt, fearful of an answer they may get.

Lofty fear

It is simply a fear of woman. This kind of phobia is most prominent among the Muslims. According to Islamic doctrines, woman is a vessel of evil, a child of vice, a lustful creature who distracts an honorable man from his pious thoughts. The description says it all.

Medportal.ru

Translated by Guerman Grachev