I have writ­ten before about the book of per­sonal essays deal­ing with man­hood, mas­culin­ity and male sex­u­al­ity that I tried, unsuc­cess­fully (even with the help of an agent) to get pub­lished in the 1980s. Evolv­ing Man­hood was the work­ing title, … Con­tinue read­ing →

What first attracted me to Maria was the way she had no reser­va­tions about say­ing she didn’t like Walt Whitman’s poetry, even though our freshman-year pro­fes­sor in Intro­duc­tion to Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture had made Whitman’s work cen­tral to the course. When … Con­tinue read­ing →

At eleven, I am the youngest of eight boys lined up along one row of lock­ers in the oth­er­wise empty men’s room at the swim­ming pool to which the day camp we are attend­ing takes us every other day. Nor­mally, … Con­tinue read­ing →

In 1834, Sylvester Gra­ham  —  inven­tor of the cracker that con­tin­ues to bear his name  —  pub­lished a book called A Lec­ture to Young Men, in which he warned that mas­tur­ba­tion would trans­form a boy who prac­ticed it reg­u­larly into: a wretched trans­gres­sor [who] sinks … Con­tinue read­ing →

When a good friend of mine who is not Jew­ish found out that her first child was going to be a boy, I asked her if she intended to have him cir­cum­cised. “Yup,” she answered, smil­ing. “Do you know how … Con­tinue read­ing →

“You don’t know who you are any­more!” We’ve just fin­ished eat­ing lunch and my grand­mother is sit­ting across from me at her din­ing room table. “All your trav­el­ing, your read­ing, explor­ing other cul­tures,” she purses her lips and looks down. … Con­tinue read­ing →

With a half-finished bot­tle of soju sit­ting on the floor between us, and another two wait­ing to be opened, we set­tled in, my friend Mr. Lee and I, for an evening of drink­ing in my very small seven-and-a-half pyong apart­ment … Con­tinue read­ing →

I’d been in Korea for two weeks when I decided it was time to ven­ture on my own into Seoul’s urban land­scape. One of my col­leagues had taken me the pre­vi­ous week­end to Chong-no for some noo­dles, a visit to … Con­tinue read­ing →

“Just meet me down­stairs in 30 minutes” was all my friend Mr. Park would say when I asked what he had in mind. It was Fri­day night and I had, actu­ally, been plan­ning to spend it alone, but I was so happy … Con­tinue read­ing →

I was lean­ing against the entrance to the Shin­chon sub­way sta­tion watch­ing peo­ple turn the cor­ner into the Semaeul Shi­jang, the out­door mar­ket where I bought rice each week and where my friend Mr. Kim had bar­gained one of the … Con­tinue read­ing →

Seri­ous domestic/intimate part­ner vio­lence trig­ger warn­ing in the first few para­graphs of this post. Sit­ting on my bed with her back against the wall, my lover  —  who’s come to visit dur­ing my first year of grad­u­ate school  —  tells me that she’s at last … Con­tinue read­ing →

Male dom­i­nance instructs men that our bod­ies are tools. By turn­ing male orgasm into the “cum shot,” het­ero­sex­ual pornog­ra­phy reflects and per­pet­u­ates this image of the male body. Yet it does not have to be that way. Erec­tion, for exam­ple, … Con­tinue read­ing →

A white woman’s mouth in the act of swal­low­ing a white man’s penis fills the screen of my TV. Almost directly in the cen­ter of the pic­ture, the shape of his organ glides back and forth against the inside of … Con­tinue read­ing →

In the het­ero­sex­ual porno­graphic video Secrets, there is a woman-on-woman scene  —  both the women are white  —  in which one of the per­form­ers, wear­ing a suit and tie, uses a large pur­ple dildo to play the role of a man. This “male” woman … Con­tinue read­ing →

I did not go to pornog­ra­phy because I’d been sex­u­ally abused, but the fact that I’d been abused made the world of pornog­ra­phy one that it felt nat­ural for me to inhabit. One of the effects that sex­ual abuse often … Con­tinue read­ing →

I’m look­ing at Playboy’s Miss Octo­ber for 1995 and I’m try­ing to remem­ber what it was like to see pic­tures of naked women for the first time. My brother and I were very young  —  no more than eight or nine  —  when we … Con­tinue read­ing →

You won’t believe me. I know you won’t. I didn’t want to believe it myself, but I couldn’t deny what my eyes were telling me: My penis was gone! Really! Gone! I’d just come home from break­ing up with my … Con­tinue read­ing →

Part 1 ended with the fol­low­ing para­graph: And so on and so on, until the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the Jew and the woman. Nei­ther believe in them­selves; but the woman believes in oth­ers, in her hus­band, her lover, or her … Con­tinue read­ing →

The first time the old man who lived in the apart­ment at the top of the stair­case said hello to me, he stopped for a moment as we passed in the court­yard and smiled as if he’d known me my … Con­tinue read­ing →