AmbivaBlog: Male Sexuality - From The Horse's Mouth

This is the classic children's book, Goodenough Gismo, by Richmond I. Kelsey, published in 1948. Nearly unavailable in libraries and the collector's market, it is posted here with love as an "orphan work" so that it may be seen and appreciated -- and perhaps even republished, as it deserves to be. After you read this book, it won't surprise you to learn that Richmond Irwin Kelsey (1905-1987) was an accomplished artist, or that as Dick Kelsey, he was one of the great Disney art directors, breaking your heart with "Pinocchio," "Dumbo," and "Bambi."

Masahiro Morioka is my hero. A Japanese philosopher and bioethicist who has written on brain death and abortion, and who has been provoked and inspired but not brainwashed by Japanese feminists, he has now posted the first translated chapter of his investigation into male sexuality -- his own: The Insensitive Man. His offering of himself as a sacrificial ram on the altar of knowledge, rendered even more courtly by the slight quaintness of translation, is like nothing else you've ever read:

Through my experience, I personally had a full realization that “what the nature of men is like” is a falsehood. The phrase “the nature of men is like this” means no more than the conspiracy among men such as “Let’s think of the nature of men as this and have fun and take it easy.” . . .

The study of male sexuality has only recently begun. . . .

Investigating the sexuality of oneself, one is accompanied by great pain and embarrassment. This would be the same for both men and women. . . .

He goes on to dissect his not uncommon fetish for a particular item of women's clothing:

In the early 90’s, trendy “body conscious mini-skirts,” were a kind of clothing that excited my sexual inclinations. I feel embarrassed to reveal that I like them, because I am conscious that they are tasteless. The profundity of the body conscious mini-skirt is that whenever a woman would walk or sit down, the hemline of the skirt would be raised. This is because it is made of elastic materials. Here, we see the extreme form of the mini-skirt. Namely, that no matter how much women may try to lower the hemline of the mini-skirt by their both hands, it naturally begins to rise against their will. Despite lowering the hemline of the skirt so as not to see, the skirt is naturally becoming raised so as to be able to see farther up. When my eyes are involuntarily swallowed up in these circumstances, sexual arousal to mini-skirts appears in my heart. . . .

Speaking of my sexuality, panties in the mini-skirt must be white, and the female sexual organ must be covered-up with it. It must be covered-up by the white cloth solemnly in a way that we cannot tell what really exists behind it. And this whole situation must be on the verge of visibility under the hemline of the mini-skirt. Namely, the point is that the concealed figure itself is on the verge of visibility. . . .

Morioka, who's straight, got a jolt when he discovered that a transvestite he knew was male could elicit the same reaction:

There are no problems even if the person wearing a mini-skirt is a man, as long as that person looks like a woman. This is because I am not sexually aroused toward a flesh-and-blood person who wears a mini-skirt. [emphasis added]

If it isn't a flesh-and-blood person (the dark secret of male sexuality), or even the literal female organ, Morioka wonders, then "What Makes Me Aroused?" Hint: he finds at the bottom of it all an impulse as ecstatic and ruthlessly impersonal as primitive religion.

And that's only Chapter One!

You gotta love this vulnerable pioneer, this Dr. Livingston of the male psyche. But once he has blazed a trail, do we dare to go there?

- amba