Culture so often concedes the importance of sexuality , while destroying our ability to enjoy it .sx From an early age we are brought up to despise our bodies .sx Sexuality within a Protestant culture is deemed dirty and low .sx We should be concerning ourselves with 'higher' things if we want to assert our humanity against our animal nature .sx The same splits occur in our experience , where the contradictions operate at a less conscious level , since there is a significant rift between the language and consciousness of liberal attitudes towards sexuality and ways people are brought up to think and feel about themselves .sx We are ashamed of our bodies , of our sexuality , while 'attractiveness' has been made into an important commodity .sx We cannot help caring about whether others are attracted towards us and , objectifying ourselves , wanting to be desirable objects for others .sx Treating ourselves as objects , though profoundly different from the way women are treated as sexual objects within a relation of power , is a mark of the ways men have been estranged from our emotional lives .sx As men , we are brought up to despise our sexuality , in the search for 'higher' things .sx We find ourselves denying our sexuality , while at the same time acknowledging it is at the centre of our experience .sx We are brought up to be ashamed of our sexual feelings , though at the same time often obsessed with them .sx This is part of the dynamic of repression that has been used as an integral part of social control .sx We can feel caught in a paradox .sx Within the middle class , men are made to feel their careers are important , while everything else can only bring fleeting satisfaction .sx We find ourselves continually asserting ourselves in competition with other men , so we often end up feeling isolated .sx We are locked into a competitiveness that can extend into the centre of our sexuality .sx So it is very easy for women to become 'objects' for us , ways of making us feel good about ourselves .sx It is as if relationships are essentially self-referring so we can go out with women who are 'attractive' , because this allows us to feel good about ourselves .sx We get trapped into objectifying women , treating them as possessions that reflect back upon our own sense of 'achievement' .sx Georg Luk a-grave cs develops his notion of reification to help explain how , with bourgeois culture , possession becomes our basic orientation towards the world , including our relationship with others .sx We get glimpses of this , for instance , in the ways women become 'attractive' to us because they are sought after by other men .sx Exchange value is recognised as the only source of value within a capitalist society and so dominates our experience .sx We find it hard to value women who are not found attractive by others , even if we pay lip-service to an idea that " love is in the eyes of the beholder .sx " This is denied in the everyday reality of our experience , even if it is an experience we refuse to acknowledge in these terms .sx Possession becomes our mode of relating to others , even though we might be largely unaware of this and so deny any kind of responsibility for it .sx Given the way a liberal moral culture individualises our experience , we fall into thinking of relationships as a matter of individual personalities hitting it off with each other .sx This has painful consequences .sx It strikes deep into the ways our emotions and feelings have been structured .sx Jo , for instance , might have been brought up to his wife as 'mine' , feeling deeply committed to looking after her , without ever realising this puts restrictions on her .sx So if he experiences his wife as 'part of him' , this hints at the depths of hurt and jealousy he feels when she begins to feel attracted to other people , or discovers that other men find her attractive .sx This goes totally against how Jo has been brought up as a man , and he cannot help feeling betrayed by her .sx He feels humiliated in her attraction towards other men .sx Within the ways his own morality connects to his inherited sense of masculinity , he has no way of understanding his own feelings .sx As far as he is concerned , " she is my wife and that means she shouldn't be mucking around with other men .sx " He does not experience this simply as jealousy .sx He feels this deeply as an insult to his very masculinity .sx He finds the situation unbearable and has been given no cultural language and experience for preparing himself for it .sx It does not help to say that he regards his wife as a 'possession' , without developing an appreciation that goes beyond moralistic judgement to see how deeply embedded this is in his sense of male identity .sx He thinks of himself as a 'faithful husband' , and in many ways he is .sx Partly because for many men their sense of individual identity is so tied up with their sense of masculine identity , they literally 'go to pieces' when their masculinity is challenged .sx This is not to justify unequal sexual relationships , but it helps us to appreciate the depth of issues we are dealing with , which are so often misleadingly set in the rationalistic terms of choice , will and determination .sx Liberal morality often follows Kant in talking about the 'wrongness' of treating people as objects , almost as if it is simply a matter of 'attitude' we freely take up towards others .sx This is profoundly misleading , though deeply embedded in liberal conceptions of freedom , making us feel that we are free to have whatever relationship with people we want to have .sx This idea makes it difficult to identify and question social relations of oppression and domination within human relationships .sx It is built upon a very na i ve psychology of self-interest that does not help us understand social forms of dependency and subordination .sx Its truth is questioned in feminist analysis of women's subordination , whose theory originally grows out of consciousness-raising based in the everyday realities of women's lives , rather than existing in an independent realm of its own .sx When we say , as men , " we can't help treating women as possessions " , we might be refusing to change but we are at the same time trying to show that it is not simply a matter of an act of will that men are 'free' to make .sx What is at issue here is a restructuring of our relationships and experience .sx We are bringing out how the close relationship between our sense of ourselves as men and our sense of individual identity can make it hard especially for older generations of men to change themselves , and to relate to women and gay men in different ways .sx This is to question the ways identities are formed in the cultures we are living in .sx The idea that 'we can relate to others in any way we wish' mystifies the realities of our everyday experience as heterosexual men and does not prepare us for the difficulties we all face in giving up a power and superiority we take so much for granted .sx This does not mean the need to change is not pressing , but we have to realise how much of our inherited conceptions of masculinity need to shift if we are to relate to women in equal ways and come to terms with a homophobia that is often deeply culturally and psychologically embedded .sx At least in challenging these notions we might develop a clearer sense of the significance of feminism and gay liberation rather than fool ourselves into thinking we can change ourselves simply as a matter of will .sx SELF-DENIAL AND FANTASY .sx The control and domination of our feelings on which our sense of ourselves as masculine is built eventually weakens them .sx We end up feeling very little at all .sx This undermines the base of our experience , whether we are straight or gay , meaning that we are less grounded in our own experience .sx Now the self-understandings of bourgeois society can protect us from feeling this as any kind of 'problem' .sx Utilitarian culture has little room for emotions .sx If anything , they are regarded as 'inferior thoughts' .sx It is almost as if an ideal life would preclude the 'interference' of emotions and feelings .sx This sustains fundamentally the Kantian identification of our 'humanity' with 'rationality' .sx Emotions and feelings have no real place in the humanity of our lives , which is strictly defined in opposition to our animal nature .sx This is a source of e litism and superiority , because a 'human life' is always defined as being 'superior' to an 'animal life' .sx For Kant , our emotions and feelings are a part of our 'lower' , animal selves .sx In this way , modernity , as it is lived out in bourgeois morality , undercuts our experience .sx Utilitarianism shares this fundamental structure with Kantianism .sx It is this systematic denial of our emotionality , that is part of what defines morality as 'bourgeois' .sx Our experience is left inevitably fragmented , and we are left denying whatever feelings and emotions are emerging , so that we can live up to the ideal of ourselves as 'rational' , never to be 'swayed' by any feelings .sx This denial makes it difficult for us , as men , to say what we want and need , because we do not want to talk out of our emotions and feelings .sx Already we regard emotional life as a sign of weakness .sx So , to give an example that illustrates the workings of these processes , Richard would never say that he was hurt because Susan had started a relationship with Tom .sx We have to find room in our understanding for the idea that Richard was not allowing himself to feel hurt .sx This does not mean that he does not feel hurt , but that he does not allow himself to feel his hurt or even his jealousy .sx This is not simply a question of 'mistaken' identity , nor is it a matter of Richard not knowing what he feels .sx Richard might say that he objects to the relationship because he thinks that Tom is not a nice person , and is bound to be just leading Susan up the garden path .sx He finds himself giving all kinds of 'reasons' that are supposed to be 'objective' , which could bring Susan to make a decision against the relationship .sx He wants her to conclude that it is 'irrational' for her to have the relationship , given what she knows about Tom .sx But all the time Richard refuses to say he is 'hurt' and that is why Susan should give up the relationship .sx In this way , he denies his feelings , but also mystifies the reality of the relationship that exists between them , presenting it simply as Susan's decision .sx He could think that his feelings do not have anything to do with it , because Susan is free to do whatever she wants to do .sx At the same time , he is providing 'objective reasons' for her ending the relationship .sx In this way , Richard discounts himself in the situation .sx He presents it 'impersonally' as a matter of 'reasons' that should be taken into account .sx We need to realise that this mystifies his personal reality .sx Whatever ideas of freedom and equality he is living up to , make it difficult for him to accept his feelings in this situation .sx His energy , as Freud understood , becomes taken up with suppressing his feelings .sx This is part of what creates a sense of 'unreality' in the situation , and means that Richard is cutting off from his own experience .sx This is part of the reality of self-denial .sx This kind of emotional self-denial is often more familiar to men than it is to women , who are allowed to be more 'emotional' , though they are put down for it .sx In some sense , this relates to the emotional unreality of male experience and goes some way to explain what we mean by saying that men are less grounded in our emotional reality , in our experience .sx This follows directly from the hold notions of 'rationality' have in organising our masculine experience .sx It is also related to the high level of 'fantasy' that exists in men's lives .sx It seems that , in some sense , men fantasise much more than women or have more visual fantasies , which seem to play a much larger role in their experience .sx