THE END FOR MEN?

"The future is female" has been the late Nineties mantra. As we approach the millennium, things can only get better for women - but where does that leave men? Their magazines - loaded with images of half-naked women - would have us believe that men are getting enough, but the queues at Viagra clinics tell a different story. Who is telling the truth? In the first of a three-part series, DAVE HILL talks to three men about their sexual experiences and, below, analyses how the change has come about

STEVE BANKS, MUSICIAN, 35 Steve, above, is in a long-term relationship.

He likes the fact that gender roles are no longer fixed when it comes to sex. I grew up with two older sisters in the Seventies who were very into feminism. I'm close to both of them, but one of them liked the saying, 'All men are potential rapists,' which made me worry that it was a problem just being a man, especially when it came to sex. I've struggled with sex ever since. I've had running battles with myself about it all my life, although I also really enjoy it. "It seems to me that where men are concerned, sex is a huge taboo. It's almost impossible to talk about it in a really personal way. Even in the men's groups I've been in it's been hard to talk about sex. Men devour magazines with pictures of women with their parts bared to the world, yet men's sexuality is something that is always kept hidden from view. All the excitement about Viagra has shown how much guilt and anxiety there is about it which we're conditioned not to talk about. There's a sort of disgust about male sexuality which is felt by men and women alike. "I think that disgust is partly what drives those women campaigners who want to use the law to prosecute men who make or use pornography. I use pornography and telephone sex lines and I'm very split about it. I think there's a lot in the feminist thesis that pornography isn't about sex, but about men exerting power over women. But it misses out the personal side, the psychology of it. "As a man you might give up porn because you think that morally it's the right thing to do, but I don't believe it would change much in the long run. To make any lasting changes we have to look deeper, to try and understand what men are really about. For me, porn is like a fix. It's an addiction, it's similar to an eating disorder. I feel disgusted about consuming it, but I'm not ready to give it up. I think that underneath it all is a huge need for comfort in physical contact. Even when I'm with my girlfriend, who I love having sex with, there's still this feeling that I just can't get enough of that comfort. "Reading some of the men's magazines, you would think that men are preoccupied with intercourse. But I find that sex is so much more enjoyable when the gender roles aren't fixed. It's nice to do that archetypal male thing, but it's also great just to drop it and be passive. That could be a source of a much more pleasurable life for so many men and for women too. What women want and what men want match up fine if only we are prepared to take the lid off the subject of sex and have a proper look inside." SWITCH on the TV, scan the news-stands or just listen to the bawdy talk of women and you'd be forgiven for thinking that, where men are concerned, sex and happiness have never been more distantly related. Another day, another documentary, alarming article or colourful conversation about how chaps today cannot do It, will not do It or seem unable to resist doing It with someone they should not. Far from being one of life's eternally simple pleasures, something men have been doing co-operatively with women since a snake and a Granny Smith distracted the original Ground Force team in Eden, sex is portrayed as the focus of a million male anxieties about what women think of them and, at the same time, the source of a million female worries about the ways of men. It hasn't always been this way. For most of this century women have been seen as the gender for which sex was a difficult issue. The first public discussions of this once fiercely private matter arose around birth control in the Thirties, making Marie Stopes a household name and introducing women to intimate areas of their own anatomies which had previously been concealed by a maidenly veil of silence. By the Seventies that silence had been shattered: in the pages of Cosmopolitan women read of sexual possibilities in scintillating detail; in The Female Eunuch Ger-maine Greer urged that women should settle for nothing less than ecstasy. Ladies! What a din! Today, the western world seems teeming with glowing females declaring: "I like It, I want It and I won't feel bad about getting It." In so doing, many are effectively saying: "Gentlemen, over to you." The critical female eye trained on men's sexuality helps explain why the emphasis has shifted, with much more concerned attention now being directed at men as sexual beings. Women have asked pressing questions, and not just in the form of bedtime games of Find The G-Spot. They have also addressed frightening matters which go to the heart of too many men's overall attitudes towards women. The combination of feminist campaigners and an increasingly graphic media has made us grimly aware of men who are sexual deviants, sexual predators and a sexual menace on the streets, in the office and even to their own families in the home. And now there is a new dimension to the disquiet. This year we have been made vividly aware of how men can feel distress about sex within themselves as well as create it in women. The advent of Viagra and the frantic initial demand for it has lifted another veil of sexual silence, this time exposing the guilt, shame and anguish surrounding impotence. Erectile dysfunction - ED as we hipsters call it - has long been treated as a laughing matter, as long as it wasn't you - or your husband, partner or boyfriend who was afflicted with it. But it was claimed at the BMA conference earlier this year that one in 10 men is an ED sufferer. Now the laughter has become a bit more nervous. Fit all these pieces together and the picture of the contemporary sexual male is a pretty chequered thing: at worst he resembles a monster, at best a poor, drooping creature, quite unable to rise. In such a climate, foreboding can easily engulf a fainthearted fellow. Even as women in car commercials smirk that "size matters", scientists are claiming that oestrogen-like chemicals in the environment are making penises smaller. Periodically we are warned that sperm counts are plunging, suggesting that men are faltering even as suppliers of procreative seed. Meanwhile, in various ways, more and more women are bearing children without having had intercourse with a man in order to do so, frequently by choice. Suddenly the term "redundant male" seems to resonate far beyond the dole queues. But how accurately do these impressions reflect reality? No one should make light of men's capacity to misuse their sexuality to humiliate women and worse. Nor should they glibly dismiss the real anguish experienced by the majority of men who feel they need Viagra. However, the fact that we are becoming more aware of both the frightening and the frightened sides of male sexuality does not necessarily mean that both are on the increase. It may be that we are simply being confronted with things we have habitually hidden away from - which may turn out to be the disturbing first step towards finding a way to improve them. If that is so, it's not a moment too soon. Sorting out the sexual ignorance, self-doubts and misdemeanours of heterosexual men is an important part of modernising masculinity for a world in which the sexes are relating to each other in all manner of new, sometimes disorientating ways. Silly specimens like Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione actually blame women's slow but significant progress towards independence and equality for making men impotent: "Feminism has emasculated the American male," he told Time magazine recently. But there is nothing to be gained by glibly blaming womankind for mankind's sexual woes. Instead, heterosexual men need to carve out a new future where their women are true partners rather than emotional strangers and where sex is regarded not as a myopic measure of masculine mastery but as a shared avenue to pleasure, trust and love. * Dave Hill is the author of The Future of Men (Phoenix). What is it like to have a woman boss? Or to be the lone man in an all-female office? Find out in Part Two of the Standard's challenging series when men talk openly about their changing working lives. TOMORROW: WORK GRAHAM ELLIOTT, 61, TEACHER Graham, right, an Alexander Technique teacher, has been married happily for 35 years. "Men's obsession with sex is a product of conditioning we get from innocent male babyhood to adult male. We live in a society where sex is big business and men are dismissed as not real men if they aren't looking for sex all the time. We end up having sex in our thoughts a lot of the time, wanting real human contact with women and seeing sex as the only way of getting it. "I think we have to question all those assumptions. Sex simply doesn't provide the answers to half the problems we're told it will. "I've been married for 35 years. We've had two sons and now have three grandchildren which gives us great delight. We are, I suppose, a successful, stable family. "It concerns me that I've seen many good men with compulsive sexual habits going from one partner to the next, looking for the stable relationships they dearly want but being frequently disappointed. Other men have inhibited patterns of sexual behaviour and get equally trapped in those. "We need to change the messages about sex that men receive. We get convinced that if we're not fancying every bit of skirt that walks past there's something wrong with us! "In the last 30 years, sex has opened up as topic for discussion. But we haven't really raised awareness. We need to speak well of men as a sex, instead of as if they were all monsters. Men, including gay men, need help and support rather than just blanket blame." AARON KELLY, 21, STUDENT Aaron, above, is single and a student at St Mary's and Westfield College, University of London. He doesn't like today's so-called ladettes. "I want to get my degree, but I'm here for the University of Life more than anything. I go to the gym three times a week, I'm captain of the football club and I spend GBP 30 a night on beer. It's about feeling good about yourself and chasing women. That's it basically. "I go chasing women most nights of the week, nearly always in the student bar or the night-club they've got here. It all goes with the football club: if we're not playing a match we're training so we're always out together afterwards. On the pitch I'm the one whose job is to shout and lead, so people have to respect me in the bar as well. Socially, I'm expected to lead from the front. It's very much a game. You know, "look at her, you haven't got a chance", then going and talking to her. Or else it might be a case of how many pints will it take for you to shag that girl? You've invested in all that beer, it's a shame to waste it. I have been called the most prolific, though I'm modest enough not to say that I'm the best at it. You try to scope the situation out, then go for the one you really like. As long as you can get talking to a girl, if you can make them laugh, that's the main thing. Me and my mates help each other out with that - it's very much schoolboy humour. You don't always get what you're after. It's a 50-50 situation, I suppose. A lot of girls are up for it these days. You get them now, very outlandish and forthright they drink pints, watch football. It's not very attractive, is it? It's one thing knowing your own mind, it's another trying to outlad a lad. But if you can get talking to some of these Dorises, it's pretty much an easy score. I can see it happening that I'll settle down one day. I want a wife and children - a couple of children, and to teach them how to live life to the full."

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