A tomcat for example is literally a genome robot: he has no conscious control over his need  or compulsion  to follow a female in heat, or his need to compete and battle with other toms to impregnate her. Human beings are different in that (in theory) we're capable of placing a layer of civilization, social convention, and individual idiosyncrasy on top of our evolutionary imperatives, even to the point of obscuring them completely.

So, on the strictly biological level you can agree with the guy who says "men really do need sex", but only to this extent: in the mammalian realm, including the larger primates of which we are one, the male generally demonstrates a compulsive reproductive initiative.

A human being is also capable of actions that don't involve just our developed time sense and the evasion of future pain, disgrace, or humiliation ... that may even commit us irrevocably to all three. A human being is capable of:

• setting himself on fire to protest a war;
   
• renouncing wealth, sex, comfort, and worldly concerns -- for life -- in the name of an abstract religious belief;
   
• sacrificing his/her life to save a stranger (even an elderly stranger, which is really counter-evolutionary behaviour);
   
• going on a hunger strike, even unto death, to prove an abstract political point;
• staying silent under grievous torture out of pride, theological conviction, or loyalty to non-kingroup individuals;
   
• spending his/her last penny and enduring hunger and cold in order to acquire a first edition
   
• sprinting on foot into heavy machine gun fire under orders that he knows are idiotic, in the name of military discipline and patriotism

Well, you get the point. All of these behaviours are insane from the strictly evolutionary, biomechanical point of view. They involve motives far removed from the exigencies of daily individual or group survival.

An animal might chew its forefoot off to get out of a leg-hold trap, or take enormous risks to save a juvenile of its own species. Only a human would chew its leg off to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity or risk its life to save a puppydog (oops, wrong species).

In other words, humans are capable of choosing priorities on which we base our actions. Some part of us is genome robot, but a lot of us is the squirrelly result of too much forebrain.

To argue that "men need sex" and "will go crazy without it" is to argue that men are nothing more than animals; we all know that a human can go without anything (sex, food, water, happiness, love, comfort, whatever) if there's a good reason.

And a good reason is anything that human finds important -- including the doctrine of the Trinity.

So we know that e.g. a human male is quite capable of taking the moral/social position that women, as fellow human beings, deserve respect and politeness. Accordingly he is capable of suppressing, concealing, or sublimating his sexual interest in women around him, because his moral imperative is more important to him. Or perhaps, to be less charitable, because keeping his job is more important to him. Whatever --a tomcat couldn't do it, but we can.

But are men really human?

Are men in fact "more like animals" than women? Ah, such a comfy, familiar old theory -- but so many counter-examples are readily available (historical and contemporary). The male half of the species doesn't have to behave like animals... but sometimes they choose to do so.

They choose to do so when they are unwilling to recognize any other higher social priority.

And often they choose to use the excuse that men are closer to the animal state, to duck their personal responsibility for anti-social (anti-human) behaviour. "I can't help myself" is second only to "she asked for it" when rapists justify their offences. "I can't help myself" really translates into "my responsibility as a human being to behave reasonably and not injure others was way less important to me than my acquisitive or appetitive impulse." We're talking choice here -- priorities -- decisions. We're conscious beings, not paramecia. As an aside... we could also argue that those behaviours in women which are cited as proving that women are "more human", more civilized, etc. are simply mammalian female behaviours directed towards nurturance and defence of young, education and cultural transmission, etc. All this would mean is that some female mammal behaviours seem to work better for living together in a state of civilization, which might not be so surprising. In some, but not all, primates you'll find that the basic social unit is a crowd of females raising their young semi-communally, while wandering males come and go. Or, we could argue that women have more at stake in preserving civilized conditions, because we're at a disadvantage when it comes to brute force.

You can go around and around and around this stuff for years, and lots of people have.

Why bother? Is it even relevant? I don't think that biological imperatives are a suitable ground for anyone, male or female, to stand on when defending their actions or attitudes. What is "natural" to our species bears no necessary relationship to what is "right" for us to do as members of a human society.

Sometimes women (including lesbian feminists) have leapt eagerly to adopt the position that women are more human, more civilized, less animal than men (c.f. Bestializing the Human Female and related humour and theory).

Despite the momentary glow of superiority to be gained by subscribing to this one, the downside is that it implicitly places responsibility for civilization more heavily on women than men (animals, after all, are not responsible in way that we expect humans to be).

It makes women implicitly responsible for controlling male behaviour, which (when you consider that men have most of the physical mass and strength, almost all the weapons, and way more than half the money) is ridiculous. Men are responsible for their own behaviour. They are not tomcats.

Anyway, whether men are "more like animals" than women seems to me a pointless discussion, a time-waster.

You can try to contend with an assertion like "R"'s by waving 300-page books around, but the argument will go on indefinitely (there's just as much text devoted to Tabula Rasa as there is to Sociobiology). Whether testosterone has a stronger debilitating effect on reasoning power or conscience than estrogen is really of no interest to me. What I do know, from my own behaviour and from observing others and reading history, is that as human beings, we (all of us!) are divorced from our biological imperatives to a degree uncommon in the rest of the animal world; and this means that none of us can hide behind our "animal nature" to justify our actions.


Well, time to bring out the devil's advocate. Suppose it's true...

Suppose we did buy the man - beast argument, suppose we were willing to believe that men really are intermittently out of their minds due to their raging male hormones...  

What would be the ethical and logical implications of the "werewolf theory" of male violence and sexual predation?

To argue that women should be put at men's disposal for sexual use because men have an animal need for sex is about as rational as saying that men should be fed to sharks because sharks have an animal need for food.

Well enough theoretical rambling.

Back to the fears that "men" will "go crazy" if he doesn't get sexual access to women now and then.

First, men deliberately conflate "sexual outlet" (physical release and pleasure) with "love" and "intimate touch".

If orgasm is what men require, then obviously a man can provide that for himself any old time (unless he's living with some fairly extreme physical disability).

Orgasm and love, as men (and "pro-sex" lesbians) are always pointing out, are not necessarily related.

If affectionate touching is what man hungers for, I'll grant that as a common primate need. All our primate cousins spend a whole lot of time grooming and patting and hugging.

But it's absolutely contradictory to seek affection or intimacy in a commercial transaction; the result can never be satisfactory. Primate touching behaviour occurs in a deep social context of kin group, age cohort, mate selection, etc.

Without that social context it's an empty ritual.

What do men require?

The answer to that is very complicated and elusive at best, but in a nutshell, men need to get laid. Period.

And as often and with as many partners as possible or needed. Using prostitutes, is not perhaps the way, but it is a temporary fix to what men need.

Do men need prostitution? Yes.