A sweet toddler’s brain is beginning to grasp language. He understands some words but is mostly learning through emotion.  He notices the sound of a bird, the beauty of the sunshine on a flower and the exciting sensation of its fuzzy leaf.  He gets an erection.  Suddenly, his mother is angry. His father shouts, sweeps him up and swats his butt. Stern scowling faces. Shrill voices.  He understands. He shouldn’t allow his body to do that. … He adapts by resolving to never again feel that much pleasure.

Early in life, every male in our culture encounters some form of this experience. And again. And again until his body is trained to dull the experience of pleasure … except for fleeting moments when he engages in self pleasure, often rushed and hidden.

Shame has successfully altered, if not annihilated, one of every man’s most important bodily functions. The function that may be key to the evolution of humanity: pleasure.

Even in the Land of the Free, his body is not allowed to function naturally.  Ever.

River’s Boner Theory: Boner shame is harmful. So harmful that it may end our species.

Facts: A man does not naturally control when he is erect any more than a woman controls when she bleeds.  Also erections are not synonymous with arousal, they are separate functions that sometimes occur simultaneously.

Boner shame has harmed us by:

• Institutionalizing shame

• Causing body armoring, tight muscles and muscular dysfunction or atrophy

• Killing natural life force energy

• Severely stunting creative potential before it can be expressed

• Stunting pleasure for all males, and therefore females as well

• Bottling up authentic sexual expression

• Repressing vital emotional expression

• Reducing self esteem

• Unnaturally adapting the development of the human body, mind and soul

• Killing hope for male sovereignty over his own body

• Dominating the man’s body non-consensually

• Creating deep, intergenerational accumulation of body shame and dysphoria

• AND creating a condition that maybe half of all men in the US identify with … (doomsday music) … “Erectile Dysfunction.” Which according to River’s Boner Theory is actually Cultural Dysfunction, as outlined here.

When we shame men for having boners we shred male sexuality. 

And then we berate men for the way they express themselves sexuality. 

Come on.  

We can do better than this.   

Our brothers deserve liberation just as much as our sisters.

It’s time to take a look at how we sexually abuse men.

If you follow the current conversation about evolution, and whether or not we will, you know that pleasure may turn out to be the key to human evolution. … If we allow pleasure to survive, that is.

Let’s start by unwinding these savage assaults on our brothers’ sexuality, masculinity, esteem, body-sovereignty and consent.

As our men wither away sexually, so do we all.