I used to think that the reason men seem to enjoy telling what we once called "dirty jokes" (the slightly guilt ridden term for jokes with a heavy sexual content) was because, at heart, we are all dirty old men.
However, as I mature along life's journey, I have come to understand that telling "dirty jokes" was about the only way most of us ever talked about our sexuality. And, when you think of it, that's rather amazing and actually quite sad.
The problem with dirty jokes is that some of them go beyond the bounds of being truly humorous to being coarse and disrespectful. That's not a healthy outlet for anyone for anything. And the other problem is that they are grounded in unreality--unnatural or impossible or superhuman actions. So while these jokes provide a brief permit to verbally acknowledge our interest in sex and our sexual capacity, these jokes are not rooted in honesty or reality and so there is no emotional value to telling them or listening to them. Comic relief is no substitute, long term, for necessary emotional relief that comes from honest self disclosure.
But--how to do this? Our women friends, of course, have never had as much of a problem as men seem to have had. Women get-together and discuss the core happenings of their lives "early and often." This includes sharing their experience of human sexuality--talking about sex.
For me, the opportunity came as an unexpected "byproduct" of a series of heart to heart talks I had one evening a week for the past several years with one of my best men friends. Our common ground was having grown up with mothers who were addicted to alcohol or prescription mood altering drugs. >From exploring those off-center experiences and how our personalities and behaviors changed as a result of them, we began discussing our relationships with "the women we'd loved" starting with high school sweethearts and going on from there. Eventually, we started to discuss moments of sexual awareness that we had, at the time, tried desperately to suppress (being attracted to co-workers, female bosses, married women, and just plain attractive women who came along at a time when we thought our minds should be on other matters).
It is incredible how much of this kind of suppression had gone on over the course of, say, 20 years. It must be remembered that while it is not usually appropriate to allow sexual thoughts to surface (i.e., verablize them) at many of these moments, it IS important to acknowledge them in a safe or appropriate environment. Standing in a circle with several other men or boys and telling "dirty jokes" does not meet this need. Yet that is what many of us experienced for far too long a time.
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