Boys & Sex Literary Elements

Non-Fiction

Modern-day America.

The book is narrated in first-person from Peggy Orenstein’s perspective.

Frank, Colloquial, Concerned, Solemn

The protagonist is adolescent and young males while the antagonist is toxic masculinity and rape culture.

Orenstein identifies the cultural forces that influence the mindset of young adolescent males on sex, romantic relationships, and sexuality. Toxic masculinity, pornography, and popular culture have fostered the emotional disconnect that boys exhibit in their conversations, sexual encounters, and relationships.

The book lacks an apparent climax.

The author opens by delving into the current climate in the United States following the sexual harassment claims against celebrities and public figures. This foreshadows the toxic masculinity that she addresses while interviewing young males on the topic of sex and pornography.

In the interviews the author conducts, the young men understate the adverse effects that certain cultural forces have had on them.

The book alludes to the current cultural issues around male-female interactions in real life and also as depicted by pop culture and on social media platforms. The author references the #MeToo movement to address the subject of rape culture, consent, and traditional masculinity.

“Mason, nineteen, met me in the lobby of his dorm at the Big Ten university where he was a sophomore, dressed in a thrift-store cardigan, gray sweatpants, thick-soled sneakers, and two different-colored argyle socks. I couldn’t tell what the length or color of his hair might be—it was completely covered, as were his eyebrows, by a neon-green stocking cap onto which he’d doodled stars and moons with a Sharpie, along with a favorite quote by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.”

“A second group felt that their porn use had no effect on them, many of them asserting, “I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” That, as it happens, is the instinctive response people give to any suggestion of media influence. None of us wants to think we’re so impressionable, though we’re quick to recognize that others are”

The book parallels the dynamics a young adolescent male has to cope with and those of their female counterparts regarding sexuality, intimacy, and societal pressures.

“Locker room talk”

The term is used as a metonymy for open and candid conversations had by members of peer groups particularly males.

“Jock culture (or what the young men I met were more likely to call “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military.”