“Men find it difficult to express themselves seriously about sexuality”

• TMC broadcasts this Wednesday at 9:10 p.m. the documentary by Maïa Mazaurette

  Désir: What men want

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• “Finding men who want to talk about desire is fine.

  But the real question is: are they able to talk about it simply?

  To our surprise, it was more complicated, ”advances the “sexpert” of

  Daily

  at

  20 Minutes

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• "Public discourse tells us that when you're over 50, you're burned out in terms of sex, but I've been able to see that this is precisely the age when you can reinvent yourself with much more freedom", she says.

Sex maniacs, men?

Preconceived ideas about male sexuality have a hard skin that Maïa Mazaurette does not caress in the direction of the hair.

For her documentary

, broadcast this Wednesday at 9:10 p.m. on TMC, the columnist and "sexpert" of

life conducted the investigation.

She collected the testimonies of the first interested parties, went to a workshop dedicated to the exploration of prostate pleasure, invited herself into the locker room of a rugby team... What she found there belies many clichés and prejudices.

In March, you devoted a documentary to feminine desire.

Talking about male desire was a logical sequence?

She was eagerly awaited, even if it hadn't occurred to me.

The first thing people who watched the first documentary told me was that they absolutely wanted to have the same thing for men.

I received hundreds of messages on Twitter and Instagram the night of the broadcast from viewers telling me that seeing famous or anonymous women put words to desire allowed them to take stock of how they felt and that they would like men to be able to benefit in turn from this kind of testimony.

You said you had no trouble finding women willing to testify about their sexuality.

Was it that easy to convince men to do the same?

Finding men who want to talk about desire is fine.

But the real question is: are they able to talk about it simply?

To our surprise, it was more complicated.

For the documentary with the women, the interviews lasted one hour.

For the one with the men, it took us an hour and a half each time.

It needed more time for them to let go.

Women have a culture of sharing and witnessing around sexuality, whereas, among men, it is not a matter of modesty but of lack of practice when it comes to expressing oneself seriously about sexuality.

Many interviewees had strategies to avoid answering questions.

That's to say ?

For example, some used humor.

We had guys who did sketches for us, that's a defense mechanism.

We had men who pretended to be experts.

For example, if I asked "What do you watch as pornography?"

», I was told « Men, in general, watch this or that type of pornography… » However, the question was about the real and personal feelings.

I saw that men weren't necessarily comfortable talking about their desires.

It's paradoxical because it is often said that desire is the territory of men, that they are very comfortable with it.

There are many taboos...

There are plenty of taboos related to not sticking with an ideal of virility in sexuality.

Being super efficient, wanting all the time, not having any flaws… As soon as you get out of that, it becomes complicated.

Prostatic desire, we know that in fact it concerns about a quarter of men who have already tried it.

We had great difficulty, however, in finding the witnesses because it does not correspond to this ideal of triumphant virility where the man is necessarily active.

We also saw this on the issue of sexual violence, when asked if they had ever forced themselves to have sex, many said yes.

And that doesn't correspond either to the kind of contract that men sign with virility.

We can say that we are five years after #metoo, that men have started to deconstruct themselves,

The person in charge of the workshop dedicated to prostate pleasure explains that the vast majority of those registered are heterosexual men.

Aren't the latter in the process of making their sexual "revolution"?

The man who agreed to live this experience [the workshop on prostatic pleasure] with us is young but the others participating in the course were mostly over 60 years old.

I discussed it with them.

The moment when men accept to challenge their desire and their sexuality occurs when they have reached the limit of what they could do with very restrictive standards for them (having desire all the time, never having erectile failure , etc...).

When andropause rings the doorbell, comes the urge to say to myself: "I'm going to rely a little less on my penis and rediscover sensuality."

So the sexual revolution of men from using their whole body - testicles, chest, prostate, etc.

- is not worn by young people.

I find it quite interesting and exciting.

That said, the persistence of very strong gender norms that weigh on men, but we can see that there is a way out.

Public discourse tells us that when you're over 50, you're burned out in terms of sex, but I've been able to see that this is precisely the age when you can reinvent yourself with much more freedom.

Do you already have an idea for the subject of your next documentary?

I have 180!

There are so many topics.

There, we talked about desire, now I would like to talk about pleasure.

We must not leave aside people who have a more complicated relationship with sexuality, those who are not interested in sex.

I would also like to do something about technology, sex toys.

I'm passionate, I want to make hours and hours of documentaries.

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