Sexuality as a Competition

A second metaphor conceptualizes sexuality as a competition. Sexu­ality is compared with a baseball game in which the batter (i. e., the man) tries to hit a home run (i. e., obtain sexual intercourse). Scoring, a term often used by young men to describe a successful sexual encounter (i. e., one that resulted in sexual intercourse), also is an example of this meta­phor. Mutuality is irrelevant. Scoring and winning do not require the con­sent of the opponent. In addition, hunting metaphors are used to describe dating relationships. Hunting and scalp collecting, historic rites of passage in some cultures, are compared with dating. The assumption is that during adolescence and young adulthood, a man will demonstrate his manhood through sexual conquests and eventually settle down into a committed relationship (Bum, 1969). This analogy supports adversarial relationships between men and women and is not a healthy analogy for mutually con­sensual sexual experiences. Clearly, the concept of conquest is not com­patible with consent. In any competition, someone must win and someone must lose.