If you’re a dude, hugging your best guy friend for more than a brief second — or better yet, asking him to hold you while you cry — would likely end with him blocking your number and losing your address. But Trevor Noah is looking forward to the day where society recognizes that the need for intimacy is a human one, and not based on biological sex or gender definition.
On Wednesday, The Daily Show host posted a “Between the Scenes” video to YouTube, which showed him discussing how the phrase the “right to sex” was trending recently, and the conversations it was sparking. But for Noah, the more important conversation — and one he hopes that we, as a society, will at some point address — is the difference between “sex” and “intimacy,” and how the two words are often confused as being interchangeable. As he explained:
Very seldom in society do we talk about how the expectation of sex was often set by a society controlled by men and women were just subject to it. And as that has changed, you would hope that now the dynamics would change. But it also makes it seem so one-dimensional; they go, ‘Men aren’t having the sex that they want to have.’ … Like, how much sex do they think they’re supposed to have? Let’s start there. And secondly: do they think they’re entitled to the sex? And third and most importantly for me — and I really feel like we don’t speak about this enough — is people don’t realize how often men are experiencing a lack of intimacy. And the only place that they can experience that intimacy is through sex.
We’ve created a society where men are so afraid to be vulnerable with each other; to be sensitive with each other; to care for each other; to love each other. You know even saying that, as a guy, you have to change… You can’t just say, ‘I love you,’ you have to say, ‘I love ya, dog.’
Noah says it’s one area where women have the advantage, and can be intimate and vulnerable with their girlfriends. “And I think we take for granted how much in society men who say ‘sex’ is the thing they’re not getting are actually struggling with a lack of companionship, of intimacy, of being in a space with a person where they’re sharing everything — from serotonin to endorphins to what humans need to feel. And I hope we can change that conversation just a little bit more.”
You can watch the full conversation above.
