Table 2: Qualitative code and corresponding conclusions

Dimensions/Codes

Results

Characteristics of sexual partners

  • Importance of partners not having had too many sexual partners; for a woman having multiple partners carries a much different meaning than for men.
  • Important for their sexual partners to carry a quality of their loved one, like mother or grandmother or other female caregiver. 
  • Intelligence was also an important quality, along with physical attributes.

Modes of Sexual Expression

  • Respondents reported acting respectfully towards women while having sex.
  • It is important to listen to a woman and be attentive to what her concerns are.
  • Oral, vaginal and spontaneous sex are ways respondents express themselves sexually.

Sexual activities

  • Higher numbers of sexual partners were more important when the respondents were younger.
  • Oral and vaginal sex was most frequently reported; very low incidence of anal sex. Oral sex was reported most frequently as both giving and receiving.
  • Importance of foreplay reported.
  • Oral sex depended on how many men the woman has been with.
  • Condoms and safe sex were very important to the respondents.
  • “When I was in high school, I think I had four sex partners.  But now I’m at 30.  And that’s when I came to college.”
  • “I think a lot of men are having sex because it's not really a negative aspect of having sex or having a lot of people.  As long as you don't have any diseases, you're pretty cool.  

Sexual needs

  • Ability to communicate with women is very important.
  • The idea that men have sex because it just feels good, makes them feel manly, makes them feel in control.
  • Sex can be a good stress reliever.
  • “I have a drive if I just see the girl come up to me and she has no clothes or she's revealing so much that it should drive an old man.  Okay?  But more or less, TV drives me, the Internet drives me, just seeing stuff like that on TV and the computer and all that stuff makes you just want to think about it, like yeah I got to go,  I want to have some sex.”

Sexual orientation/identity

  • All respondents were heterosexual with only two (2) ever mentioning another man who they’ve been friends with or ever having had any homosexual thoughts.
  • Development of sexual identity came from peers, parents, and other family members.
  • Important to sexual identity to feel like a man who is dominant.
  • Sexual identity = preferences, likes/dislikes, habits.
  • “All right.  So if you have a gay person, and then other people are looking at him as being gay, so if you have a gay person next to a straight person, the gay person is the negative person out of the group.  So nobody wants to be looked at as being negative.  And growing up, that's all you hear about, is "Oh, he's gay.  Oh, he's gay."  It's a bad thing to be associated with.  So I wouldn't want to associate myself with that.”

Sexual values

  • Adopted from influential family members or caregivers.
  • Important to have a reputation of being good sexually.
  • With age, sexual values change and it’s less about the numbers or reputation.
  • Most respondents wanted to keep a private sexual profile.
  • Sex is crucial to making or breaking relationships.
  • “Sex on its own is a physical act, and as a physical act, it’s okay for that physical act to go on between two people regardless of whether there are any emotions at all.  And with my experiences, I was able to take the emotion out of sex, so that way I didn't equate love and sex.”
  • “…., that’s something that I feel I should save for somebody I’m involved with for real, for real.  You know, most of these girls, you’re not really involved with like that.”
  • “It’s going to happen. A lot of dudes, it makes them feel that they’re more of a man to go out and discuss how many girls they have relations with.  Some dudes even have competitions with their teams, with their friends.”
  • “Well, I would want my reputation to be under wraps because I wouldn’t want everybody in my business, and knowing what I do. That should be only between me and the person that I’m with.”