A young man whom I’ve mentored was in my office this week, and asked me a question based on what had come up in one of my old Men and Masculinity lectures. I’m paraphrasing, but here’s more or less what he said:

I appreciate what you often say about the importance of being a “safe older man.” You are, and that’s great. But one reason you’re safe is that you’re married. You aren’t single and looking. It seems like that makes it easier for you to be a full-fledged feminist male, because you can afford to have all of your relationships with women other than your wife be completely asexual. So don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not always that helpful as a feminist male role model because you can’t demonstrate how someone can be single, straight, looking for a girlfriend and be feminist. I don’t want to be seen as a creep, but I certainly don’t want to be seen as asexual either.

This goes back to some of the recent discussion around Clarisse Thorn’s piece at Alternet about demonizing men who are honest about their sexual desires.

It’s something I touched on in my write-up of my meeting with young men at Brown University last year. As I wrote then: “for men who long to be feminist allies, finding a way to affirm their own wanting (without an assumption that they are entitled to have those wants satisfied by women) is vital.”

So my student (who had read Clarisse’s controversial article as well as my post about the lads at Brown) was essentially asking me to explain the how of affirming male heterosexual desire while reconciling it with a commitment to gender justice and feminism. He wanted to move past the rhetoric that intimates that from a feminist standpoint, “the only good penis is a soft one.” But how can a man show sexual and romantic interest in a woman without being potentially creepy? That’s where my student — and many other well-intentioned young men – need help.

First off, being a straight male feminist ally is not code for “walking on eggshells” all the time. It does not demand that young men run about taking the emotional temperature of their female peers. There’s no better example of a false dichotomy than the suggestion that all men must be either painfully earnest nice guys or predatory, swaggering bad-boy assholes. The alternative to those unhappy models is one of compassionate confidence (or, if you prefer, confident compassion.)

What does compassionate confidence look like in interpersonal relationships? It starts with the recognition of the difference between one’s own right to want and one’s right to expect others to respond to those wants. In a culture where we raise women to be people-pleasers, generations of men have grown up assuming that their desires are women’s responsibility to solve. Whether it’s a husband who expects dinner to appear magically as soon as he’s hungry, or a boy who insists that his girlfriend owes him a blowjob because “she got him horny”, far too many of us are conditioned to believe that men’s desires are women’s problems to solve. So many men confuse wanting with the entitlement to have their wants met that it’s little wonder that a great many women are mistrustful of expressions of male desire.

A good guy knows that he has the right to want. His horniness and his fantasies are not sinful or wicked. But he’s very clear that his attraction to a woman (say a classmate with whom he strikes up a conversation) isn’t a compliment to her for which she is required to be grateful. He has the right to have a crush, he has the right to lust. He doesn’t have the right to have his wants reciprocated. He needs to do two things at once: affirm the essential goodness of his own desire, and affirm that the woman he’s attracted to has every right not to share his interest.

As I’ve written before, one of the greatest benefits of feminism to men is a greater authenticity and honesty in heterosexual relationships. Women who don’t feel pressured or coerced or “guilted” into a “yes” are going to be much more comfortable saying “no.” And a woman who feels safe to say “no” to the men to whom she is closest will also be someone who will be better equipped to speak an enthusiastic, honest “yes!” when she’s presented with someone she actually wants.

We live in a culture where women have good reason to fear the consequences of rejecting men. Making it clear that one doesn’t expect one’s wants to be met by others is a key part of putting other folks at ease. Dealing with rejection without sulking or shaming the one who has rejected you sends a signal about your safety and your essential decency. (For a marvelous example of why women have good reason to fear the consequences of rejecting men, see the opening scene of the hit movie “The Social Network”, in which it seems as if the very inspiration for the creation of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s toxic rage at being rejected by a woman he’s already treated very shabbily.)

Because many women have little experience with men who take rejection easily and with equanimity, it’s little wonder that some women’s fear of male rage turns into a fear of male desire itself. “If he wants me, then I have to face the problem of rejecting him — and if I reject him, he may do something really dangerous or humiliating. Therefore, it would be better if he didn’t want me at all.” But the problem isn’t the wanting: it’s both the vulgar and crude ways in which some men make that wanting known, and more importantly, the outraged indignation so many men express when they are in fact rejected.

Learning to articulate one’s wants needs to go hand in hand with the graceful acceptance of the rejection that occasionally follows; that is the stuff of which “confident compassion” is made. And in the end, women’s acceptance of the reality (and goodness) of men’s desires is contingent on men’s acceptance of women’s (absolute and never forfeited) right to reject them.