Wanted: male sensuality. Last Seen: Mills & Boon book cover

Today smacking: The loss of the sensual male

I really hope that Justin Timberlake is, in fact, "bringing sexy back", as he claims, and not just teasing us in that velvety rumbling undertone of his. Fact is, there's a great big, vagina-shaped hole to fill in pop music, which is in dire need of some sexual healing from all the lithe-tongued, firm-handed men out there – and JT is a man alone in his mission to do it.

In my second year of university I took a class in writing contemporary to the country in which I studied. My lecturer in the subject was an author with a couple of published novels under his belt and so, I suppose, had some authority on the subject, or could at least warn us away from all the terrible pitfalls of the writing business, thus scaring us off forever and widening the overcrowded profession by a crack so as to forge a little more elbow room for himself (which all the writing lecturers seemed to do; fuckers). He once said something about male sexuality that to this day I can't forget.

Those of us with a twig-and-berry combo and those of us with frilly pink orchids are just altogether different on seemingly every level, and we know this. Thus, it is exceptionally difficult to get inside the mind of the so-called 'opposite' sex in order to write from that point of view. My lecturer – let's call him Philip Whatshisface, since I genuinely can't remember his surname for the life of me – pointed out to us a few of the aspects of the respective genders which we might just miss, in our own research, but which should be considered when writing a character.

One such observation that stuck with me was that we give all the rights to the label 'sexy' to women, and give no such rights to men. We let women be the sensual ones, and we expect little in the sensuality department from men. We portray affection and innate attractiveness and beauty as female traits, leaving most men out – as if it's their birthright to be beaten witless by the ugly stick. Naturally I sat there, my feminist brain catching fire as I mulled over all the ways in which The Patriarchy had brought this about, and worked myself up into a right tizzy in the all of three seconds it took Phil to finish his sentence. But my curiosity was piqued as he went on. It was detrimental, he said, to men more than it was to women. He said there was something of a void where our nation's male sexuality should be.

I was hooked at this point. He was right.

All these words he was bringing out: 'sensuality'; 'sexiness'; 'affection'; they all seemed so, well, female to me – and for the first time I was given pause to see it. To my eyes it was wrong. It was an injustice to our straight men and quite a few gay ones, too. Why should they be conditioned to think that a good sense of sensuality, and familiarity with one's own sexuality was forbidden territory? Why should they be deprived the wonderful feeling of knowing fully the innate sensuality of your own self; using your hands and tongue and teeth and feet and thighs and every part of your body to understand the body of someone else?

Suddenly it was clear to me, too, why sometimes it is so easy to spot a certain type of gay man. It has nothing to do with them trying to act like women, and has everything to do with embracing their raw sexuality, their inner sex kittens (lions?), their unabashed lust – in a way that has usually been reserved for women. There's a certain undeniable freedom we women feel in executing an easy hip swagger, a careful flick of the wrist, a sultry pout. And it seemed our gay men had caught on to it, knowing that they, too, could play. They didn't have to conform to the expectations a straight male has placed on him: to keep his arse puckered, his cards close to his chest, his upper lip as rigid as the cock he thinks is the only representation of his sexuality.

Where was our straight male sensuality, I wondered? We had lost it somewhere, and I, for one, had no idea where to find it. Until now. Justin Timberlake seems to have found it for me.

See, all it takes is one straight man with a falsetto voice and a frame that oozes sex to spontaneously moisten the panties of millions of girls worldwide. And the best part? To do it in the most misogynistic genre of all: R&B. Twenty years we've been listening to rappers waffle on about how many bitches and hos they be playing, and how fun it is to mistreat them (my personal favourite lyric is courtesy of Ludacris: "Move, bitch, get out the way / get out the way, bitch, get out the way." Mmm, eloquent.) and here we have a skinny whiteboy from the Mickey Mouse Club making our hearts all aflutter. How? Well, a cursory look at some of Justin Timberlake's latest lyrics turns up dozens of references to pleasing a woman, doing things how she wants them done, maintaining her desires and, um, using his tongue. A lot.

Halle-fucking-lujah. Finally there's a man out there not so frustrated by the vice grip that restrains his sexuality that he resorts to taking it out on women-in-general through ill-conceived lyrics and film clips consisting of pure tits and arse. Finally there's a man who knows how sexy it is if he can show confidence in exactly how flexible he can be in the sack. Finally there's a man alone who is not afraid to dance a trail of fire across the floor. Finally, this kind of man is popular. And by god, do I hope other men follow suit. The truth is, if they don't follow JT into to the den of awakening sensuality, they're really missing out. Because even if you didn't think you liked the man or his music before, when Justin Timberlake croons at women in his trademark creamy tone, “I'll let you whip me if I misbehave,” we kind of, uh, really want to.