> Still, we have these consistent patterns and its entirely
> reasonable to understand some portion of our behavior as mediated
> by our biology.
The total number of human beings that have ever lived is estimated to be about 100 billion. If you find a consistent pattern that applies to all or most of them, you might justifiably suspect a biological foundation for it. But if you find a consistent pattern among, say, 1% of them but not in others, a more plausible way of going about understanding the pattern in question is that it's a peculiar culture that the 1% have developed among themselves, owing to a peculiar evolution of production and reproduction of social lives among them.
The idea that having their bodies desired, wanting to make them desirable, ornamenting them for display, etc. is "not a big part of sexuality for most men" is hardly a consistent pattern that applies to all human beings across time and cultures. If anything, among many species of animals, males tend to ornament themselves more than females, for sexual selection depends on females. In human history, too, the idea that men's job is looking and desiring, not being looked at and desired, is a bourgeois Western invention, exemplified by the development of monotonous male business uniforms -- most prominently three-piece suits -- a peculiar institution that has since spread wider and wider among men of all cultures due to the power of the Western cultural hegemony backed by its material wealth. Before that, clothes were determined by social classes as well as genders, and there was no pattern that made men's clothes more drab and boring than women's in the same class. Among the so- called primitive tribes today, physical ornamentation is as common among men as women. You look at literature across time and cultures, and you notice that till recently there was no taboo ("what, are you gay?") against men taking note of and effusively complimenting other men's beauty and desirability. In this respect modern Western men are poorer than their ancestors.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>