Does penetration = presumption of power/control?

Hang on I didn't assert that what you like is fixed, but it either feels good or it doesn't. You can fake your response but not the feeling. I'm sure lots of girls have pretended that PIV has brought them to climax.

I totally disagree that people just know what they want with sex.

Sexuality grows and matures through the years, the experiences that you have shape your desires, and women's bodies change as well. My sexual response is different (not better or worse, just different) since having my children. So our sex life has altered to accomodate what suits me now.

We try things and find we like them or don't, we try things when we are young and don't like them and then later we try again and like them.

And how can we possibly know all of the exact scenarios that will get us going? I am sure that many people watching telly or reading a book (erotic or otherwise) or even watching porn will encounter a scenario that they have never thought of before and come over all unnecessary. Subsequently that scenario might be incorporated into their fantasies and sex life.

So I totally reject the idea that people somehow just "know what they want" especially when they are very young, and most especially if they are in relationships where they do not feel able to communicate with their sexual partner.

I'm saying that most one night stands and bfs according to my friends were rubbish in bed and their life partners were refreshingly good, hence they stuck around. it may be a bit chicken and egg. I'm not cross either.

Drops the D bomb

"most men are pretty shit in bed"

Probably not from their pov.

PlentyofPubGardens I see the thread has really moved on, but I wanted to respond. I'm not that far into the book yet so I don't know if she tackles why this stopped being the case. However, it was believed that both men and women had 'seed' and that both types were needed for conception. So I wonder if the female 'seed' was actually the result of female arousal as the moisture was tangible. Thus, if it wasn't there, the seed wasn't there and so conception could not take place.

Fraser does mention the microscope and the discovery that women had eggs and not seed. I wonder if this had something to do with it. If the slippery female 'seed' wasn't necessary for conception, then it didn't matter whether the woman was aroused or not.

I'm being tongue in cheek.....and it has become very much part of porn culture, straight man porn culture.

"Let's face it even lesbian sex is just for men!"

I think you'll find that is not correct

Let's face it even lesbian sex is just for men! Hence lipstick lesbians. I don't go along with PIV being a power conflict at all, but it can be when part of a unequal relationship. Depends whether you think you're taking or accepting cock.

SAF....I think I've always taken over, it was always like a performance almost it's just that most men, DH aside, are pretty shit in bed.

Just or whatever your current name is you said women on this thread that felt the need to point out that they like PIV were not equal. And I'm being rude?

Perhaps women should be empowered more to ask for what they like....I've never had a problem and I find it hard that adults don't ask jeez some don't even speak about sex. Women, girls aren't free to masturbate or certainly not expected.....afterall we don't have porn therefore aren't sexual in our own right.

no posie..i dont think anyone is a bit thick on here.
however i do think you are very rude.
im obviously looking at it from a diffrent angle...debate and discussion an all that!

sparky

Posie I disagree. I can tell my ex has shaped my sexuality. I was with him for a significant time when I was just starting to explore sex. I am still, decades on, trying to unpick the influence that had on me.

And taking a wider view, I can't believe that the increase in anal sex is just because a lot of women, at the same time, decided they all liked it, with no external influence, and the rise in porn was a mere coincidence. As one example.

Victor - for me that's a key point. The first time I came across PIV critique, I thought wtf, this isn't going to fit in my way of seeing the world. Then as I read I thought actually this makes sense. Scary that. And it is the idea that if we accept that there are structures in place that lead to inequality in every other aspect of life, how the heck would sex transcend this. That makes no sense. Just like with anything else, it doesn't mean to be a feminist thou shalt not engage in PIV, as we're all in structures we didn't make. But the idea that sexual relationships could be the one thing that transcends everything we talk about in every social interaction, is not the most valid sounding explanation.

I don't think anyone who has said that they like PIV on this thread are doing it to feel more like a woman, to say they are is saying they don't know their own sexual preferences. Sexuality, aside from the reppressed, is one area where most humans know what they like with or without conditioning.

You must think some of us are a bit thick, sparky.

Tilly Interesting point re: equal/unequal. I tend to flick between a few ways of looking at it. Most common: I have an equal relationship because the inequalities in risk are balanced out and managed by wealth and the availability of contraception (which is a dodgy thing to rest my equality on - chemical contraception is not a good thing for quite a lot of women, including me). If the shit hit the fan, however, it's me who bears the brunt of the fallout.

Alternatively: it's not equal, and can never be equal because of the vast discrepancies in power held by women as a group versus men as a group, and I'm kidding myself by thinking that I as an individual can escape this. This is the uncomfortable option that I tried to resolve in the 'separatist femimism' thread. I read Sheila Jeffreys talking about how consent is never truly consent because of these huge power imbalances and it really chimed in with me. I feel like my relationship is equal, in bed and out - but am we as a little unit of two really capable of transcending these huge social and economic imbalances? The jury is out on that one! Perhaps we are now - but if children, the result of PIV sex, come into the equation, I suspect the illusion of easy equality will slip pretty damn quickly without a LOT of effort on both our parts...

Theposieparker[sun 22.02]

[eh?so if on a topic of piv..............................]

what im trying to say is..............in this patriarchic society men are favoured more than women.some women internilise this and piv then is power[obviously on the mans part]....eg..are afraid to admit that they dont like piv as they are frightened that they would be seen as "less of a woman"!
or a woman with"something wrong with her"![hetrosexuel women]
also..if you think of whats said about lesbian women[paticcally butch lesbian women]....eg"she wants to be a man as she wears a strap on]..."shes pretending to be a man" ect ect.....its down to a penis again!
along with all this......theres something not quite good enough about her...depraved....not as good as other women...ect ect.
men think shes in competition with them.[sometimes]
so...yep-in some cases i think it is piv=power on mens part.

sparky