Does being a RadFem mean that you can't like anything to do with males and PIV?

Feeling patronised by it is a personal response.

I disagree with the article, but I didn't feel patronised. We will all have our individual responses to it.

I'm not really interested in how it makes me feel, I'm interested in what it makes me think. The article has generated some interesting discussion here, even though most people have broadly not agree with the substance of the article.

IMO the emotional and physical risk associated with PIV sex makes me closer to my partner. I don't think it is traumatic bonding though. I think it is bloody nice bonding. Always feels good to me. Having said that other types of sex feel great too but I always feels slightly frustrated if it dosn't end with a good old fashioned PIV shag.

Ah, so the point that it could be patronising is not worth debating in your view? Or the idea that not every woman feels the same for the same reasons? Why is that not adding to the debate?

It's not about whether I personally like a certain sexual practice or not and therefore disagree. But about getting away from the idea that every woman feels the same as part of a homogenous faceless group without any individuality.

You may argue that it's an oversimplification to make a wider point, but even if it's just oversimplification it's getting too far.

I've got no problem with accepting that some women don't like PIV, or some women have all the fears described. I also think that if someone doesn't like it, there's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is to argue that it is the same for every woman from every social background in every context.

But you're not adding anything to it.

You've made it clear that you like PIV sex and therefore you disagree.

Your point has been noted.

There's nothing really more to elaborate on that, is there?

Finding it patronising, is taking polemic a little personally IMO.

I find the idea that "it doesn't feel good" even more patronising than the idea that "it shouldn't feel good". But then English isn't my first language, so I might get the nuances wrong

Also, I don't see why disagreeing with the ideas on PIV in the originally linked post means not engaging with the debate.

You used the word "shouldn't"

That has a different meaning to the word "is".

I can't help it if you don't get linguistic nuances and their implications. I read your post as being similar to the OP's in that you felt the post was saying how you should feel.

Feminist polemic isn't about telling other women what they should feel. It's laying down an idea as a fact so that we can all argue about it and decide how far we agree/ disagree/ what else is related/ what comes out of it.

If you're not interested in participating in the debate because you like PIV and you can't see anything else interesting to discuss, no-one is forcing you to discuss it. Those who are, will carry on shooting the breeze about it as long as they are still interested.

So it's not saying that, but is saying that? Sorry, can't follow your line of argument at all here. Can you elaborate?

It's not saying that at all WW.

It's saying, in a very challenging way, that this is how things are. The writer is throwing out an argument and she knows it will be discussed.

Fresh perspective? I for one like doing it, because it feels good. That "fresh perspective" is saying that it shouldn't feel good and it's only coercion and lack of information that makes me think it feels good.. That's not a fresh perspective but just a very negative and sad outlook on life and relationships.

And a decrease in pregnancies.

Good point SS. If we look at higher primates, then PIV tends to result in a pregnancy about once every 5 years. The mother does not resume oestrus until her baby is weaned at about 4-5 years. Also interesting is that although there is a lot of social fluidity in chimp groups, mothers with children tend to bond together as a group.

That's all very different from modern society isn't it, though anthropological evidence shows that the mother/child grouping is quite common in pre-industrial societies. It seems to have a lot of benefits (arguably one being no pressure to engage in PIV ). Thanks to contraception, PIV is about much much more than procreation obviously, but I sometimes wonder if contraception has been a double-edged sword in terms of women's ownership over their sexuality. I also think it would be interesting to see what would happen if contraception become 100% responsibility of men, with the back-up that they would, without fail, end up paying child maintenance to its full extent. I think a side-effect would be a plummeting in STIs and a decrease in sexual assaults.

I don't think it's patronising at all.

It's great that people look at ordinary things from a fresh perspective. Even if you don't agree, a new challenging viewpoint is a Good Thing.

PIV predates man and woman, so for me the question is how were our notions of wo/manhood formed by the act/dynamics of PIV.

I find this blogpost fantastically patronising towards women who enjoy penetrative sex. Yeah, I know, there's plenty of great sex to be had without penetration, but that doesn't mean that it can't be really really enjoyable to do it either.

The blog actually reads like it's a satire, drawing an extremist point of view to ridicule feminism. Certainly it's not a brand of feminism I could identify with.

You know I see how that article is relevant in certain situations and to those women affected by it its so bloody inhumane BUT for example in my circumstances PIV sex belongs to me. I feel that I am the active (or at least equally active) participant, I don't think of penetration as being 'done to me' but of enveloping the penis and recieveing joy and intimacy from it. I do think the blogger has a point but it doesn't apply universally. I'm pregnant at the minute and have actively tried to become pregnant so for me PIV sex is a beautiful thing. I do realise my position is privileged (even though it SHOULD be the standard norm)

The lack of support for motherhood in our society, facilitates abusive behaviour by men.

Yep, same for me sunshine.

At the time I got pregnant, XP didn't have his own bank account (only building society) and couldn't get one as he didn't have a regular monthly income. So I suggested that I convert my bank account to a joint one and once he had a joint bank account with me, he could get his own one with the same bank (they would automatically give you a joint and/ or individual account at that time).

So we did this. Almost literally the first thing he did, was take a bank loan out on that joint account so I was legally liable for it, without telling me and then he hid the bank statements so that I wouldn't know about it (this was just before internet banking had become the norm).

It was something that if he had done before I was pregnant, I would have recognised as being proof that he could not function as a real partner and I would have thrown him out. By the time I found out about it, I was about 6 months pregnant and felt I couldn't go through my first pregnancy and experience of motherhood, alone.

The thing is, he knew that the odds of me throwing him out at the most vulnerable time of my life, were vanishingly small, which is why he did it. He would never have done it prior to my pregnancy unless he actually wanted the relationship to end at that point.

Basil - really thought-provoking link you've come up with there about DV. Certainly that was the case in my relationship. Prior to becoming pregnant, I guess you could argue that I was the one with the power in the relationship (primary earner, independent means, own friends and social life, etc). My abuse started when I was pregnant, starting with emotional/psychological abuse and culminating in physical abuse at the point where I'd told him I'd had enough of the former and was leaving him. Looking back on that period - the whole of which lasted about 10 months - it was the most vulnerable I've ever felt in my life and I certainly tolerated behaviour from him that would have seen me leaving had I not been pregnant/a new mother.

TFW - as you'll have seen from my other posts, I don't entirely agree with her myself. But surely part of radical feminism is exploring seriously, er, radical positions like these, and I think that's an enormously valuable thing to do and brings many insights even you don't sign up to the whole argument.

I suppose I also get slightly weary of feminists saying 'well, that's nonsense because I'm in a lovely relationship with a lovely man so there' (I'm not saying this is what you said but there is an undercurrent like this in some posts on here). The point of radical feminism is to analyse the relationship between the sexes systematically, yes? So it is generally more helpful to look at the overall dynamics rather than get hung up on individual examples.

I found that second point particularly interesting partly because of my own experience and partly because of the very stark figures about domestic violence - 75% of actual physical violence starts, when a woman is pregnant or within a year of her giving birth.

That tells the story of men who know at a gut level, that the power balance in the relationship has changed because of the pregnancy and child. Is it because the woman is more bonded to him so will allow him to get away with stuff she wouldn't have had pre-pregnancy, because she is more emotionally dependent on him? And if so, is that primarily because she is having/ has had a child with him, or is it because having had that child, she is more dependent on his goodwill, in a society which makes it extremely difficult for women to function fully in that society, once they are mothers?

It is difficult to disentangle how much of that emotional dependence comes from the simple biological fact of creating a child together and how much comes from the deep down knowledge that having a child in a misogynist society, represents a real loss of power for a woman.

Why did it piss you off and why did you get that feeling?

I'm a heterosexual, I like PIV sex and I don't know if I'm a radfem, I probably am in that I don't believe that the current way we organise society can ever delivery women's liberation from systematic oppression and we have to go back to the drawing board with regards to reorganising society, so I prob do count as a radical feminist, but I didn't feel even vaguely as if this blog was an attck on me "letting the side down". I just felt that the blogger was raising some interesting points more with regard to rape than with sex tbh and that I broadly disagree with the overall thrust of the post. I don't think she's trying to make me feel bad though.

I also thought the second link was slightly more interesting, in that it talked about the fact that because she could become pregnant, she felt more needy of her Nigel. That's a really interesting conundrum in that what's worth examining there for me,a) do women feel that they are more bonded to men naturally, inherently, when they are having regular PIV sex with them, because as someone else mentioned, they might need them to help raise any potential child, or does the fact that patriarchy ensures that pregnancy and childbirth means a loss of power for women (completely the opposite of what it would mean in a sane society), mean that they need the man they're with more if they become pregnant?

Tei equally PIV does not mean missionary position. Many couples prefer positions which do not involve being face to face!

Nigel Duncan Gingercat, RIP 10 October 1984.

No, actually I don't think he was neutered, but I think he was in a committed relationship with the next door neighbour's black and white tom.

I don't agree that oral sex is more intimate than PIV, because it's sex where you can't see your partner's face. But there are different kinds of "intimate".

And that lovely Nigel--did he have all his parts?

I do agree that PIV carries a greater risk for women than men. A recent lover wanted to fuck me without a condom and I point blank refused as I wasn't on a pill. He preferred it without; as do I. We then had the best oral sex ever; much better than PIV and more intimate. I think I converted him! TMI sorry!

However, I do enjoy PIV sex despite the risks and don't think I am less of a feminist for wanting it. I do think that as women we get more bonded and potentially have more to loose by having PIV sex however I am more likely to be totally gaga over someone for giving me great oral. Unfortunately biology has dealt us women an unfair blow as far as the sex fallout is concerned rather than a social construct such as patriarchy I think.