Let's talk some non-trans feminism - women and sex

On a practical level, my main concern is how do I steer DS through adolescence with the clear moral framework that most of what's on porn hub is misogynistic abuse and not a good model for a happy, mutually enjoyable sex life?
Sorry to resurrect an old thread - you have to tell him that sex is not like porn. It'll embarrass him and he'll go to his friends to ask if it's true but it's about the only thing you can do.
I've had conversations with adult men (the long term single type) to explain sex is not like porn. Those who aren't virgins assume they're missing out, and there is a girl out there who will do everything he's seen online and more. Those who are virgins assume all sex is like that.
If he's old enough and not phased by the idea of gore, tell him the girls in the valley who shoot porn all the time literally have their anuses surgically repaired on a monthly basis. I'm still trying to find the article I read that in, it was a doctor in the area. Strangely it seems to have been buried deep in the internet...

Surely this is a very Pornified version of the woman being on top? I don't think women are "slamming their full body weight" on to their partner's penis just because they are on top? Or am I very behind the times?!

I remember it being accepted knowledge that sex could cause cystitis. Usually of the man-on-top, "vigorous" variety, or if your partner wasn't as clean as he could be.

Or if your urethra is pretty much in your vaginal vestibule. I was startled to see photos of other women (educational, not porny) whose urethras were at least a centimetre further forwards than mine.

I remember it being accepted knowledge that sex could cause cystitis. Usually of the man-on-top, "vigorous" variety, or if your partner wasn't as clean as he could be.

I also remember "rough sex" being discussed as a risk factor for cervical cancer. Has this been debunked, or is it just not talked about any more? So much of sex education has been hijacked by advocacy groups, as well as religious influences.

I would think most women have had a sex related injury or illness, surely? It's ok for men to take a small risk, too.

You know, ive never worked out how to think of England.

Think of the Brexit negotiations maybe?
I'm surprised there are men who don't like women on top, it's a pretty basic position, and given my admittedly limited personal experience, has always been popular.
I have heard of a few cases of damaged penises where the woman was on top.
Apparently leads to a lot of blood everywhere...

'Our hypothesis is that when woman is on top she usually controls the movement with her entire body weight landing on the erect penis, not being able to interrupt it when the penis suffers a wrong way penetration, because the harm is usually minor in woman with no pain but major in the penis,'

I spent a month recovering from post-coital cystitis once: two courses of different antibiotics because the first course failed and two corresponding courses of thrush treatment to treat the antibiotic-induced thrush. He was on top.

I get post-coital cystitis a lot, to the point that I can't have sex after about 6pm because I need to drink and pee several times before I sleep, I can't have sex within three days of last having sex because I need to allow abraded tissue to recover between sessions, and I have nitrofurantoin-resistant bacteria from all the antibiotics I've taken for cysitis. If the bacteria become trimethoprim-resistant, I will have to stop having sex, which realistically means "no more boyfriends" because what man will want a sexless relationship? (I don't want a sexless relationship either but I need working kidneys.) This is why I get so enraged when Greer downplays the seriousness of rape (especially rape in a relationship): a man can make me physically ill for a month by deciding that he doesn't want to wait until morning, it's not physically harmless.

"Usually minor in women" my arse. Men do not understand and do not WANT to understand just how dangerous sex is for us.

My Dd (21) said to me recently that one of the best and most empowering things I told her was 'it's your body, if you don't know what you like and want, how will you ever know. There's nothing wrong with knowing, it's your body'

We are pretty open and I hated the thought of sexual need being informed only by other partners.

Turph I was lucky enough to become sexually active back in hte mid 80s before internet porn, so "two people mutually going on a voyage of discovery together" was very much my experience. (We were crap at it to start with, but crap together if that makes sense).

Though other posters are right- toxic attitudes round sex and women's sexuality predate internet porn by a long way. And there's always been this central inconsistency about it all - women's sexuality is simultaneously portrayed as voracious and threatening and at the same time passive. Often the way misogyny squares the circle is via the madonna/whore dichotomy. Nice women don't want to and lie back and passively think of England, naughty women are sexually voracious, will thus cuckold you (and possibly snap your dick off by being too enthusiastic). Oh, and keep your madonnas on a tight leash, because inside every one of them is a whore struggling to get out, so you'd better keep them in ignorance (abstinence only sex ed) or at its most extreme, practice FGM to keep them "pure".

I remember back in my teens reading Bocaccio's Decameron and liking the "way hey, women like sex too" attitude. Then I read Margueritte of Navarre's riposte, the Heptameron, which is very, very much darker in tone - reflecting I think the reality that in a world without contraception or adequate treatment for STDs, sex had very real, and potentially devastating/life-threatening consequences for women. If anyone out there knows of any books examining Medieval attitudes to women's sexuality which include the few women's voices (like Margueritte's) that we have, I'd be fascinated to read it.

On a practical level, my main concern is how do I steer DS through adolescence with the clear moral framework that most of what's on porn hub is misogynistic abuse and not a good model for a happy, mutually enjoyable sex life?

Interesting discussion.

Question 1. How do we move away from the idea that sex is something that is done to women, that we are passive, and always available because of that passivity?

Question 2, (which is based on the premise that porn is responsible for the change in attitudes since the 1980s/1990s when women seemed to be winning the fight to be seen as less passive partners). Where does porn go from here? Now that mainstream porn involves beating, raping, torture, as mainstream, other than showing women being killed, where can it go next? I'm not a porn expert but had a quick look at Pornhub when it was mentioned in a feminist thread a while ago, and all of the videos featuring assertive women were BDSM videos.

If I attempted to think of Her Majesty during sex I might have to think of Phillip too, or god forbid Charles, and then I'd never have sex again. Is this meant to work as a means of contraception?

Is there a place then, for keeping sex between loving committed couples, rather than as a leisure activity?

You know, ive never worked out how to think of England

Me neither and in my head it translates to "Think of the queen" then it all gets a bit weird...

Reading this with something like detached interest, as a 60 year old, post menopausal woman who has difficulty remembering what feeling like it was like...

You know, ive never worked out how to think of England. Is it to think about the amazing geography we have in our tiny country? Same as no one has ever told me how to suck an egg, even though apparently its easy (realises may be derailing thread, sneaks out the door).

Do people in the real world really think this or is it made up click bait on the part of Grazia?

Does that even need an answer?

I'm posting on the app, not sure how the gin got in that post...

Turph, those are some interesting thoughts. I came from a background of sexual abuse, and very many years of no heterosexual orientation at all, tons of partners and some pretty messed up understandings of sexuality. My DP was a virgin before we married and is emphatically not a porn user. He went to a talk when he was younger that reiterated that every woman in porn is someone's daughter and it made a very big impression on him.

I worked very hard to leave my baggage behind, and he carried none in with him, so I've never had to deal with anything like a pornified power struggle with him - quite simply, I'm not a notch on the bedpost, and there is nothing to 'compare me against'.

It's given us an interesting perspective in parenting girls, as I think we are sex positive in the way you really should be - sex is great, fun, should be respectful and loving at its base, and that female pleasure is every bit as important as male pleasure. My eldest likes to show pictures of the internal reach of the clitoris to her classmates as an illustration that she believes God is totally pro women.

But there are issues around certain young men who have been around them and it's very clear how widely porn has reached, and I do worry that they are in a world where everything is distorted beyond all recognition by the genuinely dehumanising effects of a porn culture.

Do you think porn and the commodification of sex reinforces sexual roles? As in, porn actor man has to be brutal so men feel they shouldn't be tender? Porn women should be passive/brutalised/glamorous so women feel they can't be dominant/messy/comfortable in bed? Only because porn norms have entered normal life - women and some men removing all public hair, anal bring expected/demanded by him and suffered/denied by her? Blowjob as foreplay? No kissing? So it stands to reason that men who already have size and performance hangups might also have position/activity hangups and women, who have body hangups and aren't confident to ask for what they want, and fake orgasms, and often have precarious relationships might have hangups about the whole thing?
I'm not straight so this is all theoretical. I'm just thinking if sex was something a couple discovered together, (this sounds a bit old fashioned I grant you) but even if they had each had multiple partners beforehand every partner is different so there's something to explore... And the relationship was committed and honest - wouldn't that encourage both partners to admit what they really liked and to be less prescriptive in their sexual performance?

28 of the cases involved heterosexual sex. A sample size of 28 from which they conclude cowgirl is more dangerous. They're having a giraffe. Someone needs to make them retake their undergrad stats class.

However, it's not so much that the science is dodgy as that it then captures the public imagination (or at any rate is deemed newsworthy by editors) and, surprise surprise plays into all sorts of pre-existing tropes about female sexuality. And also that no-one asks the analogous question about risk of injury for women.

(Anecdotally I've seen it suggested that having a retroverted uterus makes some positions painful - I have one and have always found doggy position unpleasant. So I don't do it!)

Also that article is so much bullshit it's batshit! More chance of a broken willy? FFS