Hen party brunch - is it normal for women to over-share like this?

[HeidiHiBye]

I’m genuinely intrigued as to whether I’m just a bit blinkered or if I’m in the minority with this sort of thing.

For my friends hen yesterday, I joined her and about 20 others for brunch and other activities. I didn’t know everyone there, with a mix of old school friends, Uni, work colleagues etc.

The drinks were flowing as expected and some of the women sat close to me turned the conversation onto more sexual matters. In no particular order, they covered - penis sizes of their other halves, favourite positions, oral preferences/techniques, their best former ‘shags’. One even complained their current partner is too passive and she’s considering leaving him as she just needs a ‘good f’ing’.

There was also topless waiters and two of the girls were speculating who’d have the biggest penis and be the best in bed.

I’m no prude but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and hearing how a certain position makes someone ‘squirt’ is beyond the pale for me.

Is this normal behaviour?!

I remember going to an Anne Summers party years ago, 1986 ? I was around 17, my sister just 19. She’d started at a new office job and wanted someone to take , she made me go!
We had to play some games, drawing your boyfriend’s willy on a piece of paper on the top of your head.
For a start I hadn't had a boyfriend, let alone seen a willy! We’d lived a very sheltered life! I remember looking at her, thinking wtf! We decided on the way home not to mention too much to our DM !
All seems so tame now.

There’s no way I’d discuss private things like that, even with good friends. I can’t imagine anyone I know doing it either.

There's no way a man would discuss the intricacies of his partner's genitalia to his friends, let alone a bunch of strangers, yet women seem to think it's OK the other way round? Weird, and double standard.

It’s not about finding sex a taboo topic ,It’s about women who don’t really know one another In a big group discussing in depth their sexual relations with their partners..
I wouldn’t like my partner at a stag ( I’m single , but if I had one ) at a stag with 20 guys discussing the ins & ours of our sex life
Who would !

That’s what I said though … that everyone doesn’t know everyone so it’s weird

No, not really, as with any group of mixed friends you chat about general stuff and then maybe a few drinks in may get a bit more smutty. Sounds a bit unclassy, some people will be like this, no etiquette. Xx

Yeah , but you said you wouldn’t find it the biggest deal , there’s harmless banter & there’s taking it too far, & who wants to be sitting down listening to it anyway with a bunch of strangers.. !

i still think most of it is pretty harmless. talking about partners penis sizes is a bit far but I still think this is pretty standard at a hen party. I personally wouldn’t comment on my husband but I also don’t mind people sharing if they want to. if i wasn’t a fan of a conversation, I would just remove myself from the group or try to change the subject. Was just trying to answer OP to say this is pretty normal for hens (I’ve been to quite a few) and some people don’t find that sort of convo too far. Perfectly fine is she does but best just to remove herself or try to the subject :)

Because no one wants to be that person on a hen do!

But, yes OP, this is a thing on hen dos. One of the (many) reasons I try to avoid them like the plague!

I'm pretty open minded but that is just grim.
No way would I want to talk about that with strangers.

Thats gross!!

I wouldn’t do this about my current long term partner, but I would and have swap stories of sex and penis size about random men I’ve slept with from my past- more likely with friends, but potentially in this sort of setting as well.

Yeah , fair enough..
I’d say I went off the topic , you didn’t ..
I turned it into , “ it’s wrong to discuss your sex life like that at a hen do with a bunch of strangers “, when OP asked, “ is this what goes on at hen parties “ ..
The simple answer is , yes, it does tend to go on at some , it doesn’t at more 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think it’s fairly normal to talk about things that wouldn’t be the usual topic of conversation when alcohol is flowing in abundance. Lowers inhibitions and all that. Were some people quite drunk and you less so? I had a friend when I was younger who wouldn’t stop talking about her sex life in absolutely graphic detail and that got on my nerves. It was too much of an overshare and too much of a frequent conversation that I distanced myself from the friendship in the end. I wouldn’t be bothered by a hen party with conversations like that IF I knew the people. If a woman I’d met that day was talking to me about the size of her husbands penis I’d be a bit WTF, although I guess it depends on how drunk we all were. The topless waiter thing is totally cringe and naff and wouldn’t be something anyone I know would have a a hen do, or strippers or anything like that. Yuk.

Just thought I’d quote. Cos I can…

Vile. Maybe they watch too many' reality shows' My guilty secret is watching MAFSA.
I'm amazed at what they disclose in a room full of pretty much strangers! Yet most of them disclose to the point of graphic!! Even the so called "Experts," Don't bat an eyelid! I have clearly had a sheltered life!

Dick size isn't very interesting. The outliers at either end are quite rare (hence being outliers) and most dicks I've had have just been within a spectrum of normal. I couldn't tell you more about the sizes (curvature maybe...) because I wasn't exactly getting the measuring tape out. There was no correlation to the quality of the sex!

So that's why this whole "hen party bonding over dick sizes" comes across as a little performative, and ultimately a bit boring.

Generally I don't want to know about the sex lives of my friends. It's perfectly possible to talk about sex in a somewhat abstract way without conjuring images of people in bed. I had to stop a friend dead in her tracks once when she started telling me about how her boyfriend - who was MY friend first! - was a bit too boring in bed for her. That was about seven years ago, I'm still friends with them both and it's just not information I want in my brain! They split up shortly afterwards and people often ask me if I know why (as I lived with her and had been friends with him for years before that). I wish I didn't!

Anyway in comparison to that a nice topless waiter would feel like balm to the soul.

(Sex talk bonding is infinitely preferable to those other female bonding cliches of performative calorie-counting, ooh I'm so naughty I had a biscuit, or moaning about your husbands for hours on end. EAT THE CAKE. DIVORCE HIM IF YOU HATE HIM. STOP TALKING ABOUT IT)

Yes, I and my besties swap such details all the time. It's certainly normal for me and tbh I'm surprised to learn here that some women find it really unacceptable. Ppl go on about hen party participants not bring close friends, but I would have thgt that was a good thing. If A tells B her partner is little finger size, then B isn't likely to ever meet that partner and laugh!

This.
Some hens are raucous and boozy.
Some hens are active events or a cottage somewhere with a hot tub.
It's whatever the bride likes and moh/hens arrange. Not everyone likes all the same thing.

Personally I'm a sexual person and quite enjoy a natter on the subject

Haha, I think you’re very naive if you think men don’t talk about this stuff too.

I agree on the whole that it isn't very exciting but sometimes you see/experience one that you can't keep quiet about, not to your close friends anyway. My 6th one was an ons, but I wished he hadn't have been... OK you're not my closest friends, so I'll shut up...

I wouldn't speak like that with anyone. Never have and never will.

When I was 17 I went to a Fancy Dress party as a boy. Considering the comments I get as a girl, I was amazed at how I pulled it off.
Now, whether I should have done or not, I used the men's/boys' toilets. Sat there wondering when it would be safe to emerge and wipe my hands (thinking "will I be giving myself away IF I wash my hands?").
Anyway I sat there and I learnt something. I learnt that boys and men talk about us in THE most disgusting, degrading, disillusioning ways possible.
They don't consider us to even be bodies, just sex objects for them to stick their massive* missiles in. What I heard that day just told me once and for all that the basic difference between the sexes when it came to one discussing the other is that whereas we JOKE about their bodies and their inability to use them as they should, they SERIOUSLY run us down as people, as sex objects and - most importantly - as unnecessary "items" that they see as irrelevant to their lives and their positions as "running the world".
Ever since that evening, I've seen nothing in the slightest wrong in getting hysterical with my mates over a tiny todger or a petty pee-pee, or in eating a banana suggestively in front of a boy.
Believe me, however horrible we are, men are ten times worse!
*their word, not mine!

It must have been an incredibly long poo for you to get all that detail to enable you to construct an entire worldview from a conversation overheard when you were 17.

If they thought about it at all, they probably thought "he" was having a wank about one of the girls.