Does penetration = presumption of power/control?

[skrumle]

Was chatting with my H last night and mentioned the Romeo and Juliet law in Ireland that's been discussed on here a few times. Anyway, when I asked if he thought it was reasonable his immediate answer was "no". I then asked him: if our son was gay, and started a conversation about a sexual experience that he was unhappy/uncomfortable about would he be more likely to feel that our son had been forced/co-erced if he was the one penetrated rather than penetrating and got a in reply...

I have to be honest, when I read the original thread on here my automatic view was that to protect girls over boys like this was to deny the fact that girls enjoy sex too, almost like taking a step back. When I read the thread fully though and thought about the implications for girls I probably did start to think that girls should have more protection than boys.

So, should there be a presumption that penetration equals a greater degree of control? So two heterosexual 15yos - greater responsibility lies with the boy to ensure that this is what both of them want?

HerBex! The corona! Further evidence that the sun shines out of my - no, wait; not that kind of corona, you say?

It's mentioned in a mag called Scarleteen, Spoons and the F word and Jezebel. The LA Times also covered the story, but not sure where else it was reported.

I don't think there's been enough discussion about enveloping on this thread.

Can anyone be arsed to discuss it? Not being a MRA, I don't feel I'm entitled to order you all to discuss it at once.

Because a lot of this is about language isn't it? Sometimes I am penetrated and sometimes I envelop. Often with the same man Our culture generally only recognises the former and calls the latter penetration as well.

Not sure where I'm going with that one, but thought I'd throw it into the mix.

Well my post got gobbled up so I'll try again.

Enveloping is a lovely term, far more appropriate than penetrating when a woman is on top, taking the more active role in sex.
If I'm on top of DH, bringing him to orgasm with my body, he's not actively penetrating me, I've enclosed/enveloped him, in much the same way as I use my mouth, I doubt many people see it as being penetrated when you take him into your mouth? It is different than being taken from behind or any activity where a man is taking the active role, for sure.

So I think that penetration does equal a greater degree of control, but enveloping doesn't.

The problem being that enveloping is never talked about outside of feminist spaces afaik. I've never heard it used in RL. We talk about penetrative sex, we don't talk about evelopative or encosative sex. (Both of which sound really clumsy so perhaps it won't catch on. )

Ok, have now been to the vaginal corona, and like a lot of revisionism it's contradicted by experience.

I had a housemate who experienced such a huge amount of bleeding 'the first time' that we had to rush her to the A and E. It was much much more than a nosebleed or what you'd get from lack of lubrication, and it was NOT menstruation. (Am happy to say this was probably the boyfriend's fault, but nevertheless.)

My hymen had to be stretched - by me, though some bareback riding helped - to allow me to use tampons. Even so I bled the first time, and the second, third, and fourth times. And the time I rode a very skinny horse bareback in jeans. No, it WASN'T superficial blood. 'They soon heal' is another effing joke. Just try riding a bike the next day - I thought I might die of it.

I say all this because I smell a very familiar aroma, the aroma of a nice fresh half-baked new myth, just out of the oven, that will give some of us a lovely new sense of inadequacy. I'm sure it is this simple for some of us, but not for me or my housemate, I'm afraid.

enclosative

Perhaps instead of PIV, it could be VAP or VEP?

But it doesn't say you never bleed or it's only superficial, does it?

It just says it doesn't happen all the time - I can't remember because it's ages since I've read it, but doesn't it say 50% of women don't bleed when their vaginal corona is first penetrated and 50% of women do?

Also from what I remember, it acknowledges that in some women the corona does come out over the opening of the vagina and looks like one membrane (this is presumably where the idea of the hymen as one piece of membrane came from in the first place - the actual visible part of some women's vaginal corona.)

So it's not setting out to try and make some women feel inadequate or abnormal. It's just saying that the hymen as it has been presented to us throughout history, has not been an accurate representation of this bit of a woman's body.

HerBex I did mention Coital Alignment position....

Well I didn't bleed and neither did my mate so now we're even on the stats. So maybe, as the piece says, it depends on the person.

Thanks Seiglinde, for correcting my hazy memories!

Doesn't the virginity/purity/PiV shebang link to the acquisition of filthy lucre? Men had material wealth, for a long time women legally couldn't, and even now men still hold nearly all of it. But women do have babies, and without babies men would see all their wealth pass to others after their death - perhaps even enriching a rival.

It's only recently that a man could say with any degree of certainty that the child he raises and, if it's a boy child, leaves his wealth/titles/estate/business to, is actually his own child. Of course, women always know that their child is their child. So rather than just trusting women - or, horror of horrors, re-arranging the whole show to a matriarchal line - a whole construct is created whereby a woman's purity is valuable, and guarding her sexual access to other men is desirable.

It's totally patriarchal and disturbingly heteronormative.

delurks

This thread has been really fascinating, thank you all for your contributions, you have really made me think.

Thinking about the religious angle, I have a number of friends, and also my DP, who are Christian, belonging to less traditional denominations. I have always thought that the patriarchal religious obsession with purity and virginity (esp in women) was inextricably linked to the 'problem' in a patriarchal society of not being certain who has fathered a child, and how this relates to inheritance, hence the inevitable focus on PIV and control of access to a woman's womb. As other people have already said (not trying to thunder-steal!).

However, I find it very interesting that for my 'non-traditional' Christian friends, they actually place much less emphasis on PIV = sex, and believe that any form of pre-marital sexual contact is sinful. They do vary on how strictly to apply this, but consistently would exclude mutual masturbation, oral, nudity, even bed sharing without any sexual contact. Certainly no living together before marriage. I know one now-married couple who believed that 'dating' was wrong, so went from friends to engaged and were more or less constantly chaperoned (by their own instigation) until their wedding night. On the one hand, this seems incredibly strict, but I do admire how the emphasis is on 'purity' for both male and female, rather than the double standards so often seen. And it suggests to me that they believe that penetration is not the be-all and end-all of sex, but that other acts are equally meaningful and intimate (which I agree with, I just don't see the need to confine them to marriage!). I know this is something of a digression from the power/control element of PIV, but I find it interesting in the context of patriarchal religion and control in general.

narky - much as I'd love to take it, the credit for the straw person isn't mine!

HerbeX - on that note, it's funny how the passive image of PIV exists despite the fact the vagina's actually quite active ... being a ring of muscle and all ... but it fits with the idea of the man in control to forget that it's more than just a hole, just an absence.

brekekekex - I guess I've seen the nastier flipside of that kind of 'Christian' attitude to sex: some denominations object to all kinds of sex activity before marriage equally, not because they think PIV isn't the be-all and end-all, but because PIV is bad before marriage and other kinds of sex are 'abominations' all the time. I know people who believe oral sex is invariably a sin. It's beyond belief.

(Btw - and geek alert - I was tempted to namechange to koaxkoaxkoax to reply to you but restrained myself. )

Fortunately I don't think I've come across that attitude, it's amazing to me that anyone can think that to me the concept of sex outside of marriage as a sin is bad enough. On the other hand, I find myself aligning with the religious view when it comes to the over-sexualisation/pornification of our society. It's one of those strange situations where it seems that my views as a feminist are the same as certain conservative religious views, but I struggle to articulate why the two are different, and why as a supposed liberal I seem to be siding with a conservative viewpoint.

That's massively off-topic, sorry.

( @ koaxkoaxkoax)

I guess there are so many strands of Christianity, it's no surprise we have different experiences.

For me, the difference between me disliking porn and a right-wing Christian dislike it, is that I think porn leads to women being badly treated, and to be honest I think right-wing Christianity simply believes women 'like that' corrupt men. My concern is for women; theirs is ultimately not.

Both porn and fundamentalist Christianity want to control women's sexuality; they just do it different ways. IMO.

Whew, you're right, one could spiral off into the sunset with this one ...

Yes, brekekek, I'm in the same place. And it might be worth adding that religions of the book were still dominant when the first big wave of pornography hit, which was due to the rise of print. So it wasn't successfully preventive. LRD is most likely right when she says both are ways of controlling women.

Victor, thank you for taking my rivetspotting in good heart. Agree with ALL you say re patrilinearity. Milton even extended it to women's thoughts - everything had to come form the dear husband, or it wad adultery. There's an amazing bit where he says going to the theatre or a dinner party without hubbikins's permission is the same as adultery. Blech. But obviously even the most benighted Christians have moved on a BIT since then, so good to remind ourselves that these mindsets are not inevitable.

That thing of feminism and fundamentalist christianity both being anti-porn for different reasons - it deserves a thread to itself because I think a lot of liberal and lefty women struggle with the idea of lining up with reactionary patriarchs and the whole topic needs a good airing in its own thread.

If anyone would like to start one, they will have more energy than me...

I can't start a thread, because I must finish my chapter and it's not going well, but if no-one minds I may start a similar thread in a little while ... I'd also love to think more about religion and feminism as it so often just gets a response 'oh but Christianity is sexist', which isn't terribly subtle (true though it may be).