Guardian article on lesbians, sex and orgasms goes trans inclusive and loses coherence

[5inga5ong]

Did anyone else see this article this weekend?

Do Lesbians Have Better Sex Than Straight Women

It's quite a typical broadsheet feature on sex - light reading, no deep research, a few light supporting interviews, etc. Just the sort of thing you'd expect to find in the features section, really.

It does come a bit of a cropper when it tries to be trans-inclusive in one of its supporting paragraphs, though. Not, I'd like to point out, BECAUSE it is trying to be inclusive, but because although I've read it several times I think the author's efforts to inclusivity have made her writing ambiguous and left her point unsupported.. (I can't imagine what it must be like to be a sub editor these days.)

^Jessica says that women tend to be better at listening and communicating in bed (and perhaps outside of the bedroom, too – it is not clear whether those abundant news stories about women speaking thousands more words a day than men stand up, but understanding and empathy are areas in which women excel). There is a strong emotional connection between women, too.

Alice Martin, a 20-year-old trans lesbian, says the same. “As a woman having sex with another woman, it’s a completely mind-bending experience. The mix of care, love, romance, pleasure, emotion and intensity is something that I never experienced with men.”^

So, the author is taking the position that women are more emotional and feel sex more emotionally than men do. (I personally disagree with this as it doesn't match up with my lived experience, but hey ho.)

The ambiguity is around Alice's situation, identify, context, and how it relates to the point that author is making about women being more emotionally connected in sex then men are.

• At first, I thought Alice was born male and identified as straight, and she transitioned to being a transwoman and then identified as lesbian. Then I realised that she was comparing her sexual experiences with men and with women.

• So then I thought that Alice was born male and identified as bi, but then transitioned to being a transwoman stopped being bi and became lesbian only. (This seems most likely to me, but it's not clear. And of course then I want to know Alice's story and why bi was okay, but then not, even if it's not the point of the article.)

And THEN I started wondering, if you're in a male body but you've only had emotional sex when you let yourself be emotional because you are thinking of yourself as a woman, is the emotional bit really attached to "being a woman" or is it attached "giving yourself permission to have emotionally connected sex with someone else who is emotionally connected?"

And then I started thinking that the author needed to have another quote to bolster her "women have more emotionally connected sex than men do" point, but from a natal female identifying as bi who enjoyed sex with men and women but who found her same sex experiences more emotionally connected. But that wasn't there.

And then I realised that the article starts off with links to a website full of drawings of different types of vulvas to help women feel better and more normalised about their female genitals so they can have better female orgasms, and then my headed exploded with the contradictions and I stopped reading.

It's insane isn't it! Such a mess

The main thing I thought re the incoherence was all the ‘women know other women’s bodies and feelings’ and then an interview with a trans person...

I was thinking ‘OK... but unless the trans person is talking about their experiences with other trans people who share biology and also the same actual experiences (surgery, medication etc) and feelings then how does this actually relate to the rest of the article?!’

I also thought ‘well TBH this could be evidence that this stuff about feelings and talking IS sexist stereotyping and motivation matters’ but then I realised that one of the big problems re heterosexual sex for women is that men just think they are really great at it and that every woman they sleep with had a really great time on the basis that they enjoyed themselves... sometimes even when there are obvious and clear indicators the women felt ‘meh’ or ‘urgh’ or worse....

(And obviously it doesn’t relate to lesbian sex vs heterosexual sex really)

It would nice to have an article about women that doesn't need to involve a transwoman.

I've had sex with men and women inside and outside relationships, they could have interviewed me, though I would have said not much difference emotionally (the best connected sex I've had was with a man). I would say the difference in orgasm rates is partly down to you having to make more effort in same sex sex, so when you have it you're more committed to doing it "properly" whereas it's easy with a man to be happy for them to come without being that bothered or making the effort yourself! There's probably also more coercive sex. I don't entirely understand the what point the trans comment is making either.

I was a bit confused as to why a transwoman was quoted for experience when much of the article focused on lesbian sex bring better because women know where the clitoris is and how to stimulate it. You genuinely can't get any more based in natural biology than that.

So, regardless of 'identification', a transwoman is never going to instinctively know where the clitoris is and how it works, because even they have had surgery, they don't have one! Weird article.

I suspect Alice's partners wouldn't match the lesbian figures of the orgasm gap...

She wrote the article and then someone said 'But what about transwomen, they can be lesbians too and you're excluding them' and so she found someone to give her a quote and bunged it in and it made a mockery of her argument —but at least it means that she won't be targeted by angry TA activists for being anti trans and the Guardian has covered its back. So who cares if it sells lesbians down the river with the fantasy that someone with a dick or a 'front hole'* created by inverting their penis can experience extraordinarily new heights of sexual pleasure. Particularly as the transwoman with a dick will just be having straight sex with a lesbian (who of course won't actually be a lesbian because she's having sex with someone with a dick). Let's stop here before our heads explode with the madness of it all.

• Was it front hole that we were told we should use instead of 'vagina' in order not to offend?

I was also confused by Jessic'a ex who 'identified as cis straight at the time but now identified as genderqueer'.

But still not a woman? So why bother including this, unless you are worried about just writing about BORING lesbians?

Person with penis decides that on balance they prefer having sex with people with vulvas to sex with people with penises, because people with vulvas have been socialised to be nicer. Hold the front page.

That inclusion was totally irrational and adds absolutely nothing to the discussion. I just don't get it. I'd love to see a trans man interviewed in an article about gay male sex.

She wrote the article and then someone said 'But what about transwomen

This, but that could be any article about women in the guardian.

I liked the inclusion of the fact Jessica slept with someone who identified as genderqueer but is now a cisman or vice versa as if DP could start identifying as a woman tonight and automatically be better in bed
And maybe the reason the transwoman enjoyed sex with women more was because they now identify as a lesbian I.e they fancy women not men? Their comment was completely irrelevant to the article because the whole point was to do with women knowing where the clitoris is?

Tbh I always assumed lesbians had better sex because its presumably mostly related to clitoral stimulation and not vaginal intercourse. Its pretty obvious when you think about it and nothing to do with women being more "emotionally connected" or even knowing where the clitoris is, what adult man doesn't know? Its just to do with the fact theres no dick involved so presumably more oral etc every time?

Thank you FermatsTheorum for that excellent summary.

OP, you're right, that particular para is mind-boggling. (Do we have a thread on this elsewhere? I thought I'd already commented.) The conclusion one comes to is that when Alice was a man, he had sex with men, and now she's a woman, she has sex with women. And the sex with women is better. But one could quite easily point out that if Alice had remained a man, he could still have had sex with women and it would presumably have been better than sex with men. The more you think about it, the more opaque it is. It literally (in the true meaning of the word) makes no sense.

It's a shame, because Hannah Jane Parkinson is usually a good writer. She did an excellent piece on mental illness recently. But that paragraph is nonsensical.

Perhaps 'Alice' only realised that sex was about more than PIV and that women are able to orgasm until he became a woman. In which case- WTF?????

The article is a prime example of lesbian erasure at its ugliest - interviewees were 'professionals', a bi-woman, & a biologically male person who self-identifies as a lesbian; it's so 'inclusive', it fails to include a single comment from an actual lesbian (ie a biologically female homosexual). Am beyond disgusted that the Guardian had the audacity to print this piece less than a week after their vile demolition piece on the brave women who protested lesbian erasure at Pride in London

If anyone wants to formally make a complaint (please do!), this is the page that tells you what you need to do: www.theguardian.com/info/2014/sep/12/-sp-how-to-make-a-complaint-about-guardian-or-observer-content

There's also discussion here on a thread from a few days ago: Another thread on this

The Goddess

Yes. My reading of what Alice is saying it is that Alice was heterosexual when Alice was a man, and then 'a lesbian' when Alice became a 'woman'. So changing sex seems to have changed Alice's sexuality

Alternatively, as you say, Alice just wasn't that great in bed before.

And yes, we should suggest the Guardian writes an article about gay sex that doesn't include a gay man in it.

I realise I've misread this and got it ALL wrong.

Alice slept with men when Alice was a man. Alice sleeps with women now that Alice identifies as a woman. So probably bisexual.

If they needed a trans perspective on an article essentially about clitorises why on earth not include a trans man?

It makes no sense at all! And is doubly frustrating because it has only been culturally acceptable for (some, def not all still) women to talk about sex and clitorises for about 5 seconds.

Thanks for spelling it all out. I read it quickly and didn't pick up half the implications.

The language used around trans issues seems to be deliberately opaque.

It would have been funnier if they'd included a non-binary person with a clitiros. I'd like to see the logistical gymnastics there!

It pisses me off that the Guardian won't open comments on articles like this. They know they will get nothing but GC comments, and they can't handle it. It's cowardly.

I've just made a complaint to the Guardian. I'll let you know what happens.