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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

32 replies

QuentinWinters · 27/09/2018 23:24

I've been thinking about women's sexuality a lot recently.
Not the "am-I-gay-or-straight" sexuality but how women have sex.
In "Testosterone Rex" Cordelia Fine says that feminists make the best lovers because they know what they want.
While I agree, I can't help thinking that there are societal factors that pressure women to act more passive.
For example this reporting that women on top is dangerous. A woman on top is a woman in control. Some men find that threatening and science backs them up (except it doesnt)
graziadaily.co.uk/life/real-life/science-says-girl-top-position-dangerous-call-bullshit/
I also thought about this article describing how women who want to be dominant sex partners may think they are men as a result.

purplesagefem.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/on-lesbian-lust-and-identifying-as-male/

I'm very confused about how socialization has affected me personally when it comes to expressing my sexual preferences/needs and desires. It feels like women's needs are increasingly being marginalised by porn and if I feel like that as a 40-odd year old i can't imagine what it's like for our teens.

Do others agree that a woman asserting her sexual desires is threatening? How can we protect our daughters from socialization that girls should be passive And accepting?

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QuentinWinters · 27/09/2018 23:24

purplesagefem.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/on-lesbian-lust-and-identifying-as-male/

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QuentinWinters · 27/09/2018 23:28

Here's a great para in that blog
"According to our culture, a woman doesn’t even have to have sexual desire in order to want sex. Her wish is simply to be wanted, to be a beautiful object of men’s lust. She inspires sexual desire, but doesn’t necessarily have her own. Women’s sexual desire ranges from non-existent to sinful, depending on local tradition."

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Littlemouseroar · 27/09/2018 23:32

None here thanks, but I've been shocked by how many people, both male and female think that is unacceptable.

FermatsTheorem · 27/09/2018 23:42

Do people in the real world really think this or is it made up click bait on the part of Grazia? Woman on top is not exactly a niche or outre sexual practice!

I do agree that a certain sort of porn saturated man does think that women are basically walking talking fleshlights and that sex is something to be done to them. In this view it's not so much that we're passive as that we are inanimate objects. Though it does have strange echoes of Victorian beliefs - hitch your nightie round your waist, lie back and think of England.

QuentinWinters · 27/09/2018 23:45

Sorry for DM link
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2920830/amp/Scientists-reveal-having-woman-dangerous-sex-position-men-having-safest.html

Interesting because it directly says it's safer for the man if he is in control Shock

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QuentinWinters · 27/09/2018 23:46

Strangely noones researched cystitis/vaginal tears etc

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moofolk · 27/09/2018 23:47

I worry that feminism has not had the best effect on my sex life, in making me really examine and think about things I had previously enjoyed without thinking about too much.
I had revelled in a fit, attractive body as a younger woman and definitely fell into that trap of wanting to be desired.
Luckily that beautiful, fit young body is gone now!

moofolk · 27/09/2018 23:50

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

FermatsTheorem · 27/09/2018 23:58

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!)

Turph · 28/09/2018 00:05

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?

FloralBunting · 28/09/2018 00:46

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 womenGrin.

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.

FloralBunting · 28/09/2018 00:48

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

LassWiADelicateAir · 28/09/2018 01:07

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?

QuentinWinters · 28/09/2018 06:35

turph that's a brilliant post and exactly what I was getting at.

fermats now I'm more awake/less ginned I am even more Shock. Maybe half of the 28 were woman on top because lots of sex is woman on top because lots of couples are fine with the woman being in control. It could even be that 80% of sex is woman on top and it's actually safer!

I agree the Grazia article is click baity but at least it somewhat took down the pointless study

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QuentinWinters · 28/09/2018 06:38

Also turph it's made me wonder if porn is driving this or if porn is reflecting and magnifying societal norms that were already there. The "lie back and think of england" type thing.
I did read somewhere that in medieval times it was thought women had a higher sex drive than men and needed to be kept satisfied so that was different.
Not sure when it changed. The Victorians probably.

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QuentinWinters · 28/09/2018 06:47

I think this is interesting - Freud originally thought women's "hysteria" was down to child abuse but then decided it was actually penis envy Shock
www.verywellmind.com/how-sigmund-freud-viewed-women-2795859

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Littlemouseroar · 28/09/2018 07:05

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).

VickyEadie · 28/09/2018 07:53

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...

CircumzenithalArc · 28/09/2018 08:02

You know, ive never worked out how to think of England
Grin
Me neither and in my head it translates to "Think of the queen" then it all gets a bit weird...

QuentinWinters · 28/09/2018 08:28
Grin
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picklemepopcorn · 28/09/2018 08:35

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

AngryAttackKittens · 28/09/2018 08:43

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?

beenandgoneandbackagain · 28/09/2018 10:37

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.

FermatsTheorem · 28/09/2018 12:10

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?

Rememory · 28/09/2018 12:24

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.

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