Young women and sexual expectations of their partners

[CatalogueUniverse]

I’ve been reading a lot recently about the sexual expectations that young women are being confronted with when dating. I’ve also read a number of threads on here by women who after ending a long term relationship have gone back into dating and been somewhat surprised at the sexual acts that are considered mainstream which was also my experience when I ventured out after the breakdown of my long marriage.

I’m grasping (weakly) at the concept that it would be very easy for women of any sexuality who have been in a long term relationship to dismiss the concerns of those who are being subjected to a very different experience.

I have daughters rapidly heading towards adulthood. One of which is lesbian. She is a fabulous young woman with a developed sense of justice and rights and has a small number of lesbian friends - some of which are trans girls - for the sake of clarity, born male, identifies as female. Lovely kids all, one is dating a female lesbian. This has made me think even harder about talking to my daughter about sexual preferences , being comfortable with the sex you have, why your body is yours and shouldn’t be used to make someone else feel good at your expense. All of which I would want her to know about regardless of the sex of her partner but as she has expressed a clear preference for female bodied women while simultaneously supporting trans women are women and expressing confusion about this relationship and whether it is homo/hetero/pan sexual there’s a lot going on. I ended up saying that there is a spectrum of sexuality, Kinsey style with some people being at the absolute heterosexual end and some being at the absolute homosexual end and others somewhere in the middle. I did veer off into a mess about how more boxes create more divides and also why language is important and I think I confused us both.

I’m walking a fine line between her switching off and thinking I’m a dreadful old rad fem who talks about sex- eww and actually getting my point over about her right to only have sex with people she fancies who fancy her in a mutually respectful happy manner.

I’ve attempted to discuss this with RL friends but as most of them gay or straight are in long term relationships of about 20 years they all think it’s a bit unnecessary. Maybe it’s because most of them who have kids have boys. Which frequently goes along with a porn, pfft whatever attitude.

I can’t decide if I’ve read too much about cotton ceiling, porn death grip in young men or whether I should be as concerned as I am. Young women seem to have a boatload of sexual expectation foisted on them which is waaaaaay beyond what was my experience 30 years ago. In the dark ages when those who trimmed or removed their pubic hair were considered most exotic and anal was only mentioned rarely in the context of a heterosexual experience.

Are my RL friends correct that I’m over concerned or are they out of touch with today’s reality? I’d really appreciate your thoughts.

2 young teen DDs. We've talked a lot about porn vs reality. And that if everyone having fun that's fine but if only one of you is having fun it's not.

Sex, respect and intimacy go hand in hand for me. Feeling good is great, but I could live without it. The fuzzy, warm, glow of intimacy and mutual respect on the other hand

Totally agree. I also like a bit of romance. Makes me sound old fashioned probably but i dont care. Nothing wrong with it as far as im concerned.

https://www.collectiveshout.org/growinguppinpornlanddgirlshaveehadittwithpornnconditionedboys

This article is worth a read

Thank you Orchid.

CatalogueUniverse YouKidsKeepMeYoung
I'm sorry for leaving the thread and not replying. After what happened the next day we spoke and I told my partner how I felt, and that I think it's not him, that it is his consumption of porn that made him act the way he did and he agreed. So we decided to switch off for a bit! It's been great and we have booked and have been to a couples counselling session and have more booked. He already knew I was, or was becoming a feminist, but still for him looking at porn he didn't see the harm.I didn't really either, although I had my doubts. This feminist chat has really put into words what I've being feeling for a long time and has giving me the words to express it. My partner is a good man, a good father and partner,and now he is starting to become an ally. So Op, I think there is hope, communication is key.

Are my RL friends correct that I’m over concerned or are they out of touch with today’s reality? I’d really appreciate your thoughts

As you suggest, being the parent of a girl brings different kinds of (sex specific) issues and sensitivities, to being the parent of a boy......I also, increasingly, feel that until anyone actually has a child of their own they can not really comprehend many issues at all. I see this all of the time.....

Having an Intellectual grasp and understanding is not quite the same as the very urgent and visceral concern that a parent feels.

It feels as though we are going backwards, not forwards, and I fear for my daughters

I feel the same.......it's making me become quite conventional and straight-laced. Girls and women have so much to lose and to suffer from 'inappropriate' or promiscuous sexuality

Sex is about feeling good

Sex is about all manner of things; only one of which is " feeling good" - whatever that means......

A significant number of women (presumably non-feminist) apparently have rape fantasies, so this sadly is likely to support men's defence of "but it was consensual"

Our sexuality and sexual response is very much shaped and 'trained' by whatever we are exposed to. And early sexual experiences and memories are often the most powerful.

Agreed. But it's presumably easier to 'justify' why you were strangling somebody in the first place if it transpires that they fantasise about being strangled.

I think this would only follow if the couple were then trying to play out the rape fantasy. If they weren't, not so much. If the woman didn't really tell the man about it, all the more difficult for it to be a defence.

I think the error, if you follow the thinking back, goes to "it's ok to do this because its not real". That seems to have come from saying, you know, lots of women have rape fantasies, its not something to be ashamed of, or weird, and it doesn't need to be something you worry about". All of which I think is true. We have a lot of thoughts for one reason or another, often its impossible to know why, and we don't have perfect control over them.
But then the next leap is, so it is also ok to encourage myself with those thoughts if it is a turn-on, share them with my partner and act them out. And that doesn't necessarily follow, for a lot of reasons.

We have a lot of thoughts for one reason or another, often its impossible to know why, and we don't have perfect control over them.
But then the next leap is, so it is also ok to encourage myself with those thoughts if it is a turn-on, share them with my partner and act them out. And that doesn't necessarily follow, for a lot of reasons.

Yes! We have lots of urges that aren't good for us. Does anyone else ever think about the Land of Cockaigne in Pinocchio? He goes there with a group of boys and they're encouraged to do whatever they like. Slowly they turn into donkeys and are sold. Pinocchio escapes but later he meets a donkey and realises it's one of the boys he used to know. It's really sinister.

Maybe the problem with society is that a lot of adults never had the crap scared out of them by fairytales.

Maybe the problem with society is that a lot of adults never had the crap scared out of them by fairytales.

In all honesty I think this may be true. I think kids are so over-protected these days, it's part of why the are so fragile and think tiny slights are actually damaging and somehow personal, and anything people can do, it is ok to do.

I've almost started to think of myself as a social conservative, though I don't really fit there politically in a comfortable way. It seems like conservatism at least understands that the reasons for a lot of social boundaries isn't just to be annoying or prudish, but because there are wider effects on society, including the formation of individual personalities. Liberal progressivism doesn't seem willing to admit this is a factor at all.

I think kids are so over-protected these days, it's part of why the are so fragile
Lisa Marchiano talked about this, I thought she made sense.

I used to think I was liberal left. But back then I was under the impression that liberals thought prostitution and porn were harmful and exploitative, so... I don't know what I am. Do you read/listen to Michael Sandel much? He articulates a lot of what I feel about the importance of certain social norms. He did a great set of Reith lectures a few years ago.

No, I haven't read him. I have a terrible reading pile at the moment but I will have a look!

Hmm, he studied with Charles Taylor, that's interesting...

Stick on his Reith Lectures. I don't know Charles Taylor, must look him up.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kt7sh

It may be pointless, but I'll give it one more try. I'm having trouble explaining what I mean so that it's comprehensible.

I'm the one, way upthread, who said sex is about feeling good, and that respect is a separate issue. There were several responses that the one without the other isn't worth having, and if you can only get one, respect is better.

I'm not disputing that. What I'm trying to say is that sex, as a category, by itself, as a biological action, involves nerves that give you a high. The many other nerves inside your brain that recognize being treated as a full and significant member of your group, aka respect, is a different matter.

That's not saying the two aren't much better together. What I'm trying to say is that the current porn-soaked understanding of sex is so far away from sex that you could mix in as much respect as you wanted and it still would not result in good sex.

The porn-soaked view is that sex is just a tool for performing male dominance. Yes, the marker of "winning" is ejaculating, but the point is the dominance, not enjoyment. If it was enjoyment, violence and humiliation would not be essential. Every now and again, at least, porn would equal what used to be called erotica instead of being an endless parade of violated women.

If sex is misunderstood as dominance (and therefore necessarily somebody else's submission), then it might seem like respect would help, since respect is partly about tamping down oneupsmanship. But, if sex is misunderstood as dominance, it can never be sex in the feel-good sense. Respect isn't going to end in highs, no matter how heartfelt it becomes.

Think of it in an analogy with jokes and laughter. You're with a group of friends, getting funnier and funnier until you're all laughing so much your sides ache. That's never going to happen at the company Christmas party with your boss on one side and the company president on the other. Everybody can even respect each other, but the social dynamics are too overwhelming to allow pure enjoyment to just go for it. And, obviously, if the boss is a jerk who uses the time to dump on subordinates, it's just that much worse.

Also, obviously, in the group of friends there's all the respect and kindness necessary to treat each other as equals. Otherwise enjoyment can't even get started. But respect is just a mere pre-condition. If it's not there, the whole thing fails. But it's not what makes the jokes funny or has you laughing.

I'm not sure that I think the point of porn is dominance, rather than pleasure. At least, not for the individual using it.
I tend to think that it's more the case that there are certain things that can intensify sexual pleasure. Dominance is one, or also things that are transgressive. Transgression is of course a moving target, so it depends on what the culture sets boundaries around and also the actual experiences of the individual. The fewer boundaries, the more extreme the transgression needs to be in order to up the thrill level.
My view is that despite that element, the basis of this is probably physical. Physical pain in some cases can be a kind of direct stimulation, and transgression affects the way we experience pleasure in the brain.

If that is true, it means its kind of a fact we have to live with. So what we can affect is the cultural elements, like the kind of access people expect to sex, what activities are considered normal, access to images that are extreme, things like that. The challenge I suppose would be not to be so strict that people pull hard the other way, while also not driving people to extreme activities to get a sexual thrill.
Now, as far as the people producing the porn, I suppose they are looking for a kind of economic dominance.

Sex isn't just about feeling good. I think this goes to the heart of the problem, this idea that sex is just another source of pleasure. Sex can affect us profoundly in good and bad ways. There's nothing else like it. It's about the only thing that in one situation can be the most pleasant experience and in another can be the most horrific. It's much too closely tied up with our emotions and mental well-being to be thought of in the way that the 'sex-positive' narrative presents it.

I think girls need to be taught that sex is different for them, than for boys. It might not be very politically correct but it's a simple way to convey that women's sexuality is different from men's, that the emotional aspect is different for a woman and for a man, etc.
Men see swallowing as an act of acceptance, and even love, and many get upset when their partner doesn't want sex. Some of that is sheer entitlement and some is the fact some men are stunted emotionally and need sex as an emotional release.
However, men also have sex with women who aren't enthusiastic, women who haven't consented, women who they don't love, don't like, hate sometimes, women whose consent they have bought, and those men enjoy that sex enough to climax. #notallmen and NAMALT and 0.000001% of rapists are women blah blah blah but women's sexuality, whoever it is directed towards, is fundamentally different to men's.
Women are far less likely to have fetishes. Women are far less likely to sexually assault someone. Not saying all women are perfect but it's just not the same thing.
Women my age and younger who have had hundreds of partners have now given up on sex with men because they see it as ultimately pointless and like a previous poster mentioned, there is no afterglow of intimacy. This is sexual liberation and the hookup culture at work. It's pretty sad.

TL;DR: girls need to know that what they feel about sex isn't what boys feel about sex and that if he appears unaffected emotionally it's not because she did something wrong

I kind of feel like women used to be told that sex was often different for men than women, but at a certain point it became somewhat taboo. And also there were certain things that were expected of nice men to accommodate that difference, and now it would be considered sexist to say such things.

Sex positive culture has probably really upped the number of fetishes and similar issues as well. I think that has a lot to answer for in terms of things around sex getting worse for women.

@Beamur I'm waiting on delivery of a book which I'm hoping will help me to tell to my turning-12 year old this summer. I honestly don't know how in depth is too much. And at what point I try to talk to her again but with deeper detail. She's gay, or thinks she's gay (I've told her she can keep an open mind and it's OK to decide she likes more than women, etc - I think she's felt pressured into defining herself before she has worked herself out). And I realised a few days back that actually I haven't a clue how to talk to her about gay sex. I've had limited experience with women myself.

Oh also, I learnt what little I knew, from exposure to porn, and hearsay from older guys I knew. I'd hate that to be either of my kids.

Sexual desire does work differently on average for men and women. Sexual desire is, on average, more constant and more higher for men than women. Men are more likely to find themselves sexually frustrated when in a relationship or alone. That sucks, but that's the way it is. Can boys be bought up to accept this and learn how to deal with it resorting to porn or prostitution?

Jellyslice Mainstream has nothing to do with what people do in public. The definition is

mainstream
/ˈmeɪnstriːm/
noun
1 1. 
the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are shared by most people and regarded as normal or conventional

I think girls need to be taught that sex is different for them, than for boys.
This seems to be true, and whether or not it's politically correct, I think it's better to face up to it. But, I don't think men are benefitting from the 'sex positive' thing either. I have a friend who's gay and he's been saying for ages that the gay dating scene is horrible. He said you get laughed at if you want an exclusive relationship, everybody uses porn, he said it's empty and depressing. Because we were talking about it, two of his friends - both gay, both of whom had never mentioned this to him - said they thought that too. Basically I think there's a whole load of people out there grimly having empty sex with each other, and they're all miserable. (There's also, no doubt, a whole other load of people having grim empty sex and quite happy about it.)

Both sexes objectify the other, though. Male strippers seem to be a common staple of hen do's and I was actually caught by surprise a few months back when having a drink with a mate in a local pub.

I heard a bit of giggling etc behind me and upon turning around there was a man in a fireman (or was it a copper) hat windimilling his cock in the middle of the pub to the hens delight! I found it much worse than a strip club to be fair as it wasn't something I could avoid - it was literally in the pub for everyone to see!