Tag: sexuality

Yet Another Bunch of Myths About Male Sexual Desire

~ Clarissa ~ 25 Comments

And once again the Puritanic legacy of this sex-deprived and sexually repressed culture wins the day:

The desire for the approval of other men shapes straight men’s sexual desires. Think of the very reasonable claims of many men that they’re not attracted to size zero, skin-and-bones supermodels. Lots of guys claim, with apparent sincerity, that they love women with “curves.” So why are men so interested in dating skinny models?

The need to believe that sexual desire is a result of social pressures betrays a profound fear of the uncontrollable nature of sexual urges. If we repeat often enough that things we find very easy to understand, analyze and describe shape sexuality, we will end up believing it and our fear of desire will abate. This will be a momentary respite, of course, and soon yet another string of platitudes will have to be uttered to exorcise the horror Puritans experience every time they realize that sexuality cannot be easily contained, predicted, and quantified.

The last statement in the quote I provided is also very curious. I understand that the author of the piece is from California and I hear that things are different there. However, I have to ask, where does the author find all these men “so interested in dating skinny models”? I can just imagine asking any of the men I have met in the course of my life in a variety of contexts (at work, at school, on the bus, in a bar, in a store, etc.), “So are you interested in dating skinny models?” I am convinced that any one of those men would think I was mentally disturbed for asking this question.

The central claim of the post I quoted is that men lie when they claim not to care about the beauty of their partner. Of course, a person of either gender is lying through their teeth if they are saying that physical attraction is meaningless to them. A psychologically healthy individual would never have sex with a person they don’t find attractive.

Hugo Schwyzer, the author of this piece, has dedicated a lot of effort to convincing women who are not thin that our personal lives are doomed to be horrible. Now, he has a new hobby: telling women my age and older that we are equally doomed:

Enough aging men do sexualize very young women—and disparage their female peers—to send a loud and clear message to women on the high side of 35.

Just imagine what depths of loneliness await those of us who are over 35 and not thin at the same time!

Of course, I could mention that in my personal experience of being a woman (which, in any case, is more significant than Hugo Schwyzer’s experience of womanhood), I have never been as happy in my personal life and felt as attractive and desirable as I do now, at my oldest and fattest. But who cares about actual experiences of women when an opportunity presents itself to pity us for things we have no desire to be pitied for?

Seriously, if this is the only way to be a male feminist, I’d rather there weren’t any.

Oral Sex As a Feminist Issue

~ Clarissa ~ 17 Comments

Some of the weirdest attempts to explain human sexual preferences from an ideological viewpoint are related to oral sex. Here is a set of myths that surround oral sex and transform it into a quasi-feminist issue:

– Men who dislike giving oral sex to women are misogynist jerks.

– Men who love administering oral sex to women cannot possibly be misogynist jerks.

– Women who dislike receiving oral sex do not exist. If they do, they must be oppressed victims of patriarchy.

– Women who enjoy giving oral sex are subservient to men.

– The final destination of sperm during oral sex has ideological connotations.

– A true marker of whether a man is a feminist is how enthusiastically he gives oral sex to a woman and how willing he is not to ask for oral sex to be administered to him.

To me, all these attempts to bring people’s sexual preferences into the arena of ideology sound extremely bizarre. We keep making fun of the sexually repressed folks who say things like, “Of course, I don’t want my wife to have oral sex with me and then go kiss the kids with that same mouth.” But are we any different from them if we keep reading ideological meaning into sex acts?

If you want to figure out how feminist one is, believe me, looking at their oral sex practices is really not the way to do so. The manner in which they do or do not enjoy oral sex only tells you one thing about them: this is how they do or do not enjoy oral sex. Looking for  a more profound meaning in these practices is completely and utterly futile.

Is Monogamy Hard?

~ Clarissa ~ 16 Comments

Time and again, one encounters people sharing a tired old maxim that “monogamy is incredibly hard.” Just like any other piece of “common knowledge”, this one is half-right. Monogamy is extremely hard for people who are not monogamous. Just like passing for straight is for a gay person. Or pretending to be polyamorous to please somebody when it isn’t your thing.

For people who are monogamous not as a result of interiorizing societal dictates but because it is their own, genuine sexual preference, there is nothing complicated about it. Just the opposite, everything other than monogamy is incredibly hard while being monogamous is the only thing that comes naturally and easily.

So if you find monogamy “incredibly hard”, maybe you should look into what your true sexuality is like. Chances are, monogamy isn’t the problem. Rather, your efforts to adopt a sexual preference that doesn’t come naturally to you are causing you all this hardship.

In Search for Sexual Innocence

~ Clarissa ~ 38 Comments

Since I wrote this post, people have been bombarding me with questions and quoting Hugo Schwyzer recent really good and convincing post titled “Love is never about wanting to be first.” The point of the post is that searching for sexual innocence in a partner is wrong and constitutes evidence of weird ideological hangups. Hugo is right, that’s what it is. Except when it’s a genuine sexual preference one has. Just like there are people who are into BDSM, polyamory or any seemingly unconventional sexual behavior, there are people who are genuinely into having sex with sexually unsophisticated partners. It doesn’t mean that they are into dominating the partner or serving as their teacher outside of the bedroom. That’s simply who they are sexually.

So how do you know if you are talking to somebody who is simply into sex with innocent partners for no ideological reason as opposed to a Fundamentalist freak who uses sex to serve an unhealthy sexual agenda? Like genuine polyamorous or BDSM folks, such a person will never lecture you about the number of partners you have had or try to show you the error of your ways whose only “defect ” is being different from their ways.

Feeling Like a Whore

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

According to the following, I must be a boy:

I was mortified to ask the Pharmacist for Plan B. I felt like a complete whore for having consensual sex where the condom just happened to break. In this country, if you are a girl who acknowledges her sexuality, you feel like whore by default.

I never felt “like a whore” in my life. I don’t know that “a whore” should have some special feelings that are inaccessible to not whores. I also never felt that my happy acknowledgment of my sexuality needed to make me feel “like a whore.” Until a feminist blog told me that I should feel that way, or I will somehow magically stop being female.

I’m perfectly fine with anybody narrating their experiences of feeling like whores (although I do question the terminology, which I find degrading to women). What bothers me is this attempt to suggest that everybody who doesn’t feel the same is not fully female. The desire to grant women acceptance into womanhood on the basis of how much or how little they have been victimized is very disturbing.

I was born a woman. I don’t need to pass daily exams as to whether I count as one. Both Liberals and Conservatives keep coming up with definitions of womanhood that exclude me and many other women. Maybe we should stop trying to define women? We are all different. We all feel differently. We all count.