I suppose you are going to call me an asshole once you have finished reading my letter, but I hope you have some advice for me regardless.
I am a 45-year-old heterosexual male. My last relationship lasted nearly seven years. I am currently single. I am discouraged. One of the reasons for my discouragement: I have to get too far into a relationship before I can determine if it will work out with any particular woman. An awful lot of emotion, time, and effort are required to get that first look into a woman’s panties. And this is where my problem lies. A woman can have the sweetest personality, she can be pretty and hardworking, but if her pussy isn’t bald and her “little man in the boat” doesn’t fit comfortably in my mouth, I am NOT turned on. I require a shaved pussy and a big clit.
I have asked women with whom I’ve become close to go bald. If the answer is no, there is no need to return. I respect a woman’s control over her own body, of course, but I like a big clit. She may or may not be bald, but if the clit isn’t big enough, there’s no sense in returning. I have heard women say that they were disappointed to find that a man’s dick was too small or too large, or they didn’t like that it curved to the left or right. Do I have a right to a similar preference? What do I do? Is there a way to ask about these issues before emotion, time, and effort are invested?
Call Me Asshole
Knowing that she could be disqualified due to the size of her clit, which she can do nothing about, or the presence of pubic hair, which she can do something about (but might not want to), is information a woman might want before she invests a lot of emotion, time, and effort in you, CMA. Or any emotion, time, and effort. But there’s literally no way to ask a woman to show you her clit or to verify either her “baldness” or willingness to go bald in advance of that crucial first date. Even women with six-inch clits who suffer from neck-down alopecia (credit: www.tinyurl.com/5vle95) are going to run screaming after hearing a request like that.
Don’t get me wrong, CMA: It’s a fine thing to have preferences, to be aware of them, and to be able to articulate them. And most people would prefer to be with someone whose preferences roughly jibe with their attributes. But most of us would also like to think—even if it’s not true—that our personalities are so winning that our partners would love us even if, say, our clits were tiny and our pubes towering.
So what do you do? Well, CMA, since being up-front about your very particular, deal-breaking preferences would result in your never seeing another pussy again in your life, I think you keep your mouth shut. You’re just going to have to date and invest the time. And then if you discover once you get into her pants that her clit is too small or her pussy is too hairy, CMA, just make up a nice, polite it’s-not-you-it’s-me lie. It wouldn’t be fair to leave her wondering what the hell is wrong with her, when in actual fact there’s something wrong with you.
Kinky female here, age 26. For as long as I’ve been sexually active, I’ve been ridiculously turned on by guys with huge cocks. I love the way they look and feel in my hands and when they’re inside me. This isn’t to say that I’d date a guy purely on cock enormity alone; I wouldn’t. But I’m not sure what to do about my current situation: I’m dating someone now who shares my same values—he’s flamingly liberal and actually enjoys RuPaul’s Drag Race—but we don’t have the greatest sexual chemistry. Some of it’s because he’s pretty vanilla, although he’s GGG, but a lot of it is that his dick is average. Sadly. Am I wrong to want a guy with the lower half of a horse? If so, can I retrain myself to accept, and even want, an average or below-average penis?
Female Phallophiliac
You don’t say how long you’ve been dating this guy, FP.
If you’ve been fucking him for a while and you still haven’t found a groove, well, it might be best to move on. Liberalism and RuPaul’s Drag Race are nice, but they’re not enough to sustain a long-term romantic relationship.
But if you’ve been dating him a short time, FP, and there’s been some noticeable improvement on the chemistry front, you might want to stick around. Sometimes the chemistry is there and obvious from the start; sometimes chemistry kicks into gear after a few weeks or months. If you dig him—and it sounds like you do—then he’s worth the investment of a little time. As for the little dick, well…
How big is his forearm?
I’m a partnered gay man who happens to have a small cock. When I was younger, I was often embarrassed, but I have gotten used to it and I can’t change it and I know how to enjoy it now.
Among my friends, small-dick jokes are common. Not directed at me, but generic jokes and comments suggesting that guys with small dicks aren’t real men, or should always bottom, or aren’t worth dating. Stuff like that. And it has begun to make me feel much more self-conscious, especially since a couple of the guys I’ve heard making these jokes are intimately familiar with my cock. They know I’m small. It wasn’t an issue, because they initiated the sex and wanted it more than once. I had a six-month fuck-buddy relationship with one of these guys and I topped him, so I know he didn’t have an issue with my size.
So my dilemma is this: Is this just some self-esteem issue that I’ve been unaware of and need to deal with? Or should I say something, at least to the two guys I’ve had sex with? They are my closest friends and know that I struggled with my size when I was younger.
Sensitive Matters And Lessons Learned
You should definitely say something to the two ingrates you’ve had sex with, SMALL, and to anyone else who makes small-dick jokes in your presence. You don’t have to volunteer to men you haven’t fucked that you happen to have a small dick yourself. Just point out that in any group, there are going to be guys with smaller-than-average endowments and that it’s just not cool to make those guys feel bad or inadequate—particularly when studies show that the partners of men with smaller-than-average dicks report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than people whose partners have larger-than-average dicks.
STRAIGHT RIGHTS WATCH: Indiana’s right-wing Republican governor signed a bill into law that strips Planned Parenthood in that state of federal funds. This is going to lead to more abortions in Indiana, not fewer, but facts don’t matter to right-wing shit-piles like Mitch “Social Issues Truce” Daniels. Now would be a good time to make a donation—even if all you can afford is a small, symbolic one—to Planned Parenthood of Indiana. Go to www.ppin.org, and click “Donate Now!” Then do everything you can to defeat the GOP in 2012.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
“An awful lot of emotion, time, and effort are required to get that first look into a woman’s panties.”
Does not match:
“I require a shaved pussy and a big clit.”
Figure out if you’re a deep or shallow person. Then go from there.
I’d really like to understand why Planned Parenthood, a private organization, needs to receive any direct money from taxpayers (state or local)?
If women on Medicaid can go to any provider who accepts Medicaid, then I have no problem with PP being an approved provider. But women with health insurance should be going to their own primary physician for medical care.
If the health insurance law goes into effect in a couple years, everyone is supposed to be covered. If PP is an approved provider, then by all means go to PP. But there is no reason why PP (or a host of other private groups) should be receiving direct state or federal tax money.
GymGoth, Its hard for me to figure out if you are simply ill informed, naive, or dangerously incompetent. The health insurance law you reference, as you note, doesn’t come online for years. So waiting for it to come online means letting a lot of people get fucked over in the mean time. Then there’s the undeniable fact that large portions of the population have neither Medicaid nor private health insurance. Moreover, many health plans do not cover many types of women’s health services and even those with insurance have to pay out of pocket. Add that to the fact that Planned Parenthood is often the only provider of a wide range of women’s health services and there’s good reason for its existence. Please take the time to realize that having a healthy population is a good thing for our country and that women’s health services are a part of the equation.
Finally, you’re whining about the government funding private organizations? That’s what the government does all the time. Mitch Daniels’ and his ilk’s attacks on Planned Parenthood are all the more egregious since they are the ones that constantly privatize government services; everything from auctioning off the proceeds of government owned toll roads to providing tax payer money for private schools. He and his cronies yell a shrill cry of “Communism” and “Socialism” any time the government provides an actual service to its citizens. Yes, in a different world the essential services that Planned Parenthood provides would be offered by the state directly without middlemen, even if they are non-profits like Planned Parenthood as opposed to corporations making a literal killing off people’s healthcare. But that doesn’t exist in the US and Indiana’s governor and his Conservative friends are doing everything they can to make sure it never will.
@157 Crinoline : my post was meant to be tongue in cheek. And I did write that I met an American girl who did not to shave…
Don’t take it out of context. I was 17, and a foreigner in highschool. I came to the USA to meet people, not to gross them out by sticking to my own cultural choices. So I made the very choice to conform to whatever was the norm – at least in public. I did keep on drinking hot milk every morning in my exchange family, though it grossed them out.
Once in the US, I learned that shaving (and wearing a lot of make up) was a big part of conforming in highschool, and that came as a big surprise, since both are non-issues in highschool in my home country.
Especially I had never been put before in a situation where I had to discuss with a bunch of 13-year-olds my home country’s pussy-shaving habits. Which I had no clue about, shaving the legs and the armpits yes, but I didn’t even know that some people were shaving their pussy. That was surreal.
OK, it happened in Austin, Texas (a great place) – but don’t tell me it’s because Texans are different. I’m pretty sure it would have happened in any US highschool.
My point is : whether you or I shave or don’t, in the 90s there was more pressure on shaving in the US than in Europe – and since I haven’t seen a hairy armpit in any US movie since, I guess it hasn’t changed much.
People with fetishes are not rendered completely incapable of ever having, and enjoying, vanilla sex. People with fetishes commonly have satisfying LTRs with partners who are unwilling, or even unable, to indulge them. They find ways to deal. Maybe they get creative with their partner, using role play, sex toys, anything that might satisfy their desires. Maybe they watch a lot of porn. Maybe they visit sex workers. Maybe they have open relationships- or maybe they cheat.
But the key difference is, if they find someone who they really care about, and “click” with, they don’t feel “no need to return” if that someone does not fit in with their fetish. In fact, I’d wager that MOST people with fetishes are actually in LTRs, and they don’t even tell their partners about their desires. People tend to feel ashamed of their fetishes, even common ones like BDSM and feet. Remember those columns a while ago about men who enjoyed smelly tennis shoes? A lot of fetishes are like that. You feel the need to satisfy your fetish at least occasionally, but it can be done discreetly (whether through porn or through borrowing someone’s used tennis shoes). Outside of those occasions, you probably have pretty normal-seeming relationships with others.
In other words, a fetish does not prevent you from enjoying “vanilla” sex or intimacy. And CMA claims that he feels “no need to return” to any woman who has an average-sized clit or a bit of hair, which rules out like 99% of females, and makes his chances of finding a woman who he “clicks” with, AND who satisfies his desires, pretty much nil. This is a problem if he wants to a) ever get laid again, and b) get laid with women who he actually enjoys being around and who enjoy being around him.
TL;DR version: CMA does not have a need or a fetish. His problem is either a) he’s just an asshole, or b) he needs therapy to solve his deep-seated intimacy issues.
I don’t buy the idea that a fetish is a sexual need just like orientation. And frankly, I think it’s a bit insulting to those (myself included) whose orientations deviate from the “straight” norm. I don’t buy that this guy “needs” big clits in the same way that gay men need other men and gay women need other women and straight women need men and etc.
If you believe, as I do, that sexual orientation is “born” and not “made” (“nature” more than “nurture”), then it is biologically “set” and cannot be changed. If fetishes are the same thing, then are we also “born with” our fetishes? We come out of the womb with them and they cannot ever be changed throughout the course of our lives?
I, and most psychologists I have read, would disagree with that. From what I understand, fetishes are developed during childhood (as our sexuality develops), and are based on outside stimuli (“nurture”), not inner biology (“nature”). Most fetishes tend to be mild and not cause any problems (i.e., foot fetishes)- or, people with fetishes find other outlets (porn, sex toys, role play, even sex workers).
For those who feel burdened by their fetishes, therapy can be helpful. I don’t think that fetishes can be “cured”, or that they should be at all pathologized. But some people with fetishes are quite miserable about having them, and therapy can either a) help them accept the fetish as part of who they are, and/or b) decrease the power that their fetish holds over them.
Whatever the case, I believe it’s safe to conclude that CMA should give some therapy a try (preferably with an open and sex-positive therapist).
215-sissoucat– Thanks for your note. I didn’t catch the tongue-in-cheek the first time around. I agree that U.S. fashions as regards shaving are strongly pro-shaving and haven’t changed much through the 70s to the present. The part that I find so interesting is where the pressure to shave comes from. To a large degree, it’s the fashion industry. They’re the ones that dictate what’s supposedly normal and beautiful. Individuals disagree all the time, but they may feel pressured into saying, at least publicly,that they agree with the norm. On a personal front, I’ve found that it’s the straight women who take the pressure most personally. They’re the ones who internalize it. Straight men (in general) don’t care. So you end up with all these women shaving because they think they have to in order to be attractive to men, when in reality, they’re doing it to appear normal for women.
Hasn’t CMA ever heard of fingering? I think you could judge baldness and size by that. If it meets your specs then proceed. If it doesn’t float your boat, get her off without intercourse and then do the “it’s not you, it’s me” a week or so later.
Raelynn makes a valid distinction between orientation and fetish but I am wondering where preference fits into this. Is it a triangle or part of a continuum? I’m not sure.
I suppose I question whether CMA has a fetish as opposed to a preference. I mean, I tend to think that I have a preference for someone who is smart, attractive, has a good sense of humor, and who likes lots and lots of good sex. That is not to say that I haven’t bedded people who are unattractive, dull, and/or who can’t fuck worth a damn, but it was never going to be a relationship. Still, even though my preferences may be deal killers, they do not seem like fetishes.
When does a preference become a fetish? Is wanting a shaved pussy different from wanting a man who has no facial hair? The size of the clit thing may be puzzling to many of the correspondents here but how different is it from preferring long legs or a tight ass, or a big butt, or any of the myriad things that get us hard or make us wet?
@213 – do you know that there are a fair number of women who are both uninsured and don’t qualify for Medicaid? You have to be a certain amount of well-off to get insurance. You have to be a certain amount of poor to get Medicaid. There are people who end up in the middle.
um…
Razor Burn = Why God Invented COCOA BUTTER.
Seriously, it’s $2 at the beauty supply, it’s slippery, it smells faintly of chocolate, it’s edible, AND has amazing powers of skin rejuvenation. And it smells yummy.
God is a crazy-smart woman.
Did I mention it smells good? and is edible?
SMALL – I’m a straight dude. When I was a tween the intense anxiety I felt about my penis size kept me up at night, regularly. When I was fifteen, my mom accidentally walked in on me while I was dressing – which prompted her to later initiate a mortifying talk about ‘late-bloomers’… in front of my dad. Before I learned to ‘work-it’ I had a lot of humiliating and horrible one night stands. When I was 18, my second partner told everybody I knew that I had a small dick. My 3rd and 4th partners were not to be, once they grabbed my cock they evacuated in a rush – without a word, and never spoke to me again. I was a ‘jock’ in school, I went to the Army, all my friends are alpha-male types with huge dicks. Somewhere along the line though, maybe it was a partner’s multiple orgasms, I just said fuck it and accepted myself. Not as identifying as a small-dicked dude, but as a man. I have a cock, and it’s a powerful thing – smallish or not. After a few satisfied partners, I just came to terms with my manhood, my adequacy. I have more than once been called a the best sex of somebody’s life – and not from choir-girls. If an ex-partner, who had liked our sex and came back for more, made jokes about small dicks in front of me to the laughter of others, this is how I would turn that around: she liked it – and her jokes are a front, not about me – which makes her comments double-worthless. Secondly, if she’s willing to make that joke in front of me – maybe she doesn’t think my dick is ‘too small’. Maybe it isn’t too small. My best advice, and this is childish, is to fuck the shit outta somebody. And when you are done, store that feeling in your chest, nurture that sense, because it will soon be way more powerful and lasting than the fear of shame. The cock doesn’t make the man, the man makes the cock.