zuerst! (in honor of Dan and Terry's trip to Folsom Europe)

LW2: Maybe he is planning on having sex with other women. Maybe he took them thinking that you might use them to have sex with other men. One thing is for sure: He managed to push your buttons. Which was probably a major reason for taking them. I mean really. It's not like one can't stop by the drug store and pick up a box on the way to the new bachelor pad.

Communication between WIFE and currently-separated-on-a-trial-basis husband seem to be lacking on both sides.
WIFE didn’t mention no sex with others as a negotiated part of their trial separation set of rules, yet assumes one has to get the other’s consent in order to act on it.
Husband is probably worried such a clause may be added, hence his unwillingness to discuss the issue.

As for LW1- can women who had their first sex experiences with other women confirm the Orenstein assertion?

WIFE, what, in your mind, is the purpose of this trial separation? Your husband wants to "find himself", and clearly he wants sexual exploration to be a part of this finding himself. Do you want him to find himself? Even if that means he has sex with other people and maybe isn't completely in control of what will happen as a part of that? In my experience, when people find themselves, they often find other people at the same time — and often those people are also confused people in the midst of finding themselves, which often leads to situations, good or bad, which aren't really under any one person's "control". There isn't a guarantee that your husband will do this, of course, and maybe he doesn't even want to. Maybe he just wants to have some adventures, of a kind that apparently you and he have decided he can't have in the context of your before-separation relationship.

Clearly, though, he DOESN'T want to have to ask your permission first. He doesn't want to talk to you about it. He's moved out of your house. He wants a space and time (at least a limited space and time) where you don't make his rules, or he doesn't have to collaborate with you to make his rules. Is this fair of him? I don't know. It's asking a lot of you, and I hope he's understanding that it's asking a lot of you.

But clearly he's trying to establish some boundaries about where the rulemaking starts and ends — and you don't agree with him about where those boundaries should be. It sounds like he wants more freedom than you're interested in giving him. I'm not saying you're a bad person for not wanting to give him complete freedom. But, in the context of a trial separation, the amount of freedom he has is ultimately not up to you.

What do YOU want out of the trial separation? Do you want him to have a good time, but not TOO good a time, and then come back to you? (That's kind of what it sounds like.) If that's what you want, again, that doesn't make you a bad person at all.

What would make you a bad person would be if you "allowed" him to do certain things (sleep with other people) but not other things (have particular kinds of feelings for them) — in other words, if you set him up to be under even GREATER scrutiny, of a MORE personal and complicated kind (which almost guarantees that he'll make mistakes), when clearly what he wants is LESS scrutiny. It sounds a little like you want to give him permission to do something (sex), but simultaneously you want to create conditions around that thing which will inevitably lead to punishing him for doing that thing.

If what he wants is freedom to explore without having to ask your permission, and if what you want is for him to find himself and then come back, then you need to face a question: can you give him the freedom to do what he wants? If not, that's totally understandable. Again, it doesn't make you a bad person. But DON'T pretend you're giving him the freedom if you actually don't want him to have it, or if you don't really want him to use it. That's a recipe for all kinds of unhappiness.

And finally, your letter indicates that you have kids. And that he wants to talk to you about stuff relating to the kids. For the love of all that is good in the world, DON'T use your kids to punish your husband for breaking your rules. If you want to say to him "if you (do some bad thing) you can't come back," that's your right, and you will have to accept that it means he might not come back. But if you want to say to him "if you (do that bad thing) you can't see your kids," and you're secretly saying that to MAKE him come back, knowing he doesn't want to... then yeah, that will make you a bad person.

(Maybe you are a very good person who would NEVER do what I just described in the above paragraph. Please know that I'm aware I don't have all the information here. I just wanted to bring it up because nobody else has yet.}

Use your words. This applies to everyone who wrote in this week.

Re LW2, I suggest reading up on the law on marital separation in your state. In some states, in some situations, having sex with your spouse restarts the clock on the legal separation and may delay divorce. So if one of you thinks this separation is leading to a divorce, they might want to know and keep in mind what the actual law is.

Re LW3, I'd suggest exploring not just "If this relationship is on track to become sexual" but what a happy sexual relationship looks like to both people. For me, if a prospective partner didn't find kissing arousing after two months of hanging out together, I would be extremely dubious that our sex life would be satisfying even if it did get off the ground.

I'd also suggest LW3 consider the possibility of unconventional genitalia or an undisclosed untreatable STI. If I had been dating someone for two months and hadn't had sex, I would definitely be wondering if there was information I hadn't learned yet.

I don’t believe there is enough information surrounding the separation to draw any conclusions about the condoms. Maybe he thought, “I paid for these, I might as well taken them with me,” or “I’m going to use these while jerking off because that feels awesome, and I don’t feel obligated to disclose this to a partner if we’re heading for divorce,” or as another commenter suggested, “No way am I got to let MY wife get nailed while I’m gone by some other dude using MY condoms,” or maybe he just threw them into a suitcase because he simply classified them as “things that belong to me” and didn’t respond to his wife’s questions because he was trying to avoid a fight.

And, of course, there’s the strong possibility that Dan’s scenario is correct. But we just can’t know. Regardless, based on the tiny amount of information the letter does provide, the possibility of a reconciliation seems remote.

Asexuality.org is wrong, I believe. Demisexuals accept as partners only those who are part Greek god. Good luck with that, ISITON.

"My husband and I are currently separated on a trial basis...If either of us were to have extramarital sex without the consent of the other, I would consider that cheating."

Call it oversimplification if you like, but from here it looks like someone isn't clear on what "separated" means. If I have to ask you for permission to have the experiences that are ostensibly about finding myself, that mean you are in control of whether I find myself or not. I can't help wondering if the problem with control issues and boundaries implied by that is what led to this trial separation in the first place

@1delta35: Congrats on being zuerst, and Dan (& Terry): Hope Folsom Europe was a blast.
Dan, thanks for continually helpful information! I appreciate the resources offered to MIDDLE to share with her daughter, and the definition of demisexuality (someone who doesn't have sex without first acquiring a strong emotional attachment) given in response to ISITON.
I keep learning something sexually new (to me, anyway) every week. Since you also made reference to asexuality, I'm wondering if I fall into the demisexual category. I have never felt like I could just physically go for it without feelings of love.
Many thanks and keep on rocking the house!
And kudos, again, Joe, for another kickass graphic.

I know this is so last week, but---nobody wants to score the lucky number from SL: Stranger Things...?

@CMDwannabe

You mean this bit?
""Lesbian and bisexual girls I spoke to for Girls & Sex would talk about feeling liberated to go 'off the script'—by which they meant the script that leads lockstep to intercourse—and create encounters that truly worked for them. I ended up feeling that hetero girls—and boys, too—could learn a lot from their gay and bisexual female peers. And I don't mean by watching otherwise straight girls make out on the dance floor for the benefit of guys."

Since gay and bisexual girls can't default to PIV intercourse, and since there's not a boy in the room whose needs/dick/ego they've been socialized to prioritize, queer girls have more egalitarian and, not coincidentally, more satisfying sexual encounters."

As a bisexual who had her fist few experiences with women, Orenstein assertion's has been very true for me, and is really one of the more disorienting aspects of subsequent heterosexual experiences.

Great column today. Somebody got their groove back.

LW1, MIDDLE: All your daughter really needs at this point is your support and unconditional love. It's great that you are so positive about her coming out, but honestly - would you, as a cis straight woman, have welcomed your parents pushing sexual ethics manuals on you in your teens? Right, well neither does your lesbian daughter. This is not an appropriate time for helicopter parenting. You are doing your part if you welcome any girl she brings to your home just as graciously as you would if your straight daughter brought home a boy. Also, if you wanted to pick up a copy of Orenstein's book "for yourself" and conveniently leave it lying around on the coffee table, that would be OK and she might pick it up and read a few chapters...when you're not home, of course. Please don't worry, your daughter will figure out whatever she needs to know about lesbian sex without any help from her totally inexperienced parents.

LW2, WIFE: In my experience, both first-hand and what I have heard from friends in similar situations, whenever a spouse or lover says "I need to find myself," what they really mean is that they have found someone else and they want to see where the new relationship will lead. If you still love your husband and you are willing to take him back after his long strange journey through the wormhole, here's hoping he ultimately finds out his new love interest is only an infatuation, or his new lover makes that decision for him by dumping him. Because if he is truly, deeply in love with someone else, your marriage is effectively over, no matter what conditions you try to put on it now. Any arbitrary rules you try to impose may make you feel better in the short term, but they won't change the trajectory of his new relationship. If it works out, he's gone; if it doesn't, he'll probably want to come back to you - especially since you have kids together. But at that point, you may no longer want him to come back. Please use this trial separation as a good time to figure out what YOU want, both in your current marriage and in the rest of your life as a human being. Lean heavily on your friends - that's what they are there for - and consider talking with a professional marriage counselor, who can help you untwist and understand all the conflicting emotions you are probably feeling right now.
LW3, ISITON: I agree with Dan here. Everyone is entitled to use whatever labels feel real and true for self-identification, but GF appears to be intentionally or unintentionally teasing you with the possibility of sex sometime in the near-far-forever future. You need to ask her to tell you in plain language what "demisexual" means to her, in the context of your current relationship. And if it involves conditions that you're not willing to accept, it sounds like the two of you are destined to be good friends rather than a love match.

@4: bouncing, your answer was a marvel. So compassionately yet realistically and tough-lovingly and thoroughly done.

Dan should send you roses.

"Young women are more likely to measure their own satisfaction by the yardstick of their partner's pleasure,"

OMFG!! I'm a 68 y/o male / teenage lesbian...

@CMD: I was in my late 30s or early 40s before I routinely encountered men who gave a hoot about my satisfaction. A vast majority of the men I had sex with (and since I am pretty slutty, that constitutes a lot of men) didn't even bother pretending to care about my satisfaction. Ever since I started having sex as a teenager, it's been of the utmost importance to me that my (male) partners were completely satisfied. Indeed, much of my self-definition and ego were riding on it. So although I'm resolutely straight, Orenstein's assertion makes perfect sense to me.

Find himself up someone else, WIFE, is what he's really saying. And why are you continuing to have sex while having a trial separation, sort of defeats the purpose of separation. Tricky when you guys have children, otherwise I'd suggest you let him go.

@ISITON: Tell your girlfriend-wannabe that you are "demigamous."

In other words, that you will commit to sexual fidelity at such time as there is an actual sexual relationship to be faithful over. Until that point, you're a free agent.

WIFE: Yeah, your husband definitely is or is trying to have sex with other people and keep himself a 'get out of jail free' card by not explicitly agreeing that the two of you will stay monogamous. There's really no other likely reason for refusing to discuss the matter. He wants to have sex with other women and he wants to be dishonest about it (preferably by a lie of omission).

You need to 1.) insist that it is discussed, and 2.) accept that if he refused to discuss it without being cornered, there's a very good chance he's going to lie and say 'ok, we're monogamous' and cheat anyways.

@3 CMDwannabe: Yeah, that's pretty well known. Get a few bisexual women together and ask, and they'll tell you. Or, ask straight women how often they orgasm with their partners, and prepared to be deeply depressed over all the justifications those poor creatures come up with: "well, it's just not reasonable to expect women to orgasm regularly," "look, just because I don't orgasm with him doesn't mean I don't have a good time," "well, it's more about the emotional closness than the orgasm," etc.

Where are all these guys that are terrible in bed? I never met a man that didn't care about his partner's pleasure. On the other hand, I was tragically clueless as a teen.

Could it be that women who begin sex in their teenage years get used to young male uselessness in bed, and end up with men who have never made an effort? I'd love to ask a dataset of nonorgasmic women when they started having sex.

Bouncing @4 has asked some very fair and well-phrased questions of WIFE. What does she want out of the trial separation? What does she happening at the end of it? His returning to her, with more life and sexual experience and a deeper, less self-absorbed sense of what his family means to him? Or something else? (One thing it certainly doesn't seem to be, at the moment, is an opportunity for her to explore sex beyond the one partner she's had so far).

The case would seem to be a characteristic one in which sex means different things to the man and woman. For her, it seems to mean the possibility of their getting back together isn't extinct. It may hold out that promise or reassurance to him, too--but it could just be sex, fucking alongside any other fucking he's doing. If they are separated on a trial basis, it seems fair to suppose that the presumption of monogamy has lapsed. (That is, she isn't entitled to police his sex life). A separation is a separation. WIFE's husband can try it on and ask her for sex but she absolutely isn't obliged to comply; and she has the same perfect right as he has to have sex with other people. Before offering my fuller say on their situation, I'd want to know all the reasons they separated. He wants to 'find himself'; does this only have to do with sex? Does he think she was making his choices for him, or always taking the lead, in other areas of his life? How remediable does WIFE think these issues are?

To me, terms like 'demisexual' are good. They make people who fit that description feel less of a freak--more that they have a tribe. Archaic as it may seem, the term 'bottom' was a comfort to me in my teens (certainly before I was bottoming). Rather than homosexuality being a confusing and shaming accusation thrown in my face, before I could even understand it, I could grasp there were roles and a culture and procedures--a way things worked.

@24. Oh please no. People should be not be restricted to one sexual partner in life, which is what your guidance in this, and in so many other cases of religious people, would amount to.

WIFE, I think you know what's going on here, and it's got to be painful to be blindsided like this. Your husband has left you, trial is not what this is. Rather, half left you. He's still happy to have sex with you. He's playing both sides against the middle.
First up, stop having sex with him and talk with him, then go see a lawyer. In the meantime, arrange that your co parent, does his share of the job.
I sense your disbelief, yet his behaviour points to it. Talk with your gfs, as capri @14 has suggested, and try to accept that, sneakily as he's arranged it, your husband is behaving like a man who has closed the door on his marriage.

Talk with him and both of you work out looking after your children as you talk truth to each other. Good luck.

@25 Harriet_by_the_bulrushes - 24 is spam. Ignore it.

Great advice this week.
WIFE: I agree that if you are still having a sexual relationship, you are not "separated." You are in an open relationship. He knows it's open, now you do too. Make sure you keep using those condoms, and get tested.

EricaP @6: Two hits and a miss. ISITON, if your girlfriend does ever get to the stage where the attraction she feels for you is sexual, she may want to have sex only every six months or so. Is that the sort of relationship you want? Would that be the sort of relationship you would want if it were open? Is she open to the idea of polyamory, or does she want your future sex life to be limited to the rare times she is in the mood for sex? (ISITON has learned the information he needs to know why she hasn't said yes to sex: she's demisexual. It's a bit demiphobic [is that a word?] to suggest that she's hiding something.)

Phascogale @12: Best typo of the week for "As a bisexual who had her fist few experiences with women"!

Harriet @25: Carimess is a bot. Reported as spam.

@wife, separated...mean it....stop the sex. Put some distance and objectivity in place where it lacking. The value or role of your consent has no bearing here given you are separated. There is no benefit speculating over what he is and isn't doing while separated.

Re: the orgasm gap. I thought the figures seemed exaggerated. Here are the actual figures:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?ter…

Caveats: These figures are for single people over 21 who've had sex in the past 12 months, and relate to the percentage of time they experience orgasm with a familiar partner. (If one-night stands are included, I can definitely see women's satisfaction rate dropping to 29 percent.)

Heterosexual men 85.5%
Gay men 84.7%
Bisexual men 77.6%

Heterosexual women 61.6%
Lesbians 74.7%
Bisexual women 58.0%

Odd that bisexual women have fewer orgasms than hetero ones. One would think the number would be somewhere in between, but far closer to the hetero figure, given that bi women are far more likely to be in opposite-sex relationships than same-sex ones. Bi men have fewer orgasms as well. I wonder what we collectively are doing wrong?

CMD: I didn't start having sex with women until my mid-20s, so I can't really answer your question. Also, I've experienced few men who didn't seem to care whether or not I had an orgasm. Perhaps I've been lucky (though I do have quite a large sample size); perhaps my preference for "beta" over "alpha" males had something to do with it; or perhaps I learned to assert my own sexual needs at a younger age, as I've always seen sex as a goal in itself rather than a means to an end (a relationship). For me, a relationship was something that happened when you found someone you really, really liked fucking, whereas girls typically are taught that sex is something you give a guy as a reward or inducement to his committing to you. TL;DR, despite quibbles with the numbers, I agree with Dr Orenstein's overall analysis.

Nocute @ 17 - "A vast majority of the men I had sex with (and since I am pretty slutty, that constitutes a lot of men) didn't even bother pretending to care about my satisfaction"

Didn't they even ask "Did you like it?" at the end, while obviously expecting yes for an answer?

@31: Ricardo: No. Of course, this was the 80s. Maybe changing times/mores.
They wanted to get laid, and having achieved that, were happy. Of course, there were a couple of contributing factors: most of these sex partners weren't people I was emotionally involved with. Many were extremely casual, so there was not much motivation to care about me and my experience. I was anorgasmic then, too, and I don't know if they could have helped with that then. I sometimes wonder if my body just wasn't "ready" yet. And it could have been that my hormonal birth control was a hindrance. Nevertheless, no one seemed to care.

I want to reiterate that that is not the case now, no matter how casually I have sex. On the other hand, in addition to being older now, I orgasm very easily, so perhaps it's a chicken-or-egg thing.

Nocute @ 32 "Maybe changing times/mores"

My experience is about the same since my sex life started, in the 80s: most guys don't care, at least not much, but those who seem the least interested in my pleasure are always the ones who ask at the end if I liked it. It appears that to them, this is "showing concern for your partner's pleasure".

I'm glad you've found a different kind of guys, or that you've "evolved" into more pleasurable sex.

Personally, I now look for guys whose sexual self-centeredness happens to fit my needs, i.e. who "accidentally" give me pleasure even though that's not necessarily their aim. Unfortunately, those who really care about my pleasure seem just as self-centered - the only difference being that they have a very precise scenario of what they'll do to me in order for me to be pleasured, whether or not that's what I enjoy, and then they're disappointed if I dare ask them to modify it. So in the end, I prefer the openly selfish ones, at least they're more honest.

@CMD
I’ve never had sex with a woman so you can skip this if you want since it's not really an answer to your question, but Orenstein’s assertion about het girls is absolutely true for me. I think it’s a pretty common experience, at least among teenage girls who start dating/ having sex young, for girls to basically spend the first few years of their dating life sort of struggling with boys who try really hard to wear you down to push you farther than you want to go. Dan mentions socialization, and probably that has a lot to do with it, but for myself it didn’t feel that way at the time (socialization is often invisible to the socialized people) and it felt more like excitement combined with massive anxiety. Girls are horny and want sex too, what you are doing feels good, but you are worried about all sorts of things around sex- the pain, maybe you are bleeding, will you get pregnant, do you have contraception, will you know what to do, could you get an STD (in my generation, we were still all terrified of HIV on top of that) and it felt like the guys just didn’t think about any of this AT ALL. So you’ll be making out, and it literally becomes a bit of a struggle where you pull back, the guy desists for a bit, things get less serious, then they get more serious again until the guy wears you down to the point that either you have to draw a firm line and say “stop” (which is confusing because you are horny and you would like the no-pressure making out to continue) or you just have sex because it’s easier than making a scene (and like I said, you are also horny). And under these circumstances, tons of teenage girls have sex with teenage boys that they sort of wanted to have but that is not very pleasant. I can’t imagine that this is the same between two women not just because the sex itself would be different (no eager teenage boys just thrusting away for a couple minutes, ha ha) but also because lots of those concerns- around the fear of pregnancy, the pain the first few times, the awkwardness of being on your period- all these things would be shared, right? All of these things are hard to learn to handle as a teenage girl- it’s a lot to learn to deal with all at once in a short space of time, and often you have no way to access the information / contraception that can give you peace of mind and you don’t yet know how to talk about them.

@NoCute
That’s just awful. I’m so sorry about that. That has not really been my experience since high school at least. I mean, there have been a few duds here and there but mostly I’ve found that if I’m assertive about what I want, I usually get it and men are accommodating. Out of curiosity, Did you start having sex young? I’m wondering because it seems like I had the learning curve most women go through in college back in high school which made college more fun and set me up for an adulthood of fun after life got busy and you don’t have as much time for learning curves anymore. I don’t know what it’s like for girls who wait until they are older, and as with most things I’m sure there are class/culture/generational differences, but I can say with certainty that this was absolutely the norm of experience for myself and all my sexually active girlfriends who started having sex in the 13-16 range with other boys that age which was the norm at least in our bubble- working class latchkey kids in a diverse urban school. By the time I was around mid high school, I was stupidly and madly in love with a boy and became very comfortable with sex and my own body and my own desires. So the good news is that college was tons of fun because I had that learning curve out of the way. But it would’ve been easier if these dynamics and how to handle them would’ve been an explicit part of the conversation when I was younger. Though as an adult working with teens, I’ve wondered how much they’d listen to these talks anyway. They’re such a bag of hormones.

@MissPiggy,
Ha, I typed all that before I read your post. I was wondering the same thing.

As for WIFE, my hunchy feeling about her letter is that her husband wants a divorce but right now he’s in that calm eye of the storm. He knows it’s coming, but right now they are separated, he’s still able to have sex with his wife (and probably others) and he doesn’t want to have that conversation because he knows damn well that it will bring on the conversation about divorce. This is why he’s willing to directly talk about finances and kids- it’s harder to be wishy-washy or procrastinate on those issues- but he’s avoiding the conversation that is going to bring on the storm. I have no evidence for this interpretation other than this is the pattern that I’ve seen plenty of couples with shared assets and kids follow when they get divorced.

We used to call people who do not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional bond "normal." It's only since the sexual revolution in the 1960's that people have assumed that folks should jump into bed with someone they just met. Before that time, most people -- certainly most women -- assumed that a strong emotional bond was a necessary precursor to sexual activity. The world has certainly changed, when we need a special word to describe what used to be the default!

@Corylea,

It's not the sexual revolution's changing attitude about sex that brought about changed behavior. It's that birth control became widely available for the first time in human history, and this changed behavior which brought about the sexual revolution. Men had been writing about the desire to remove the requirement of relationships from sex for decades, often with complete cluelessness that this would not work for women who took on all the risks. Once you start to remove those risks, the relationships become less of a requirement for women. This distinction is important because people often think of the sexual revolution of being a time when people suddenly start to think about free love etc, but it's far more material than that. It happened because women could, for the first time in human history, independently prevent getting knocked up.

I don't think it has ever been the norm for men (individual differences exist, but generally speaking) to require strong emotional bonds to have sex. If that were the case, then brothels would not have been a thing forever.

As for women, the historical requirement for strong emotional bonds or at least a sanctioned relationship have (what should be) obvious causes: the risk of pregnancy, the risk of physical assault, the risk of social condemnation, and women's more complicated sex drive and sexual pleasure that make casual hookups with someone with no incentive to know your body less likely to be satisfying. Some of these issues are less of a concern now than they've ever been before. So I don't think it's ever really been about emotional bonds as anything other than just a process to deal with those other issues. As those other issues become less of a concern (as we deal with them in society) then behaviors start to change.

Corylea @35: What you're missing is that demisexuality refers to desire, not to behaviour. Up to the 1950s, as you say, women in particular were socialised to require a strong emotional bond as a precursor to sexual activity. That's not to say that these women didn't want the sexual activity; they were expected to repress their own desires until they got something -- commitment -- in return. This is different from not actually having any desire for sex unless you have an emotional bond with someone.

Using your logic, one could claim "well gee, up to the 1970s there weren't any gay people." There absolutely were. They just mostly felt compelled to hide in the closet, just as women in the pre-birth control era felt compelled to hide the fact that they too wanted sex.

I'd like to hear from the men, particularly the straight/bi ones on the board. At what age, and through what experiences, did it occur to you that you should be concerned about whether your sexual partners were enjoying themselves?

Oops, I meant CENTURIES not decades. I was thinking specifically of Schopenhaur, Marx and Swift all of whom wrote about the restraints of marriage, family and sexual repression without ever considering it from a female pov- the fact that sex causes pregnancy.

Also yes to BDF- I didn't even think about that. I'm sure there are people who just have their desire linked to emotional bonds, and I'd even go so far as to say that's more common among women.

But in general, I think sexual behavior has a lot more to do with material and historical conditions since the IDEAS of the sexual revolution were not new, just the conditions that allowed more practice of those ideas existed.

What kind of cheap-ass, lame-ass, inconsiderate dipshit takes the condoms when he moves out during a trial separation? This guy wants to fuck others, wants to make it harder for you to fuck others, wants you to figure out that he's fucking others without having to say it, and presumably will want you to do all of the legwork in your divorce.

To summarize: LW2, DT cheap, lame, lazy, cowardly MFA

I don't know beccoid. That's certainly a possibility, but we don't know anything about how/where they store things like condoms. I mean, if he was just cleaning his drawer in the bathroom and the condoms were there, it would be weirder if he took everything else but left the condoms. If they keep their condoms in a mutual place or in a box of sex toys or something, well that's different. Since the dude has communication problems, it could be some passive aggressive way to say "I'm going to fuck people!" without having to be reflective or openly communicative. So sure. But it could just be a detail that he didn't even think about while cleaning out his shit. He's boxing up all his stuff to take to his new bachelor pad and the condoms happen to be in his stuff so they go too, etc.

But about his more generally skirting responsibility, yes I agree. I think he wants a divorce and just can't be assertive enough to do the work for it. Procrastination maybe or maybe he's the sort (as you imply) that dumps responsibility on others.

Emma @40: It's my understanding that demisexuality isn't just about not wanting to have sex with someone unless there's an emotional bond. Most of us humans could be described as sexual creatures. We have sexual desires. We look at porn. We see hot people and have fantasies about them. We want sex, whether we actively seek to fill that need with casual partners or in a relationship or not at all. Demisexuals do not. Demisexuals do not desire sex for its own sake; that switch is not switched on unless or until they meet someone they form a strong bond with. Also, a demisexual is unlikely to be the person who goes from not craving sex while single to wanting to bang two or three times a day once they find a suitable partner. Demisexual literally means "partly sexual." This is why I don't think ISITON is likely to be able to turn this relationship into one that satisfies his sexual needs, no matter how long he waits.

Thanks to all who responded to my Orenstein’s assertion question, especially phascogale @ 12 who also helped clarifying the matter.
I think the answer is overwhelmingly a “yes.” The statement did make sense to me as well, thought some times we encounter assumed stigmas that aren’t always true in real life.

#3, I agree with Orenstein's assertion. I had my first sexual experience with a woman when I was sixteen and it was fun, sexy and pleasurable. I had my first sexual experience with a man at 21 (he was 28) and all I could think was, "Wtf is going on here?!" It did seem like there was some script that I was supposed to follow, and that script didn't contain any of the fun, sexy, pleasurable aspects of sex that was accustomed to. I found the situation very confusing, especially after I realized this wasn't a problem with just one particular guy.

In my experience, talking with friends about this, many (not all) straight women seem to have weird delusions (or fantasies) about what sex (and relationships) is (are) supposed to be. Perhaps because my early experience was so different, it took me a long time to understand where they were coming from. I didn't understand why it HAD to go according to this script because it hadn't always gone that way for me and I knew there were other, more satisfying possibilities. Imo, people can figure out what they like without a script, but there seemed to be a lot of fear and resistance to abandoning one, based on some of the reactions I received when I even hinted at this.

Fortunately, more women start asking, "What do I want?" as they get older.

Thanks bowie, that was brilliant. You just explained the problem heteronormative assumptions - it takes a while to figure out how to get around that.

Thanks also BDF- that's very clarifying. It seems like a really difficult way to be sexual. Most people aren't going to find strong bonds first and then sexual relationships as they tend to grow hand-in-hand, so I bet it would be really hard to find a partner in that situation.

BiDanFan @28 -- without explicitly challenging someone's self-declared label, I can keep my mind open to a full range of possibilities.

Someone might feel demisexual because they expect rejection if they are honest and so sexual intimacy isn't something they allow themselves to want until after they trust the other person not to leave when they hear the truth.

This site isn't exactly on point because the author isn't demisexual but it gets at some of what I'm talking about:
http://www.thepantheronline.com/opinions…

>> Trans people ... are much more likely to experience violence due to sex than cisgender people, especially trans people of color. There are so many privileges to recognize that exist within hookup culture:

>> Not having to lie or hide your identity to a potential partner is a cisgender privilege. Having a one-night stand is a cisgender privilege. Unwavering sex positivity is a cisgender privilege. Stigmatization of no sexual activity/being a virgin is a cisgender privilege. Not being pressured into body-altering surgery is a cisgender privilege. Never having to worry if someone won’t like you because you’re transgender is a cisgender privilege. Not ever having to feel unlovable because of your own gender is a cisgender privilege. >>

@44 BiDanFan "Also, a demisexual is unlikely to be the person who goes from not craving sex while single to wanting to bang two or three times a day once they find a suitable partner."

Flatly false in my demisexual girlfriend's case.

Re my male partners' interest in my pleasure -- until I figured out my own kink interests, I definitely told men that I wasn't going to orgasm from their efforts and it stressed me out for them to try -- plus I didn't enjoy cunnilingus. So it's hardly their fault that they respected what I was telling them. Not sure how many women were conveying similar messages, but I doubt I'm that unusual.

Also, I love the fact that we are talking about Orenstein's Assertion as if it is now a theory of human behavior or the natural world like Occam's Razor or Avogadro's Number or Murphy's Law. Maybe if this became as well-known a thing, straight sex would be less likely to assume that wtf script Bowie talks about in the first place?

Beccoid @41, 42: You read my mind.

Because my youthful sex life was pre everything,the sexual politics just shifting past the sixties, and Australia that much behind the US in cultural shifts, I don't think the men asked how I did. Sex worked or it didn't work. I found out early on how to reach orgasm,male technique was pretty individualistic and not rough, if I recall.

So much has changed sexually and been alllowed the light over the last fifty odd years in the west. I marvel at all the forms of expression.

(that's not to imply that ALL of those sexual connections went anywhere emotional, into either love or friendship. but that meant they didn't last long).

@46, bowie, that's true. Getting older, that question does rise to the top. What do I want?

@CMD Of course, I can only speak for myself but I've always said basically the same thing that Orenstein asserts! Taking myself out of the straight culture of high school made me less hung up about my appearance and looking like the ideal female and the sex I had in high school and college (exclusively with girls) sounded a lot more communicative and mutual than the sex my straight friends were having. And I can't chalk it up to the relationships being particularly healthy or communicative otherwise, the relationships were actually quite bad. I started having sex with men during late college and felt very empowered to advocate for myself and my pleasure which I really do think came from getting to explore my sexuality without that tunnel vision view of PIV and male orgasm that color so many young women's first experiences.

@35 Corylea, the restrictions on sex were sure greater pre '70s. Backyard abortions, adoptions.
Good sex with a heart connection is always best, going with pure attraction also has its rewards.

@39 I care less and less every year. I used to care a lot... but, you know, I was a nice boy and wanted to make sweet nice boy love. But women seemed to prefer that you treat their bodies like a piece of meat and don't feel desired unless you turn into a complete animal, pure id, focused only on receiving pleasure. It turns out I'm into that too, to a certain extant, so it was an "easy" adaptation to make, but I need the kind of woman who smiles and says thank you when you grab her by the hair and smack her cheek - not everyone who wants to be dommed likes that.

So, while I still care, I take more care to hide that I care. It's a vicious world and sometimes I'd like to stare into my lovers eyes as we gently fuck but... you can't always get what you want.

Sportlandia, a dom cares about another person's sexual pleasure so that doesn't sound like what you are describing. It sounds like you are describing more an inability to not reflect on why what has worked or not worked in your attempts at relationships with women means about your approach and your beliefs. You sound really dangerously conflicted about whether or not you really want "nice" sex or not or nice relationships or not, and you are blaming that conflict on women by generalizing what you've decided they all want rather than reexamining your own view of yourself.

In answer to BDF's question, it's enlightening, b/c what you've just said is that you thought you wanted X, but when women didn't respond to X the way you expected they would, you responded by deciding they all want to be treated like shit rather than reflecting on what X really was in the first place. It's the easier road and very instructive to hear it.

I suppose other men have had other responses? In fact, I know this is the case because I'm several decades into satisfying sex with men that includes neither Nice Guys (TM) nor being smacked around.

Not that there's anything wrong with women that want to be smacked around if you've found them- what's disturbing is that you begin this description by saying you don't care about women's pleasure and that you think women (generally) seem to prefer being treated like meat. As a woman, this is news to me.

@59 cont. I mean forced or out of cultural shaming adoptions.
The main loves of my life all broke my heart, it was the casual encounters I can look back on and enjoy the memory.

Oh Sportlandia, that is so sweet. I'm sure there's women out there who like a little combination of the two. Gentle lovemaking and a bit of rough play. Staying connected, no matter the play, doesn't mean you are treating a woman like a piece of meat. It's the lack of any human to human care/ connection that makes the encounter mutual objectification.
Maybe it's the women you are falling for.

BDF @ 39
My partners’ enjoyment was always a concern/awareness, yet the knowledge of how to achieve it wasn’t always there.
Back in the days the man/boy was very much expected to be the experienced leader in any het relationship. As much as I craved to be “taught” I used to get nervous when seemingly more experienced women approached me, as I thought I don’t have much to show. Having a rumor going around that you’re not performing to expectations could have been devastating when growing up in a small place, especially when you already felt awkward for other related-or-not reasons.

The women who were even less experienced then myself that I partnered with back then were not that threatening, but lack of knowledge and societal “shyness” didn’t necessarily make it easier. Talking about their own needs was deemed slutty, and I remember couple early encounters in which my young female partners declined my requests for a guided private parts tour once we were through despite me walking around naked. (Yes kids, it was a long time ago. The internet did not exist, we used to do it in relative dark, and pubic hair was abundant.)

Things have improved once I gained some confidence and found more suitable partners. It is also my experience that feminism isn’t only for women. It eased the requirement for men to always lead, though some still see it as a threat, and it also improved knowledge and communication skills for all involved.

Thank you CMD. Yes, feminism has helped along with queer pride, to throw off so many imposed gender rules. I could never have gone down the white wedding route or shaved my body.

@61 I don't know how you come to the conclusion that I'm responsible for the sexual preferences of the people I'm with, I don't have ESP or mind-control abilities. I didn't decide what anyone wanted - I was told by my partners over the years. I'm confident in what I want, I'm just not confident that many other people want the same thing and you'd better believe my biological clock is ticking.

You've still got a few years Sportlandia.
If you are serious about finding a mate for life, to have a family with, be more selective. And write it on your profile.

@44 BiDanFan "Also, a demisexual is unlikely to be the person who goes from not craving sex while single to wanting to bang two or three times a day once they find a suitable partner."

As with 49 idreamofhorses's g/f, that is flatly false in the case of this het, male demisexual.

@8 saxfanatic: Thank you for food for thought regarding Asexuality.org and demisexuality.

@69: Ooops---I did not see this coming (pun semi-intended)!
Okay, while I am thrilled to get a twofer on the lucky number, this time by default, someone else really should the honor in next week's Savage Love.

EricaP @48: "Not being pressured into body-altering surgery is a cisgender privilege."
Not if you have small tits.

Lolly @55: Your experience mirrors mine. Physical attraction came first, emotional connection, if any, followed.

Sporty @60: It doesn't sound like you're describing not caring about your partners' pleasure. It sounds, as Emma says, that you discovered your partners enjoyed different things (ie rough sex) than you expected them to enjoy. If you'd discovered they preferred rough sex but persisted in giving them the gentle sex you liked, you'd be guilty of not caring about their pleasure. If you changed your script and refused to alter it upon finding yourself with a partner who did prefer gentle sex, you'd be guilty of not caring about her pleasure. But you're not doing that -- you're displaying the self-awareness to accept that you won't be sexually compatible with every woman out there. Not the same thing as just expecting to do it your way, regardless of her preferences.

Lava @62: Yes. The biggest mistakes I've made were keeping lovers around too long, after the non-sexual aspects of the relationship had started to go bad, instead of cutting ties and walking away. Oxytocin, as I've said many times, is a hell of a drug.

CMD @64: "Talking about their own needs was deemed slutty"
This is a huge factor. Younger girls don't feel they can articulate their own needs. They feel it's much more important to preserve the guy's ego, to allow him to maintain the illusion of himself as some studmuffin. Young women probably also don't know that the things they like aren't necessarily the things all women like, and that saying "please be a bit rougher/slower/whatever" isn't tantamount to telling someone he's no good in bed. (Queer women learn this a lot sooner!)

Idream @49/Desert @68: Thank you for the correction.

Griz @69: Congrats!

@48. EricaP. "Unwavering sex positivity is a cis gender privilege'.

Absolutely yes and well spoken. Living in the other gender, whether this is done as 'passing', with an approach to fitting in and not attracting undue or inappropriate notice, or in some more theatricalized or camp way, is not always a sexual performance. My going about en femme would be, almost all of the time, _not_ eroticized or minimally eroticized--only in the same way female undergarments are. I wish there were more contexts where I was comfortable being this way that were explicitly professional, civic, non-sexual. Sex is always an undercurrent, I guess. But in a lot of my life I want sex out of my face--more so, I'd imagine that the typical cis het guy, and more than some cis women.

When I'm having sex with a woman, my number one priority is her orgasm(s). When I'm with a man, my number one priority is my own.

BDF @39

At what age, and through what experiences, did it occur to you that you should be concerned about whether your sexual partners were enjoying themselves?

I had my first, and up till now, only non-commercial sex, in the relationship I had between the ages of 26 and 29.
I was brought up in a rather "feminist" culture, in the sense that female pleasure is what matters in sex, the man should be "sensitive" and his first priority should be what the woman wants. Predictably, this mindset lead to rather unsatisfying sex for all involved. I never could shake the "If I'm enjoying myself too much I'm a despicable Neanderthal" feeling in that relationship.
So, more or less the opposite of the usual complaint from women about men. The end result was still bad sex though.

Lava @ 65
"I could never have gone down the white wedding route"
Let me know if you change your mind, nowadays I’m a proud owner of some exquisite bridal lingerie.

@66 Sportlandia, I'll try to explain my response.

"the sexual preferences of the people I'm with"
is different than
"women seemed to prefer that you treat their bodies like a piece of meat and don't feel desired unless you turn into a complete animal"

The first makes the distinction that you are referring to the women that you have sex with. The second refers to women in general. If you did not mean it that way, then I apologize for a misinterpretation. But if you are referring only to women that you have sex with, and their preferences are not indicative of general trends, then this is a situation that YOU are contributing to. Which is fine. As I said, there's nothing wrong with any of that, and if you and your partners are having the rough sex that you both want, that's fantastic. But you present the story as if you fell into this because you couldn't find women who want what you want. If you have only found women who want to be treated like meat and slapped around then there must be something about you that keeps leading you to attract and date those women.

As for "I'm confident in what I want, I'm just not confident that many other people want the same thing" yet again seems to show that you are doing this to please the partners you are with rather than it being what you want to do. I said you sounded confused because your first post does have a lot of contradictory statements. "I take more care to hide that I care. It's a vicious world and sometimes I'd like to stare into my lovers eyes as we gently fuck but... you can't always get what you want." You start out by saying you were a nice boy that wanted nice sex but women only wanted rough sex and you found you sort of liked that too.

What I'm trying to say is that if this has been the typical experience of all the sexual experiences that you've had, then probably it's more about you. Maybe you don't really want nice sex. Maybe you want both as Lava says and need to ask for that more directly. Maybe your impression of yourself as a nice boy is very different than how other people perceive you. I'm not really sure what "nice sex" means to you, but if you just mean sex that has lots of caressing and does not include slapping people and grabbing them by the hair, then that's probably way more common so if you are not finding it but are finding a lot of interest in rough sex, then there must be something about you that is attracting that sort of woman.

Unless I'm totally misreading you here and you are talking about a very small number of partners. People all have different preferences, and if you find a pattern over and over and over again, the common element is you. Which is fine btw.

We've talked about it before, and I seem to remember that you had a misunderstanding of what it meant to be raised to be a "nice guy" similar to what Registered European is describing, and I do think that's problematic. I don't know why so many people have gotten such terrible messaging about such things, and it's unfortunate. But no one should say that feminism prioritizes female pleasure and as CMD explained (and so did I above) young girls are often very conflicted about what they want as well so it would be unfair for young boys to somehow be able to prioritize their pleasure when they don't even know themselves. I think CMD and BDF and NoCute and Lava and I have all talked about what it's like to learn to figure those things out with age, and it should never have been interpreted that it was a priority of boys or men to know them for women. It's why I hate it (vomit-inducing major red flag) when a guy talks about how he can "give her an orgasm" even though I'm forgiving that men don't normally mean it that way. Women have to learn their own bodies. What we are talking about is changing a narrative that focuses directly on an escalation straight to PIV thrusting with no thought about other ways to explore bodies and find pleasure- and all of this with consent and responsibility- not that suddenly men should be overly nice or that they should just be born knowing how to give pleasure or that they should shelf their own pleasure. And if someone is calling "nice guy" behavior the sort of bullshit that claims to only be attracted to a woman for her brain or her personality and pretend to not sexualize bodies, then this is also red flag bullshit- and I'm sorry if you've encountered that sort of societal messaging and I agree it's damaging. We are all damaged by society, and what we are trying to describe here is how you learn to work through it and recognize that damage in others.

I think a lot of the "I'm a nice guy" stuff comes from a place of resentment about sex. I think it's because some probably well-intentioned but damaged people raised a couple generations of people and told them that if they just "be yourself" and "be nice" and "work hard" you will be entitled to things like sex and that you can reach all your dreams and be whoever you want to be. This is a crock of bullshit, and most of us figure that out pretty young and find ways to cope with the fact that the world is a violently unfair place. It troubles me when men point to feminism as the cause of this just because the main source of resentment or injustice in their life is around sex. It's an easy target, and it ignores the fact that most women (who are not young or conventionally attractive) are also not getting what they want. In any case, being nice doesn't mean you get laid. It means you show respect for people. Also being nice isn't the same as being kind or being respectful. Nice is about manners, and manners are often bullshit that just keeps people civil. It's a low bar for interpersonal relationships. To me, it sounds like what you want is rough sex mixed with sweetness (not niceness) and intimacy, which I think is probably a pretty common desire. So I wonder why you are finding the rough partners but not the sweet intimacy? Or am I misinterpreting you again?

There is no key to getting laid. It requires self-knowledge and social skills and rejection and flexibility- and a good part of it is just pure dumb luck of being good looking and able-bodied. This is true of women and men, and while it sucks to not get laid, there are lots of things that suck about being a woman dealing with men who are (sometimes dangerously) resentful about not getting laid too. That doesn't mean the world doesn't also have respect and kindness and compassion and really hot sex.

I dunno. I'm trying to say that I hope you and RE are both able to work through whatever damage was done to you that left you so conflicted about being "nice guys" and that you are both able to find more generous partners, or in the case of Sportlandia, find partners that let you gaze into their eyes after you slap them around a bit.

I hope you and RE are both able to work through whatever damage was done to you that left you so conflicted about being "nice guys" and that you are both able to find more generous partners

Thanks, EL, but I'm no longer interested in finding a partner (haven't been for the last 15 years actually). Paid-for sex combined with platonic female friends suits me fine.

@76: "I think a lot of the "I'm a nice guy" stuff comes from a place of resentment about sex."

You're far too gracious in explaining. He knows* the difference between a good person and a "nice guy" but conflates them because it fits his suspiciously anti-feminist ideology.

*This topic gets covered in many threads that he has read and responded to. He's not arguing in full sincerity.

Jesus undead, what? You have been on Sportlandia's case like all over the threads. Why is that. He seems to try and play it straight in what he says, as far as I read it.

@Sportlandia: I take more care to hide that I care

Yes. In younger days, making women come was a core part of my sexual identity.

As I matured into a more dominant sexual identity, the partners I ended up with tended to take as much or more pleasure in pleasing as they did in being pleased. Initially, this imbalance felt precarious - if I'm not getting her off on a regular basis, how strong could our sexual bond really be? With time I learned that this line of thinking was counter productive, that it was OK for me to just roll with it, and that once I stopped worrying, this sort of arrangement actually suits me quite well.

@EmmaLiz: Women have to learn their own bodies.

Are you speaking from your own sexual experiences with straight women?

There are some women who learn all by themselves, but I can assure you there are others for whom a man was integral to this process.

@80 undead's just a grown up bully, can only feel good about themselves by putting others down or describing their failings back to them. I assume I attract [her] attention because I try to be at least somewhat reflective and she sees that as weakness and therefore it's safe to get on my case. Not the first, or the last. Things aren't that different than grade school, except we can choose to be here or not.

What ever the moves that happen in the sex, if the heart and head aren't connected, and a whole person isn't in bed with you, then the sex is only half cooked. Doesn't mean pretending intimacy, because that comes with time.
You men don't have mouths? Who wrote these scripts where sex has to be anyway, except what the two etc people doing it say it is.

LW1, I think you're a bit late, your daughter knows she's gay and how do you think she learnt about it, except from her peers. They talk about sex and crushes with each other, all the time.
If you've been fair and loving parents, and it reads like you have, then she'll know what to look for. Have her back, because of the risk of discrimination and bullying.
Like all young people, she won't want you to know what she's up to, she knows you're there for her. My daughter kept me updated on her beaus and her heartaches all thru. Now she's a partner and mother of five, blended family. The strongest advice I'd ever given her was to not get pregnant, she's had two.
Having a gay daughter is no different to having a straight one. You keep an eye on them, be available, and love them.

@83: Do you expect a positive response from constantly claiming that I and others in the peanut gallery "hate men" when expressing distaste for a very small subset of LWs?

Grow up, drop the manchild act, or at the very least stop making these dumb and substanceless claims.

Sportlandia, I won't be defending you if you just jump in the puddle with undead, splashing each other.
Thanks for the offer, CMD. You enjoy them, not my colour.

@undead: The majority of your contributions to Slog are ad hominem attacks on male posters who dare express perspectives that don't conform to your narrow interpretation of scripture.

These latest posts are nothing more (or less) than harassment.

@88: I don't think you understand what an ad-hominem represents. I find positions distasteful, and that may represent the holder. Contrary to your assumpti

...ion, I don't believe most men necessarily hold these bad beliefs.

The issue here is entitlement, not manhood.

If you can't separate the two, that's your damage.

Undead, I'm with WoofCandy on this one. Your posts have been particular bitchy lately and mostly directed at men. Chill.

@86 I've never claimed that you hate men. Perhaps you're defensive about it because you're projecting?

@91: Would you observe a difference between being mad at someone who is a man and being mad at someone because they're a man?

The bee in my bonnet comes from the suggestion that others and myself are only giving LWs and one or two posters here a hard time because of their sex, instead of because of the nature of their attitudes which are not universally shared.

I get not wanting to see the back and forth and to that I apologize.

To better things!

Can someone quote orenstein's assertion please?

And lw1? Your kid is going to have a much better sex life right off the bat - no pregnancy risk, lower std risk, her own body is her instruction manual, her hesitations and no will be respected absolutely, the built in power dynamic our culture creates re boys needs more important will not exist, her pleasure will not only exist but be prioritized, she won't be forced or bullied, she won't be seen as a thing or treated like one, she'll likely be in a far more body positive relationship than would be even remotely likely with a teenage boy, and she'll be seen as a full human being by her partner. You could not hope for better. No need to fret. You will not need to fear for her like you would if she were dating boys. I highly recommend starting sex and dating w girls for any girl who is even a little bit bi. Your sex life will be a lot more fun if you are fully in charge of it and totally without fear from the get go, and that's hard to have w boys (not impossible, but much scarcer, even if you snag a unicorn or five).

undead, please don't do logic leaps on me when it's the intention and language I'm talking about. Cool it with the viciousness, that's my suggestion. Disagree with other posters, if that's how you feel.. just don't be abusive about it. If anyone around here is like Mr E, some of the time, it's you.

I'd love to go see Dan talk with Esther.

@LavaGirl: I'd love to go see Dan talk with Esther.

My lady recently turned me on to Esther Perel's podcast and bought us tickets to this show.

Mixed feelings about seeing Dan - too much "ouch" since he abandoned the original premise of his column (which was to advise breeder boys and girls from a neutral third party perspective).

But I'm really looking forward to seeing Esther - so intelligent, open-minded, compassionate, positive, and helpful. And Belgian.

@49 Idreamofhorses & @68 desert walker: Agreed with @72 BiDanFan.
Thank you all for further clarifying the definition of demisexual. It sounds like
the description fits me to a T-top (VW Beetle convertible top?).

Emma @76: As a woman who has sex with women, the concept of "giving her an orgasm" is not an exclusively male thing. And I'm wondering why you dislike the phrase so much. To elaborate on my quip @73, the mechanics of PIV are that essentially, whether the man comes is mostly the result of what the man does, and whether the woman comes is mostly the result of what the man does. He has most of the control over the speed and rhythm of thrusting. Even in cowgirl position, there's an element of him grabbing her bum and thrusting from underneath. The woman is a more passive -- though I would certainly hope involved -- recipient of the thrusting. He can, to some extent, guide whether he comes or does not come via his own actions; she pretty much cannot.

There is also "giving her an orgasm" by non-PIV means: oral sex, handjobs. These are methods by which you "give him an orgasm," as well. [I'm going to disregard "face-fucking," which is active rather than passive oral sex, but which I consider BDSM and am not including in this discussion of typical vanilla sex acts.] In hetero sex these are usually considered side dishes to the main course of PIV, but in queer sex, they are sex. When I am having sex with a woman, whether she comes is mostly the result of what I do. Yes, she needs to tell me, verbally and non, what she likes. But her orgasm happens because of what I'm doing with my tongue or fingers or vibrator, so how could that not be described as "giving her an orgasm"? And why is "giving her an orgasm" a bad thing? That's how sapphic sex works: we take it in turn to give each other orgasms.

What way do "men mean it" that you hate? Is it that the men you've known seem to be claiming credit for what is a mutual experience?

Lava @80: Despite occasional bouts of sincere self-reflection, Sportlandia rarely passes up a chance to throw in a misogynist barb. Example: assuming Undead is female because they challenge his sexist comments. Holding a grudge may not advance the conversation, but is certainly Undead's prerogative.

Woof @82: And there are many for whom dozens of men were integral to the process. And there are many for whom a woman, or several, were integral to the process. How do women learn what their bodies like? Through practice, and there is only so much practice one can do with oneself. (I now think I understand Emma's objection to the concept of "giving her an orgasm." Thank you.)

Lava @84: I'm wondering if my early attitudes to sexual satisfaction were shaped by the fact that my first sexual experience was receiving oral. I had lived a sheltered life; sex ed was exclusively about where babies come from and how to prevent them, and avoiding pregnancy by having oral sex instead was not suggested. I had never ever considered how a tongue on my clit might feel and HOLY SHIT. I know mileage varies (hi, Erica), but did other people's early sexual experience include oral sex, and if so, how did its incorporation into your sex life affect your enjoyment? (Perhaps it's not a case of straight vs queer, but whether or not your first lovers went down on you?)

FWIW, I don't think Undead has been unfair in calling out misogyny. It's not their fault that the majority of the misogyny happens to come from men.

Fan, calling out attitudes is not the problem. It's doing it with a vicious energy.

Re 98: "As a woman who has sex with women, the concept of 'giving her an orgasm' is not an exclusively male thing. And I'm wondering why you dislike the phrase so much."

You didn’t ask me, but the phrase “giving her an orgasm” bothers me as well. “Why?” Is an interesting question that I haven’t considered until now.

What immediately comes to mind is, orgasms are something I have, not something done to me. I don’t even need another person to have one, but I can choose to share that part of myself with someone else if I want to. I’m not passive or dependent, and the phrase gives me an image of a woman lying there, helpless, waiting for someone else to make the orgasm happen to her. Of course, what my partner does contributes to or detracts from my experience - and what I do contributes (or doesn't) to theirs - but I see it as a contribution. We are creating the conditions together under which I will have an orgasm. It’s not something I passively receive from someone else, and no one wins a prize for giving it to me as if I had nothing to do with it.

I would also say that the context and the spirit in which the phase was said should be taken into consideration. It’s so commonly used that I’d go crazy if I got offended every time someone said this. Most people don’t examine their choice of words very carefully and they use this phrase to mean all kind of things without thinking about the implications. However, some people who use it are patting themselves on the back, as if their partner’s orgasm is their own achievement, and that’s when it’s troubling. Underlying that is the assumption that women don't (or shouldn’t) play an active role where their own bodies are concerned.

It occured to me that me @74 could be interpreted as me blaming feminism for my sexual failures. Just to be clear, that's not what I meant. I'm not assigning blame, just reporting on what happened.

(And if there is anyone to be blamed, it's me for taking the wrong lessons from the feminism-inspired culture around me.)