Savage Love May 28, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Seattle & Denver

Joe Newton

Comments

127

@126. venn. The idea that straight men, or just straights, are looking for guidance from anyone even vaguely non-normative or queer is ... too close to the bone for me. In one way, palpably, preposterously wrong, and in another, so much of a live rail that, in failing to specify it or make it socially plausible, Queer Eye, with its daffy tag team and all-round niceness, blunders with its heavy boots into my hopes and fantasies. I am an overflowing brown paper bag of goodwill, with a soppy, puppyish, undifferentiated desire to help. My help is almost never accepted. I've had to make myself an ironclad, desexed, degendered expert at work to become someone routinely listened to, whose word is sought. This is because when I weigh in on the basis of general humanity, the response is either bafflement (e.g. who are you, to think you can say something to me?), or some exclusionary impulse, often angry or repudiatory ('why does a queer think he has anything to say for straights?' Why does a man think he has anything to say for women? Can identify as a woman? As a straight woman? As a queer woman?). A lot of this, I know, is a response to me, not just to the idea of the possibility of trans and bigendered identifications. Some of the exacerbated responses I got commenting here are quite continuous with the pushback I've gotten 'trying to be helpful' or sympathetic irl.

128

@98 In bad faith what? Howso? Disagreeing with the fundamental premise of the wage gap research isn't "bad faith", it's "not agreeing with what you think".

129

Venn, I'm well aware that you have issues with feminists. However since in this conversation, I was talking about feminist criticisms of the nuclear family, it really has jack shit to do with gay people except that any destruction of hetnorm defaults would benefit those that are not heteronormative. It's a pretty widespread feminist critique of patriarchy to point out how expecting men to be strong dependable sole providers manages to crush men with the combo of unrealistic burdens/expectations (and the stifling lack of options to express it) while also making women dependent on them, all the while transferring the costs of reproducing labor from the private sphere to the public, etc. Whatever this has to do with feminist writings about gay people I have no fucking idea and since you are not the primary provider for a family, I don't even know what this has to do with it. If you just mean, "lots of women are bigots to gay people" yes of course they are- we all know this and if any of us had forgotten you would be the first to remind us.

Sporty what is bad faith is asking questions which you clearly already have decided upon your answer. Just say what you mean to say and then back it up, don't aw shucks, just trying to have a conversation, bullshit. It's boring.

Harriet, it's generally a good idea not to offer help nor advice when it is not requested unless it is for your own intimates. I don't think this has anything to do with gender or sexuality- but rather a widespread human preference to not have others assume their good intentions give them the right to intrude in others' lives. Of course online in a comment section you can chime in on anything you want- we are all here playing the same game- but it seems you are referring to real life as well so I'm responding with that assumption.

130

Have you read ‘Death of the Family’, by David Cooper, EL? It was written in the 60s-70s, when anti psychiatry was at its peak. These ideas all exploded around feminism. The state took up their ideas of confronting state run mental hospitals. Though instead of creating more humane and healing spaces, they closed all the hospitals down and sold the land. Forcing mental patients out into the world, with medications and not much support.
Bit like what has happened with feminism. It was never about forcing women/ mothers out of the home, it was giving women the choice. Now, because of the cost of houses and living, there is no choice for most mothers/ fathers. Both have to work and run families. No wonder more and more people decide not to breed.

131

@129. Emma. True--irl I'm like the British children's book character Mr Nosy who gets the door closed on my nose....

132

I agree that feminist-inspired and queer 'families of choice' represent roughly the same break with the patriarchal norm. Not sure that two gays or lesbians living together is the same thing, though.

133

Harriet @120: The idea that a guy would lose all desire if he thought I were enjoying sex too is the most depressing thing I've heard all day. I certainly hope I never find myself in bed with such a guy.

Harriet @123: "I'm the only person to think that the stereotypically gendered impulse to dominance of the straight guy pestering his gf for anal is anything other than deplorable." Uh, no, you're far from the only one to think that. I think most of us have made similar comments. (Asking may be natural; pestering is a DTMFA offence.)

134

Mizz Liz - When feminists stick to examining female problems, I usually agree with them. You were inviting the inference of feminist merit in having written about male issues for decades. But if what is being written is distasteful and unhelpful to those at whom it is aimed, then it basically belongs in the same category with Mrs Court's claim that her church "helps" homosexuals. My MRA acquaintance who defends Christians along the line of, "Many really DO love the sinner," at least accepts that whether the receiver takes what is proffered as love counts at least equally.

Now I could make a highly reasonable case that women are entirely justified in feeling as if they have been treated just the way Harriet Smith was treated by Miss Woodhouse, either by men or society as a whole. There are other cases I could make using that comparison, but I shall abide this time by your decree and save further observations on Reaganesque trickle-down thought for a more fitting moment.

135

M?? Harriet - I can well imagine. I myself found people were always telling me things

You call the mind what seems to me a French concept, the difference between "jouer de" and "jouer `a". I think it is entirely right and proper for you as someone in your situation to advocate for the extinction of the homosexual orientation (I also find it equally appropriate for feminists to take such a line against MM if they so choose) and only wrong of you to claim to be doing it from the inside.

136

Straight women and men live together, Venn- it is impossible to write about patriarchy, feminism or het relationships without writing about both.

Again, I know some women hurt you and I'm sorry that happened, but I don't know why everytime anyone talks abotu feminism in the context of het relationships, you need to be all "but some women are bigots and conversion therapy is torture". Yes that is all true. It's also irrelevant and no one is disputing it anyway. And I don't see what the religious beliefs of random MRAs nor the fictional characters of shows you like have to do with it either. If you just want to rant about your own issues with women then do so, but I don't see the point of addressing it to me as if it's relevant to anything I'm talking about here.

BTW, the feminists these days with the most objectional views towards LGBT people are in fact the ones refusing any acceptance or acknowledgement of the T identity under the claims that it erases the G and L and encroaches on their culture (among other complaints of what it does to cis women generally) so the funny thing about your rants against feminists is that I often think you'd be most comfortable in their company, romanticizing gender ghettos. So sometimes I don't really even know what you are on about specifically other than a general resentment of half the population due to the actions of some bigots that harmed you? Most all of us have been harmed and usually by the same people- it's sad to me that everyone clings to their own ghettos. But please note that I was not trying to get you to come across to any point of view or join any thing- I was talking about het straight men who are providing for their families and the unique stresses this arrangement of sole caregiver to reproduce labor imposes on both parents in the relationship. What this has to do with your experiences here is beyond me other than "a woman mentioned feminists and I have to make sure she knows I don't like them". Great, big surprise.

137

thanks Lava- it looks a little kooky- I tend to be more of a materialist and as such I tend to think of spiritual explanations as lacking a clear view of things. Yes the closing of all the hospitals and cut off funding, etc- that is a really good analogy for the dissolution of the family without providing networks to replace it. Thanks for that- I had never thought about those parallels, but you are exactly right. In both cases, we were dealing with a flawed system in the first place, but then instead of attempting to improve it in some radical or at least well funded way, we just eliminated it all. And now what? That's the problem with a system that values nothing that is not for profit- most social needs can't be met that way. The same thing happened with the closing of the hospitals here in the 80s btw but it had nothing to do with feminist, family nor psychological critiques, at least not afaik. Thanks for the rec, there is a pdf version online free and I'll check it out.

138

David Cooper wasn’t kooky. He was a trained psychiatrist working in mental hospitals in London, and then joined with others attempting to create therapeutic environments. He was with Juliet Mitchell, the writer of Psychoanaysis and Feminism, for some years.
Hospitals closed in the US for the same reasons, it happened worldwide. Drugs were improving everywhere at the time and it was a huge upheaval for patients who had been in hospital for decades.
Yes, it is a good analogy for the stricken nuclear family.

139

You're right, Lava. I'm looking through it now. When I first googled it, I just saw a blurb that talked about body-mind separation and I assumed it was referring to astral projection, ha ha ha ha. No you are correct, very interesting, thanks.

140

I do get confused EL, where the anti osychiatry movement sprang from. Foucault in France, Cooper et all.. lots of activity in Britain, and I don’t remember what was coming out of the States. Bruno Bettleiheim, a much maligned therapeutic genius, had set up a school via the University of Chicago long before it became mainstream. He was a Freudian, there were many of those in the US. He ran a therapeutic milieu, where patients lived, for adolescent and young adult schizophrenics, without the use of drugs.
His book about that, ‘ Home for the Heart,’ is filled with therapeutic insights into healing madness. Many were healed. Then he got lost in it all and used force sometimes and his reputation went to shit.
What he achieved though and the intensity of commitment to his task and those who worked with him, was beyond honourable and it was successful. Not to mention the University financing it.
Otherwise, maybe it was bi passed a bit in the US, because I can’t recall anyone else. Bettelheim showed it could be done, for some, healing from psychosis without drugs, it took a lot of resources and patience and skill and love and time to do it. Capitalism can’t afford such luxuries for the mentally ill. Here, take a pill.

141

@133. Bi. Re men enjoying sex because it involves 'getting one over' their partners, overcoming their reluctance... my starting-point has to be that, on average, the sexes enjoy sex equally, in the straight context (the alternative is resurrecting a lot of historical guff about men being depraved and women being prissy; and I really don't want to go there...). But if this is so, why is one dominant relationship dynamic still men importuning and women withholding (or seeming to withhold)? It must be, to my mind, because this is a sort of fantasy-play between straight men and women--both enjoy acting out a part that might be thought typical of their socialisation. Even when parents and caregivers, in a good feminist spirit, try to undo the most pernicious features of both boys' and girls' socialisation, it seems to me, historic gender roles will be with us for a long time yet. One of the ways they will be defanged will be through their becoming purely fantastical or kinky.

Obviously, pestering for any sex act is wrong.

142

@135. venn. I'm not advocating for the extinction of the homosexual orientation. People can do what they like, and whom they like--and they can do it from any conception of their group identity, political identity or orientation. When I was young and brash, I thought we were 'all bisexual'. Do I still think this? Don't know, don't much care--care more, now, about the hurtfulness and hatefulness of telling anyone to reassign themselves. (In an academic manner, I would have some ideas and arguments in support of 'primary bisexuality', but it means primary bigenderedness, not bisexuality, at least to begin with). I don't agree with your main point, because, for me, it doesn't take account of how anyone is 'positioned' by antagonism, by their enemies and critics (their h*ters, as the young say). From the point of view of the gaybasher, I'm as gay as you and you're as queer as me. Our finer distinctions don't matter in this context. This is the political value of an umbrella category of 'queer', as a revalorised term for the people reviled by homophobes.

There's another question, which is whether the 'queers' in this sense represent an ontological category; and I don't think they/we do any more than you do.

143

Harriet, you can't pretend that the bedroom is somehow separate from society, nor individual homes, etc. I mean, who knows what sexual relationship dynamics with straight folks would be like if they lived in an environment in which there were not gender norms because such a society has never existed. It's really not that relevant what individual parents do with their young children.

The problem with your earlier observation is that the pushing the boundaries stuff is fine, but it never really gets to be flipped and you never really get to get away from it. Unlike with gay men. It's the same issue with the young/old gay relationships- at some point, a young gay man looking for an older mentor can become an older gay man who mentors younger gay men. This dynamic just largely does not exist for women. But I don't want to belabor this point as the analogy is flawed in the first place.

The answer to your question about men still pushing for sex while women still tend to be reluctant- I have answered this to you specifically MANY times, and there have been entire threads about it where you have participated, so I don't know why you keep misunderstanding.

Generally speaking, women do not receive pleasure in the same ways from the same acts that men do. Generally speaking, women are less likely to orgasm at all. Generally speaking, the likelihood that a woman will receive pleasure decreases for all sorts of reasons that doesn't affect men. Generally speaking, women face more risks and potential for pain from sex with men than men face from sex with women. And finally, generally speaking, men are frequently enough trying to be competitive or pushy or handsy with women that they (the women) often develop a defensive response right away as a matter of survival.

I'm quite sure that the frequency of these experiences does end up creating a dynamic that a lot of people can use to get off- fantasy play and all that for many people. But this isn't really relevant to the question of men constantly upping the ante, since most of us are not playing at that fantasy.

I've explained this to you in detail before, but I"m going to try again, really explicitly and slowly.

Most teenage and young men (and even some older ones though in my experience dudes outgrow this unless they are assholes) are very often in a rush to do the thing that will get them off - usually sticking their dick in a woman and thrusting it until they cum. This isn't usually what gets women off- in fact it's usually the least likely thing to get women off, the most likely thing to cause discomfort for women, and also (with piv) the only thing that can get women pregnant. Somehow, this is still how most young people start having sex.

So girls' (and young women's) introduction to sexuality usually involves being really horny and really enjoying making out but constantly having to push away and redirect a guy who just will not linger in the moments and is constantly trying to push to the next step. It can feel a bit like an exercise in de-escalation, and it is exhausting. This is so totally normal in our culture that we socialize boys this way by talking about making it to various bases- first base, second base, etc as if it is an achievement (and masculinity caught up in it) to get to the NEXT STEP.
So from a girl's point of view, even without sex shaming or bullshit about virginity (which also exists), you have to learn to deal with and redirect a boy who is trying to up the ante every time you start anything with him. Now girls are ALSO dealign with the stress around pregnancy and everyhting associated with puberty etc.
At a time when young women should be learning about their own bodies and pleasure, when they are really horny and inexpeirenced, they instead usually learn how to guard against boys who are looking to use their bodies for their own pleasure. And I mean this without any ill-intent on the part of the boys who likewise are only learning themselves. Plus if you just talk to young women and girls about this, you will see that they have also internalized the idea that being pursued makes them feel special- we all want to be desired. So it's pretty common that even when girls and young women take charge here, it's sometimes more about being sexy to the guy (being the prize, being desired, being pursued) than it is about learning how her own body works and receiving actual physical pleasure for its own sake. This is the flip side of the boys' baseball bases mindset. Most young women do not yet know how to orgasm so they can't really ask for what they want, even if the dude fucking them really wants to prioritize their pleasure. On top of this, penetrative sex is pretty frequently painful for girls in the beginning especially. So this is the baseline. This is the socialization for most straight people- even the well intentioned ones. Because we do not live in a cultural vacuum and we are not born knowing things.

Now best case scenario, this early awkwardness is also fun and young people move past it and the horniness of youth will often take you a long way and most people really do want their lovers to have as good a time as they are having, even most young horny boys care about this. But you have to also drop this into a social context in which from the time your boobs start to grow, men are catcalling at you, harassing you, talking down to you, etc- and you have to be on guard.

Then even still some of the most sex positive women who really love men and have only had good experiences still have trouble orgasming. And this is all before we get into the hormonal stuff and the reproductive management which it seems like you keep shrugging off as no problem even though it is a massive source of anxiety and problems for loads of women.

So yea, sometimes it can feel like you have to keep dealing with guys who keep obsessing over all the ways they want to stick their dicks in your body, like nothing is ever good enough.

Now on an individual level, of course when you are horny and caught up in something it's loads of fun and you want to try all sorts of things. But bigger picture (when you aren't horny) it can get tiresome constantly being on guard.

Regarding anal in particular, I have myself been curious about it and tried it out a few times. It was a fun experience and no big deal, I certainly did not feel that anyone was trying to get anything up over me. But it caused me no pleasure whatsoever and yes it was slightly painful. Mostly I just found it awkward and the positions uncomfortable.

The fact remains that most women find anal sex painful. MOST. Most women who do it, do not enjoy it, do it solely to please their partner, and experience pain from it.

I'm certain that most straights who do anal do it from the point of view of exploration and fun. Some will find they really like it. Most will think of it as a novelty and curiosity. Most men are not trying to punish women though I do believe most have some eliminate of their egos tied up in their feelings of sexual achievements. And yes, it's still pretty common for men to feel that women who are sexually experienced are worthless- even though I don't think we hear so much of that sort of thing here in these forums. There's also a lot of punishing and resentful portrayals of anal in straight porn where it's explicitly about domination and humiliation - and I think people would have to be pretty willfully ignorant to pretend that this does not affect the way younger people who grow up watching this handle their own otherwise normal sexual frustrations, even though I'm sure most people outgrow it or don't act on it. Hence my skepticism that expecting anal from women really is the norm- I'd love to hear from younger folks how often they are in fact pestered for it.

And all of the above is why women are far less likely to be interested in just going out and having sex with random men for random NSA encounters- for most women, it increases the risk of discomfort (or worse) and decreases the chance of pleasure.

144

Lava, that is a really interesting question and one I have never considered although I realize now that I've missed out a larger context for a lot of the modern trends in US mental health, so I really appreciate you bringing this up. In the 80s, when a lot of the services were eliminated or defunded, the US was also experiencing an increased medicalization (take a pill) of psychiatry- this was during the Prozac surge you know. If there were undercurrents of this larger movement, I was not aware of them by the time I started studying and working in public health / social work, etc. But by then, the "chemical imbalance in the brain" model was the standard narrative (though even when I took my first pharmacology class in the late 90s it was clear that the actual evidence was thinner than the general public thinks- shows you the power of marketing over research). I was a child when these people you mention were active.

I feel like you've shone a light on some part of history that I was not even aware of, so thanks a lot actually- it couldn't have come at a better time. I have this summer to get through, and then I'll be free free free free of pressing family obligations (it's been easing up for a couple years anyway in spurts) and it's terrifying and exciting at the same time.

145

Good EL, because it baffles me how this whole period of very intense practice and writings have been eliminated. That yes.. the chemical inbalence as etiology of all issues re the brain/ mind is such a cop out. It’s true of course because we are chemicals etc, that the inbalence comes first at all times, ie is the cause of all mental illness, is not true. . Our thoughts and words and behaviours determine so much, as does what is done to us as children, the patterns of life imposed on us from parents/ caregivers during those formative early years.
Yes, looking back it’s criminal what has transpired. Those hospitals could have turned into true therapeutic environments, rather than the hell holes a lot of them were.
It’s like the govts all over the western world said, right, you want changes in mental health, try this.
Pity you don’t live closer you could rummage thru my books. I have kept so many from that time.
Tract down Bettleheim’s work, I remembered he ran that school for twenty five yrs, about. The London lot wrote much, though their experiements in housing patients sans drugs, I don’t think were as successful as Bruno’s. He really had the money to set it up and the deeper insights into how to proceed. That’s my take.
Let me know how you go.

146

DSO @10, I'm sorry that you were sexually assaulted by someone who pretended that he accidentally penetrated your anus. That happens and it sucks.

Accidental anal penetration also happens, generally in the missionary position. I've had it happen once with someone who was open to anal sex and would have agreed to it if that's what I wanted to do. I've also had it happen with someone with whom the issue had never been discussed. In both cases it was accidental, not "accidental." It happens.

147

Sporty @57, Different butts are different. Some are pretty relaxed and when wet and lubricated, a dick can slide right in.

I dated a woman whose butt relaxed at the sound of my voice. She used me as a cure for constipation. Yes, literally. She'd call me if she was having trouble pooping. Thinking about our recreational activities while hearing my voice relaxed her butt. I assume she also got wet during those calls, but I never really asked.

148

@143. Emma. You're explaining something I didn't think was the topic under consideration--why straight (cis)men tend to want more sex, and more casual sex, than straight (cis)women.

My 'baseline' was that men and women tend to like the sex they find great--their favorite kind of sex, a kind of sex accepted as enjoyable and to some degree routinised--equally much.

Of course one cannot separate sexual relations in the bedroom from sexual and gender politics in society. My observation was that forms of dominance liberals are trying to do away with in society, like the presumption of male leadership and female deference, are in one sense retained in many stylised forms of sex--e.g. in D/s, BDSM and many more vanilla relationship dynamics. There is nothing anti-feminist, even implicitly, in these kinks. They are variations, in fantasy, of something that has rightly been made impermissible in social relations.

149

No Harriet. I was responding directly to this:

"my starting-point has to be that, on average, the sexes enjoy sex equally, in the straight context (the alternative is resurrecting a lot of historical guff about men being depraved and women being prissy; and I really don't want to go there...). But if this is so, why is one dominant relationship dynamic still men importuning and women withholding (or seeming to withhold)? "

As for things being antifeminist or liberal or whatever, that really doesn't have all that much to do with anything.

As for your baseline about what sex different people like:

1) People's sexual habits develop in a context so you're just going in circles.
2) Your baseline is wrong. The sexes do not enjoy sex equally. All research shows this. Women are far less likely to experience pleasure during sex and far more likely to experience pain. That's the baseline.

You can't assume a baseline that is untrue and then make up a story about it to answer the questions you asked (which I quoted above). My response was to try to explain WHY the baseline is what it is because it's key to understanding just how obnoxious (or clueless) this statement is in the context of actual het sex norms:

"getting your partner to 'give it up', to sacrifice to you, or to pretend at least that this is the dynamic. I think it's potentially prejudicial against men to make everything about sharing, empathy, negotiation. Perhaps when sex is characterised in this way, when guys can think of it as something equally satisfying to both or more satisfying to their partner, then ... it’s limp dick time."

150

I don’t know about any of these rules of sex. I remember as an adolescent girl, a Catholic convent girl catching the ferry into Circular Key in Sydney, with the school boys. Walking thru the red light district to get to school.
What worried me the most about the whole first/ second base story, was the blue balls. Like wherever one went with a boy, he got blue balls. Don’t give me the blue balls, I was told they’d scream.
So I didn’t. I didn’t go near a boy till I was ready to go ‘ The whole way,’ so I didn’t cause no blue balls. I forgot my birth control training because nobody had bothered to give me any and I was a dumb catholic chick. I blame it all on blue balls.

151

I don’t know exactly what you’re on about Harriet, it feels like you’re imposing straghjackets on energies. Man/ Woman energies, are not containable or knowable. You can’t force us all into little categories. It’s hard to describe to you the importance for me, of playing with those energies, however they present themselves. Sometimes it’s a dominant energy, others submissive or vulnerable or sad or joyful..
I like men, cis men, as they are. Even with the distorted aspects via our distorted culture. I don’t want sameness.
Sometimes dominance hits the spot, sometimes you better watch it telling me what to do. It’s being fluid and emotionally intelligent enough to respond, in the moment.

152

I bought a small whip today, from a leather worker selling from a stall at a local market. Older guy, great work. I’ve already cracked it on my floor. Ouch, you gotta watch for any throw back. I’ve wanted a whip for so long.

153

I know somewhere in what you said Harriet, is some truth about BDSM, can you re phrase it?
I won’t be using the whip on people, I’ll show my grandson. He’ll wanna try it.
When I get on fetlife, it seems everybody is into kinks/ fetishes/ is there more? Few Vanillas left out there.

154

@116: Where's Bill the Cat? Aack-oop! :)

155

@151 Lava. But would you think that male energies were male and female energies were female? What about people with cross-gendered energies? What about people with a low level of energy altogether?

My suggestion (a fairly familiar one) was that lots of kink replays stereotypical patterns of male dominance and female submissiveness in fantasy.

@149. Emma. I can't understand how I have made an obnoxious remark--any more than I could understand how your long explanation of cisfemale sexual pleasure and formative sexual experience corrected a misunderstanding on my part.

We could try rewinding, to see what I was saying. The discussion was about 'should anal become standard in het relationships, just as oral has done?'. (My answer would be 'no--because why should anything be standard?'). There was a question, 'are men badgering their female partners for anal as a way of dominating, having the upper hand over, them?'; and some people (Bi, for instance) said 'yes' (rather than e.g. men thinking that both partners would find it enjoyable, or had been turned onto the asshole by porn). The consensus was that this was deplorable--and I said 'maybe not'--maybe both men and women are just lapsing into familiar fantasy-roles as proposer and disposer.

I would find your idea that women inherently enjoy sex less than men problematic, in that it would suggest e.g. that women and girls are well-fitted for a convent-school education. Or that a het woman's focus should be on finding one partner with whom she can cultivate intimacy and enjoy rewarding sex--rather than, say, the onus being on everyone to educate boys and men so that casual sex is more satisfying to women.

156

It doesn't surprise me that you don't understand what I said.

The idea that women enjoy sex less is not mine. It's literally what all research on the subject shows- that women have fewer orgasms than men and that women experience pain more often during sex than men. Nowhere did I say this was "inherent"- you added that word so that you can continue to pretend to not understand me. In fact I wrote a very long post explaining how this ends up happening. What is "inherent" is that men and women get off differently (usually) and on different things (usually). Women's bodies will never function like men's. How we respond to this reality sets the baseline for people's experiences.

I understand that the consensus was that badgering your partner to do something that they don't want to do and that will mostly likely give them no pleasure and will in fact likely cause them pain is deplorable. It's worth noting a few things: first off that I was never asking about badgering anyone anyway- I was asking about if this had become and expectation of women and why. But second, yes you are the only person who thinks that badgering is not obnoxious and your explanation for your opinion is that you think women and men lapse into familiar fantasy roles. Of course this is probably true for a minority of people- anything is. But it is not true that women just generally like to be badgered and worn down to do things that cause them pain. This is just not true- it's something that happens but it's not a woman's fantasy role.

I never said a goddamn thing about cultivating intimacy - and yet it is always your reply when we try to talk abotu this. You just ignore the biology and experiences of women and repeatedly go back to stuff like emotional fidelity and intimacy and say they are my ideas which is so fucking weird. I also said nothing about one partner. This is literally just you making stuff up. It's so weird Harreit, I'm so intrigued by how your mind works- circles and loops, I don't know.

I made no suggestions at all to correct the situation, but if you asked me (which you didn't), my suggestion would be to destroy the narrative that sex starts with penetration and ends with male climax- I'd say less focus on penetration altogether, way more mutual masturbation and play with toys, and a huge focus on reproductive health care more generally. None of these are very unique ideas- it's stuff people like Dan and Esther Perel have been saying for years. The exactly opposite of this would be LAPSING into familiar gender roles (they are not fantasies- they are norms) that do in fact basically center around a guy trying to always push things to the next step.

157

wholeheartedly and 100% agree that we should seek to do away with the conception that sex is normatively PIV. Our sex education (where it is not relationship education; where it is about the mechanics) should make this a major focus. How could I not think this?--personally? ~2% of the sex I have is PIV (and <0.2% lifetime sex).

Otherwise we are genuinely talking across each other, as I don't understand what you think I've said. If you could put this in 1-2 sentences (you think: '1. [... etc.]'), I could tell you whether these are my views or not.

158

I have no reason at all to doubt the 'orgasm gap' between men and women.


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