Straight, male, talking about my sexuality
I got an awful lot of links today from a comment on Bitch Ph.D's post 40 is the new fuck you.
Dr. B says "I wish straight guys had the balls to talk about sexuality the way feminist women do."
And Orange of OrangeTangerine flattered me senseless by linking to me with "Here's a straight adult man who's not afraid to speak candidly about sex."
By coincidence this "why don't straight men blog about sex" meme has been making the rounds lately. I *think* it started with Susie Bright who said "Why don't straight men include sexuality in their blog writing-- aside from the resolutely anonymous few that sex-blog professionally" but you can find other references.
Me? I'm a straight man. I blog about sex! (I do blog anonymously but more for the kind of reasons O of Eros, Logos articulates. And besides, most women also blog anonymously or at least pseudonymously.)
To be honest I'm not sure why more men don't blog about sex. Or, more accurately, why more don't blog non-pornographically about sex.
I mean, yeah, I get marvelously hard imagining a partner sprawled knees-astraddle a backless couch, with my left hand pressing gently on the small of her back and the other alternately stroking her ass and inner thighs (or fingernail kittycatting her or, if she's into it spanking her) and wetly swirling my open palm over her vulva and gently thrumming her clitoris between my fingers.
And of course I get totally excited about cupping her feet in my hands, my index fingers pressed between her big and "index" toes, supporting her open legs as I feast on her open pussy or wetly kiss my way up her body and finding her mouth with mine at the exact moment my cock finds its way inside her.
And oh my I totally love it when a partner pulls me close inside her, wraps her legs around my hips, and rolls us over so she's on top, grinding her clit into my pubic bone while her hips rock my cock against her slippery walls.
And if all that's preceded by an hour spent kissing madly on the couch, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet forgotten on the video, our hands finding every avenue imaginable into each other's clothes, unbuttoning, unzipping, baring, revealing our bodies to each other, murmuring deliriously earthy phrases between breathy inhalations, mauling her breasts in my broad hands but only delicately fingertipping her crinkled nipples, her tight-fisting my heated cock and gently dandling my figgy balls, me kissing my way from earlobe to nape, her tugging my flag-proud cock away from my belly and first towards and then into her mouth, then me squirrelling around and behind her, my hands fluttering between breasts and belly and cunt as our hands first part her lips and then guide me into her, our joined hands find a clitoral counterpoint to the thudding baseline her hips pushing against me, my belly seal-flopping against her ass, and then long-later, the TV screen flicker'd blue with neglect, the thoroughly bedewed wet washcloth cooling on the nightstand, she reaches down to find me still inside her, still almost hard, and her fingers stir, awakening us both...
I *love* writing about that!
But while those sorts of things are probably the most *fun* part of sexuality, it's not always the most *important* part. Sometimes it's just as important to talk about the obstacles to sexuality -- our conflations of virginity and commodity; our false dichotomy of reproductive penis and imperial phallus which overlooks the cock as the only human organ evolved expressly to caress; and extensive catalogings of good vs. immoral sex acts while stinting again and again the taxonomies of consent, alienation, and commitment.
And while those are the fun parts and the important parts of sexuality it's *also* important to talk about the *realities* of sexuality. The times -- days, sometimes months, weeks, sometimes years -- we spend grinding under deadline, under class schedules, under childrearing, under threat of war or poverty or illness or age, where sexuality is honored (if it's remembered at all) in the breach rather than the commission.
And if I've been terribly busy these last few months, working to make a difference in a small but important part of our social fabric far removed from headline politics or photogenic alarums, and if in all that fulfilling but unerotic effort I've felt hard pressed to find more than moments for sexual delight then that's part of our shared human sexuality as well.
Woo hoo friends and neighbors, grown sons and daughters of wonderful/fallible/heroic/mundane and best-of-all human men and women, takers-up of the reins of the world, there are a dozen, a hundred, a thousand equally important things we should dwell upon between the pared parentheses of birth and death, and among the dozen, the hundred, the thousand equally important subjects is sexuality in all its permutations and manifestations and just every now and then, thank you very much, I think we ought to blow off not having anything nice to say about it and finding something nice to say.
Damn, I love your mind, Fig!
[Thanks so much, Cheryl. --fl]
Perhaps I have not explored enough links, but what I wish is to find is a woman who admits to being my age (sixty something); where their sexuality has become invisible, having a partner is improbable and who is pissed. I get more pissed when I read your and other erotica and know I have missed out on so much. O is *not* everywoman. My world has not always been unbounded in the sense of the feminist. I could not blog myself, because I have not found my voice. Also I have been too angry to intellectualize and look at my experiences objectively.
Sometimes when I make comments I feel I have totally missed the point or that I'm out of sink with the other comments. I read your blog because I so miss the masculine. You are also so sexy.
[First of all, 5o9, I think you've made a very good case *for* starting a blog -- the point of writing for most people is to discover and articulate things about themselves, not simply to recite what they already know. Like you I don't know of many women over 60 who are blogging about their sexuality but I *do* know they're out there -- perhaps just not blogging about it. I also know that neither age nor life experience need be an impediment to exploration (not by themselves anyway.) To cite only one example, a participant in a body-image seminar I attended at a nearby community-center-for-sex called the Wet Spot was closer to 70 and needed a wheelchair but she's is evidently an active member of the community. I guess what I'm saying is that I think that if there are no sex bloggers over sixty that just means you can be the first, but what I really suspect is if you start blogging you'll discover links to others fairly quickly. Will you think about it? Thanks, 5o9! --fl]
Beautiful post! Especially the last paragraph (and the photo that follows!)
I've often wondered about a lot of the same things you mention here. I hope blogging will help more people feel uninhibited to talk about sexuality. I see it happening in small steps; yours is one of the most refreshing blogs, to be honest!
[In a way its not even about being uninhibited. (If I was *really* uninhibited I wouldn't be monogamous!) Instead it's just about climbing down off our perches where we think everyone else wants to be (but virtually no one really does) and so we pretend that we want that too (which, when other people believe us, makes them feel bad and try harder to be like you) with the result that *when* someone slips up and is honest about how they really feel about sex everyone feels angry and betrayed because they (we) have been up on these perches and hating every minute but just trying to fit in like everybody else.... Bugger! Thank you for being honest, Amber. The only way to help people down from their perches is to be willing to be a little bit honest and catch a little bit of grief for it. In the long run, though, the people who can do it without introducing new, equally phony perches (oohhhwww loook, free luuuuve, now I have to do that toooo nowww or I won't look groooovyyy!) are real heros. So back at you. Thanks. --fl]
I wonder if people would get pissed if I included this post in the upcoming Carnival of Feminists..? ;)
[I'd be flattered, of course, Amber, but in this case I'd also be very pleased if you would. First because I think Dr. B was on to something, and second because people I respect out the wazoo like PZ Meyer and Coturnix feel affirmatively obliged not to blog about sexuality. (Science, math, and politics of sex, yes. Sexuality no. So if you choose to do so I'd appreciate it. Thanks! --fl]
I blog about sex too. It's usually on all men's minds. Wonder why so few write about it. It's a theraputic outlet for me.
Chaio!
[Thanks, Llevon. --fl]
hmm, I suppose I could comment that women's voices have historically filled many alternative (ie non-commercial) spaces in advance of those spaces becoming resolutely commodified. But I'd sound like some kind of Marxist. There are surprisingly few men solo-sex blogging and you do a bang-up job, fig. There are a few of us still doing it couple-style.
[Good point about the necessity to use alternative spaces. Also thanks for the complement, Gander. You and Goose do a bang-up job as well. (I know you're not posting as often as you once did but what you do post is good stuff.) Take care. --fl]