A little earlier today I mentioned a post by Britni Danielle expressing how she’s keen on most things about hetero sex, except…
I absolutely love when a man comes on my tits or stomach. I adore being covered in come. I also love when a man comes in my mouth. I think it’s totally hot. I don’t necessarily love having someone come on my face, but if it’s someone I’m dating and he really wants to, I’ll let him. So where do I HATE when a guy comes? Inside me (without a condom).
I think it’s absolutely repulsive. I think it’s messy. I hate that it drips out for the next hour, whether it’s onto the bed or into your underwear and you have to sit in it all day.
She continues…
But honestly? I think that it may be partially related to my complete aversion to having children. I think that I associate someone coming inside with procreation or babies or pregnancy or something. ... Now of course I know that there are sperm in precum and blah blah blah, and I’m on the pill which is 99.9% effective and blah blah blah, but I still hate the thought of someone coming inside me. Even if it’s someone that I’m really emotionally connected to and intimate with.
When you add it all up it does seem like — however nice PIV/ejaculation might be — that there’s an almost… disorderly emphasis put on that one particular activity.
I can think of a couple of obvious reasons why. The most circular being that it’s the most “natural” form of sex. Or, its sociobiology/evolutionary-psychology form, it’s the most “genetically wired.” But I can also think of a couple of other ones: a thousands-of-years-old, intense legal and doctrinal fascination with restricting sex “except for procreation.” The equally ancient tradition of male “semen conservation“ for health, vitality, and old-age would be another. (I’ve mentioned elsewhere that in the peak of Victorian-era hysteria it was believed in Europe, England and the United States that “as much as ten ejaculations a year” could be fatal to a healthy adult male!) The old Monty Python song “Every Sperm is Sacred,” in other words, had (and in many cultures still has) an entirely secular side as well.
One nice side effect of the Protestant Reformation in the West was an overturn of the idea of sex only for procreation. And men have demonstrated, um, repeatedly that semen “conservation” has few if any benefits at all. Add the substantial risks of unwanted, unplanned pregnancy, the increased risk of transmission of some STIs, the inconvenience and mess born mostly by the recipient and the point that there are actually more pleasurable ways for both men and women to have orgasms together and… it’s worth, well, reconsidering our obsession with the practice.
Except for procreation, of course. :-)
Update: For the record, since my enthusiasm might be mistaken for stridency, after complaining about the notion that we should always limit “normal” sex to PIV intercourse to ejaculation I’m not turning around and saying we should never do so. I am, however, questioning its centrality and the assumption — especially in the face of quite a bit of contrary evidence — that it’s the easiest, most natural or (according to DSM proposals) least “abnormal,” or best thing people can decide to do together.
I’m also aware that a lot of the alternatives sound a whole lot like the dismal, almost universally self-induced “money shots” of pornography. To that I’ll just say that the “money shot” of porn is to male orgasm what the rest of porn is to real adult sex: highly stylized activities designed almost exactly to be more exciting to watch than to do in real life.
Submitted by 2957 (not verified) on Wed, 2009-05-20 18:26.
Neither here nor in comments have you responded to the heart of my criticism, which is that - however much I agree that we'd be better off with a far more expansive definition of sex and pleasure - you're intellectualizing this stuff to the point of ignoring people's lived experience. For instance, I rather *like* everything about a man ejaculating inside me, even the sticky mess between my legs. Britni may hate it but she doesn't speak for me. Conversely, I have no desire to have someone give me a facial. And that's okay! Isn't the point of opening up these definitions and shaking up these hierarchies to recognize a plurality of pleasures - and not to construct a new hierarchy?
If the goal is risk management, condoms do a pretty good job of it, despite your lingering doubts from the 1970s. Some of us have managed to use them with 100% success over many years. They won't protect much against HPV but then neither will other forms of sex that involve actually touching one's partner. And they keep your options open as to where ejaculation will occur.
If the goal is political, to decenter PIV as the be-all and end-all, I'm with you, in general. But here is where I see you sliding into dogmatism, if not exactly stridency: "there are actually more pleasurable ways for both men and women to have orgasms together." *Equally* pleasurable, perhaps, at least for one person at a time. But even the most obvious alternative - my partner coming in my mouth - will frankly be something that's sexy for me because it gets him off. Maybe for him it's even more fun that way, but from my perspective it's nowhere near as nice as him coming during PIV intercourse. For me, an orgasm from anything other than intercourse is almost always more intense, but it doesn't give me that connected feeling that goes with coming while joined. This is where it's important to heed people's lived experience and not just assume it's all brainwashing.
So. I'm waiting to hear about ways to come that would be "more pleasurable" across the board for those of us who actually enjoy sharing a PIV orgasm and don't find it repulsive. There are many of us. We aren't just dupes of the patriarchy.
I'm highly aware of the ideology and phallocentrism that surrounds this. I know the history; heck, I've *taught* it. I realize that our pleasures are not merely biological, they're also socially and culturally constructed. But the biological pleasures are also real, and just because something is constructed doesn't make it unreal or utterly pernicious! Calling this approach to orgasm a second-rate form of pleasure is letting the ideology win, in a backhanded way! There's a longer argument to be made for this involving deconstruction but I'll spare you that. :-)
And no, I'm not on a tear about this just because I know what it's like to do without PIV sex and ejaculation. Though believe me, most men miss both quite fiercely when surgery or radiation deprives them of it. And so do many of their partners. From that experience, I have a pretty good idea of how creative people can be - even folks in their 60s and 70s who experiment with cock rings and vibrators for the first time. But it's a real loss. I've heard many men mourn their lost ejaculations. I've yet to hear one say sex is better without them. And yes, while many of them can experience orgasm with oral sex, they miss coming inside their partner's vagina.
I'm puzzled at why you seem to be discounting a whole realm of lived experience. Maybe it's to be contrarian? Maybe you've got some notion of political correctness? I'm also wondering at your own desire to walk the talk on this. Do you seriously want to put orgasm during PIV intercourse at the bottom of the menu in your own sexual buffet? If yes, wow. If not - then isn't this an inauthentic argument for you to make?
[First of all who said I don't like PIV intercourse. I think it's great. I like ejaculating in a partner for the same reasons it sounds like you like it. It's a wonderful, intimate activity. That said, if I don't think it's overrated I do think it's drastically over emphasized. Second of all, before I name two things that feel better than ejaculation during PIV intercourse I really need to explain that when I meant by "better" I meant, strictly, is more "mind-blowingly" orgasmic. Obviously a face-to-face orgasm feels very good in other dimensions including emotional ones. Which ain't chicken feed. But also isn't the "justification" some people, men especially, use for claiming they "gotta have it," and, especially, when they claim condoms "ruin the feeling." Third, as far as "walking the walk," without disclosing too much of my interpersonal life (I'm fine with personal but intercourse involves more than me) I'll say that yes, for significant stretches of my active sex life I've been either unwilling to (no contraception) or unable to (thanks to medication) ejaculate during intercourse. That didn't particularly diminish either my sense of intimacy, emotional connection, or enjoyment before, during, or after. It only meant that, with quite a few of my partners, if I ejaculated anywhere it probably wasn't inside her vagina. And... I guess what I'm still trying to say, based on theory, politics, biology, risk-assessment, and other people's alternative-lifestyle practices sure, but also my *own* lived experience is that there's not just more than one way to do it, there are some good reasons to encourage people to explore them. --fl]
Submitted by 2957 (not verified) on Thu, 2009-05-21 11:01.
Okay, I'm glad to hear you're not interested in building up a new orthodoxy; I was scared that figleaf and Twisty had somehow merged into a single person! (Or somehow, asexually, spawned offspring? Which had now taken over your blog?)
We're totally on the same page with thinking it's great to explore those other options. But those men who claim condoms "ruin the feeling" and thus refuse to use them? I'll grant them their experience, but if they won't use condoms, I wouldn't trust them to pull out, either. And they're going to need a lot more enlightening before they can really explore and be playful about sex in the way I think you intend.
I wasn't looking for you to unearth *interpersonal* details beyond the wealth that you've already committed to the Internet in perpetuity. I know your words well enough to know full well that you like PIV, and also that it would be out of character for you to swear off ejaculating during PIV as a general rule. (Not least because anyone who's read this blog knows you've had a couple of vasectomies. Last I checked, the only indication for them was a desire to ejaculate non-procreatively during PIV sex!) That's why your argument rang false and hollow.
I still think there's a difference between choosing a sex life that excludes PIV ejaculation, and having it forced upon one. It doesn't sound like you actively chose it in your particular situations anymore than I have.
I'm still skeptical that the loss of options (whether chosen or forced) doesn't diminish the experience overall. If medication makes orgasm hard or impossible, that a real loss. If PIV ejaculation is consistently off limits, that a real loss, too - in my book at least - unless both partners are "meh" about it anyway. Obviously, if the female partner rejects it, she's got veto power - but it would be cruel to blame her partner for still desiring it.
So now that you're defined "feels better," I still want to know: What are those two things that feel better than PIV ejaculation? And how much reciprocal or mutual enjoyment do they promise, apart from the sexy feeling of pleasing one's partner? And yes, I realize PIV does little for some women, but plenty of us really do enjoy it. Even the mess. :-)
Submitted by 2957 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-05-24 04:50.
I also still want to know about those two things.
Sunflower