Cinnamonsticks of Christian Nymphos tackles a stealth issue in patriarchy, pedestals, and the no-sex class.

We hear from a lot of women who aren’t satisfied in the bedroom. Some have husbands with a low sex drive. Some have husbands who don’t know how to be good lovers to them. Some have a hard time achieving orgasm. For whatever the reason they are not happily enjoying a fulfilled sex life with their husband.

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What I want to do today is take the time to specifically focus on and discuss the importance of not transferring our part of the problem to our husbands. What often happens is that if we perceive that our husband is doing something that is keeping us from being sexually satisfied, we become so focused on his contribution to it that we forget that we are actually the ones who are primarily responsible for making sex what we want and need it to be.

She said it here.

One of the limits of traditional gender relations has been that women are given “gatekeeper” rights over only one thing: to open the gate. Everything else is held to be up to the man. Including her satisfaction. Including her disappointment.

As Barbara Eherenreich and Dierdre English, Rachel P. Maines, and others have meticulously documented, society has sometimes gone to extraordinary lengths to insure that women remain as passively dependent on their partners as humanly possible. Even in the sexually “progressive” 1970s the whole “she comes first” movement (endorsed by 2nd-wave feminism and Playboy progressives alike) held men more accountable for their partners’ enjoyment but… no less responsible for it.

In terms of heterosexuality one of the coolest things about the advent of the so-called “third wave” beginning in the 1980s was the then seriously radical idea that sex wasn’t just something that men had. There had been vibrators, yes, but they were still mostly seen (but not shown to partners) as substitutes when men weren’t around or… to “finish the job” after the man had gone to bed or gone home. But starting somewhere in the 1980s women began actively asserting ownership of their enjoyment rather than expecting their partners to provide it for them.

In many circles, both traditional and (perhaps surprisingly) progressive, this shift from women as audience of men’s performance to women as their own agents has gone over poorly. Resisted in a way that, say, tipping hats, opening doors, paying all expenses for dates, or even men leading in ballroom dancing hasn’t been. But the resistance is still an obstacle to parity.

Bottom line is it’s really (really!) important to take an active interest in our partners’ pleasure during sex. Important for men because historically we haven’t been terrifically attentive, and when even when we’ve been attentive we haven’t necessarily been very realistic. And important for women too because historically, if inaccurately, there’s been that assumption that once a partner says “yes” men can handle the rest themselves. But while it’s important for all of our partners to be actively interested in our enjoyment it’s also important that we not hold our partners responsible for our enjoyment either. So good call by Cinnamonsticks.