I’m still so trying to wrap my little brain around the idea that it’s 99% hetero women’s partners spanking them rather than the other way around.

No knocks on Em & Lo, who's post about their new book (150 Shades of Play: A Beginner's Guide to Kink ) prompted this post. They lean heavily though not completely men-spank/women-are-spanked.  But the mix for heteros seems so common as to make generalizations like that fine.

I’m just curious about the physics, or anatomy here. Because even doing non-”spanking” tapotement (those kind of “karate chops” with the edge and flat of the hands massage therapists use) seems to get way more women’s motors running than men’s. Or is it the psychology? I’ve almost never heard of gay men routinely spanking each other outside the context of more intentional BDSM. And it’s almost never mentioned by lesbians. And, maybe even more perplexing, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of bi men carrying spanking over to male partners, nor bi women requesting spankings from their female partners.

Do I just not get out enough anymore (entirely possible?) Or is this really an overwhelmingly majority-hetero activity?

And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it being majority hetero, if that’s what it is. What gets our motors running in bed is or should be entirely separate from what motivates our conduct elsewhere. I’m just curious about the source of the apparent differences.

Image reposted from Geekyvamp.tumblr.com.

Ever notice how almost all mainstream/medical/social discussions of women with multiple male partners the women are always assumed to be objects, passive participants, or even unwilling or duped victims?

And hey, sometimes they are! But the reflex assumption that they must be? That no woman in her right mind would choose to be with, let alone enjoy being with, let alone desire to be with two men at once? That’s the bogus Two Rules of Desire talking.

See also the persistent narrative that all two-women-one-man three-ways are also for the benefit of the man.  Yes, again, sometimes it is.  But heaven forfend that a woman ever was interested in, let alone desired, let alone might invite, orchestrate, or otherwise initiate such a thing for her own benefit.

That might not be intolerable, for once, but... only because it's so socially inconceivable that a woman would ever want such a thing that 99 out of 100 observers would say either "woo-hoo, dudes love girl-on-girl 'action'" or else "eww-boo, straight girls playing it up to keep the man interested." 

Note: For the longest time I focused this blog on the women's side of feminism -- posting in defense of women's sexuality and autonomy and alternating between anger and mockery of men (but it's not all men!) who denied such a thing.  Lately I'm trying to turn that around and actually, you know, take it to men instead.  Because it's as much a gender trap for men to assume any kind of hetro-leaning sex is always about the man.  The social scripts and narratives are overwhelmingly strong... but 50 years ago the narrative was still strong that any man who wanted a blowjob was a "latent homosexual" (look that one up in your granparent's psychology books sometime!) and 100 years ago the equally strong narrative was that any man having "as many as" ten ejaculations a year would be insane or dead by age 40.  If you're a man alive today you're better off than men from 100 years ago.  And of 50 years ago. And, trust me, if you can help get it out of your heads that all of hetero sex is, one way or another, "in service" to men you'll be even better off.  But I digress...

Anyway, in porn?  Yeah, it's still almost exclusively about the men, even though an amazing amount of porn is consumed by women.  But from talking to a wide array of candid, sexually active people over the last seven years, in real life it's not as sure a thing that a woman in a threesome sees herself only as "servicing" her two partners.

Photo by Flickr user Dru Bloomfield. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So over at Em & Lo's site a woman wrote for advice saying

Dear Em & Lo,

I’m an 18-year-old girl/woman and I want to be more sexually active, but every time I have sex with my boyfriend I orgasm super quickly (like in less than 5 minutes) and it feels weird to keep going. What should I do? I really want to keep up with my boyfriend but he says he could go for hours but I can only last for minutes.

– Early Bird

She said it here

First of all, if by “sex” Early Bird means “intercourse” then I don’t think five minutes before she has an orgasm is all that short a time. Taking admittedly great liberties with averages, average hetero intercourse lasts a little more than five minutes, and 25% of women say they always have (some kind of) orgasms from intercourse (and more say they usually or often do.) If Early Bird's partner could only go two minutes instead of hours then ta-da, suddenly she'd suddenly be “frigid!”

That said…

I think the feeling of weirdness or discomfort with continued sex after orgasm is more common than a lot of women let on. Although it’s commonly considered a “male” thing, plenty of women are “one and done” when it comes to orgasms. And of those I’d say while about half are ready to continue if their partner wants to, quite a few others are ready shift gears and start talking about their day, to go to sleep, to start thinking about breakfast, and so on.

And, again while it’s usually called a “male” attribute, a subset of those women also come both easily and early. Which, if their partners are still in the mood, can leave them feeling a little hung out to try. Even though that hung-out-to-dry feeling is typically considered a “female” attribute.

Call me a rebel here but I think it’s even less likely that women this happens to are going to disclose being “premature ejaculators” than men are. First because it’s a little embarrassing. Second because a) “everybody knows” orgasms are hard for women, b) “everybody knows” women can always have another orgasm (in contradiction to item #1), and c) “everybody knows” sex for women is about “feeling close” rather than horny so continuing sex after orgasm without feeling weird is supposed to be perfectly “natural.”

This is why I’m so happy Early Bird has piped up about her experience. She’s not alone! It can be a problem! It doesn’t feel lucky, either for her or her partners, or for women like her or their partners.

The good news is that while the underlying mechanisms are probably a little different, some of the techniques men are taught to deal with premature orgasms might work for you. And no, I don’t mean cliches like thinking of baseball statistics or imagining out-of-shape in-laws naked. I mean the real things like communication, acknowledgement, pacing, practicing “edging” by yourself and then later with a partner, and (radical though it might sound) doing “foreplay” to get him up to speed.

Which leads me to return to my first thought: how many more women would find themselves in Early Bird’s shoes if more men learned how to last more than 3-5 minutes? I say this not to knock men (at all) but to say it’s funny how we assume that women’s orgasms are “hard” just because they don’t tend happen as quickly as their male partners. I mean, consider if Early Bird’s partner was more quick on the trigger she might still think she had “problems” reaching orgasm during sex!

Photo by Flickr user marsmet462. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Sweet mother of pearl is there ever a mind-bending difference in the number of research papers on "female arousal" compared to similar studies of men.

This despite the fact that it sure looks like sex researchers (particularly principle investigators) are overwhelmingly male. And would have plenty of research material at... er... hand.

You'd think, especially for no-brainer (heh) PET-scan research like this one, called High-intensity Erotic Visual Stimuli De-activate the Primary Visual Cortex in Women, someone would bother to try the same experiment on men to see whether there were differences or similarities.

Or, if they did do use such experimental "controls" you'd think they'd mention it in the abstract. Not least because you'd think someone would be interested in one of two obvious outcomes

• Research showed that women's brains categorically process "high-intensity erotic visual stimuli" differently than do men's, or
• Research showed that women's and men's brains process such stimuli similarly.

Either way you'd think news about the latter two would be more interesting. But... probably because it would involve learning something about male sexuality... either nobody bothered mentioning it or, more likely, nobody's even bothered to try.

It's not that nobody's interested.  But most of the time it's not very integrated -- people generally seem to study a) female arousal, b) female arousal, c) female arousal, d) male arousal, e) female arousal, f) gay male arousal, g) female arousal, etc.  But you only occasionally see the same experiements conducted on both men and women. 

I still think the problem is that since everybody already "knows" everything you could possibly know about male sexuality (e.g. 90% of men masturbate and the other 10% are liars) there's no real reason to look... to see what if any of what we "know" is true.