Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

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.

Read the quote in context here.

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.

Kink In Exile tackles head on the masturbation question that’s been percolating around the intertubes (and, obviously, in real life) recently

Someone did in fact ask why it might be hard for some people to orgasm with a partner if most of their orgasms have been through masturbation. I should first clarify that question to say “...if they can masturbate to orgasm successfully.”

...

The way people masturbate is often different from the mechanics of partnered sex. You may have learned to masturbate in an environment of secrecy and so you do it quickly, but find that partnered sex doesn’t allow you to reach that tempo. Or maybe you find an angle from which to approach your own genitals that feels soo good, but is harder to do with partnered sex. Your body gets used to the way you’ve been getting it off and expects that kind of contact; you change things up, don’t go fast enough, or don’t hit the right spots and suddenly it doesn’t work. Keep in mind also that many women can’t orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. So what do you do? Pay attention to how you masturbate, how your partnered sex looks and what physical differences exist there in. You can then try masturbating in a way that is more reflective of partnered sex or adding toys to partnered sex to make sure you’re hitting all the right spots.

She said it here.

There’s been a fair amount of conversation lately about the merits and demerits of masturbation as it relates to partnered sex. Given that masturbation is now effectively mainstream… as is conversation about sexual function and dysfunction… it’s a good time to talk about integrating solo and partner sex competency instead of imagining they are or should be separate.

At least for women back in the 1970s Shere Hite announced a strong correlation between learned masturbation position and, I think, orgasms during intercourse. (Darn it I’m probably going to have to look it up now.) Anyway, I distinctly remember her saying something about women who learned to masturbate in face-down or curled-up, upper-legs-crossed positions having difficulty and thinking yeah, that could be a problem. Although that was so long ago now that rear-entry intercourse was still largely considered a (demeaning, intimacy-avoiding) kink.

I had a little epiphany about sex and masturbation a couple of years ago, based on remarks from someone who said she never got off on intercourse and so she’d wait till her partner was asleep and then masturbate really surreptitiously. That experience was probably more unusual for men but since the advent of Prozac and other anti-depressants many men need a manual override to have orgasms during partner sex as well. There’s also, as you hint, a bit of a subculture among young men (at least) who might fantasize madly about whoever they’re oriented to… but in practice prefer the pace and, possibly, the auto-focus of masturbation. Oh, and finally, there are any number of people in kink who don’t care for or who even actively dislike, say, being beaten black and blue while it’s happening,_ who nevertheless get off hard in anticipation, on recollection, or both. So my epiphany was that we ought to get over the idea that we ought to reconsider not just the 70’s notion of “simultaneous orgasms” as ideal but the idea that intercourse is the “right” way to have orgasms at all.

The key, though — one that Hite missed or disregarded in her post — is that just because you develop one set of neural pathways to orgasm (through this position or that sensation) it doesn’t mean that’s the only way you’ll ever be able to do it. The obstacle, at least physically, is that it can take almost as long to grow the nerve pathways as it did to learn the first way. That’s fine if you mix it up while learning (something Betty Dodson talked about at least in her workshops.) It’s harder if you learn on the sly, if you’re uncomfortable or in denial about doing it at all, or if you get the idea (from porn, say, or bible-study classes) that it’s supposed to be this way instead of one’s own way. Or, preferably, ways.

None of this is to say orgasms during partnered sex is bad (in fact, as they say in the blogosphere, “heh.”) It’s just that as Kink In Exile points out, if you’re pretty good at having them by yourself, and if neither you nor your partner are brow-beaten and/or drum-beaten into being embarrassed that it might be so. And while I’d never make promises, who knows? Given that expectation stress and performance anxiety are major buzzkills, not worrying about it might even improve one’s odds with one’s partners.

See also:

• The Masturbation Industry from Noli Irritare Leones
• Why Am I Boner Kryptonite from The Beautiful Kind
• It Was Bound to Happen from Secret Lovers Lane
• And No, I Accuse! from Skin::filter()

• And most recently, Did You Come? from Calico

If you’re an adult you can click here to see a probably-not-work-safe image.

Em and Low of Daily Bedpost

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Sex is not intercourse. So stop using the two words interchangeably! When we as a society do this over and over again, it gets into the collective unconscious and starts limiting how we imagine the possibilities of pleasure, especially for women. A majority of women (that’s more women than not!) don’t climax from intercourse, so why rush to get there when you can spend time on more rewarding acts? But make no mistake: it’s not like you gentlemen out there can’t enjoy the variety that comes from taking intercourse off its pedestal—hey, if the destination is orgasm, how could anyone complain about the journey there? (Indeed, how could anyone NOT call that “sex”?!)

Read the quote in context here.

Nicely, if heteronormatively**, said. I always like to go a bit further, though, and stress that “sex,” however you define it, also doesn’t automatically end with male ejaculation.

This is not, by the way, to buy into the idea that orgasms are just “harder” for women, or that women “need” foreplay. After all the “fore” in foreplay is short for the same old “before intercourse to male ejaculation” Em, Lo, all other right-thinking people, and I are trying to nudge out of first place.

Instead, as Em and Lo hint, if the point of sex was male ejaculation then “Jizz in My Pants“ would be an instructional video and we could all go home. Since there’s almost universal agreement that “ejaculation” and “sex” aren’t the same thing it’s not that much of a stretch to “intercourse” and “sex” aren’t the same thing either…

At which point you get quite a bit more latitude for enjoyment not just for women but for men too!

One last point about the benefits of confusing intercourse with sex. Among heterosexuals it’s overwhelmingly the case that “intercourse” is something that men do to their partners. Not necessarily a bad to do things to each other during sex, and I’m given to understand that many (though not all) women enjoy it for precisely the reason of feeling “done to.”

Thing is, though, that if for the most part “foreplay” means “getting ready for sex” and “sex” means “intercourse” and “intercourse” means “what the man does to the woman” then… well, where, exactly is the room for women to enjoy actively things, for men to enjoy actively being *done to?”

I mean, if (heterosexuals) can’t break out of that then we’re stuck in what amounts to one party always hosting dinner (using food as my favorite analogy again) and the other party always being the guest. Not that there’s anything specifically about that either (one reason I think it’s a good analogy.) It’s just… limited in the sense that neither side gets the full range of experience. Just for example: of planning what to make or bring or do, of anticipating what the other has planned; of making requests or alternately of soliciting them.

And, seriously, with sharing sex, just as with sharing food, the experience of breaking out of the “host” and “guest” roles provides further understanding, further appreciation, greater inspiration, closer connections, and consequently much richer, much deeper, and much greater pleasure. For all concerned.

[** Focusing on heterosexuality is just fine in this context, because for reasons that… don’t actually have as much to do with sex as it does with notions of reproduction heterosexual sex seems to be a lot more consistently… even institutionally!... and unnecessarily dysfunctional. —fl]

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

Mary Roach, in a chapter titled (with signature drollery) The Princess** And Her Pea; the woman who moved her clitoris and other ruminations on intercourse orgasms, in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, draws a number of lines of research into women’s orgasmic “capacity,” both ancient and modern, with the entirely sensible point that orgasmic “capacity” for women (and, incidentally, for men) is almost entirely a function of who’s in control of what’s going on.

She sites Alfred Kinsey who agreed that clitoral location can make a difference, and so can position, but what matters most is “one’s level of engagement in the proceedings.” He suggested that it’s no so much that “women on top” positions are anatomically superior as “...it is the person on top who’s in control — making the movements and controlling their speed and depth and direction.”

She cites a modern researcher, Kim Wallen, who says “Women who routinely have orgasm in intercourse without explicit clitoral stimulation all say that it makes little difference what the guy does, as long as he doesn’t come too soon.” To which Roach adds “Meaning, it’s the women’s own movement that matters most.”

Wallen also says “In fact it is sometimes preferred that he just lie there and anchor the woman’s pelvis to him. The movie image of wild abandoned thrusting seems to have exactly the opposite of the intended effect on these women.”

Roach politely added that wild abandon can be nice. “Later, you know, toward the end.”

I mention this because heterosexual orgasmic “dysfunctions” are so linked to the “no-sex” class paradigm that insists women are disinclined to sex and, therefore, that women who are orgasmic during sex are atypical. Which means that men who (as befits us as members of the “sex” class) “manage” to get women in to bed with them and then “manage” to “give” them orgasms through androcentric, he-does-all-the-thrusting*** sex gets all kinds of “worthiness” points. If he bothers at all because, after all, women’s orgasms being atypical and all he might just feel like going for his orgasms figuring he can compensate her some other material-transfer-y sort of way. Which in turn fits perfectly into… the “no-sex” class paradigm wherein women would rather get stuff than have sex!

Oh, and can I just point out yet again how just the simple steps of turning intercourse over to her at least often enough for her to become accomplished, and then defining the end of sex as when she has her orgasm would force a rewrite of virtually**** every bit of mainstream heterosexual sex advice written in the last 400 (and maybe the last 4,000) years.

[** The princess in question was Marie Bonaparte, great-grand-niece of Napoleon, who, it turns out, helped pioneer inquiries into women’s orgasms during intercourse in the 1920s. —fl]

[*** And maybe in addition to all the thrusting he “masterfully” “warms her up” with cunnilingus or other forms of “foreplay.” And perhaps later “finishes her off,” multitasking with a finger or vibrator during intercourse. —fl]

[**** And just to be clear? I’m not saying “you’re not doing it right” to anybody, not at all at all. First because that would just be tossing the dysfunctionality ball back in. Second because everybody’s mileage varies. And finally because everybody’s mileage varies! Some people (maybe 15% of women and a nearly equal number of men) are simply not orgasmic no matter what they try. —fl]