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.

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

Bored Housewife says

It’s ok if you want to wake ME up for a fuck…
Sheepishly, hopefully.
He smiled up at me, as I sat here, watching the VP duh-bates on my computer.
I kissed the top of his smooth head and smiled back, giggling as I buried my face in his neck, giddy at the thought of it.
He just gave me a reason to go on Girl’s Night Out.
I was looking forward to it, but THAT, right there?
That was my golden egg, my reward, my treasure chest.
I don’t like to be woken up for anything, even sex, so he felt the need to point that out.
I’m oh so glad that he did.

This is just a snippet. Read the rest here.

Only a few short-term partners, and no long-term ones ever woke me up in the middle of the night for sex. The nicest, ever, was very early in my active sex life, before I’d gotten my vasectomy. It was summer, at a campsite with tons of other young adults. We’d met, hung out till late, made out passionately for hours, decided not to have sex because neither of us had birth control. Eventually we nodded off, still fully dressed, her sleeping bag under us, mine over, she nestling her head into my shoulder. A bit later I woke up with her on top of me, still in her t-shirt, undies on but jeans off, grinding against my nocturnal erection. Oddly I think it was her hair and hot, hot breath on my neck that woke me just… moments before she came and then, only a moment later I came too, into my jeans. And moments after that a few kisses and first she and then I were back asleep again.

I believe I’ve mentioned, repeatedly, how much I adore grinding like that while clothed. I’m pretty sure that was the first time, and certainly the first time a partner initiated it. It’s also the only time I ever came that way. But I digress.

What I really liked about Bored Housewife’s take on it is incorporating as a cap to her night out. Something like that happened one of the few other times someone woke me up for sex and it was also pretty great.

So anyway, yeah, middle of the night sex? I know it’s not for everyone but you could wake me up for that any time!