Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Heather Corinna of Scarleteen provides a cool answer to a fairly troubling question from a young man who says he can no longer have intercourse with his partner because, he says, “I think about what I’m doing I feel like I’m stabbing her, or performing some kind of violent act on her.”** In the process she introduces what I think is a really, cool, really effective new euphemism for intercourse.

I think it might help if you made some adjustments to the way you think about intercourse and sex as a whole.

You use the word penetration, and talk about what you’re doing as stabbing or a kind of invasion. I also hear you saying that sex is something you are doing to your partner or on your partner rather than with your partner, or as something you are doing together. You frame sex — as many people do, unfortunately — as something you have, rather than as something people actively and jointly do or create.

Physically, metaphysically, and often emotionally and intellectually (sometimes even spiritually), sex is about people and their bodies interlocking in any number of ways, and about BOTH sets of genitals (or other parts), both bodies, both people being actively engaged, doing something together, not about one person doing something to, on or at the other.

I know that can be quite the mental headstand when there are so many ideas and presentations of intercourse as men forcing themselves into women, as vaginas or vulvas as somehow passive and only penises as active, and with heterosexual sex, as what men do to women, how men dominate women, but those ideas come more from political agendas and sexism — and reactions to inequality and those agendas — than they do from what is really happening with intercourse or other sex when any two (or more) people are sharing an experience that is mutually wanted, about mutual pleasure and real connectivity.

She said it here.

Interlocking, huh? It’s a really great alternative to the someone-has-to-be-topping-the-other ways of saying it like penetration or engulfing.

Another nice thing about “interlocking” is it’s not heteronormative. Nor, for that matter, is it particularly genital-specific. One can interlock any number of ways.

Mmm, interlocking. The word of the day is interlocking.

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See also:

- the rest of Heather’s post for the rest of her gentler-than-he-may-deserve attitude adjustment. – an earlier Scarleteen post about the Etiquette of Entry

[** Buying into the idea that penetration is by-definition injuring doesn’t seem that different from not caring whether or not it hurts. —fl]

Over on the wonderful sex-ed site Scarleteen.com authors CJ Turett and Heather Corinna have posted an in-depth, non-gender-specific article called “Let’s Get Metaphysical: The Etiquette of Entry.”

Vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, placing fingers inside a vagina or anus, fellatio (blowjobs), in plenty of ways with cunnilingus (oral sex for women), and even kissing with your tongue are all some ways we might enter someone else’s body or have someone else enter our own.

All text quoted in this post are from here.

First of all it’s just so cool that they’re calling it “entry,” which locates things in the person entered instead of “penetration,” which tends to emphasize the person doing the entering. And with that in mind here’s a clip on the section about why they think it’s important to deconstruct entry in the first place.

• The person whose body is being entered is usually at a higher risk of injury or sexually transmitted infections, because it is their genital tissue which is most likely to wind up with small abrasions, fissures or micro-tears. For any partner involved, when there is bodily entry going on, the stakes are higher than they are with, say, dry sex, or rubbing someone’s breasts or penis.

• The person whose body is being entered is often the person more likely to experience any pain or discomfort, often due to things like nerves, inadequate arousal or lubrication, or an aggressive or over-eager partner.

• If we’re talking about an instance of sex and a combination of body and parts that could possibly result in pregnancy, it’s the person whose body is being entered who is at risk of pregnancy.

• Many people have had or do have trauma when it comes to others entering their bodies, whether due to the forced entry of rape, having experienced pain in the past with entry, medical abuses, childbirth experiences, or experiences with a previous partner who disrespected or disregarded limits, boundaries, or desire. Both the physical body and the mind remember pain, so previous pain — be that physical and/or emotional — can make entry scary for some people or trigger some challenging or painful emotions regarding previous traumatic experiences.

• We have a lot of cultural baggage that says only women get entered and only men do the entering, or that any kind of entry is a kind of violation or powerplay. For some men, a lot of homophobia can also be tied up into them being entered, as entrance has historically been constructed as a passive or more feminine role. Balancing our desire or interests with our community, family, or religious values—as well as what we’ve been taught from other places—is not always an easy task.

• Some people may have gender identity issues with either being entered or entering someone’s body. The ways we feel about our own bodies and body parts, and whether those align with what our partners may see about us or understand about our identities, can sometimes be confusing. Regardless of our gender, we may also have preferences about what kind of sexual roles we see as acceptable or desirable for ourselves.

• Some people also have shame tied up into the insides of their body, or the fluids or substances with which contact can be made, particularly when entry is involved.

And from a section on entry, personal space, and boundaries

This might sound a little hokey, but entrance into another body — whether you are inviting it for yourself or someone else is inviting you inside of them — is often a profound moment of connection. While all sexual activity, regardless of whether or not there is entry present, is an opportunity for this sort of connection, physically crossing into and entering into another body can be highly emotional for a lot of people. But it’s easy to forget or overlook that when you’re busy thinking about everything else, like how to physically go about it or how you’re performing or whether or not you’re “doing it right”.

And a historically-critical from a section called “A Vagina is Not a Sock, and Other Helpful Hints”

With any bodily orifice, we’re not talking about something that is passive or just lying around. Body parts exist within relationship to other body parts, within relationship to complex bodily systems, reactions, and interactions. The mouth is active and full of muscles. The vagina is a muscle. The anal sphincters, anus, and rectum are muscles. And with any of those parts, if we’re really paying attention rather than going into our own heads or focusing only on our own bodies, we can feel when they are really are opening up to us and when they are not.

And, a fairly big one, from the section on patriarchal, feminist, and heteronormative constructions of entry

Heterocentrism also makes it really easy to skew this conversation to only be about heterosexually-identified people who were assigned male at birth (and who still identify as male) with people who were assigned female at birth (and who still identify as female). Heterocentrism can mean that we often default to viewing penis-in-vagina sex as “real” sex, and anything else as somehow less or not valid even though they really are mighty similar and have some very important things in common.

On distinguishing between body signals, body language, and verbal consent

Lest we unintentionally send an inaccurate message, this is not to say that if the bodily signals are there (erection, lubrication, a flushed face or chest, increased swelling around the genitals, increased heart rate—all of which can be signals of arousal) then all systems are a go and you have complete liberty to do as you may with your partner. Nope. All of the signals need to be in alignment, and indicators of bodily readiness can only take on meaning in the presence of verbal consent. Consent is not simply the absence of NO; it’s an active statement of yes, and a freely given and enthusiastic YES at that.

And finally from a section on the language of entry itself

The wording and construct of “penetration” can imply that one person is pushing through or into another, often by overcoming resistance. In some contexts, that word can deny or make invisible the fact that while, indeed, sometimes that can be how an encounter goes – particularly when we’re talking about rape rather than consensual partnered sex – that’s not actually what is going on when sex is wanted by all partners, and everyone is emotionally present and bodies are fully engaged.

...

Instead of saying “receptive,” when we talk about the partner who is being entered, we might say that a partner and their body are welcoming, yielding, inviting, taking in, enfolding, embracing. Heck, even “entry” is a bit limited. We’re short of language for so much of what we’re talking about here in large part because for such a long time the ways that we’ve talked about sex were (and in many ways still are) all caught up in the politics of separateness, inequality, of conquering, and of power-over rather than power shared.

I’m sure it sounds like I’ve just quoted the whole thing. But Heather and CJ have put a lot of work into this. Oh, and incidentally, except for a few posts by people like Bitchy Jones, most of the work on… I dunno… call it the philosophy of entry/penetration was done back in the 1970s. And a lot has changed since then. Anyway, it’s good stuff and I highly recommend it.

Photo “Tête à Tête” by Flickr user Pabo76. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones had a great post a little while ago, the third part of which (her post covers three unrelated topics) discusses the question of “casual sex.” One important point stands out (my emphasis in bold)

Final unrelated topic, “casual sex.” There was a thread at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog that digressed into a discussion of the meaning of this phrase. Here are my thoughts. Among the range of attitudes toward sexual morality in this country, you can find “it’s fine as long as it’s consensual and condoms are used as needed,” “it’s fine as long as you’re in love,” and “it’s fine as long as you’re married.” Oversimplifying a lot here, because there’s a lot more of a range in detail than that, but in this case, I want to discuss the “it’s fine as long as you’re in love” position.

...one of the problems with criticizing “casual sex” is that it’s easy to take that in fuzzy ways that don’t have much to do with really thinking about what responsible sexual behavior involves – “casual sex” is sex if you’re not really, really in love, or sex if you haven’t had the requisite number of dates first, or sex with a number of partners that’s, well, fuzzy, but certainly more partners than I’ve had. So, if you’re going to criticize “casual sex,” be sure to be clear about what sex you don’t consider casual; otherwise people will just fill in their own varied ideas, and pat themselves on the back for not having “casual sex” by their own standards.

She said it here (but you’ll have to scroll down a bit.)

First of all I really appreciate her point that definitions vary up to the point where, for some people… quite a few actually (certain major religious denominations, for instance) non-intentionally-reproductive sex in marriage may be frowned on as “casual sex.”

(Quick note: I haven’t mentioned this for a while but I come by “prudish libertine” honestly: while I’m a strong advocate of having sex if you’re ready to have sex, I also firmly believe that “now you’re married now” doesn’t automatically mean “now you’re ready to have sex.” What does mean ready for sex? Here’s the official Scarleteen checklist. It’s long. It’s fairly strict. It doesn’t include “well, now that you’re married you should.” I think it’s spot on. But I digress….)

What I really appreciate is Lynn’s point that “casual sex” is what my logic and rhetoric professor called an equivocal term that needs to be defined before we use it. Even in, well, casual conversation.

A similarly equivocal term would be “sex**.” Another would be intimacy.

Speaking of which, Lynn mentions what she sees as my position on intimacy and casual sex. It’s a good illustration of her point about defining terms.

Two of the bloggers I read often are non-worksafe figleaf and Steven Barnes. Both of them talk a lot about sex (figleaf with more explicitness than the much more work safe Steven Barnes). Both of them clearly see sex as a vital and positive part of life. Neither of them seems to have a sexual ethic tied particularly strongly to a particular religious tradition, and neither goes with the old rule that you should need to be married to have sex. And both are pro-choice, as well as, of course, pro-birth control.

But beyond that, the guidelines they set seem to be very different. figleaf, who likes to call himself a “prudish libertine” or a “libertine prude,” has lots of ideas about what ways of approaching sex are desirable, but none of them require any level or intimacy or relationship between the partners (assuming both enthusiastically consent). Steve has said that it’s wisest not to have sex with anyone from whom you wouldn’t take a 2am phone call a year later, and that it’s not good to have sex under any circumstances where you wouldn’t be around long enough to know if a pregnancy resulted. Now, the thing about this advice is, whether you think it’s the right place to draw the line or not, it’s a clear place to draw the line, and not an arbitrary one. I think this kind of advice is rationally defensible in secular terms (and the 2am phone call example rather appeals to me), but simply letting people read whatever they want into “casual sex,” not such a good idea.

I think this is another case where the definition of “intimate” is equivocal because it sounds like Steven Barnes and I aren’t that far apart. I tend not to talk much about intimacy not because I think it’s unimportant but because I (mistakenly?) assume it’s a given. (Much like I wouldn’t talk about the importance of atmospheric oxygen if I blogged mostly about exercise.) I should probably make it clear every now and then that while I may have a much more expansive definition of “intimacy” it’s very, very important to me. For instance I’m not comfortable inviting someone to dinner if I wouldn’t be willing to field a 2am phone call from them a year later.

And no, this doesn’t mean I’d only invite someone to dinner unless I’d also have sex with them. “Intimacy” may encompass “sexual interest” but not vice versa at all, at all.

[**See Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich. Also, a college-level sex-ed textbook I read had a table discussing what people considered “sex.” A small number of surveyed respondents thought even penis-in-vagina intercourse to ejaculation didn’t count. It was way below 1%, and there was no explanation, but that anyone at all thought that might not count illustrates that what’s meant by the word is extremely ambiguous. —fl]

Anita Wagner of Practical Polyamory, while flagging a positive article about polyamory at YourTango.com

There’s a good article on compersion on the women’s sex and love webzine tangomag.com. I love that this subject – something most people have never heard of or even imagined – is being explored on a women’s mainstream venue.

She said it here.

I’d never heard of compersion either but it sounds like a useful word. According to the still-mostly-a-stub Wikipedia page compersion is

...the positive feelings one gets when a lover is enjoying another relationship. Sometimes called the opposite or flip side of jealousy.

[or]

...the feeling of taking joy in the joy that others you love share among themselves, especially taking joy in the knowledge that your beloveds are expressing their love for one another.

Source: Wikipedia

I can’t think of a lot of other words in English that carry that sentiment even in the general sense of feeling glad about someone else’s good fortune. There’s a link on the page to a Pali/Sanskrit word, mudita that means “rejoicing in others’ good fortune” Which, they say is “sometimes considered the opposite of schadenfreude.” Although, come to think of it, we don’t have an English word for that either.

To be honest on my tongue and to my ear neither “compersion” or “mudita” seem very evocative of the sentiment. Seems like a pretty useful sentiment though so if any poly-linguist and/or deep-vocabulary readers know of other similar words let me know in comments.

Tin ear or not I have to chalk up another one for the poly folks.