Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Melissa Gira Grant left a comment at Geek Feminism Blog about proposed guidelines to mitigate the seriously painful practice of men in tech “sexing up” dull presentations with… um… call it sexual-assumption-laden references or images of women. The problem being, as is often the case, the difficulty of distinguishing twittery vs. substance. Melissa lays it out nicely, and hits exactly the crux of the problem (emphasis mine.)

I think I get the thinking around these guidelines — and the totally male-dominated conference circuit that needs to hear this sort of guidance — but I just am stuck on this:

How do we keep guys (or anyone) from non-sensically using sexual or sexualized imagery and language in their presentations and preserve the right of people to use that information when it’s actually really, really what the presentation concerns?

This might be beyond the scope of these guidelines, but I am thinking back to the first BlogHer, during a “Birds of a Feather” session organized by self-identified mommybloggers, who were irritated that when they discussed the biological particulars of childbirth and childrearing, they were told they were being unprofessional, NSFW, or “overshare-y” — or, obscene.

It’s hard to address intent in this stuff. And I don’t want to sit through anymore stuffed-shirted dude “presos” on boring web marketing that just have some naked women sprinkled throughout to “sex things up” — because usually, those are the same dudes who don’t actually want to hear women talk honestly about sex, either.

Read the quote and follow links to the original sources here.

I think that’s about right. The problem isn’t the guidelines themselves. Or perhaps more accurately the problem isn’t insufficiently fine-grained guidelines. The problem is subsets of participants for whom the notion of the objects of their desire as biological human beings is both figuratively and literally TMI.

I’m emphasizing the notion of alienation from biological reality because, as this FAQ from Gender Shouldn’t Matter (also via Geek Feminism) demonstrates by reference that men are actually perfectly capable of acknowledging women as intellectual peers… under, um, certain conditions.

[Q] Free Software communities are meritocracies. Aren’t your recommendations purely discriminative?

[A] Everyone likes a true meritocracy. A community fails to achieve it, however, whenever female members resort to hiding behind male usernames.

I found the FAQ here.

The conditions being, um, when they don’t realize the intellectual peers they’re interacting with are biological women. Which, again, makes it a twits vs. substance issue — twittish sexual ideals (“it’s just harmless fun,” “we’re all men here,” “eww, you’re feeding babies with those things?!?!?!”) vs the corporeal, biological substance of those peers.

And, sigh, the problem in this case isn’t solvable by the standard 1st Amendment “the answer to bad images is more bad images.” (Although one imagines the rhetorical impact of PowerPointing a Wikipedia-derived photos of micro-penises into the graph at Gender Shouldn’t Matter as “just a light-hearted illustration” of the small face-to-face participation of women in Free/Open-Source Software venues as a response to the highly influential developers who angrily deny the women’s breasts they present in their own graphs might be objectionable.)

Instead it’s going to take something closer to confrontation. And possibly intervention. And it’s going to be a tricky intervention not so much because you have to overcome resistance (though there’s plenty of that) but because you also have to overcome this conception of the role of women in tech as not only things-not-people but as unapproachable/unachievable things.

Which, sad to say, is just an exaggerated version of the mainstream vision of women. Which is yet another consequence, of course, of the vision of sex as transactional.

Since I’m way behind in my reading I read this first via Echidne, but over at Pandagon Amanda Marcotte just answered a question that for some reason started bothering me almost as soon as I was out of WiFi range. See if you can guess what my question might be from the following snippet:

...from my perspective, the implicit argument —- that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation —- is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the “family values” narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity.

Read Amanda’s text in context here.

And, because it’s a good post too, don’t forget to read Echidne’s take either.

Anyway, it’s an interesting point that a) women who have lots of sex are considered degraded and yet b) industrial porn is almost invariably about women who have lots of sex.

Straight porn is very rarely centered around the actual performance of the male performers and when it is the focus seems to be far more about how much he’s able to get his various partners to “take” than how much he’s willing to, um, er, I guess, “go.” (I’m sure there have to be exceptions but are there ever non-fetish assumptions in porn that the men’s limits are smaller than the women’s?)

Anyway the thought that drifted through my head, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the one that I think complements Amanda’s post rather nicely, is why do you suppose there’s no “gang bang” porn where one man has sex with multiple partners? Heck, there’s not even a word for the comparable situation!

A few years ago there was a raft of stories about one or more videos of well-known or aspiring porn actresses having sex with up to 500 men. (I think it’s telling, by the way, that so many commenters at the time made much of the fact that the numbers were exaggerated… that it wasn’t “really” 500 different men, that organizers got some participants to go back around and get in line, etc.)

And yet, as far as I can tell, even though porn is allegedly about fantasies of male prowess and all that, as far as I can tell from Googling around, and dredging through more Fleshbot posts than I’d ordinarily do in a month year ok, ok, ever there just doesn’t seem to be that much interest in either producing or viewing one man “taking on” what viewers might see as a taxing number of partners. No male “gang bang” porn. No speculation about male “gang bang” porn. No requests for it either.

I think, at least in part, it’s because Amanda and Echidne have a point about the function of mainstream porn. I don’t exactly agree with them that the point of facials, say, or no-preliminaries anal intercourse, or “ass to mouth” exists only to degrade the women doing it in the sense of punishing them for having sex. Instead I still think it’s a “no-sex” class paradigm-driven fascination about what women can “take” either without saying “no” or before finally saying “no.” Which would, of course, finally satisfy the mythical Rule of Desire #1 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.

And meanwhile I think a circumstance showing multiple women sharing the same male partner would violate Rule of Desire #2 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

You’d think a male viewer (and this is still assuming not all but a majority of consumers are male) interested in seeing any naked women having sex with a man would be interested in seeing lots of naked women having sex with a man. The grammar doesn’t seem to work that way. Instead to the extent there’s interest (and there does appear to be a lot of interest) it’s pretty much always one naked woman having sex with lots of men.

I’m guessing Rule #2 dominates here — the assumption is that a man with myriad partners is a fluke the average insecure man can’t identify with. Meanwhile I think the logic is that if there’s a woman who’d have sex with 10, 100, 500, or 620(!) men she might let him have sex with her too.

Anyway, I dunno. What’s your take? (And don’t say logistics. Especially if you’ve ever imagined the porn industry rakes in gazillions of dollars. If there was a market for it they’d find a way to do it.)

I can’t have been the first person to mention it but if penis size was all that important to women’s satisfaction in sex then it ought to stand to reason that women, who’s hands after all are much smaller than men’s penises, mustn’t be able to satisfy themselves at all.

That’s obviously not to say there’s no distinction to be made about size at all. Or even that more people find one size nicer than another. It’s just that it seems like to believe that size matters or especially to imagine that larger is always more enjoyable is to misunderstand the part men and our… well… parts play in women’s sexuality.

Update: Just to clarify, I’m not saying I have magic insights into what works for women. Nor am I saying intercourse isn’t important. I’m saying I’ve got a very strong idea of how men encourage each other to think it matters. Instead of checking in with the individuals for whom it actually matters.

Teresa Strasser of MomLogic says

If you’re thinking about conceiving, or certainly if you are already pregnant, there is some pretty convincing evidence that instead of just swallowing, say, folic acid, you might want to swallow something else.

Let me be delicate about this, if I can.

As far as I can tell, not only should you be having lots of oral sex with the father of your baby — even up to a year before conceiving — you should also make sure to ingest his seminal fluid. Listen to what I’m telling you: the international medical community is giving you an Rx for oral. Sure, they say frequent intercourse is good, too, but oral is better. So, if you care about having a healthy baby and not potentially unleashing what scientists call a “destructive attack on the foreign tissues” of your fetus, if you want to avoid immunological disorders during pregnancy, and I’m sure you do, get to work. Or to pleasure, depending on how you feel about it.

Basically, the research says you need to be able to tolerate your baby’s foreign, paternal DNA; in other words, you need to get your body accustomed to the stuff, need to cozy up to some daddy double helix for a while so your body doesn’t reject it.

She said it here.

Further down in the same post, though, Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, also of MomLogic says that’s true if and only if a single, very small study by a non-specialist counts as “the international medical community.”

Maybe I have not been attending grand rounds enough and am out of date — but I NEVER learned about this benefit of oral sex in medical school or residency, or at any of those fancy continuing medical education conferences!

So while my search was far from exhaustive, I checked out a few of the wiki sources named in Teresa’s blog. The one academic paper that seems to support this supposed “immune maladaption theory of preeclampsia” is in fact published in one of our most esteemed peer-reviewed journals, but it is a small study and, no offense, was authored by a resident … and the bigger, better controlled study with more than 2,000 subjects published in another peer-reviewed journal concludes otherwise. So, if you like, swallow, and if you do not … please do whatever it is that you do with undesired contents of the oral cavity

Care to guess which way most of the comments on the post go? Suddenly being skeptical about a very dubious study makes Gilbert-Lenz a prude? Or “a feminist,” as if that was a bad thing?

I think fellatio feels very nice, and I agree that it’s lovely when a partner swallows. I also think there’s no, zero, none chance the study demonstrates that “gastrointestinal absorption of semen” is the best way to establish immunological tolerance. Or anything of the sort.

That’s a good thing, too. Because from the look of it the cluster of related papers all say the immunological effect seems to be related to substances in semen, not sperm. Which would suggest another, even more reliable way to avoid preeclampsia would be to altogether avoid contact with semen, period. So.

Quick question for anyone hoping Dr. Gilberg-Lenz is a spoilsport: would you be as credulous about a similarly small, obscure study claiming preeclampsia could be avoided through total lifetime abstinence except specifically for procreation? No? Good call.

I mean, it sounds like a good call. She says clearly, if a bit medically, “so, if you like, swallow, and if you do not … please do whatever it is that you do with undesired contents of the oral cavity.” Do it if you already like to, otherwise don’t force yourself is feminist advice, sure, but it’s pretty good advice period.

For instance what if an “international medical community” of one claimed that “gastrointestinal absorption of semen” was the best way for men to avoid prostate cancer instead? How many straight-oriented men do you think would start swallowing semen? Even if their wives emailed them the links? Even if their wives reminded them that prostate cancer leads all other forms in men? Are those crickets chirping? I thought so.

If you look at this (or, obviously any other sex-related recommendation) from an it-could-happen-to-me perspective “swallow if you want to but don’t let anyone force you if you don’t” starts sounding pretty good for everybody. Feminism’s good for everybody.

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Finally, despite admonitions about not looking gift horses in the mouth and all I think it would be weird to find out one’s partner’s suddenly interest in oral sex turned out to be about her enjoyment, or her interest in my enjoyment, but because she was thinking about its medicinal properties.

I mean, yeah, inside the fantasyland where “men just need a place to have sex, women need a reason“ womanly/maternal/feminine concern for health is great “leverage” for sex. But… first of all eww, and second of all I’m really, really tired of the Two Rules of Desire where men are incapable of being desired, and women of desiring them… and where it’s inconceivable that a man might receive a blowjob because a woman wanted to give him one.

Update:

Me? As much fun as it is for you when someone lovingly kisses his way down your body… from your lips to your neck to your shoulders and breasts… gingerly across your belly and then down further, lingering longer and longer while your eyelids flutter and your breath quickens and… Ahem, where was I? Oh yeah, as much fun as it might be for you, one of the pleasures of eating you for your partner is that he gets to be the reason for your… well… flutters and sighs. And that he enjoys the way you look, the way you taste, the way you feel against and in his mouth… the way her legs flex… and quiver… rise… and squeeze or thump his shoulders.

And so much as I enjoy the same trail of kisses down to my naughty bits, and don’t notice my curled-toenail marks further kisses bring, it’s hard to believe the common belief that being the source of my murmers and sighs and shortened breath might not be just as enjoyable for a partner… or that she wouldn’t enjoy the way I look, the way I taste, the way I feel against and in her mouth, and the way my legs stretch out… the way my muscles tense… the way my hips roll and surge up against palms of her hands.

I mean… in the broadest terms could one gender really get less enjoyment from that than another? Could it be that the only motivation for one might be it’s possible medicinal value?