Excellent advice from Em of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between.

If we all followed the golden rule of reciprocity in bed, we think there’d be more sex, more orgasms, less bickering, fewer sex advice columnists (we’d be out of a job!), and possibly even world peace. Remember, if your partner tickles your back, it’s not just because they’re being nice — they want you to tickle their back, too. And anything tactile, whether it’s a back massage or a nipple tweak or oral sex, feels better when you don’t have to ask for it.

I nicked the whole post but you’ll see the original text plus a lovely, erotic but mostly-work-safe photo here.

It’s funny that Em would have to remind us but… we hear over and over… and over and over and over… that the hetero bias towards one-way sex is frustratingly durable.

I don’t want to bring up my, um, universal explanation for everything but it does seem that if people were a bit more willing to acknowledge that women might enjoy sex because it feels good and not just because they like making letting their man feel good in exchange for some other, non-sexual benefit we’d probably all enjoy ourselves a lot more. There’d certainly be more orgasms during sex. And there might be probably be fewer sex advice columnists. I’m actually not sure about world peace or even less bickering since I’m not a big believer in the “...just needs to get laid” theory of conflict resolution. I do think there might be less bickering about sex.

But forget all that! You know what’s really nice about reciprocity? It’s not the “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” that makes it cool. It’s the “doing unto others, period” that’s cool. Because, seriously, scratching or massaging someone else’s back is fun. Tweaking someone’s nipple back is fun. Oral sex? Can I just make the only-seemingly-paradoxical proposal that while it’s not as orgasmic to eat someone it’s just as much fun?

The one caveat? “Reciprocity” isn’t the same as “payback.” If you’re eating your partner, say, only because they won’t eat you if you don’t? Then yeah, resentment’s kind of a buzzkill… but it’s a buzzkill both ways. I’d also point out that reciprocity also isn’t “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” It might be that one of you rocks out over receiving oral and the other only gets of when she or he is on top. If so then great — reciprocity can work that way too.

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.

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.