[storytime] Sex communication case studies

86 Responses to “[storytime] Sex communication case studies”

1. 

   Tomek Kulesza March 11, 2011 at 9:24 am #

   “(because I thought he could just tell — and of course he couldn’t always “just tell”. Sometimes he could, but sometimes he couldn’t.)”

   It reminds me of a relationship of mine, with a longtime friend turned lover, in which i felt so understood emotionally that even after we broke up and spent a lot of time arguing, i feel perfectly understood when she answers what i said with “I don’t understand”.

   Hilarious, yeah. Yet i wanted to say i totally agree with the part in parentheses. Because obviously after we actually talked about what we meant it became clear that sometimes we had completely different ideas.

   But i guess it could work with sex where the feedback is immediate and if people involved are straightforward/self-honest enough to communicate at the spot. Which was part of your story.
2. 

   Sam March 11, 2011 at 11:37 pm #

   Clarisse,

   I think it’s really amazing to be able to have that kind of direct communication about one’s desires. I wish that kind of communication was more present in vanilla flirting and pre-sexual interactions. I just believe the chances of running into “vanilla” people who are that aware of their specific desires, who see the advantages thereof, or who are even willing to go through that kind of thing without being turned off are much slimmer than they are within a community of people who are explicitly getting together doing partly risky stuff *for pleasure*.

   I’m pretty good at getting women to talk about their sexuality, and I’m pretty good at making them attracted to me. But it’s really rare those two elements create a “how do you like it”-situation like you describe it. I suppose that wiggle room in BDSM is explicit, while vanilla wiggle-room is implicit, in the lack of expclicit verbal acknowledgement of what’s (potentially) going to happen next.

   Plus, I guess it will be easier to meet communication-compatible people for specific activities in a predefined community (self-selection) than it will be to find them in the general dating pool.

   Be that as it may – awesome stories!
3. 

   Thomas March 12, 2011 at 4:29 pm #

   Great article. As someone, who has only experience with vanilla sex and is not really good at talking about sex, I often feel that I’m stuck in the concept that sex should be instinctive. After all it’s the most natural thing, yadda, yadda.

   I think one of the most important factors that hinders open communication about sexual desires is gender essentialism. Even in the sex-positive community gender essentialism is still persistent, let alone the rest of society, which is hardly thinking about gender at all. Maybe fighting against stereotypes will make it easier for people to communicate their desires, because they realize that they are normal and it’s ok even if their sexual desires don’t fit a rigid pattern.
4. 

   SnowdropExplodes March 12, 2011 at 8:22 pm #

   I think a lot of this is like my Auntie Dave’s saying, “Spontaneous things are great, as long as you plan ahead for them”. In the same way, sexual connection is great but mostly you have to plan ahead to allow it to happen, like the 1st example.

   Another analogy would be music: in order to create awesome improvisations, you need to know the theory and the techniques of the instrument inside-out, same with sex (where theory and instrument are roughly analogous partner’s turn-ons and body). You can’t just sit at a piano and expect to be able instantly to play a concerto (especially if every piano was different from every other piano!)
5. 

   Miguel Bloomfontosis March 12, 2011 at 8:45 pm #

   Your encounter with this man sounds like it was great. But, I couldn’t help but thinking that it would be very unlikely for the roles to be reversed – the woman asking the man what his boundaries were, the man playing the submissive/masochist role – unless the woman was a sex worker and the man was paying her for her time. Maybe I’m wrong. You’re active in the Chicago kink scene, and I’m active in no “scene” anywhere at all. So, maybe it’s possible for a man to have the kind of experience you had, where a woman in a first sexual encounter takes control and the man is able to just “go with it.” But I doubt it.
   Another observation I’d make, in regard to the sexual encounter you described, is that the level of sexual experience and confidence necessary for your partner to successfully “pull off” his role – the dominant/sadist – was substantially greater than the level of sexual experience and confidence required for you to successfully “pull off” your role as the submissive/masochist. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the heterosexual BDSM world seems to mirror the heterosexual “vanilla” world in that the man is usually required to be “on” and “figure things out,” whereas the woman has the option to be more passive and still have an enjoyable sexual experience. The relatively inexperienced woman in both the BDSM and vanilla world has the benefit of sexual mentoring that the inexperienced heterosexual man does not have.
6. 

   Miguel Bloomfontosis March 12, 2011 at 8:48 pm #

   “I couldn’t help but ‘think’…” (English *is* my first language.)
7. 

   Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 4:19 am #

   Miguel,

   Wow, where to start?

   Your comment came off as (at the very least) incredibly arrogant, and frankly, it really pissed me off.

   Firstly, please don’t apply mainstream sexist stereotypes to subcultures you know nothing about. I am a switch and I have had encounters very like the one I described at the end in which I was the dominant partner. There are a number of references scattered through my blog to encounters in which I’ve taken the dominant role.

   If you’re going to comment on a BDSM blog without knowing anything about BDSM, then for heaven’s sake you could at least have the decency to not make any assumptions about BDSM. And no, your smug little “maybe I’m wrong” does not make up for it. If you actually thought you might be wrong, you would have asked a question instead of throwing out a opinion.

   You also wrote,

   Another observation I’d make, in regard to the sexual encounter you described, is that the level of sexual experience and confidence necessary for your partner to successfully “pull off” his role – the dominant/sadist – was substantially greater than the level of sexual experience and confidence required for you to successfully “pull off” your role as the submissive/masochist.

   Again, stop applying mainstream sexist stereotypes to subcultures you know nothing about. In fact, in this case, please also stop applying sexist stereotypes to the mainstream. Your claim that women “have the option to be passive and enjoy the sexual experience”, while occasionally describing reality, has the following flaws:

   1) Many so-called “passive” partners give an enormous amount of feedback (which often both contributes significantly to the interaction and goes unnoticed) and contribute a lot more to the interaction than many so-called “dominant” partners give them credit for. Did you completely miss the significant feedback I wrote about giving my partner in the final example? You know, like when I wrote about him pulling back and me reassuring him? And that doesn’t even get into the emotional work that goes into just processing the submissive experience.

   As a matter of fact, at the end of the final encounter I wrote about in the above post, my partner actually said these words: “I get the feeling that you do most of the work.”

   2) You’re completely ignoring the fact that for people who are stereotyped and stuck in the passive role — like women in mainstream society — (a) being passive may not be a role that they actually enjoy, and may be one that they have to go to ridiculous lengths to force themselves to fit into; (b) being consistently typed into the passive role comes with certain drawbacks, such as difficulty resisting assault or setting boundaries.

   Also, an argument that I have consistently made (and for which there is now some new evidence) is that women don’t actually usually enjoy sexual experiences with random people, which is pretty at odds with your assertion that we women can just laze around and get wonderful sexing up from those poor overworked men.

   Seriously, just wow.
8. 

   Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 4:34 am #

   Sam,

   Your concerns about the willingness of many mainstream people to communicate sexually are fair, but I don’t think they’re applicable to all mainstream people. I also think that learning more communication tactics and having access to them isn’t just useful during first encounters, it can be useful later in the relationship. I think a lot of vanilla people sort of “break the ice” by having sex first, or at least getting fairly hot and heavy first, before getting into detailed communication (sometimes with tactics like the above). This isn’t the best possible model, I think, but it’s better than never communicating explicitly, which you seem to imply is basically the only option in the mainstream market.

   I also venture that there are people in the mainstream market who may be vanilla in their sexual preferences but are more communicative than the average.

   That having been said, I’ve had some failed first encounters that definitely make me appreciate some of the difficulties of this stuff. As I said of Dude #2 above, it was pretty difficult to figure out what the hell was going on for like, the first 4 dates. And I’ve had other dates in which I attempted to communicate explicitly and it just didn’t work. It’s not foolproof. Sometimes it’s bewilderingly not foolproof. For example, I had a date a while back in which things got pretty intense between a relatively vanilla and stereotype-prone guy (who I probably should have known better than to hook up with in the first place) and myself. At one point, I was sort of confused by how things were going, so I decided to step back and just ask for something vanilla, and I said something like: “Could you go down on me?” And his response was, “Oh, but you don’t like that.” I guess his logic was that because it wasn’t overtly S&M, I couldn’t possibly like it? But why the hell would his response to an explicit request on my part be to tell me that I don’t like what I’m asking for? I’m still stumped by that one.
9. 

   Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 4:57 am #

   Also, as a special bonus link, because I’m still really frustrated by some of the explicit and implicit ideas in Miguel’s comment, I give you all this excellent post from the brilliant male submissive blogger Maymay, in which he takes on the ridiculous idea that men are all inherently dominant and women are all inherently submissive:
   http://maybemaimed.com/2009/10/02/dont-you-fret-sexism-is-alive-and-well-in-bdsm/
10. 

    Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 5:14 am #

    Also? Just as a final fucking note? I’d like to note that Miguel is claiming that inexperienced men don’t get sexual mentoring in a comment on a post that includes quite a lot of explicit description of me mentoring an inexperienced man. But because I’m the submissive partner, I guess the fact that I was also blatantly the mentor for Dude #3 just completely slides under the radar, huh?
11. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 13, 2011 at 7:18 am #

    I’m very much with you, Clarisse, on your criticism of Miguel’s remarks. However, I do want to pick up on one very specific aspect in which there might be something approaching a “truth” hidden away in there.

    The stereotype that a Dominant partner has to be”more experienced” is one that I have found to be quite prevalent in BDSM – the number of personal ads I see that insist on an “experienced” Dom testifies to this. It is, however, a mistaken belief. After all, how would one ever become experienced if you have to be experienced to be able to do it? How does one become “confident”? If this stereotype were true, then I would never have been able to start playing in BDSM at all! (I still don’t have huge amounts of confidence, and yet somehow I seem to have done a good job providing and taking pleasure from topping.) One could just as easily argue that it takes more experience and confidence to bottom than to top, because the bottom needs to be more aware of hir own body, and have the confidence to articulate when something is going wrong (or, indeed, when it’s going oh-so-right!) The statement itself is not true, but is held to be true by a surprisingly large number of people even within the scene, and this is disappointing. I suspect it also ties in with the mistaken perception that sex should “just click” without needing work.
12. 

    Miguel Bloomfontosis March 13, 2011 at 10:32 am #

    Clarisse, I’m sorry if my comment pissed you off. I’ve read some of your responses to comments on your other posts, and so I’m surprised that you seem to have gotten so angry in response to what I wrote. The fact is, heterosexual men usually are expected to initiate sexual encounters, and usually are not “mentored” in the way that women and gay men can be mentored. Why is it so “arrogant” for me to say this? Is it untrue?
    I’m *not* saying, “Clarisse never mentors anyone.” I’m sure you do. I’m talking about probabilities, averages, and “what usually happens” when heterosexual men try to explore their sexuality. You can call that a “sexist stereotype,” I call it “a reality that men have to deal with.”
    And, btw, when I said, “Maybe I’m wrong,” that was not intended as snark, but as a discussion starter.
13. 

    Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 12:58 pm #

    What was so arrogant about your comment, Miguel, was your application of stereotypes — which you admitted to while doing it — to a community that you admit knowing very little about. (And then not only that, but your assumptions about the BDSM world came out of assumptions and stereotypes about the vanilla world that are incredibly problematic.)

    I woke up this morning realizing what really frustrated me most about your apparent assumption that everything is great for women (and gay men? although I tend to think the queer community is different enough that I don’t feel confident making assertions about their experience) — as if being slammed with the passive role and supposedly “mentored” is a great place to be. My previous piece on this blog (which I linked at the beginning of this post) was a fairly extensive description of an incredibly unpleasant early relationship that I had, in which I was not “mentored” in the least, and in fact was routinely manipulated, with my youthful inexperience and inability to set boundaries taken advantage of. And that piece was then cross-posted to Feministe, at which point Jezebel emailed me to ask permission to repost, at which point my blog received over seven thousand extra hits in one day. That is a record, and it points to something that was also said quite clearly by dozens of commenters at both Feministe and Jezebel: the experience I outlined in that post is not even remotely unique. That post was an accurate description of the experience of thousands of women. And again, that post is pretty much describing the opposite of mentoring.

    Sure, het men are generally expected to initiate. I’ve written articles about that, as I think you know. But your comment went way beyond that! You expressed zero understanding of the many, many pitfalls for women within our current system of gender stereotypes and you made assertions about our experience. And then you generalized from that to BDSM, and you told me that you “doubt it” that men can have similar experiences to mine, when I have specifically provided men with similar experiences to mine, and I’ve even written about it here.

    Also, I think you’ll find that a lot of het vanilla men who make the first move will still end up getting mentored by more experienced women. The more experienced partner in an interaction usually takes on a mentorship role of some kind, although that role may be masked by stereotypes of how their gender/sex roles “should” behave. That was a point I made in comment #10 about being a submissive who sometimes mentors new dominants, but it’s equally applicable to being a more experienced vanilla woman who’s dating a less experienced dude.

    And that’s not even getting into the stereotypes behind your claim that het men are rarely mentored while het women frequently are. Even discounting the large number of problems I have pointed out with women being stuck in the passive role — which is not, again, a position from which we can rely on some sort of awesome “mentorship” experience — the set of women who can rely on some amount of positive male attention is not even close to the whole set of women, it’s the set of women who conform to conventional standards of attractiveness. You seem familiar with the pickup artist subculture, so perhaps that’s where you picked up that idea — it’s a pretty common one in that subculture, since pickup artists routinely disappear the experiences of all women who aren’t hot enough to catch their attention (or mainstream/extraverted enough to be out in clubs at night). Women who are less conventionally attractive cannot rely on positive male attention, and are stuck both with a stereotyped passive role and with even more difficulty initiating than shy men, because our culture doesn’t make a lot of space for a woman who initiates romantic interactions.
14. 

    Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 2:52 pm #

    Hey Snowdrop,

    100% agreed on your observations.

    I think one of the reasons I came down so hard on Miguel here is partly that I am so damn sick of the sexist and dom-centric stereotypes within the BDSM subculture that get imported in from mainstream culture … I have a low enough tolerance for sexist absurdity when I encounter it with other BDSMers; to see a person who doesn’t even have any experience with BDSM deciding that he can tell us what our experience is based on those same outsider stereotypes that are such a problem when they’re dragged into our subculture … argh.
15. 

    Sam March 13, 2011 at 5:14 pm #

    Clarisse,

    … but it’s better than never communicating explicitly, which you seem to imply is basically the only option in the mainstream market.

    I also venture that there are people in the mainstream market who may be vanilla in their sexual preferences but are more communicative than the average.

    Oh, sure, I wasn’t suggesting that people cannot theoretically do that, or that some may already be doing it, but that it’s absolutely and relatively rare. And i believe the *main* reason for that is that the mainstream appears to be largely unwilling and unable to disentangle romantic involvement and sexuality. It’s not that these necessarily need to be uncoupled, but being able to do so allows a “pleasure-centric” look at sexuality that is unusual in most mainstream communication about physical intimacy and sexuality. I think this goes back to the implicit “emotions for sex” deal for women and “sex for emotions” deal for men, and, I believe implicitly, to the relative scarcity aspect, again: If there were a balance, the uncoupling would be easier, because the respective “payments” could be made in the same currency: physical pleasure wouldn’t be expected to be “repaid” in emotional attachment ant vice versa. Again, fantastic if there’s enough physical and physical passion for all of it to go together, I just think that the mainstream script makes people expect to trade one for the other rather than returning value received in the same currency, and that makes explicit communication about pleasure so difficult and fraught with ambiguities and emotional pitfalls.

    And as (also) the Conley research suggests, direct sexual approaches usually aren’t that useful a strategy for most men in most situations. I think that cultural knowledge will be a huge impediment to more open discussion about sex even when women would appreciate it. And remeber the Antioch experience, where helping people talk more openly was part of the motivation to force them to be more explicit. And even there, on a tiny self-selected open-minded campus, it didn’t work too well, and often turned into a sitation in which forced open communication was perceived as harrassing.

    To be honest, I wouldn’t really know where to start to help “the mainstream” to get to better communication.”

    And his response was, “Oh, but you don’t like that.” I guess his logic was that because it wasn’t overtly S&M, I couldn’t possibly like it? But why the hell would his response to an explicit request on my part be to tell me that I don’t like what I’m asking for? I’m still stumped by that one.

    Hmm, the only explanations that make a bit of sense to me would be that he simply assumed you wouldn’t be into anything “vanilla” and was thus surprised and couldn’t put it in perspective, and the other one is that he didn’t like it and used the question and your orientation as a shield to try not doing it without telling you so – explicitly.
16. 

    Xakudo March 13, 2011 at 8:17 pm #

    @Clarisse, Miguel

    In speaking to my female friends, there has been little–if any–disagreement that there is more cultural pressure on men to be “good in the sack”. But I would not suggest that there are no cultural pressures on women. Rather, I suggest that they are of a different type. The pressures on men are of a “prove that you are worthy as a sexual partner at all, and prove your manhood” kind. My impression from speaking with women is that pressures on women tend to be more along the lines of “hold onto your man” (especially for older women) and “care for your man’s fragile ego”.

    The difference in the type of pressure makes sense, I think, given that our culture generally looks at sex between men and women as being beneficial to men and detrimental to women (slut vs stud, virgin vs loser, etc.). Men have to make up for their detrimental touch, in a sense.
17. 

    Clarisse March 13, 2011 at 8:49 pm #

    Sam — You make an interesting argument. As always, I am wary of claiming the “main” reason for anything, but I think I agree that the “sex for love” paradigm is a major cause of these issues. It also seems clear that for whatever reason, explicit negotiation of the “sex for love” interaction is nearly impossible for people to do, and negotiation gets much easier when it becomes “sex for sex” (which is why BDSMers have so many good tactics for it) or “sex for money” (which is why sex workers have so many good tactics for it).

    And you’re also correct that this translates into making it hard to teach the mainstream about sexual communication. That’s very insightful. Because if the terms of the exchange are so different, the negotiation becomes fundamentally different. So perhaps part of the necessary work becomes trying to make people aware of the exchanges they’re attempting to make, and aware of the fact that different exchanges are possible. I’ve personally found it quite productive to start relationships on a “sex for sex” footing and then see if they develop into a more emotional thing, which they sometimes do. In other words, sex for sex can become a love relationship, and I would argue that this is better because no one has to feel as though they’re “losing out” or “being used” on a sexual level.

    But that might just be a really hard “square 1″ for people to put themselves in. I’m not sure. It’s certainly something that I had a “head start” on, given an upbringing that emphasized the importance of sexual pleasure for everyone (especially compared to typical mainstream attitudes).

    This may be tangential, but I am reminded of a list that was brought up by a pair of educators in San Francisco who go by EduKink. They described a loose hierarchy of emotional intimacy levels and physical intimacy levels:

    Physical
    Little to no contact
    Friendly contact
    Affectionate contact
    Passionate contact
    Full sexual expression

    Emotional
    Superficial interaction
    Small talk
    Honest expression of ideas, values, opinions
    Honest expression of feelings
    Full intimate disclosure

    I don’t remember why they brought up these hierarchies, but I later stole them for my sexual communication workshop and tried to suggest to the audience that while these levels certainly don’t have to “match up” (i.e., it’s totally okay to have full sexual expression + small talk), it’s useful to figure out what level you want to be at emotionally with physical partners. For example, are you okay with one-night stands (small talk + full sexual expression)? Are you okay with being friends with benefits (honest expression of ideas, values, opinions + full sexual expression)? To me it seems as though it’s crucial to know what you want and stand firm on that (don’t go for full sexual expression with someone who offers only small talk when you really only want full sexual expression with someone who can give honest expression of feelings). But it’s certainly true that sexuality is often used as a way of escalating up the emotional hierarchy, and there may be people or relationships with whom it’s very difficult to reach a certain emotional level before having sex with them.

    More emotional escalation stuff. Argh, I have to get this pickup artist article written. That’s where I’m planning to really explore these issues.

    the other [potential explanation] is that he didn’t like it and used the question and your orientation as a shield to try not doing it without telling you so – explicitly.

    This occurred to me as well after I wrote that comment, actually — it’s definitely possible. Either way, clearly not a good partner for me.

    Xakudo — The pressures on men are of a “prove that you are worthy as a sexual partner at all, and prove your manhood” kind. My impression from speaking with women is that pressures on women tend to be more along the lines of “hold onto your man” (especially for older women) and “care for your man’s fragile ego”.

    Quoted for agreement. Definitely true (from the female side, anyway).

    Another bonus: I found a comment on an old post by Bitchy Jones that made me laugh for five full minutes. It’s a comment by someone named LAS, who is responding to someone named Toni:

    Toni said:”Beautiful girls get what they want…”
    Ooh, like pay equity? That’s all it takes? Neat!
18. 

    Sam March 13, 2011 at 9:23 pm #

    Clarisse,

    “More emotional escalation stuff. Argh, I have to get this pickup artist article written. That’s where I’m planning to really explore these issues.”

    are you close to finishing it? Looking forward to reading it :)

    Oh, speaking of pickup artists… I recently found this online…

    http://blog.gettingherworld.com/?p=28
    (about deep conversation)

    and this

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox-c3dDcFPU

    which is sort of a pua-version of the schrödingers post, by a female! pua. Have you talked to female puas as well?
    I wonder what their perspective is.
19. 

    Trusthynenemy March 13, 2011 at 11:48 pm #

    I feel like this is very off topic, but when I emailed it to Clarisse earlier, she encouraged me to post it here, so…. ~drags everyone off topic~

    Responding to Transparent as Glass.

    I treasure these partners more than I can ever express to them. In part, because these are the partners from whom I learn the most. For reasons I don’t want to get into, I am very disconnected from my wants and my body (those two being rather more connected things in this regard than I’d like, I think). Having partners who are able to read me enables me to have positive relationships with those who can’t, because it is from the former group that I learn how to interact in positive ways with the latter.

    The first person I was with who could read me and just go off of my reactions taught me that I *could* enjoy being sexual. That it wasn’t something torturous or to be survived, that it could be wonderful and feel nice and create a really strong connection with someone I loved. Unfortunately, this was before I had learned how to communicate with others about my wants, so things that were bad were very bad, but overall it was good for me.

    The second person who could read me that way, started teaching me how to be more conscious of my responses. How to create this reaction or that one, how to control it. Which was useful, and would have been more so had we more time together, but the past is what it is.

    The third person who can read me that way–well, I’m still learning what he can teach me. But he’s being very good at teaching me to be aware of my body, and my responses. To connect with what I’m feeling. And to communicate what I want. It helps that I started out
    communicating to him how these are all things I don’t know how to do.

    I have conflicted feelings about things with him, not because I don’t appreciate them, but because the relationship he’s ultimately looking for is going to be one that doesn’t include me, and while I want him to be happy and have that relationship, I’m also selfish and want to learn what he has to teach me.
20. 

    machina March 14, 2011 at 12:46 am #

    I don’t remember why they brought up these hierarchies, but I later stole them for my sexual communication workshop and tried to suggest to the audience that while these levels certainly don’t have to “match up” (i.e., it’s totally okay to have full sexual expression + small talk), it’s useful to figure out what level you want to be at emotionally with physical partners.

    For me they seem inversely related, I don’t like “softcore” sex early in a relationships since it gets associated with a level of emotional intimacy that I’m not ready for.
21. 

    Xakudo March 14, 2011 at 1:58 am #

    Clarisse:

    Quoted for agreement. Definitely true (from the female side, anyway).

    Note that the “fragile male ego” in this case is actually a byproduct of the pressures on men to be good in bed. I mean, if you imagine a world where women’s value were not so tied to their physical appearance, women probably would not have such “fragile female egos” about their appearance. It is similar with this.

    Ironically, I suspect men would be a lot more open to constructive criticism about sex if their sense of sexual self-worth were not so intimately tied to how well they ‘perform’ in bed.

    And I am actually starting to wonder how much of the sexual entitlement exhibited by men is actually a pissed off push-back reaction against these absurd pressures. I highly doubt it is all of it, but it would seem consistent with my own experiences, at least, that it would be part of it. Especially in guys that are not otherwise uncaring assholes.

    I wonder if, from the female perspective, there is, perhaps, this fear that if men are not pressured, that then they will simply not give a shit and become these horribly selfish lovers? But that seems to me like a rather dim view of men. I really cannot imagine how telling people “you are sexually worthless if you are not good in the sack” is supposed to help them get better. And this is essentially what our culture tells men. And that is what men are reacting so strongly to when they blow up over criticisms/pointers.
22. 

    Clarisse March 14, 2011 at 2:03 am #

    Xakudo,

    I hope you’re keeping in mind that you have a very particular perspective and that most men have very different life experiences from you.
23. 

    scootah March 14, 2011 at 2:05 am #

    @Clarisse – I’m right now imagining Miguel’s comments as delivered at a CFNM/Women on Top night (or any other event with a few scene active dominant women in attendance really). I just can’t stop giggling.

    In relation to the post, I identify so very much with the scripts and lists items in particular. I sometimes (v. occasionally) do scripted scenes as a set piece for a stage show or something. But my ‘thing’ is all about instinct and improvisation. I want all of my scenes to be as organic as possible. I negotiate boundaries and limits before hand, and research my partner’s interests and kinks, so I can manipulate those interests for my own kinks. But the whole idea of a script, of a scene that’s written before it’s played out is so very alien to what I want out of sex.

    Because my thing is so much around control, or at least the illusion of control – negotiating in that much detail kind of kills my enjoyment. As a dominant, I want to stay within my partner’s boundaries and do everything with consent – but scripting it, or even worse – talking about the script in advance sounds like no fun at all.

    I’ve had partners in the past who were looking for that kind of dungeons and dragons and strap-ons sort of deal – where the fantasy was all pre documented in a glossy booklet where the variation was just how long it took to progress through the achievement points… It never worked out well for my style of kink.
24. 

    scootah March 14, 2011 at 2:30 am #

    @SnowdropExplodes – the experience thing, at least in the context of Dom men is something that shits me no end. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people claim 10/20/30/40 years of experience in kink – like being 42 and having 40 years of experience as a dominant is fooling anyone. X decades of experience is often held up in the kink community as an appeal to authority, defending some ludicrous/idiotic position – like the idea that someone has persisted in being wrong since before the great war somehow validates their stupidity and makes it awesome.

    There’s this murky ground in kink. Topping or Dominating someone is a skill. Which is not to say that there’s any kind of idiotic process that people must pass before they’re a true dom or anything… but using a flogger or using needles or slaping someone around for sexual gratification – does require some skills. The ability to gauge risk, pitch the intensity of your actions at the level that you’ve negotiated to observe, the ability to read body language and push/back off appropriately – they’re all skills that you don’t just magically develop.

    In a purely sexual context, I’m not interested in fucking virgins… or even people who are sexually inexperienced unless it’s an exceptionally rare circumstance. My preference in partners is for people who like to fuck, and have had enough practice in the past that I’m not giving lessons. And I really like being in charge and bossing people around.

    I understand in a kink context, especially for someone who’s looking for D/s submissive headspace with a sadistic partner – not wanting to give instructions/teach/mentor someone who they want to be dominant too them. Or even just not feeling able to. I certainly have friends who wouldn’t be able to teach someone to top them. Those friends struggle to safeword appropriately when they’re in play headspace, it just wouldn’t work for them to be the experienced guide. And off hand, most of the people in that category are female.

    I know one or two guys who have the same sort of issue – but it’s less common in my experience. And while I do know a handfull of girls who would enjoy/be comfortable teaching a Dominant the skills associated with doing their thing – probably a majority of submissive guys I know have at some point taught a woman the physical skills of how to put someone into bondage or how to do safe impact play – at some point in their kink experience.

    But all that said, I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of practical difference between someone who’s got some common sense and a healthy attitidue who has 6 months of active experience in a public kink scene, and the average 5 year scene veteran. I think the common sense and healthy attitude would make the less experienced player a much better/safer partner than most of the people who claim that they were in the middle of a scene when the Hindenburg crashed. But I do understand why so many submissive people chase a more experienced dominant partner. I’m not sure why my experience has been that that behaviour has been more common among female submissives than male – but I do get it.
25. 

    Miguel Bloomfontosis March 14, 2011 at 1:12 pm #

    “What was so arrogant about your comment, Miguel, was your application of stereotypes — which you admitted to while doing it — to a community that you admit knowing very little about. (And then not only that, but your assumptions about the BDSM world came out of assumptions and stereotypes about the vanilla world that are incredibly problematic.)”
    Okay then:
    (Let me just preface this by offering it all in the spirit friendly constructive criticism):
    First, as to me “applying stereotypes” to the BDSM world: It’s true, I’m not active in the BDSM scene. But I was making a reasonable assumption. Because the only experience people really “know” is their own, it’s important that people be allowed to make reasonable assumptions about the experiences of others when discussing sexuality. In this case, the reasonable assumption I was making was that many of the social and sexual dynamics that exist in the “vanilla” word – e.g. men being expected to initiate more – also exist in the BDSM world. For example, I have read (might have been Mistress Matisse who wrote this, I don’t remember) that women who are BDSM newcomers and show up at an “event” tend to get “swarmed” by people who are interested in them as potential partners, but that men who are newcomers to BDSM tend to be ignored. That dynamic is similar to what happens in the vanilla world. Now, if these kinds of gender differences no longer exist in the BDSM community, and if you honestly think that a shy woman and a shy man would be treated *exactly the same* if they showed up at a BDSM event, then that’s great news and I just haven’t read about it yet. But until I have good reason to believe otherwise, I don’t think it’s “arrogant” for me to assume that the social dynamics of the BDSM world often mirror the vanilla world in many important ways.
    Second, as for me making “problematic” assumptions and stereotypes about the vanilla world: I think there is a difference between making a “problematic assumption/stereotype” and making an “important observation.” For example, if the subject were sexual harassment and I were to write, “I couldn’t help thinking that it would be very unlikely for the roles to be reversed, and for a man to walk down the street and have women yell unwanted vulgar comments at him” – would I be making a “problematic assumption/stereotype” or an “important observation?” I think most feminists would say (correctly) that it is an important observation, because street harassment really happens, it affects women’s lives, and is something that needs to be talked about. So, even though most men don’t yell vulgar comments to women on the street, I shouldn’t have a conniption whenever a feminist blogger writes about the harassment that “men” do, so long as the blogger in question isn’t writing for the purpose of dumping on men.
    Okay, so when I say that a man who is “pretty inexperienced” would probably not be able to have the kind of sexual experience that you describe in this blog post, this isn’t a “problematic assumption/stereotype,” it’s an important observation about *what actually happens*, and this ought to be talked about openly because it affects the way in which most men are able to develop their sexuality. (I know you’ve said that you’ve provided men with this kind of experience, but *on average* it is very unusual for a woman to take the kind of role you describe in this post.) But the problem is, you and others read into what I write an “apparent assumption” that everything is hunky-dory for women. Why? Don’t you see that feminists write *all the time* about the difficulties that women face? Every time I read a feminist blog post that discusses a particular difficulty that women face, I don’t read into it an “apparent assumption” that everything is just swell for men, nor should I.
26. 

    Clarisse March 14, 2011 at 2:35 pm #

    Before getting to Miguel, I want to note something about my response to Xakudo … I shouldn’t have responded so fast and without any extra analysis, but the comment made me uneasy and I didn’t have time for anything better. I’ll try not to do that again next time. The reason it made me uneasy was that I felt like it came from a very specific perspective on sexual pressures — where men are pressured to be good in bed but aren’t pressured to have sex just for the sake of accomplishment. And I think the second pressure is at least a big a deal as the first for a huge proportion of men, although apparently not for Xakudo.

    I think the idea of pressuring men to be good in bed, and linking that to a feeling of accomplishment, probably at least partly arose out of a feeling that — since men already have so many feelings of accomplishment tied up in sex — the most productive way to make men more respectful of women might be to link their sense of accomplishment to having sex that’s good for women.

    Xakudo wrote,

    I wonder if, from the female perspective, there is, perhaps, this fear that if menare not pressured, that then they will simply not give a shit and become these horribly selfish lovers? But that seems to me like a rather dim view of men.

    This is a dim view of men, but it’s also historically supported, isn’t it? As little as 50 years ago, when the first studies of sexuality were coming out, it was clear that men were in fact horribly selfish lovers for the most part. We know, because a huge proportion of women had never had orgasms and didn’t particularly enjoy sex. And, I mean, Jesus, there was a long period in relatively recent history in which a huge proportion of women were simply sent to the doctor to get orgasms by mechanical means, because they could not expect pleasure in the marriage bed. (For more on that, read this.)

    I think this also often goes back to the trading sex for love/relationship paradigm, which was obviously more socially supported in the past when women literally couldn’t support ourselves and had to be supported by a man. And to some extent it makes sense that it’s still around, given that women still can’t rely on making as much money as men.

    Given we live in a culture where men are consistently pressured to have sex just to get notches on the bedpost, and where women are pressured to trade sex for love, removing pressure on men to be good in bed wouldn’t improve things for women. I’m not thrilled with sexual stereotypes and pressures in general, obviously, but I think that if one starts by trying to fight the “men should try to be good in bed” pressure, one will be missing the real roots of the problem.
27. 

    Clarisse March 14, 2011 at 2:57 pm #

    Miguel,

    I normally don’t do line-by-line deconstructions, but what your most recent comment said is so at odds with your original comment that I think it’s important. And I do think you have an interesting perspective, so it’s worth it to try and explain this.

    In your original comment, you wrote:

    So, maybe it’s possible for a man to have the kind of experience you had, where a woman in a first sexual encounter takes control and the man is able to just “go with it.” But I doubt it.

    That’s not a claim about stereotypes or tendencies. That’s a claim about possibilities.

    In multiple comments, you also asserted,

    The relatively inexperienced woman in both the BDSM and vanilla world has the benefit of sexual mentoring that the inexperienced heterosexual man does not have.

    Which — as I explained over multiple comments — is not true, and in fact ignores the ways (a) women are frequently exploited rather than mentored when coming into our sexuality, and (b) only certain women (who are conventionally attractive) will get the kind of attention that you (and pickup artists, and tons of other frustrated guys) seem to think all women get.

    In your most recent comment, you asked:

    But the problem is, you and others read into what I write an “apparent assumption” that everything is hunky-dory for women. Why?

    Because you explicitly said that women get the “benefit of sexual mentoring”. You don’t get to say things like that and then step back into a different position when I call you on it.

    Your original comment did not merely say that men are in the cultural position of initiating more. It stated that you “doubt” it’s “possible” for men to have an experience of being sexually mentored, which isn’t true and which made assumptions not just about men and women but about BDSM (since it was written in the context of BDSM communities). It also stated that women have the “benefit of sexual mentoring”, which, as I have now explained twice, is not necessarily a “benefit” or a “mentorship” experience — even for women who can rely on male attention, which many can’t.

    The thing is, I don’t think you’ve actually been only trying to say that men are stuck in the position of initiating more. You’re trying to fall back to that position in later comments, but that wasn’t your original position. Your original position was much stronger and included statements claiming that it’s not possible for men to be sexually mentored, and that women (and supposedly gay men) have reliable access to some kind of exciting, non-exploitative, pleasurable mentorship experiences. If you don’t believe those things, then you’re free to explicitly change your position. Frankly, I will respect you more if you do that than if you stick with this “but I was only saying …” stuff.
28. 

    Xakudo March 14, 2011 at 4:16 pm #

    Clarisse:

    I hope you’re keeping in mind that you have a very particular perspective and that most men have very different life experiences from you.

    Of course. Some–but certainly not all–of my experiences are outlier-ish. But I think that is true of a lot of (most?) people, yourself included.

    And I do speak to other men and women about these issues, especially recently. So my assertions are not based purely in my own experiences. Almost all of my male friends seem to have similar issues as I described (sexual worth being tightly tied to their abilities in bed). So, pending more “hard” data, I think that particular bit is not such an outlier.

    And I am curious: where do you think the “fragile male ego” comes from if not from the kinds of pressures/cultural views I am describing? In what ways does our culture tell men that they have sexual value to women other than through “satisfying” them (usually with their penis, which brings a whole new layer of ickiness to things for everyone involved). Or do you think that the “fragile male ego” is just a myth, and that most guys take sexual criticism/feedback well?

    Of course not every guy experiences these pressures. And different people experience it to different degrees. But a large enough number seem to, in my experience, that I strongly suspect that this is a fairly culture-wide thing.
29. 

    Xakudo March 14, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

    Clarisse:

    The reason it made me uneasy was that I felt like it came from a very specific perspective on sexual pressures — where men are pressured to be good in bed but aren’t pressured to have sex just for the sake of accomplishment.

    Oh, no, I totally acknowledge that as an important factor. It just wasn’t the factor I was commenting on. I was specifically talking about pressures relating to being good in bed. Hence why I didn’t mention “slut shaming” in my brief list of pressures that affect women: it wasn’t topical. But of course, slut shaming and (for men) virgin shaming, and the flipped celebration of virginal women and studly men, are very important factors that play into sexual dynamics.

    My apologies for coming across as if I thought otherwise.
30. 

    Xakudo March 14, 2011 at 5:03 pm #

    Apologies for the third post in a row. I keep thinking “I have to respond to this!”

    Clarisse:

    This is a dim view of men, but it’s also historically supported, isn’t it? As little as 50 years ago, when the first studies of sexuality were coming out, it was clear that men were in fact horribly selfish lovers for the most part.

    Depends on what you mean by historically supported. There were a lot of other things going on than just a lack of pressure to be good in the sack. Consider the Freudian idea of the clitoris as being childish, for example, and that grown women should orgasm vaginally.

    From the men-pleasing-women standpoint, I would not be surprised if things would get better simply with education about the female body and with a corresponding expectation that both people are typically supposed to orgasm at some point during sex (unless they do not want to).

    (Also, helping to get rid of whatever pressures prevent women from talking about/showing what they want and what works for them sexually would go a long way. But getting rid of “fragile male ego” is a prereq for that, I assume.)

    But there is a big difference between that and telling guys that they are sexually worthless if they cannot satisfy their partner, particularly with their penis.

    It is like the difference between parents who encourage and support their kids in doing well in school and who try to instill a love of learning in their children, and parents who apply the whip and punish their kids if they do not get straight A’s. Both are “pressure” to do well in school, but… they are really not the same at all.

    I suspect that 50′s sex was more along the lines of parents who just completely ignore their kids.

    And so I think there is a cultural configuration that would encourage and support both men and women in being good lovers, but that would do it in a way that is not so problematic and damaging to everyone involved. Clearly what we have right now is not working, at least.
31. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 14, 2011 at 5:04 pm #

    @ Miguel:

    First, as to me “applying stereotypes” to the BDSM world: It’s true, I’m not active in the BDSM scene. But I was making a reasonable assumption. Because the only experience people really “know” is their own, it’s important that people be allowed to make reasonable assumptions about the experiences of others when discussing sexuality.

    But if you admit you know nothing about it, then you are in no position to decide what is or isn’t “a reasonable assumption”.

    As it happens, the piece you read has been echoed both by Maymay (a male submissive) and myself, in terms of initiation of contact and so on. But that is a different issue from what you mentioned in your earlier posts. It also does not follow that you can “assume that the social dynamics of the BDSM world often mirror the vanilla world in many important ways,” even if this particular issue happens to have some parallels In BDSM, one big reason why women attract more attention is that they are less frequently found (there’s little academic evidence on this, but studies appear to suggest a bias of 9 men for every 7 women; it becomes closer to 2:1 for male bottoms:female tops). In vanilla culture, I think globally it’s something like 52 women for every 48 men (women making up 52% of the population, IIRC). The causes of the apparently similar behaviour may be different, meaning that you cannot extrapolate from one matching data point to derive others, as you appear to have tried to do.
32. 

    Sam March 14, 2011 at 6:07 pm #

    Clarisse,

    Given we live in a culture where men are consistently pressured to have sex just to get notches on the bedpost, and where women are pressured to trade sex for love, removing pressure on men to be good in bed wouldn’t improve things for women. I’m not thrilled with sexual stereotypes and pressures in general, obviously, but I think that if one starts by trying to fight the “men should try to be good in bed” pressure, one will be missing the real roots of the problem.

    I’m not so sure if the pressure isn’t in fact making guys worse lovers than they would be if they were just relaxed about it. I’m sure you remember the part in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men where one guy explains that the guy who’s only interested in her pleasure is just as bad a lover as the guy who’s only interested in his. Besides, whether or not women will be able to orgasm is very likely related to a lot more internal factor than just than male effort or technique, without denying their importance. The problem is probably that the other experience is very hard to understand, even though some, as Coupling’s Jeff, do get to that point ;)

    “Jeff: Sex can be very stressful for men. You judge us on technique, sensitivity, stamina… We’re just happy if you’re naked… half naked… one breast.”

    as for this -

    and (b) only certain women (who are conventionally attractive) will get the kind of attention that you (and pickup artists, and tons of other frustrated guys) seem to think all women get.

    I think that’s an important aspect. I believe that conventionally non-attractive women will have a harder time. Does anyone remember that tv show Beauty And The Geek? They once put all the beauties in a fatsuit, and added some facial flaws like pimples, and then sent them out to get phone numbers (their game totally failed because it was built on being approached rather than approaching, I think only one of them actually approached and fared much better than the others). So, yeah, less attractive women are in a situation similar to guys in that they have to create attention, but contrary to women, guys are much harder judges of appearance.

    On this -

    It stated that you “doubt” it’s “possible” for men to have an experience of being sexually mentored, which isn’t true and which made assumptions not just about men and women but about BDSM (since it was written in the context of BDSM communities).

    I think it’s quite possible to get mentoring in BDSM, but, and I am saying this as someone who would have needed a lot of mentoring a while ago, I think it’s exceedingly rare to find women to mentor vanilla men. I suppose until a couple of decades ago, fathers took their sons to the brothel when they were old enough, and that was, I suppose, a socially accepted form of mentoring, but since that is no longer the case in – at least – the West, and since most guys do have their first romantic sexual experiences with girls/women who are expecting them to perform in the mainstream paradigm that expects them to lead the (at least sexual) dance, I wouldn’t think that there’s much of a chance for guys to get mentoring (from non-sex-workers).
33. 

    Miguel Bloomfontosis March 14, 2011 at 7:56 pm #

    Clarisse,
    Let me try an analogy.
    How would you react if a feminist blogger wrote the following?:
    Maybe it’s possible for a socially inexperienced young woman to have the kind of experience Miguel had, where he was able to go to a singles bar just to relax and chill out, without having to fend off unwelcome sexual advances. But I doubt it.
    Now, if I were reading that, I could take umbrage and say “that’s not a claim about stereotypes or tendencies, that’s a claim about possibilities.” And strictly speaking, that’s true. It’s certainly possible for a socially inexperienced woman to chill out in a singles bar without having to fend off unwelcome advances, so long as the other patrons have some class and basic social skills. But the GIST of the statement is that unwelcome sexual advances are an awful lot more troublesome for women, on average, than they are for men. Especially when a woman is young and lacks social experience. And if a woman is new in town, and hasn’t yet discovered which singles bars she feels comfortable in, and if she feels insecure and projects insecurity, then for all practical purposes it isn’t possible for her to go and chill out in a singles bar without having to fend off unwelcome advances. Which means that the above statement is, for the most part, true, even if, as we speak, there is a young socially inexperienced woman chilling out in a singles club somewhere, unbothered by bozos at the bar.
    Likewise, if a man is relatively shy, and has a limited social circle, then for all practical purposes he has a snowball’s chance of ever having the kind of sexual experience you describe in this post. And to insist, as you do, that I “merely say that men are in the cultural position of initiating more” is to insist that I use weak, tentative languages to describe the difficulties facing shy men. And weak, tentative language doesn’t capture the difficult realities that shy men often face within the sexual arena.
    And yes, I did explicitly say that an inexperienced woman has the benefit of sexual mentoring that the inexperienced man doesn’t have. I could have begun that sentence by saying, “It is usually, although not always, the case that…”, but when I write about sexuality it’s nice to be able to count on my readers to understand that, obviously, there are always exceptions to the rule. If you read my blog, you can see that my posts are chock-a-block full of caveats, exceptions, and clarifications. Many more caveats, exceptions, and clarifications that you’ll find in, say, Fugitivus, Shakesville, or any number of feminist blogs that I’ve noticed don’t hold themselves to nearly the same standard of linguistic exactitude to which you’re holding me. (Don’t mean to sound cranky here, but really, sometimes you just have to “make statements” and, reality being what it is, those statements are never going to be 100% true 100% of the time. I aim for 95% accuracy and call it a day.)
34. 

    Xakudo March 14, 2011 at 8:23 pm #

    Sam:

    I think it’s quite possible to get mentoring in BDSM, but, and I am saying this as someone who would have needed a lot of mentoring a while ago, I think it’s exceedingly rare to find women to mentor vanilla men.

    I believe Clarisse, with respect to vanilla culture, was not saying that men do get mentored, but rather was saying that women also do not get mentored. Which I suspect is generally true. I mean, how many guys are open with their partners about what they actually like, especially when it conflicts with certain notions of masculinity?
35. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 14, 2011 at 10:04 pm #

    …if a man is relatively shy, and has a limited social circle, then for all practical purposes he has a snowball’s chance of ever having the kind of sexual experience you describe in this post.

    You’re leaping to conclusions here about at least story #1 (“Low pressure and leather belts”). I don’t see any indication in Clarisse’s account to say what sort of social personality her partner had. He might very well have been “shy” with a “limited social circle”. Or he might not, we just don’t have the evidence to say from the anecdote as presented.

    I admit that I’m not a snowball (I’m a Snowdrop, and maybe a Snowdrop’s chance is better than a snowball’s chance?), but “a man [who] is relatively shy, and has a limited social circle” certainly applies pretty strongly to me, and yet I have had encounters that sound a lot like that. Admittedly, based on having conversed online beforehand, but it could certainly happen, even to me, without that build-up. That it hasn’t yet I put down to the fact that at the social gatherings I have attended so far, I haven’t yet met a woman whose kink clicked well with mine (where that gathering was our first point of contact). But the build-up conversation pattern has certainly matched what Clarisse described in story #1 and, had we been a better match, then actually yes, it could have happened to me. And that’s for a shy man with “a limited social circle”. Sure, it probably happens less often for me than for the extroverted, confident, well-connected guys in the room, but hey – as long as I love myself well enough to believe that it can happen (but so much that I assume it will happen) then I stand a fighting chance (much better than a snowball, unless of course it’s a snowball fight!)

    Would I have that possibility in a vanilla setting? Maybe not (if you buy into the philosophy of He’s Just Not That Into You” and similar dating manuals, then definitely not!), although I’ve been working on overcoming the shyness to the extent where it might be. So, perhaps it follows (yet again) that what might apply in vanillaland is not necessarily a reasonable assumption in BDSMville.
36. 

    Sam March 14, 2011 at 10:53 pm #

    xakudo,

    fair point.

    I mean, how many guys are open with their partners about what they actually like, especially when it conflicts with certain notions of masculinity?

    You’re right. Probably not many. So maybe this really does come down to sucking for everyone because people can’t talk about the things they need to talk about.

    But on the other hand, I’m still at a loss even with respect to ideas about how to improve the situation…? I mean, take the Conley research discussed recently, and it shows that women generally don’t seem to be too interested in separatin the emotional and the sexual sphere except for when it’s Johnny Depp or (a little) when they *are expecting* a profiscient lover. There’s not much about “He’s yum. I’ll tell him what I want,…”, don’t you think? Maybe female sexuality is too complex for that? I mean, I’m a guy and I know I would very likely among those guys who’d bail (and I tell you this as a guy who has declined offers to have sex in club bathrooms, including a threesome), so I totally get that. But it’s just not helping guys to experiment with that explicit/open/vulnerable communication, particularly in early stages of the relationship, when leading is apparently much more important than later…
37. 

    Clarisse March 14, 2011 at 11:56 pm #

    Xakudo,

    And so I think there is a cultural configuration that would encourage and support both men and women in being good lovers, but that would do it in a way that is not so problematic and damaging to everyone involved. Clearly what we have right now is not working, at least.

    On this we agree. I was just trying to make the point that as long as the “men accomplish something by having sex and should try to get it as much as possible” paradigm stands, it won’t be good to try and take down the “men are responsible for ensuring that women enjoy sex” standard, because the latter is the only thing that makes the former bearable for women. Personally, I’d love to get rid of both of them.

    Snowdrop said,

    In BDSM, one big reason why women attract more attention is that they are less frequently found (there’s little academic evidence on this, but studies appear to suggest a bias of 9 men for every 7 women; it becomes closer to 2:1 for male bottoms:female tops).

    Right. There are actually fewer women in many BDSM subcultures than men. But there are BDSM groups in which this is not the case, and there are fairly reliable strategies for creating groups that have an even gender balance. Basically, when women feel safe and like they’ll have a good time, the gender balance in BDSM subcultures evens out. When women don’t, it’s uneven. Since women already face a much higher stigma for exploring our sexuality, and since women already have to deal with a lot more anxieties and danger when we have sex with strangers, women typically need more reassurance to feel okay about participating in a lot of sex subcultures. (There’s a whole section in Jay Wiseman’s SM101 about this, as I recall — it’s basically “advice for creating a gender-balanced play party”.)

    Sam,

    I’m not so sure if the pressure isn’t in fact making guys worse lovers than they would be if they were just relaxed about it. I’m sure you remember the part in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men where one guy explains that the guy who’s only interested in her pleasure is just as bad a lover as the guy who’s only interested in his.

    This scenario happens occasionally, but I really don’t think that sexual anxiety is typically making men worse in bed. (edited to add: And personally, having had experience both with sexually anxious partners and sexually overbearing partners, I’d much rather have the former. I suppose this is just my opinion.)

    I think it’s quite possible to get mentoring in BDSM, but, and I am saying this as someone who would have needed a lot of mentoring a while ago, I think it’s exceedingly rare to find women to mentor vanilla men.

    I don’t think this is rarer than women getting mentored. Firstly, as Xakudo wrote,

    I believe Clarisse, with respect to vanilla culture, was not saying that men do get mentored, but rather was saying that women also do not get mentored. Which I suspect is generally true.

    Right, exactly.

    There’s this bizarre conviction on the part of many men, especially pickup artists and men’s rights activists, that women can just go right out and have a pleasurable sexual experience whenever we want. But we can’t — sometimes we can go out and pick up a guy in a bar, say (though even our ability to do this is exaggerated, especially for women who aren’t conventionally attractive), but the chances that a random dude in a bar is going to be able or willing to provide a good sexual experience are not incredibly high.

    A guy who goes home with a random woman risks a hell of a lot less than a woman does when she goes home with a random guy — he risks less damage to his reputation; he has a lower chance of catching an STI if they have unprotected sex; his chances of being assaulted are considerably lower, at least according to conventional wisdom (which is what shapes these decisions); he has zero chance of accidental pregnancy; and the average man will experience considerably less anxiety and damage to his self-esteem than the average woman if the sex turns out to be casual. (I’m not saying that women can’t have casual sex; what I’m saying is that most women don’t want casual sex, they want sex in a relationship, and that even women who are interested in casual sex have to do considerable emotional work to be okay with it, an experience I have written about before.) And as if that weren’t enough, it’s pretty clear that most women tend to have better sexual experiences in long-term relationships, if only because the guy tends to care more about their experience.

    I don’t understand what the hell world men live in when they think “women can get awesome sex whenever”. It demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how most women enjoy sex, and our concerns about safety/bodily integrity while seeking sex. Not that that’s surprising, I suppose.

    And within long-term relationships, women don’t typically get a lot of sexual “mentorship”. As I’ve stated before in this thread, being socialized into the passive role makes us at least as likely to be exploited or manipulated as we are to be mentored — if not more so.

    So, while it may be rare for women to sexually mentor men, it’s also rare for men to sexually mentor women. But I think experienced women mentor men more than people think — it’s just masked by the supposed roles that the participants take on. I think women who sexually mentor male partners often do it from within the so-called “passive” role — they do it stealthily, in a way. To do it bluntly would be to endanger his “fragile male ego”, as Xakudo put it.

    Note also that sexual mentoring doesn’t necessarily mean that the mentor “made the first move”. If you take my examples in the above post: I made the first move with Dude #1, and Dudes #2 and #3 both made the first move with me — yet Dude #1 acted as something of a mentor for me (even though I made the first move), and I’ve acted as something of a mentor for Dude #3 (even though he made the first move). But talking about any of these situations as “mentorship” is oversimplifying them, I think. I may have considerably more S&M experience than Dude #3, but I learn a lot from him every time we hook up.

    Finally, I’d note that the vast majority of men tend to go after women who are younger than they are. OkTrends, the data analysis blog for OkCupid, did a whole post called The Case for an Older Woman in which they deconstructed this phenomenon. If men were more willing to date women with more life experience, I bet they’d be a hell of a lot more likely to get sexual mentorship (which, again, I think is an oversimplified concept anyway, but still).
38. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 12:50 am #

    Miguel,

    Co-sign what Snowdrop has been saying about your assumptions about the BDSM subculture. You are, still, insisting that you get to make assumptions about how our subculture works based on mainstream sexual stereotypes despite the fact that you know that this subculture specifically exists in part because mainstream sexual stereotypes don’t work for its members. You also seem to be assuming that when the BDSM subculture has things in common with mainstream sexuality, those things happen for the same reasons, which isn’t necessarily true. In your original comment you made claims about things that domme women do based on your experience with mainstream women, despite the fact that domme women take on a specifically and consciously different role from the mainstream “passive” standard. And on and on and on.

    I’d also add that the BDSM subculture specifically tends to be both gender non-conformist, and highly geeky and full of awkward people. No, really, it is. So shy, non-conformist dudes with limited social circles often do better in the BDSM subculture than they do in the mainstream. This may be part of why Snowdrop, who admits that he’s a shy and non-conformist dude with a limited social circle and who is also into BDSM, is calling you out on so much of your stuff.

    Bottom line, please just stop making assertions about how things work in BDSM when you admit that you have no experience with it. If you want to learn more about BDSM communities, there’s a new book by Staci Newmahr that’s basically an ethnography of one northeastern American community. It sounds like it’ll bust some of your stereotypes.

    All that having been said: Yes, as I said above, there do tend to be fewer women than men in BDSM subcultures. Yes, new women often get swarmed at events (if they are conventionally attractive), and new men often get ignored (unless they are very charming). These facts don’t support any of the assumptions that were in your original comment — especially not the ones that express mainstream sexist stereotypes, like the stuff I spent the entire above comment (#37) deconstructing.

    Likewise, if a man is relatively shy, and has a limited social circle, then for all practical purposes he has a snowball’s chance of ever having the kind of sexual experience you describe in this post.

    If this had been all you’d said in your original comment, I probably would have just agreed with you (assuming the man in question is a mainstream guy) — perhaps while adding the note that a woman who is relatively physically unattractive, has a limited social circle, and exists in the mainstream also has a snowball’s chance of ever having the kind of sexual experience I describe in this post. But most people in the mainstream aren’t having these kinds of sexual experiences. Part of the reason I wrote this post is because I know these experiences aren’t incredibly common in the mainstream. That’s the point. This is one of the major reasons I blog about BDSM — because I think some of its ideas and lessons can be useful to the mainstream.

    But the thing is, that isn’t all you said in your original comment. You made assumptions about BDSM. You made assertions about how women get “the benefit of sexual mentoring”. Etc.
39. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 1:15 am #

    @scootah — I understand in a kink context, especially for someone who’s looking for D/s submissive headspace with a sadistic partner – not wanting to give instructions/teach/mentor someone who they want to be dominant too them. Or even just not feeling able to. I certainly have friends who wouldn’t be able to teach someone to top them. Those friends struggle to safeword appropriately when they’re in play headspace, it just wouldn’t work for them to be the experienced guide. And off hand, most of the people in that category are female.

    I’ve been thinking about this since you posted it.

    Safewording is hard. It took me a long time to get good at safewording when I needed to. I think safewording is a skill that we don’t take seriously enough as a skill, in the BDSM community. I wish there were more community emphasis on giving people tips on how to know their limits, how to think about their limits, how to use safewords, etc. Tricky.

    I certainly feel happier with partners who seem able to tell when I’m getting into safeword territory before I safeword. This isn’t because I think my other partners are less likely to stop when I safeword, but it goes back to having that nice instinctive communication that can’t be taken for granted but can be loved when it’s present.

    I also don’t think it’s possible to have a satisfying dynamic with everyone you meet, not even if you’re pretty good at communication. I could have conversations with a potential partner for days, and in the end we might still not work as a couple. And related to this, I wouldn’t want to mentor a guy as a dominant for me, if I didn’t already have a pretty good connection with him.

    (edited to remove some assertions I made about safewording that I’m not sure I actually believe)
40. 

    Sam March 15, 2011 at 1:32 am #

    Clarisse,

    we’ve been talking for so long now, and you still occasionally manage to confuse me about what you’re trying to say…

    I don’t understand what the hell world men live in when they think “women can get awesome sex whenever”. It demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how most women enjoy sex, and our concerns about safety/bodily integrity while seeking sex. Not that that’s surprising, I suppose.

    I’m not sure why you’re being snarky in the reply to me since I’ve never suggested that women can get awesome sex whenever, and just above explained that I think there are women who have a tough time on the market. But as I think we discussed before in one of the manliness threads – one of my favorite bar questions is “what’s worse: bad sex or no sex”. I don’t have to tell you what answer was more prevalent about men and what answer was more prevalent among women. I doubt you’ll disagree that women would have a much easier time if they were looking what guys tend to be looking for. And it’s just very very difficult to imagine that someone who has all the tools to get what you want to badly, is really not interested in what you desire so badly…

    Yesterday you said I have a point about how the explicit ability to separate the sexual from the emotional layer is helping explicit communication that would improve sexual communication and say that that’s not what (most) women want (and with good reason).

    I’m not saying that women can’t have casual sex; what I’m saying is that most women don’t want casual sex, they want sex in a relationship, and that even women who are interested in casual sex have to do considerable emotional work to be okay with it, an experience I have written about before

    Which sort of makes me wonder what your actual position is in this respect. Do you believe that it is possible to disentangle the layers and improve communication, or do you believe that the female sexuality cannot (usually) satisfactorily happen outside of a close(r) emotional bond – which would basically explain why we’re looking at the trade we’re looking at and why it will not go away if, in that respect, women require emotional attachment as well as sexual skill, and men just require, well, as Jeff from Coupling said, probably slightly simplifying, a women they’re physically attracted to.

    I don’t really see how, if that’s the case, male touch could possibly ever be as relatively “valuable” as female touch outside of an emotional bond that creates an emotional duopoly creating mutually equal scarcity by making both partner singularly special to the other.

    For what it’s worth, I believe that women and men are more pleasure-compatible than you occasionally seem to suggest. If I didn’t, if I didn’t believe in the actual importance of the communication aspect you highlighted in the OP but which you don’t seem to believe is able to bridge the apparently inherent differnences in female and male desire, then it may really be more useful to retreat to our respective team’s corner and develop more effective tactics for the battle of the sexes.

    It’s just that after all we’ve talked about, I don’t really think that you really believe that, which is why your last reply confused me.

    Note also that sexual mentoring doesn’t necessarily mean that the mentor “made the first move”.

    I didn’t assume that. I don’t think it’s a requirement, but a mentoring relationship clearly has a mentor, and a mentee. Even if the latter is being mentored in a dominant mating script (eg mainstream male) by a culturally sbumissive (eg mainstream female) partner, the assumed culturally submissive partner is, being the mentor, teaching the assumed culturally dominant partner. Being the mentor is certainly dominant on a meta level, and it requires, as all teaching does, patience and willingness to put up with deficiencies.

    As for older women, I think a lot of young men would like a Mrs Robinson to mentor them, it’s just that the paths of young men and Mrs Robinsons rarely cross in non-fiction. I doubt they would necessarily like to be these womens boyfriends, but I am quite confident they would certainly be interested in some sort of affair, precisely in order to be mentored.

    Of course, if/since most women are looking for what you describe, that’s not exactly conducive to relationships of female mentors/and male mentees, even though “cougars” seem to have become some sort of cultural artefact in the last couple of years.

    As for this -

    And personally, having had experience both with sexually anxious partners and sexually overbearing partners, I’d much rather have the latter. I suppose this is just my opinion

    It’s probably not just your opinion – I’d say that it’s a variable that likely helps explain bad sexual communication… I mean, if even you, a sexpert, who is explaining the importance of honest sexual communication to other people, are admitting to be more likely to opt for bragging (“best d*ck in town”) rather than modesty “teach me how to please you”, then honest communication including sexual vulnerabilities seems like a losing proposition all around, which, in turn, explains why guy’s don’t do it, and why women aren’t expecting it, and why it’s not really in the script?

    I mean, seriously, if *you* prefer guys who brag about their studliness even though you know all you know, even you’re aware of all we talked about, then I’m starting to think maybe I should just exaggerate more instead of trying to figure out more seductive/effective ways to be honest…
41. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 1:37 am #

    ack. I’ll respond to your longer comment in a second, but firstly, I want to note that I’m very tired, and I’m trying to make extremely complicated arguments, and when I wrote this:

    And personally, having had experience both with sexually anxious partners and sexually overbearing partners, I’d much rather have the latter

    I actually meant to say the FORMER, not the LATTER. The original sentence has been edited to reflect this.
42. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 1:51 am #

    Sam,

    Most of my snark is really aimed at Miguel (and all the whiny guys who are always telling me how easy women have it — especially pickup artists — god, I am seriously so sick of the average PUA self-aggrandizement and self-justification). Much of my response to you was relevant to what I wanted to say to him. He may not deserve it (I’m not sure), but you deserve it much less, so I’m sorry it came across as being aimed at you. I think Miguel is making a lot of ridiculous assumptions about sexual mentoring, etc. — but I didn’t read you as making those assumptions.

    Which sort of makes me wonder what your actual position is in this respect. Do you believe that it is possible to disentangle the layers and improve communication, or do you believe that the female sexuality cannot (usually) satisfactorily happen outside of a close(r) emotional bond

    I do believe that. I think I just need to get better at differentiating when I’m trying to describe “mainstream assumed reality”, and when I’m trying to describe “actual reality”.

    I think women generally require more emotional comfort to have satisfactory sex than men do, but I’m not actually sure about whether that’s biological or cultural. That having been said, some more reading I’ve been doing about trans people and testosterone is making me think that biological factors are significant. That doesn’t mean men and women aren’t pleasure-compatible, though, as you say. It just means that certain factors should be kept in mind by both parties.
43. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 1:55 am #

    Also —

    As for older women, I think a lot of young men would like a Mrs Robinson to mentor them, it’s just that the paths of young men and Mrs Robinsons rarely cross in non-fiction. I doubt they would necessarily like to be these womens boyfriends, but I am quite confident they would certainly be interested in some sort of affair, precisely in order to be mentored.

    In the OkCupid post I linked above, the writer started with this:

    “Women older than me keep messaging me. Sorry, but that is not going to happen.” — recent feedback from a male user

    The above comment is typical.
44. 

    Xakudo March 15, 2011 at 2:12 am #

    On this we agree. I was just trying to make the point that as long as the “men accomplish something by having sex and should try to get it as much as possible” paradigm stands, it won’t be good to try and take down the “men are responsible for ensuring that women enjoy sex” standard, because the latter is the only thing that makes the former bearable for women.

    I suspect we are talking about different subsets of men. I agree that there are subsets of men for whom this behavior would get worse (if that is possible… based on your grim depictions?) if we removed the shaming dynamic. But, honestly, I am disinclined to care much about those men given that there is another subset that is suffering, and their partners with them.

    I mean, which problematic cultural pressures and shaming of women should we keep in place because they could do some damage to men unless we deal with other issues first?

    And again, I am not talking about replacing, “you are sexually worthless if you cannot satisfy your partner” with “completely ignoring your partners needs is totally fine”. I am not talking about creating a void. I am talking about replacing it with a supportive, encouraging message that helps people realize that pleasing your partner is hell of fun, and is part of a healthy, balanced sexual diet, so to speak. I am talking (to bring back the metaphor) about replacing the flagellating straight-A parents with supportive, encouraging parents.

    The only reason I can think of to keep the flagellating parents in place is if we somehow view the kids as deserving punishment. (…?)

    But lastly, I of course agree that the “sex as accomplishment” and the strongly related “women’s touch is desirable/men’s touch is toxic” etc. are things that are important to tackle as well. And I agree that they do play a role in these dynamics too, to greater or lesser degrees depending on the person.

    How about we just tackle both at once?
45. 

    Xakudo March 15, 2011 at 3:09 am #

    Clarisse:

    In the OkCupid post I linked above, the writer started with this:

    “Women older than me keep messaging me. Sorry, but that is not going to happen.” — recent feedback from a male user

    The above comment is typical.

    Indeed. That was quite an interesting post.

    I do suspect that there is a substantial effect similar to this going on:
    http://undelicatemusings.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/the-fat-girl-and-womens-attractiveness/

    In any case, my limited experience dating older women suggests that it is a very positive experience indeed, for a variety of reasons. And I am intentionally not being shy about mentioning that to people that I converse with. ;-)
46. 

    Clarisse March 15, 2011 at 3:30 am #

    Hey Xakudo,

    How about we just tackle both at once?

    well, I thought that was what I was saying ….

    In any case, my limited experience dating older women suggests that it is a very positive experience indeed, for a variety of reasons.

    Would you say you got sexual mentorship?
47. 

    Tomek Kulesza March 15, 2011 at 11:17 am #

    (on a second though, it seems that both Xakudo and Sam responsese saying a lot of this too. Oh well, then thats mostly my +1, then. Also, excuse my mangling of english language. )

    “The reason it made me uneasy was that I felt like it came from a very specific perspective on sexual pressures — where men are pressured to be good in bed but aren’t pressured to have sex just for the sake of accomplishment. And I think the second pressure is at least a big a deal as the first for a huge proportion of men, although apparently not for Xakudo.”

    Actually, i think it’s much bigger deal. That’s how i read Xakudo comment, coincidentally, and as such i was surprised by your anger. But rereading it, it seems that i was reading what wasn’t there. Probably because i have it thought out quite thoroughly and it’s obvious to me that stereotypical men\s worth is like 50% about getting as many sexual encounters with acceptably attractive women as possible.

    (performing well is part of it, even though not major. Or, more importantly, the “performing well” is not really about pleasure of a partner, but about skill, so it’s men-centered. And very generalized (so it doesn’t recognize difference in women preferences. As i said, it’s centered on a man). Which isn’t really healthy attitude, so to say.

    I disagee that the entitlement has anything to do with the “skill” question, much more about the expectation for men to be active, and similar for women to be passive, if anything. (ie: i have to spend huge amount of time how to score, i mean, my manliness and worth depends on it! And women, well, too bad for them, and after all, they want this, right? That’s what i heard, anyway?) Yuck.

    I’m not sure if the physical appearance (thinnes or whatever) is good comparison, but it seems so?

    I also didn’t think that this pressure has anything to do with women pleasure. As i said, it’s not centered on actual women, but on men, women are simply subjects of it. Not to mention that half of it was actually about getting erection, and not being impotent (scary!). Oh, there is some about a(ll) woman orgasming over and over again and how’s the man doing that really superb (yeah, like it’s all his doing), but that’s still very objectifying, unflexible and not about actual needs of any person (both partners, actually).

    But there is last point about it. It’s not about real men either. As Clarisse said, “Given we live in a culture where men are consistently pressured to have sex just to get notches on the bedpost”, it’s not the actual pleasure, satisfaction that’s important, it’s more complicated:

    It’s “scoring”>good achievement (manliness!)>the good feeling of feeling worthy.

    Sick as hell, but in the process the actual wants of men aren’t really important. Funny, i just heard last week from my (very feminist) female friend that she keeps meeting guys that, after drinking a bit, complain about having to have sex and how they had to detach emotions from sex to met the expectations of being sexually very active (internalized by that time i guess. anyway, that has about nothing to do with their actual wants). And it’s my experience too, and what i see around – even though i basically live in progressive bubble. It’s very deep phenomen.

    That’s why one of Clarisse sentences in that comment:

    “the most productive way to make men more respectful of women might be to link their sense of accomplishment to having sex that’s good for women.”

    haunts me a bit. I see it as a no change at all. And since the sence of accomplishment translates into sense of worthiness, self-confidence and such stuff, i would say that basing it on such thing as fulfilling desires of group of people is exactly something feminism tried and tries to get rid of (in case of women).

    (also, i think it’s very prevalent, and it would require active countermeasures – not reproducing it won’t do since it’s prevasive in the media – during childhood by caretakers/peers not to get this idea. Good chance with the huge communication about sex skills parents and people in general have, yeah)

    and few more random things:

    Clarisse: “But we can’t — sometimes we can go out and pick up a guy in a bar, say (though even our ability to do this is exaggerated, especially for women who aren’t conventionally attractive), but the chances that a random dude in a bar is going to be able or willing to provide a good sexual experience are not incredibly high.”

    Anecdotal, but i recently heard about exactly the scenario. The guy freaked out (and got subsequently bashed by his male friends). So typical. And no, he wasn’t the things they called him (you can imagine). It seems that one of the conclusion about Conley (sp?) research recently analyzed on yesmeansyes was right, that the straight men are outlier and it’s fantasy situation for them.

    Clarisse: “I don’t understand what the hell world men live in when they think “women can get awesome sex whenever”. It demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how most women enjoy sex, and our concerns about safety/bodily integrity while seeking sex. Not that that’s surprising, I suppose.”
    Well, it’s quite easy. I mean, imagine that you live in a world where you should have as much sex as possible with as many partners as possible, and it since you don’t get swamped by offers, it requires you to initiate contacts for that, or cope with it somehow. Of course, you get the impression that the objects (ie: females) have totally different situation, ie: they get swamped by the offers. That would be a paradise! (for you, the male. Also, it wouldn’t because reality isn’t fantasy. But on first thought and without any understanding of other gender situation it’s easy mistake, imo)

    Clarisse: “And as if that weren’t enough, it’s pretty clear that most women tend to have better sexual experiences in long-term relationships, if only because the guy tends to care more about their experience.”
    Afaik, men too. It’s not really surprising, btw, i mean, it takes time to know each other.

    Clarisse: “Finally, I’d note that the vast majority of men tend to go after women who are younger than they are. OkTrends, the data analysis blog for OkCupid, did a whole post called The Case for an Older Woman in which they deconstructed this phenomenon. If men were more willing to date women with more life experience, I bet they’d be a hell of a lot more likely to get sexual mentorship (which, again, I think is an oversimplified concept anyway, but still).”

    Ha, OkCupid statistics are pure fun :) But, iirc, the interesting thing there was that both sexes lie about their preferences, ie: they are much more likely to message younger people that they say they are (and a bit more likely to message older people than they say they are), and the gender difference isn’t that big. I guess the Donald Trump case in Conley’s research finds a bit of support here.
48. 

    Sam March 15, 2011 at 12:11 pm #

    Clarisse,

    “I actually meant to say the FORMER, not the LATTER. The original sentence has been edited to reflect this.”

    ok, fair enough.

    I think women generally require more emotional comfort to have satisfactory sex than men do, but I’m not actually sure about whether that’s biological or cultural. That having been said, some more reading I’ve been doing about trans people and testosterone is making me think that biological factors are significant. That doesn’t mean men and women aren’t pleasure-compatible, though, as you say. It just means that certain factors should be kept in mind by both parties.

    OK. I suppose it just depends on what we define as “pleasure compatible”/”pleasure incompatible”. I would define situations as pleasure “incompatible” in which one pleasure aspect is trades for another (eg. physical for emotional intimacy). And in that respect you seem to suggest incompatibility pretty much along the way suggested by Foster-Wallace (“the passion created by the encounter must be, as he says, “overwhelming”). But that creates the sequencing problem, because inititation is usually a consequence of predominantly physical attraction. How to have truly honest communication (“you really turn me on”) when she wants to hear (“I totally like you”)?

    Again, I don’t think it’s that bad. Women (though not all women) do have casual sex and men (though not all men) do require considerable emotional intimacy before taking their pants off. But, I think that is a very real problem for a lot of the issues we’re looking at. I mean, take the classic feminist description of the nice guy thing: It really seems like a rational reaction to believing that wemen require emotional attachment first – so they try to create that. And they’re seen as epitomozing dishonest communication.

    So, in this situation, there’s the one extreme of the “direct approach for casual sex” which is, remembering the discussion on feministe last week indicative of “creepy” or worse, and there’s the extreme of the nice guy, who’s apparently complying completely with the assumed preferred female escalation structure. But neither does seem to be particularly effective at creating sexual attraction (and I think that’s because there’s a feedback slope between physical arousal and emotional attachment, and vice versa).

    so, again, I’d say that the more emotional involvement required for sexuality, the harder it will be hard to get honest communication up-front (or even later, when people don’t want to hurt each other – remember the post before this one).

    So I’m really wondering about the “certain factors” you seem to think that you seem to think can make it work?

    “Women older than me keep messaging me. Sorry, but that is not going to happen.” — recent feedback from a male user

    The above comment is typical.

    Yeah, but that’s a dating site for long-term relationships, right? I would imagine that guys interested in a mentoring relationship with an older woman wouldn’t want to advertise that given current social expectations and pressures (and female preferences for older men).

    I would also like to mention that I had a very pleasant flirting conversation with an older woman last year. It’s hard to say to which extent that easy of communication was a consequence of her age, or her personality, though. Still, I suppose it is true that age patterns are a part of why men will get less mentoring… I certainly often feel that there is an expectation to be “in control” of things that may be related to an even “marginal” age disparity (most girls I meet are about your age, and I am, as you know, a little older).
49. 

    AB March 15, 2011 at 5:46 pm #

    Hello again, I decided to take a look, and it seems like things have calmed down since I left, and seeing how Clarisse appears to be the only woman currently involved in this discussion, I think I might be able to give some perspective too.

    Sam:

    one of my favorite bar questions is “what’s worse: bad sex or no sex”. I don’t have to tell you what answer was more prevalent about men and what answer was more prevalent among women. I doubt you’ll disagree that women would have a much easier time if they were looking what guys tend to be looking for. And it’s just very very difficult to imagine that someone who has all the tools to get what you want to badly, is really not interested in what you desire so badly…

    I think plenty of women are looking for what you’re looking for (and not finding it), it’s just that you assume that bad sex for an average woman = bad sex for an average man. Think back to the study about why women (and gays) weren’t as willing to have sex with a stranger. Both sexes (and people of all sexual orientations) seemed to be at least somewhat willing to have sex with a person they found both attractive and safe, the straight men were just much more likely to assume that would be the case with an unknown imaginary woman.

    Personally, I would have answered that bad is better than none if we’d talked about masturbation. Sometimes, it’s an extremely pleasurable experience for me that leaves me trembling and joyful afterwards, other times, it’s just me touching myself while watching TV because it’s kind of nice, but without getting any real sense of fulfilment from it. It’s still better than nothing even though it’s ‘bad’, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

    But bad sex for me is awful. If I’m not sexually aroused or attracted to the guy I’m with, any kind of penetration will physically hurt, and even when I’m just using my hands and tongue, it’s about as stimulating as rubbing a milk carton. The only thing which is almost guaranteed to be pleasurable in some way is getting oral sex, and that’s not the first thing that springs to mind when I think ‘sex’, and certainly not the thing I’d expect to be first on the mind of someone asking me a question like that.

    Just as the answers in the survey about sex with strangers changed when the stranger was specified, specifying the experience will change how appealing people will find bad sex. If you changed your question to “what’s worse: no sex, or having sex consist of someone repeatedly jamming an over-sized dildo into your butthole without any sort of lubrication” you might get different answers. And that’s basically what several women find ‘bad sex’ to be like.

    As for older women, I think a lot of young men would like a Mrs Robinson to mentor them, it’s just that the paths of young men and Mrs Robinsons rarely cross in non-fiction. I doubt they would necessarily like to be these womens boyfriends, but I am quite confident they would certainly be interested in some sort of affair, precisely in order to be mentored.

    So what you’re saying is that it would be a lot easier for men to get what they want (sexual mentoring) if certain women would just give it to them without getting what they want (a relationship) in return? I think that one is pretty obvious, but there isn’t really any solution to it, and when “you’re good enough for a quick lay but I’d never date you” is one of the worst insults a man can give to a woman, women don’t exactly have a strong motivation to become the mentors of younger men just because.

    (Trigger warning for this passage) Incidentally, your comment made me think of an article I read once about a woman who, due to extensive sexual abuse as a child, had trouble setting boundaries, causing her to be repeatedly raped and sexually molested. One of her first experiences was the older boys at her school taking her down to the school’s bicycle storage room to make out with her as practice to when they were with other girls. It seemed to have affected her strongly, and considering everything else she’d been through, that’s saying something.

    Not to compare, but the idea that some women are OK to practice on, but not OK to date, is potentially very offensive. It’s one thing to go out and learn about yourself and your sexuality by being with lots of people and making mistakes, or to deliberately date/have sex with someone you don’t count on being with forever, because it’s what you feel like doing right now. Its another thing entirely to think “if I’m with this person now, I might get some experience that would be useful when I’m with the people that really matter”.

    Still, I suppose it is true that age patterns are a part of why men will get less mentoring…

    As a woman, I would like to know more about why men think we get all this sexual mentoring, and especially what makes them so sure of it that they not only feel entitled to casually sling it around like it was a proven fact, but also for even progressive men (like you) to continue doing so after repeatedly being told by an actual woman that this is not her impression.
50. 

    Sam March 15, 2011 at 6:34 pm #

    AB,

    it’s just that you assume that bad sex for an average woman = bad sex for an average man.

    not really, there’s no definition of good and bad, people use their own frame of reference. So, well, sure, if more men perceived sex along the way you suggest fewer may think bad sex is better than no sex. But that’s essentially a statement about the difference of male and female sexual experience that is exposed by the initial question: Women and men have different experiences during sex hence they have different reactions to imagining bad sex or absence of sex. Maybe your reformulation is going to help men understand the/one/your female experience better. I’m not sure how to describe bad male sex to you, though, maybe others can help out.

    and when “you’re good enough for a quick lay but I’d never date you” is one of the worst insults a man can give to a woman, women don’t exactly have a strong motivation to become the mentors of younger men just because.

    Well, I don’t think mentoring in the sense of what I consider mentoring is about “a quick lay”, but I’d maintain that the kind of relationship would be different from the relationship dynamic and structure most people seem to be looking for. I’m not saying people cannot really fall in love/date if men are in a relationship with female mentor, but that I believe current preference structures on both ends will make that rare.

    It would not be “just because”, btw, they’d get the pleasure that comes with being in that mentoring relationship and having sex in it.

    Its another thing entirely to think “if I’m with this person now, I might get some experience that would be useful when I’m with the people that really matter”.

    Is that really so different from “I like this now but not for long?” I don’t think so.

    As a woman, I would like to know more about why men think we get all this sexual mentoring

    Because I feel like it’s demanded of me. And even where I cannot provide it, I’m sure other men will be happy to (or at least pretend to). I think a male mentor fits neatly into the common paradigm, which is not the case the other way around.
51. 

    Xakudo March 15, 2011 at 8:39 pm #

    Clarisse:

    well, I thought that was what I was saying ….

    Sure. But you were saying it from a “we will harm women if we do not do it this way” standpoint, and I was saying it from a, “well, we might as well, because both of them are harmful” standpoint. I still disagree with the relevance (though not entirely the validity) of your fears.

    Would you say you got sexual mentorship?

    Nope. If anything I mentored her. But I would not really put it that way.

    But there is a more balanced sense of sexual desire. Less of a sense that she is “giving” me something, and more of a sense that we are sharing something, that we are giving each other something. I feel much more sexually valuable simply for being, simply for having a young(ish) male body, which is something I never experienced before. And it is a wonderful experience.
52. 

    AB March 15, 2011 at 8:40 pm #

    not really, there’s no definition of good and bad, people use their own frame of reference. So, well, sure, if more men perceived sex along the way you suggest fewer may think bad sex is better than no sex. But that’s essentially a statement about the difference of male and female sexual experience that is exposed by the initial question: Women and men have different experiences during sex hence they have different reactions to imagining bad sex or absence of sex.

    However, you make it sound like women are after something more/better, instead of men generally having much, much better sex than women. Or at least are more likely to have pleasurable sexual experiences.

    I’m not saying people cannot really fall in love/date if men are in a relationship with female mentor, but that I believe current preference structures on both ends will make that rare.

    On both ends? If women don’t mind dating people who are likely to be able to mentor them (older men), and men show little interest in dating the people who are most likely to be able to mentor them (older women), I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that men can’t get sexual mentoring because of the evils of society.

    We don’t say that being male is a breeze when it comes to getting dates and one-night stands, whereas such things are impossible to women, merely because women appear to be less likely to be able to find dates and one-night stands which would be safe and provide satisfaction for them. If you want to change definitions to rely on preferences only, then it should be fair game to say that men can have their pick of partners compared to women.

    Is that really so different from “I like this now but not for long?” I don’t think so.

    Because at least you’re with that partner for their own sake, and the relationship (or sexual encounter) itself is a goal. Just because it’s not likely to last doesn’t mean it can’t be something for it’s own sake while it’s there. Entering a sexual relationship with someone because you already know what you really want, and plan to use the relationship with them to achieve it, is a different category altogether.

    Not to mention that you could end up making her feel cheated, if she spends time mentoring you and don’t get to enjoy the fruits of her labour (while mentoring can be pleasurable in itself, it is also often done in order to eventually get a better sex life), and with age-discrimination tending to hit women harder (I believe I read somewhere it was more common than race-discrimination), sending the signal “because of your age, you’re only good for helping me get better with the women who matter” can be really unfortunate, even if older women tend to have better confidence than younger ones.

    Because I feel like it’s demanded of me. And even where I cannot provide it, I’m sure other men will be happy to (or at least pretend to). I think a male mentor fits neatly into the common paradigm, which is not the case the other way around.

    Perhaps it would be easier if you, Miguel, and any other guy who feel like women are getting this awesome mentoring would bother specifying what exactly you meant by it.
53. 

    Sam March 15, 2011 at 9:07 pm #

    AB,

    “However, you make it sound like women are after something more/better, instead of men generally having much, much better sex than women. Or at least are more likely to have pleasurable sexual experiences.”

    I think for a number of reasons, including some you mention, men generally seem to require less to characterize sex as good (as I tried to suggest with the quote from the tv series Coupling) –

    “Jeff: Sex can be very stressful for men. You judge us on technique, sensitivity, stamina… We’re just happy if you’re naked… half naked… one breast.”

    That implies that – on average – women are less likely to have a pleasurable sexual experience, which, in turn, is totally in line with the fact that female sexuality is much scarcer (in addtion to the addded social aspects increasing that relative scarcity).

    We will never be able to compare pleasure levels ordinally or even cardinally, so all we are left with is intuition and empathy to gain a marginally better understanding of what the other person is experiencing.

    If you want to change definitions to rely on preferences only, then it should be fair game to say that men can have their pick of partners compared to women.

    I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

    Because at least you’re with that partner for their own sake, and the relationship (or sexual encounter) itself is a goal.

    There are about 237 (if I remember correctly, and someone counted them all) reasons to have sex, some more strategic than others. I think it’s certainly not an ideal relationship, but I think judging the morality cannot be done in the abstract (that is without being aware of the other person’s reasons, strategic or not). It’s easy to construct theoretical cases in which one party looks awful and exploitative and the other party honest and exploited. I’m sure such cases exist one way or the other, but they’re not that common.

    Perhaps it would be easier if you, Miguel, and any other guy who feel like women are getting this awesome mentoring would bother specifying what exactly you meant by it.

    I’ve never said that woen are getting “this awesome mentoring”, but that I feel that women do require me to be in control of the escalation, demonstrating “how it’s done”. As I said, that may be a consequence of age patterns – most women I meet are 5-8 years younger than I am (30+), and they – occasionally explicitly – are explaining how they would never want a boy but are looking for a “man”, likely assuming maturity and experience, also sexually.
54. 

    AB March 15, 2011 at 11:16 pm #

    Sam,

    I think for a number of reasons, including some you mention, men generally seem to require less to characterize sex as good (as I tried to suggest with the quote from the tv series Coupling) –

    I know, you’ve already said that. But I don’t know if you actually require less. You have about a thousand years of history (if not more) of male sexuality, we have the same amount of history being your masturbatory devices, and it still shows today. It’s not terribly surprising if we generally suck at enjoying ourselves sexually, we have no tradition for it.

    I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

    1:
    Woman: “I’m so jealous of you men sometimes, you seem to almost be able to just snap your fingers and get sex whenever you want.”

    Onlooker: “But more men are hitting on you than vice versa, men often have to ask dozens of women, some of them without ever succeeding, but you could get sex with half the men in this room if you wanted.”

    Woman: “Yes, but I don’t want to have sex with any of those, I feel unsafe and uncomfortable with them, so in reality, I’m barred from having a lot of sex that most men aren’t.”

    2:
    Man: “I’m so jealous of you women sometimes, you’re not expected to be experienced and mentor your partner like we men are, you get the advantage of being mentored instead”

    Onlooker: “But those women mostly get mentored by older men, and since older women tend to have a stronger sex-drive and less sexual-hangups, it wouldn’t be impossible for you to be the inexperienced one getting mentored by someone else if you wanted to.”

    Man: “Yes, but I don’t want to date older women. I want to date women who’re younger than me, and have them be more confident and experienced than me so that they can mentor me.”

    If you can see the disconnect in the turn of phrasing in the first example (even though the woman’s concern is a legitimate one), you should also be able to see the disconnect in the second. Just because you don’t enjoy something doesn’t mean you don’t have the opportunity to engage in it. Just because women might not enjoy most sex as much, it doesn’t mean many of them couldn’t have intercourse if they wanted to. And just because men don’t want to date older women, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t have more experienced mentors if they sought them out.

    If you believe it’s fair to say that men have a harder time getting mentoring than women, because they’re not interested in dating the most obvious people to provide it, then it stands to reason that it would be fair to say that women have a harder time getting casual sex than men, because they’re not interested in most of the people offering it or the situations in which it is offered.

    There are about 237 (if I remember correctly, and someone counted them all) reasons to have sex, some more strategic than others. I think it’s certainly not an ideal relationship, but I think judging the morality cannot be done in the abstract (that is without being aware of the other person’s reasons, strategic or not).

    I’m not talking about morality, I’m simply stating that there is a difference. If older women see young men as something to be enjoyed, or as people to have relationships with, and young men see older women mainly as something to go through because it will make their sex-lives better with the people they’re interested in having sex and relationships with, there’s a disconnect.

    I feel that women do require me to be in control of the escalation, demonstrating “how it’s done”. As I said, that may be a consequence of age patterns – most women I meet are 5-8 years younger than I am (30+), and they – occasionally explicitly – are explaining how they would never want a boy but are looking for a “man”, likely assuming maturity and experience, also sexually.

    You’re still not being very concrete, so I’ll try to be it for you. If you’re talking about having someone help you figure out what’s enjoyable to you and tell you that you’re not doing anything embarrassing (and that’s honestly what most of us need), then you’re out of luck if you think being female will achieve that .

    And if you’re talking about someone telling/showing you what’s good for them, then it’s not really everything it’s made out to be. I had a guy just pushed my head down between his legs, causing me to reflectively open my mouth and suck, because anything else would have caused his dick to smash awkwardly into my face. Somehow, I didn’t feel the enormous relief over not being expected to be in control of the situation, but I might just have lacked empathy for the plight of the guy.

    There are plenty of guys who just do what they want, and leave you to follow. I learned to kiss that way. Or rather, I didn’t learn anything. One guy seemed to have confused my tongue with my nipple, and sucked on it so hard it felt like he was trying to rip it out. Another had confused his tongue with his dick, and tried to get it as far down my throat as possible. One guy licked my ear on the inside, but I didn’t really find out that earwax didn’t taste all that good until I did the same. And I was always too embarrassed to say anything. As most other people, I learned by doing, but I learnt far more from girls than I ever did from boys.

    And guys who want to try stuff they’ve seen in porn are becoming their own stereotype. I haven’t experienced much of it myself, but sexual therapists here report that they get contacted by more and more insecure young girls who feel pressured into doing things like anal, often by guys who got their ideas from porn (no lubrication, no preparation), and think there’s something wrong with them if they don’t like it. In fact, guys with lots of ideas about what they want are frequent, guys who’re actually able to teach girls something are not.

    Just about the only guy I was with before I became even somewhat experienced, who gave me some time to figure stuff out about myself, also constantly refused to explain to me what he liked, always saying something along the lines of “just play”, as if that would make it all wonderful and creative and unexpected for him, when in truth, I just felt awkward and inadequate. It wasn’t until I overcame my awkwardness myself that I was able to learn anything from him.

    I don’t know what I learned from these guys because they specifically mentored me. My guess is nothing. A lot of ‘mentoring’ by guys seemed to be just them doing something which is apparently good for them, and expecting you to stop them if it isn’t comfortable for you. I actually liked the guy who just lay there and let me figure out how to give him a blowjob better, even though I would have much preferred it if he’d have given me a couple of pointers first.

    Zero mentoring for me beats the average mentoring from young guys by miles. I’m actually kind of jealous that you didn’t have to put up with it.
55. 

    Sam March 16, 2011 at 1:43 am #

    AB,

    If you believe it’s fair to say that men have a harder time getting mentoring than women, because they’re not interested in dating the most obvious people to provide it, then it stands to reason that it would be fair to say that women have a harder time getting casual sex than men, because they’re not interested in most of the people offering it or the situations in which it is offered.

    fair point.

    … there’s a disconnect.

    Yeah, but as we’ve seen unless everyone really wants the same, some sort of disconnct seems to be the default position – seems, even with respect to sex and emotionality we live in the corners of our own little edgeworth box and are trading something the other person wants for something we want – and it’s apparently not usually the same currency.

    You’re still not being very concrete, so I’ll try to be it for you. If you’re talking about having someone help you figure out what’s enjoyable to you and tell you that you’re not doing anything embarrassing (and that’s honestly what most of us need), then you’re out of luck if you think being female will achieve that .

    Yeah, maybe “mentoring” isn’t an ideal word for what this is about, after all. See, I am mentoring my friends and that includes a number of female friends, also sexually – we talk about things -, but usually only in the abstract. And they mentor me, quite a bit. Even the younger women. That’s what friends do. I mean, I’m pretty sure I know more about my best female friend’s sexuality than her husband, and I’ve never seen her naked. And she probably knows more about mine than most of the women I’ve been intimate with.

    I’m not sure if you’re aware of this through reading the manliness posts, but initiating kissing is a sore spot for me, and it’s probably the situation I’m subconsciously “visualizing” when asserting my beliefs and experiences about women expecting me to “control” the situation, because it is not rarely a “make-or-break” moment. (for more personal context about this – http://www.charlieglickman.com/2010/10/sex-tips-for-men-how-to-ask-for-sex/comment-page-1/#comment-6122)
56. 

    Clarisse March 16, 2011 at 2:28 am #

    I feel like I should officially apologize. Miguel’s original comment hit a bunch of really sore spots for me (QUIT TELLING ME WHAT BDSM IS LIKE IF YOU’RE VANILLA. QUIT TELLING ME WHAT WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE IS LIKE IF YOU’RE MALE, ESPECIALLY IF WHAT YOU’RE SAYING BACKS UP BITTER MISOGYNIST MRA-TYPE BS). I didn’t mean to come off as generally pissed off at everyone on the thread, it’s just that I simply can’t believe how resentful men are about shit that actually isn’t good for women. I just had a date lecture me the other night about how I can go out and get laid anytime I want, and I’m so lucky and he’s so resentful. Jesus.

    @Tomek — That’s why one of Clarisse sentences in that comment:

    “the most productive way to make men more respectful of women might be to link their sense of accomplishment to having sex that’s good for women.”

    haunts me a bit. I see it as a no change at all.

    ok, that makes sense. What I was thinking when I wrote that is that when people have tried to make men more respectful of women by linking it to a sense of accomplishment, they probably felt as though there was simply no way to get rid of the sex-as-accomplishment trope (or maybe they just weren’t thinking that deeply about it), but the intention is basically to (a) make sex better for women and (b) in particular, to reduce rape. (Because when men link sex to accomplishment, and don’t care about women’s experience, then that’s basically a recipe for rape.) But again, I don’t actually think that the whole structure is awesome. It reminds me a bit about my reservations on that African media campaign that linked manliness to using condoms, actually:
    http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2009/11/22/redefining-masculinity-for-the-hivaids-fight-in-southern-africa/

    @Sam — So I’m really wondering about the “certain factors” you seem to think that you seem to think can make it work?

    Well … hmm. I guess it seems like knowing about each gender’s biases helps us compensate for them a little bit. But as I think about it more, it seems harder and harder to compensate for, especially on a broad social level. But then I think I’m getting to be too economics-heavy about it. I don’t actually believe that sex/love fits economics models perfectly, because people are specifically such irrational actors in these arenas.

    I mean, it’s pretty clear that people out there are routinely having relationships, and non-consensual stuff rarely occurs. How are people acting now that makes this work?

    There are about 237 (if I remember correctly, and someone counted them all) reasons to have sex, some more strategic than others.

    Really? Where are they listed? I’m totally intrigued.

    AB — Hi again.

    I don’t know what I learned from these guys because they specifically mentored me. My guess is nothing. A lot of ‘mentoring’ by guys seemed to be just them doing something which is apparently good for them, and expecting you to stop them if it isn’t comfortable for you.

    Yeah, this. I feel like one of the points I’ve been trying to tease out all thread is that the fact that men are generally considered responsible for sexual escalation is SO not the same thing as men generally being considered responsible for sexual mentorship. Making the first move sexually (sexual initiation) is not the same thing as providing a safe, positive learning environment for sex (sexual mentorship).

    Pick any guy off the street, and there’s no way in hell I trust him to provide a safe, positive sexual experience — much less a safe and positive learning environment for sex. There are screening techniques I can apply (e.g. BDSMers with good reputations are more likely to provide a safe and positive sexual experience; feminist men are more likely to provide a safe and positive sexual experience), but the number of guys who pass my “basic sex” screening is a hell of a lot higher than the number of guys who I think I could definitely rely on to provide a positive sexual mentorship experience.
57. 

    Xakudo March 16, 2011 at 2:35 am #

    AB:

    On both ends? If women don’t mind dating people who are likely to be able to mentor them (older men), and men show little interest in dating the people who are most likely to be able to mentor them (older women), I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that men can’t get sexual mentoring because of the evils of society.

    You are focusing on the preferences of the young. But it is important to include the preferences of the older in the analysis.

    When he said “on both ends” I think he meant that both young men and older women do not particularly want to date each other, which I suspect is generally true. And on both ends I think the preferences are largely explainable by social pressures/cultural norms of various kinds. I would say both young men and older women are being screwed by these cultural norms, because indeed I think both groups would benefit greatly from hooking up with each other.
58. 

    Xakudo March 16, 2011 at 3:18 am #

    Clarisse:

    What I was thinking when I wrote that is that when people have tried to make men more respectful of women by linking it to a sense of accomplishment, they probably felt as though there was simply no way to get rid of the sex-as-accomplishment trope (or maybe they just weren’t thinking that deeply about it), but the intention is basically to (a) make sex better for women[...]

    Eh… how about:
    (a) make sex better for women and men

    As screwed as women are in the current situation, I think you are consistently overestimating the quality of sex that men typically get. I do not dispute that men have it better, but better does not mean good.

    Given that sex is seen as an accomplishment, and female touch is seen as inherently valuable (I think these are fairly inseparable concepts for most practical implications, btw), how do you think that impacts men’s view of how ‘good’ sex is? If a man went and had sex with a woman, and by some reasonable standard the sex was ‘bad’, do you really think he is going to come out of it feeling cheated? Or will he feel like he accomplished something, and like he got something from the woman, and thus feel like the experience was positive for him?

    To put it another way: I think the “accomplishment” and “valuable female touch” norms in our culture substantially impair men’s ability to determine whether the actual sex was a positive experience for them or not.

    True, men will orgasm much more often than women in these experiences. But, ironically, I think some women have a similar impairment as the aforementioned men: as long as they orgasm, they think they have had ‘good’ sex. It is a very orgasm-centric view of sex, and what makes sex good. And I do not think that is accurate either, and I think it causes a gross over-estimation of how good men have it.

    I guess what I am saying is this: I am pretty sure everyone is having shitty sex. Men are just fooled into thinking that they are not. And women see men getting a single piece (orgasm) of what is actually a large multi-piece puzzle, and because they lack even that one piece they think men have it “good”.

    And I will back some of this up by saying that some of the best sex I have had did not involve me reaching orgasm. Or even my partner reaching orgasm. But it took some processing and reflection to realize that that was true. There are many factors that go into good sex, and it is perfectly easy to have really shitty sex that still results in orgasm.

    [...]and (b) in particular, to reduce rape. (Because when men link sex to accomplishment, and don’t care about women’s experience, then that’s basically a recipe for rape.)

    Eh… I am not convinced. Speaking generally, our culture has a hefty stigma against male rapists. And (again, speaking generally) that stigma is much heavier than any status they gain from sex with women. So unless men are commonly fooling themselves into thinking that a woman consented when she did not (which is a separate problem to address anyway), it seems like that would be a strong counteracting force.

    Was it not Thomas from YMY that posted a while back (last year, I think) that the vast majority of rapes are committed by a small number of serial rapists? And those rapists do it knowingly and on purpose, due to hatred of women or a desire to control women, or some such thing?

    Not that rape never happens otherwise. But it seems like for normal men the anti-rape stigma (and… you know, the fact that most men actually do view women as human beings worthy of not being sexually violated, contrary to common belief) is typically plenty to keep them from raping.
59. 

    Sam March 16, 2011 at 3:28 am #

    Clarisse -

    Here’s the list of 237 reasons to have sex -

    http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/08/01/237-reasons-to-have-sex

    with this explanation:

    “This list comes from a University of Texas study published August 2007 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior … . It asked 400 students and volunteers why they had sex.”

    And here’s the paper -

    http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/why%20humans%20have%20sex%202007.pdf

    more tomorrow…
60. 

    Xakudo March 16, 2011 at 3:34 am #

    Hmm, in my first bit above (“for women and men“) I mis-read a bit what I was responding to. I thought you were talking about getting rid of sex-as-accomplishment.
61. 

    Tomek Kulesza March 16, 2011 at 6:50 am #

    Hmm, how do you make that cool quotes?

    @Sam: “(and I think that’s because there’s a feedback slope between physical arousal and emotional attachment, and vice versa).”

    No, that’s because that’s false dichotomy. “Physical arousal” is ‘emotional’ thing, and emotional attachment has physical component. In other words, the difference is illusory.

    @ A.B. “when “you’re good enough for a quick lay but I’d never date you” is one of the worst insults a man can give to a woman”

    I think it’s generally rather unpleasant to hear, because it basically means someone you (apparently) find interesting finds your personality (ie: the most important thing about your identity) appaling, not appealing. I guess in case of men it’s mitigated by “whoa, at least i’m sexually attractive, score!” and in case of women made worse by slut shaming script. But the whole issue would mean getting into wha “dating” means and what people expect of that, and that’s another bag of… stuff. Peopl could use more communication here, too.

    @ A.B. “As a woman, I would like to know more about why men think we get all this sexual mentoring”

    Oh, it’s not men, it’s Sam ;) I, for one, don’t think it’s true – it’s certainly not for me. I don’t think in that terms, anyway.

    @ Sam “I’m not sure how to describe bad male sex to you, though, maybe others can help out.”

    There you go. You have PIV sex with someone you don’t like and are hurt by (in, say, really toxic relationship), you would like it to end as soon as possible but you can’t since you have to keep trying to maintain erection. Afterwards you feel like you raped yourself and you want to throw up and run away. Been there, done that :)

    “I’m not saying people cannot really fall in love/date if men are in a relationship with female mentor, but that I believe current preference structures on both ends will make that rare.”

    Eh, you seem to keep thinking about genders as large relatively coherent groups. The variation is larger inside that between them, it doesn’t make much sense.

    “Is that really so different from “I like this now but not for long?” I don’t think so.”

    Yes, it’s objectifying. The “not for long” is unspecified, and does not have to be (say, your are bound to depart for Alpha Centauri, so it’s going to end anyway ;))

    @ Xakudo “As screwed as women are in the current situation, I think you are consistently overestimating the quality of sex that men typically get. I do not dispute that men have it better, but better does not mean good.”

    Oh, and they won’t be honest about that. I mean, “if you don’t enjoy sex with a woman, who are you? A homo?”. That said, i do think men have it better and agree with Clarisse about “mentoring” and ‘safe, positive sexual experience” by picking off random guy. I guess that’s beause of what A.B. said, men are expected to be active, so they feel entitled to it, so they do things they think are good (and of course they have no idea what’s fun for women, and especially for that woman. Communication? Gross! ;)). So the effect is that they get more satisfaction unless circumstances are atypical.

    (EDIT/ Oh, Xakudo actually said almost exactly this in his next paragraphs – before i read it. Well, another +1 from me, then, sorry – but that’s very enthusiastic +1)

    “True, men will orgasm much more often than women in these experiences. But, ironically, I think some women have a similar impairment as the aforementioned men: as long as they orgasm, they think they have had ‘good’ sex. It is a very orgasm-centric view of sex, and what makes sex good. And I do not think that is accurate either, and I think it causes a gross over-estimation of how good men have it.”

    My little personal experience: Not every ejaculation is created equal, and sometimes it’s not even an orgasm. And anyway, plateau before orgasm is more pleasant than orgasm itself IMNSHO ;)
62. 

    Tomek Kulesza March 16, 2011 at 6:55 am #

    Silly me. There are blockquotes in the comment box.

    Anyway, i remember a discussion on a certain forum where i stated that the physical attractiveness is actually almost totally irrelevant to sexual pleasure, and got a lot of negative responses until one guy said “guys, don’t tell me that if you walk into a bar with beautiful woman you don’t feel your ego sweelling as your friends look at you”. That’s the source, IMO, of importance of it, which gets translated later in the brain into higher attraction. After all, it works if the lights go out – and if it was a simple causation, it shouldn’t.

    I’m no sure if this is relevant, actually :/
63. 

    AB March 16, 2011 at 10:54 am #

    @Tomek Kulesza

    Oh, it’s not men, it’s Sam ;) I, for one, don’t think it’s true – it’s certainly not for me. I don’t think in that terms, anyway.

    My apologies for the use of ‘men’ in general, I didn’t mean to suggest it was universal, merely that it seems to be a common perception.

    There you go. You have PIV sex with someone you don’t like and are hurt by (in, say, really toxic relationship), you would like it to end as soon as possible but you can’t since you have to keep trying to maintain erection. Afterwards you feel like you raped yourself and you want to throw up and run away. Been there, done that :)

    See, this I can relate to. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, makes you feel like you’re hurting yourself, and the main reason you keep it up is because you feel obliged to. So perhaps it’s not that men prefer bad sex to no sex, but just that fewer of them experience really bad sex like you describe here, for whatever reason.
64. 

    Sam March 16, 2011 at 1:43 pm #

    Tomek,

    No, that’s because that’s false dichotomy. “Physical arousal” is ‘emotional’ thing, and emotional attachment has physical component. In other words, the difference is illusory.

    It certainly depends on what you define as “emotional”. I’d say that, when I’m watching porn, I get sexually aroused but I’m not emotionally involved with the woman responsible for the arousal (that’s where the whole objectification thing comes from, doesn’t it?). Certainly, in reality, usually, varying degrees of “liking” will go hand in hand with physical arousal, but there are certainly also cases where people are aroused by others they explicitly do not like. I suppose from a terminological point of view their physical attraction can still be described as “emotion”, but in that case it doesn’t really denote that, usually, emotional involvement does seem to characterize non-physical elements of attraction. I guess the neuro-biology of love/arousal is still under discussion. Anthropologist Helen Fisher, for example, does see three distinctive “circuits” for arousal, affection, and what she calls “romantic love”. Romantic love can, but doesn’t have to be caused by sex – having sex with someone you’d like to fall in love with but haven’t yet certainly is increasing the (neurobiological) probability of falling in love, but there’s no guarantee, of course. Just as there is no guarantee for not falling in love with someone one is intimate with even if one doesn’t want that.

    The variation is larger inside that between them, it doesn’t make much sense.

    Yeah, well, but in that case the whole gender debate including feminism is a priori pointless because there’s no subject to talk about. I’m not disagreeing in theory (and, in a way, this is how Judith Butler killed feminist epistemology), but in practice it does seem possible to attach properties to woman and man, female and male, as well as sex and gender. Otherwise, again, what would be the point of feminism if there is nothing the group “women” has in common? So, while it’s useful to occasionally remind oneself of the in-group variation (particularly as a generalizing outlier), I tend to believe that people here are aware of the implicit limitations of saying “man” and “woman”.

    My little personal experience: Not every ejaculation is created equal, and sometimes it’s not even an orgasm. And anyway, plateau before orgasm is more pleasant than orgasm itself IMNSHO ;)

    Agreed here. The first time I was with a woman (who was, by the way, certainly a mentor, although she was younger), I couldn’t come after two hours of erection. I was very disappointed, but she reminded me that it’s probably a good thing to get to the point early and realize that orgasm isn’t a standard to measure good sex by (although she had already had one, and Clarisse also seems rather focused on orgasm when talking about non-BDSM sex, so I don’t know how common that non-orgasm-centric view is – usually, ejaculation does mark the end of the respective round, simply because arousal levels drop quickly thereafter).
65. 

    Clarisse March 16, 2011 at 1:50 pm #

    Hmm … I wouldn’t say I’m focused on orgasm while talking about non-BDSM sex, but it’s one of the few countable indicators we have of whether people enjoyed sex. I acknowledge that there are issues with it as such an indicator, though, since different people have different propensity for orgasm, and orgasm carries a host of social pressures all its own. I do tend to think that orgasm is overvalued as an indicator of sexual enjoyment, but on the other hand, it’s really important that people know how to do it and how to experience it — so we’ve got this unfortunate situation where I think people come under too much pressure about it, but at the same time, it needs to be acknowledged as important ….
66. 

    Xakudo March 16, 2011 at 3:08 pm #

    Clarisse:
    After reading some of your accounts of your positive BDSM experiences, I get intensely jealous. Not because I want BDSM, but because I want the vanilla equivalent of how positive and satisfying those experiences clearly are/were for you, and because as far as I can recall I have not had anything like that. And I strongly suspect that most men are in a similar position. So I think you are actually way ahead of most men, and you are actually in the enviable position (enviable to both men and women), despite your struggles with anorgasmia. Just sayin’.

    But of course your experience is not the typical female experience, and certainly cannot be generalized from. Most women have it substantially worse than you.

    But most men have it substantially worse than you as well. When I look back on the sex I have had in my life, if I consciously try to compensate for the “accomplishment” and “inherently valuable female touch” psychology… I think I can count the good sex I have had on my fingers. Whereas I think the bad sex I have had probably comes in at around 50-60%. And the horrible sex (where I come away feeling icky and nasty, even despite ‘accomplishment’ etc.) comes in at maybe 20%. And the remainder is the so-so sex, that I may or may not prefer over masturbation depending on my mood.

    And importantly: almost all of the sex I have had resulted in orgasm for me.

    Admittedly, my experience may not be the typical male experience. But I do think it is indicative of something about the male experience.

    But, having said all that, I again feel I need to emphasize: I agree that men have it better, because at least they are reaching orgasm. So that is something. And I do not mean to suggest that orgasm is unimportant. It is just very incomplete on its own. And, arguably, being fooled into thinking that sex you are having is beneficial and positive has some benefits in itself (there is a degree to which whether something is good or not is in your mind anyway).

    But when women talk about how men have all this good sex at the expense of women, to me it sounds pretty much like the “mentor” talk from Miguel about how women get all this great mentoring.
67. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 16, 2011 at 4:01 pm #

    in practice it does seem possible to attach properties to woman and man, female and male, as well as sex and gender.

    Actually, about the most significant difference between men and women as a group is height, and on every other aspect that has been tested scientifically, the differences are pretty insignificant. (There was a piece about it in the New Scientist last week)

    Otherwise, again, what would be the point of feminism if there is nothing the group “women” has in common?

    You’re confusing “traits” with “experience” here. Society treats men and women as though they are very different, assigning gender purely on the basis of genital grouping observed at birth, and then pretty much continuously from that point treating them as though there are essential differences. This produces different shared experiences, which produces “class” (sorry, I went a bit Marxist there – but that is my political background!). Feminism (or some versions thereof, at least) arises out of the opposition to this discrimination and class oppression, and is not made redundant by, but actually dependent upon, the fact that men and women are more similar than they are different. The thing that the group “women” have in common is the way that they are treated as different from men, even though they aren’t all that different (and men are more different from each other than they are from women). If we divided people on the basis of hair colour at birth and treated them as fundamentally and essentially different on that basis instead of on the basis of genitalia, then we might have blondenism instead of feminism, or something.
68. 

    Clarisse March 16, 2011 at 5:15 pm #

    So I think you are actually way ahead of most men, and you are actually in the enviable position (enviable to both men and women), despite your struggles with anorgasmia. Just sayin’.

    Sure. But (a) it wasn’t always this way, (b) I rarely write about my bad or meh experiences, and (c) I put an enormous amount of effort into thinking about sex and engaging sexually. People who prioritize good sex are just going to generally have better experiences than people who don’t. Just saying. ;)
69. 

    Xakudo March 16, 2011 at 7:47 pm #

    Clarisse:

    Sure. But (a) it wasn’t always this way, (b) I rarely write about my bad or meh experiences, and (c) I put an enormous amount of effort into thinking about sex and engaging sexually. People who prioritize good sex are just going to generally have better experiences than people who don’t. Just saying. ;)

    Yes, absolutely. No disagreement there. And I absolutely sympathize with your past nasty experiences; I hope I do not come across as otherwise. My intent is not to invalidate women’s experiences, rather my intent is to correct what I perceive to be an inaccurate view of men’s experiences. I am trying to add to the picture, not erase it.

    And I particularly agree: people who do not put effort into figuring out what they want out of sex and how to get that are probably not going to get particularly good sex. And that is actually part of my point: neither women nor men typically do that.

    It is only recently, after doing a lot of deconstructing of my own issues, that I have felt empowered to actually have the sex that I want to have. And it took a lot of effort and emotional struggle. And, frankly, it is still a very incomplete and ongoing process, and there is still a lot of struggle left to come. There are a lot of layers of prescriptive norms, fears, and general damage that I have to work through. And I suspect the same is true of most people in our culture, though perhaps not to the same extent.

    I think both a lot of men and women could benefit from someone grabbing them by the shoulders, shaking them a bit, looking them right in the eyes and saying: “Hey! If ya want good sex, yer gonna have to work fer it. And it ain’t gonna be easy, ’cause the world is kinda fucked right now.” It is like a lot of things in life: you might get lucky and it might just fall in your lap, but you are probably going to have to be a lot more proactive in creating/finding it if it is important to you.
70. 

    scootah March 16, 2011 at 11:06 pm #

    @Clarisse

    I think safewording is a skill that we don’t take seriously enough as a skill

    recently, I’ve been going to some different parties and hanging out with some less experienced kinksters. I know I’m unusually active/experienced for someone my age in this context, but It’s very, very weird playing with people my own age – which I consider relatively grown up and expect to imply some maturity and experience, who are crazy unprepared/inexperienced.

    I’m absolutely not into newbies as a thing. I much prefer my partners to be experienced, comfortable sluts. But the way attraction and the local crowd has played out lately – my play partners have been relatively inexperienced. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people who I consider quite inexperienced. Lots of these people have had partners in the past who slapped them around or were bossy – but none of them with any of the healthy / ‘good practice’ context that you expect if you hang around in the public scene for a while.

    I’m finding that the difficulty safewording thing, and the negotiation awareness thing is really, really bad in this crowd. I played with a girl at a party, just a violet wand demo, and while leaning in to check on her, she thought I was leaning in for a kiss. She was hugely spaced out and we hadn’t negotiated any kind of physicallity/sexuality as part of the scene. Chatting afterward – I discussed the whole incredibly sketchy nature of any dom who deliberately waits until she’s that spaced and vulnerable to try and escalate from a S&M demo to kissing without negotiating it. I think she’s still not sure if she believes me that that kind of thing is something that people really do negotiate.

    A week later, having discussed and negotiated a bunch more, we had gone back to my place for a more intimate play date. She was naked, with her hands tied, on all fours on my bed, realize that she hadn’t negotiated something and call a time out to communicate some limits. As it happened, I already knew those limits from reading a blog she’d linked me too – but she genuinely thought I didn’t know these things. I spent a while lecturing her about negotiating from a less vulnerable future as there’s no assurance that her future partners will be ethical, and some creepy dom indicators to help her not have things go sideways as she plays with others.

    She’d been involved in a bunch of local scene stuff and had read a lot and still just hadn’t gotten her head around things like the idea that there is a lunatic fringe to bdsm, there is a real necessity to communicate to preserve your experience and give yourself room to walk away. Etc.

    The same parnter communicated to me on another occasion that she has trouble using safewords as she’s worried that she’ll dissapoint her top. I spent some time working through that with her and discussing potential scenes where we would push her to safeword to illustrate that in the right circumstances, having a partner safeword is not only not a dissapointment, but really fun.

    I certainly feel happier with partners who seem able to tell when I’m getting into safeword territory before I safeword.

    I talk about the ‘Skill’ of being dominant at some of my skillshares as a recognition of the idea that skill isn’t just in technique or accuracy with an impact toy or knowledge of elaborate knots, but there’s a huge challenge required to read the non verbal cues of a submissive partner. If you’re a kind of slutty dominant (like me) and you’re always in that new/not terribly well known stage of play where you’re figuring each other out – it’s a huge issue, but for anyone who plans to have a new partner at some point in the future – learning to read the body language, involuntary noises and other non verbal communication cues of a partner who’s lost in an endorphin and dopamine high, or who’s hit some kind of headspace, be it positive or negative – is a major requirement to being a ‘good’ dominant.

    I wouldn’t want to mentor a guy as a dominant for me, if I didn’t already have a pretty good connection with him.

    Honestly, mentoring a partner is a hassle for me. I’d rather not do it in most circumstances. I really like being the first person to use a violet wand or a single tail or something with someone. I get a kick on that first status and the headspace that goes with that sort of experience. But I see things like teaching someone to negotiate properly, use safe words responsibly, preserve their own safety and personal integrity as they explore in kink – as profoundly non-sexy things. I try and do them for my friends, including the friends I’m involved with on some level – because it’s the responsible thing to do. But It’s the last thing I want to do with someone as foreplay, even with someone submissive to me. When I’m in the headspace to play – I want to play at the level of intensity and engagement I’m personally at and personally seeking. I don’t want to coach someone up to my level. I want a partner who can be my equal (while I tie them up, beat them, throw them around by the hair and possibly do sexually perverse things to them).

    The reality is that for me, sometimes attraction doesn’t limit itself to equally skilled/experienced people. So sometimes I do the coaching and mentoring thing. But even as the dominant, usually more experienced partner – I don’t really enjoy it. It’s just something that I’m willing to do as a necessary/responsible thing sometimes.

    I can’t imagine being intensely submissive and trying to mentor a dominant partner. I can’t see how it would be at all satisfying for a submissive partner in the early stages, and seems like a huge gamble hoping for the dominant to turn out to be good value in the future.
71. 

    Tomek Kulesza March 17, 2011 at 10:45 am #

    A.B.
    

    See, this I can relate to. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, makes you feel like you’re hurting yourself, and the main reason you keep it up is because you feel obliged to. So perhaps it’s not that men prefer bad sex to no sex, but just that fewer of them experience really bad sex like you describe here, for whatever reason.

    Well, of course i don’t know, but i wouldn’t be surprised if that was not unique experience. Certainly that’s the impression i get from my male friends, and look even here at what Xakudo wrote about himself (i agree with him again most enthusiastically, again)

    But of course they won’t talk. For what, to be insulted as unmanly and dismissed? It’s not surprising that it doesn’t get shared in public, and rarely between friends.

    (on a side note, it reminds me of a story of my friend who had casual sex he didn’t really want – but was still active in – at a party, with both participants drunk and drugged, and i had impression that he did not like the woman in question more that it would be explained by the story. Which, when i think about it now, could be understood as directing the anger from doing things you don’t want but obliged too (uh, the compulsory sexuality) at the target, ie, the woman in question.

    Now, i don’t think it explains the misogyny, but i thought it’s interesting how interacting with women in supposedly intimate ways could make one actually more disdainful of them)

    Oh, and the most important thing here is that i put a lot of effort into examining that – similarily to what Clarisse said about herself. Most men are quite good at simply suppressing feelings. I am too. I mean, yesterday i tried to talk about similar (much better though) thing in my relationship, and it ended in crushing the ego of my partner (most likely because i basically said i’ve not been truly honest for years about that. Talk about faking satisfaction.)

    Sam:
    

    It certainly depends on what you define as “emotional”. I’d say that, when I’m watching porn, I get sexually aroused but I’m not emotionally involved with the woman responsible for the arousal (that’s where the whole objectification thing comes from, doesn’t it?).

    Hm. I can experiene porn in various ways. For example, i can see a scene and see humans doing things, and watch it as it was, i don’t know, people playing football (football doesn’t interest me). Or i can look at it with interest and this always involve some imagination. Even if it’s not explicit in my mind, it’s undeniable that without imagining at least arousal on the part of actors (or some identification with the scene), it would be as arousing as watching the paint dry.

    And the imagination is in the mind, and is emotional thing – even though the emotionality comes from your own imagined ‘story’ (even if the story is as simple as “i am in sexual situation with hot someone). Of course, it’s objectifying towards the actors, but that’s not problem IMO – it’s not different from objectifying standart movie, or sales clerk. That’s job, you’re not interested in the deep emotions and thoughts of grocery owner.

    Sam:
    

    Certainly, in reality, usually, varying degrees of “liking” will go hand in hand with physical arousal, but there are certainly also cases where people are aroused by others they explicitly do not like.

    Well, i don’t know. Pure dislike? Without imagining things and treating it as achievement? Sounds improbable for me (and even more for pure indifference)

    Although i of course agree that you can be attracted to someone you dislike (i assume that’s what meant by disliking). Hell, hating someone still doesn’t preclude that, since emotionas are not binary and it’s perfectly possible to like and dislike the same person, even at the same time.

    And, on the second though, dislike is a emotion, too. The main point is that the emotions don’t have to be with the actual person (like in my porn example) – that’s objectifying, most likely, when you have sex with someone while imagining that it’s with someone else, but the emotional component exists.

    On a side note:

    I guess the neuro-biology of love/arousal is still under discussion.

    AFAIK, emotions have physical component in general. IIRC, there was a debate whichever comes first, physical ‘activation’ or interpretation of it, but i don’t know how it was solved, if it did.

    (oh, and i cried a little when i read Helen Fischer name. No, please, no ;). Although in the case you mention i somewhat agree, there is postivie feedback loop in many circumstances when it comes to liking and physical intimacy – i guess safety and already at least slightly positive emotions are necessary for it to work)

    Sam:
    

    Yeah, well, but in that case the whole gender debate including feminism is a priori pointless because there’s no subject to talk about. I’m not disagreeing in theory but in practice it does seem possible to attach properties to woman and man, female and male, as well as sex and gender. Otherwise, again, what would be the point of feminism if there is nothing the group “women” has in common?

    Well, yes, there are large differences (even approaching 100%, like possesion of testicles/uterus ;)), what i wanted to say is that in case of complicated things like preferences the mainstream narrative greatly overexagerrates them, and what genders have in common internally is actually the way they get treated, not the preferences members of the group have. Which when what you say about mentorship is true (i mean, it’s for you and most likely for plenty of others – i don’t know) means that man will experience his imaginary expectation of being a mentor and will have to handle somehow, and a woman will feel the pressure of expecting not too be active too much and will have to face it too. Whereas their actual preferences might be something different entirely.

    That’s what we stress communication and negotiations, right?

    (also, Snowdrop explains the important point about gender differences being most important in how the genders get treated, not how they think and feel – i should have said that. On a side note, my issue with many feminists and a lot of progressive men is that they tend to perpetuate the stereotype when it comes to the opposing sex. Damn.)

    Sam:
    

    Agreed here. The first time I was with a woman (…) so I don’t know how common that non-orgasm-centric view is – usually, ejaculation does mark the end of the respective round, simply because arousal levels drop quickly thereafter).

    What is funny, i noticed it for women too. I mean, the drop of arousal level and the general laziness after orgasm. And to think that 20 years ago it was common knowledge that women don’t ever experience refraction period.

    Clarisse:
    

    Hmm … I wouldn’t say I’m focused on orgasm while talking about non-BDSM sex, but it’s one of the few countable indicators we have of whether people enjoyed sex. I acknowledge that there are issues with it as such an indicator, though, since different people have different propensity for orgasm, and orgasm carries a host of social pressures all its own. I do tend to think that orgasm is overvalued as an indicator of sexual enjoyment, but on the other hand, it’s really important that people know how to do it and how to experience it — so we’ve got this unfortunate situation where I think people come under too much pressure about it, but at the same time, it needs to be acknowledged as important ….

    I don’t want to complicate things too much, but for me, when i enjoy sex most i want it too last as long as possible, so i tend to delay my orgasm basically indefinitely (but i really need to feel no anxiety for that and have no problem in relationship. I guess i’m a woman or something :D). It gets anticlimatic by then, anyway, compared to the whole load of fun earlier. But i agree with you that it’s very complicated issue, in the ways you mention.

    Snowdrop:
    

    Actually, about the most significant difference between men and women as a group is height, and on every other aspect that has been tested scientifically, the differences are pretty insignificant. (There was a piece about it in the New Scientist last week)

    Hey, but people want their biases confirmed and not questioned. So if you have some scientifict study and there is slight and insignificant variation between genders, what will get reported? “Men and women have it different!” (yeah, sex explains 0.01 of variation in results). I mean it.

    Damn, i make overly long comments again.
72. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 17, 2011 at 5:19 pm #

    What is funny, i noticed it for women too. I mean, the drop of arousal level and the general laziness after orgasm.

    Apparently, it’s because orgasm induces a serotonin flood that shuts down the dopamine that causes arousal. (I wrote about the television show where I learned about this here.)
73. 

    Clarisse March 18, 2011 at 1:45 pm #

    yeah. It’s not that orgasm isn’t just as exhausting and turn-off for women as men. It’s that women don’t get any cultural space to stop having sex after we have orgasms, while men do. Asking a guy to perform sexual activity (including stuff like oral) after he’s come is widely viewed as “unreasonable”, because he’s sooo tired. But this is exactly what is commonly expected of women.
74. 

    Clarisse March 19, 2011 at 2:24 am #

    Hey Scootah — you mentioned that you gave someone some creepy dom indicators recently. What are your favorites?
75. 

    Xakudo March 19, 2011 at 2:31 pm #

    Clarisse:

    yeah. It’s not that orgasm isn’t just as exhausting and turn-off for women as men. It’s that women don’t get any cultural space to stop having sex after we have orgasms, while men do. Asking a guy to perform sexual activity (including stuff like oral) after he’s come is widely viewed as “unreasonable”, because he’s sooo tired. But this is exactly what is commonly expected of women.

    Yup. Absolutely. Note, however, that this goes hand-in-hand with men being required to “last” for their partners. Which causes a lot of anxiety for men, and in a lot of ways causes their orgasm to cease to belong to them. So it is not all sunshine and rainbows.

    And, related from Tomek:

    I don’t want to complicate things too much, but for me, when i enjoy sex most i want it too last as long as possible, so i tend to delay my orgasm basically indefinitely

    Yeah. One of the indicators for me of whether sex is good or not is whether in my head I am ‘lasting’ for my partner, or whether I am holding off on climax for myself. And that has everything to do with how comfortable and safe I feel with my partner and the situation, how safe I feel in being able to climax ‘early’ if I want to, and how safe I feel saying “no” or stopping some activity that is leading to climax sooner than I want.

    Playing with the plateau can be great, but it turns really shitty really fast if I feel like I am obligated. And that obligation is the (misguided) norm for most guys, I think.

    I suspect many guys would be a lot more enthusiastic about continuing sex after they orgasm if they realized that hand-in-hand with that would be the destruction of the expectation for them to ‘last’ for their partner. But when most guys hear talk about continuing after they climax (even the ones that realize that does not mean intercourse), I think they see it as an additional requirement. So in their heads, it turns into, “Okay, you have last for your partner as long as she wants, and if you do not then you are a disappointment. And on top of that, you have to keep doing things for her after your long-delayed climax as well, or you are an asshole.”
76. 

    scootah March 21, 2011 at 12:41 am #

    @Clarisse – Oh god, I have a list.

    ‘I’m Gorean’

    It’s a timeless classic. You’re a roll player, and you’re a very short step away from having plastic dice and a beard full of cheetos. If that’s your thing – that’s fine – but please understand that it’s a very short step away from having an awesome world of warcraft character.

    ‘Oh the scene is a bullshit knitting circle full of gossipy Poseurs.’

    I’m sure some people are awesome and don’t like the public scene. But the vast, vast majority of people who shit on the public scene are either inexperienced people falsely claiming otherwise, and don’t want an audience to their ineptitude, or got a bad reputation and are pissy about the fact that the scene self polices and word got around that they were a dangerous moron.

    ‘The scene is so ageist!’

    Really? 10 years ago maybe. But not so much lately. Are you sure you aren’t just being called out on being genuinely immature? Also, if you mean prejudiced against older people? I don’t know that that’s ever been true, and a failure to respect one’s elders when one’s elders aren’t appreciably worthy of respect, isn’t a criticism as far as I’m concerned.

    ‘I can’t post pictures of anything but my penis, even by private email with no other kinky context, because of my career/family’

    This just SCREAMS cheating jerk, or avoiding past reputation problems. Reality is that sending a picture of yourself to someone by email – as in an entirely vanilla facebook appropriate picture of yourself – is only going to damage your career as a politician if you’re cheating on your wife, or sending it to under age prostitutes. Or hell, Link someone to a vanilla photo of you in a throw away flickr account so they don’t have the email chain if you’re really paranoid.

    ‘Why don’t we meet for the first time at my place/in a dark alley/in a public park at night/in my windowless van’

    Why not just chloroform yourself in the comfort of your living room and save yourself the travel time?

    ‘I’m Old Guard’

    If you’re heterosexual, female, under 60? I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m just saying it’s really, really, really fucking unlikely. If you’ve never sucked a cock? Really fucking unlikely. And if you think the Old Guard model for earning your leathers is really a productive way for new dominants to learn – I question your judgement even if you are plausibly telling the truth.

    ‘I’m a Ninja’

    Your prodigious talents as a martial artist leave me sceptical to say the least, and are only really relevant if wrestling/take down play is on the cards. Also, I find that former college football players (or insert other contact sport here) are way funner for takedown play than samurai movie obsessed ninjas.

    Military credentials, or work with the police are also only really selling me on your qualities as a dominant if you can borrow equipment from work. As a kink resume item – it’s telling me that you’re scraping for something to sell yourself.

    ‘I’ve been doing this since before your grandparents were born, even though I’m 30′

    Experience only matters if you’ve been doing it right for that long. If you’ve been doing it wrong for 30 years, you’re still an idiot. If you’re lying about the length of your experience – it seems likely that you’re also lying about the depth of your skill. And if you’re massively exaggerating your status as a BDSM Elder and Veteran, there’s an excellent chance that you’re going to be an arrogant douche that refuses to belief that anyone else could have a valid opinion.

    ‘All True slaves do X and True Masters do Y’

    … Self explanatory really. One twue way troll is a twue troll.

    ‘I’m a Dominate!’

    You’re semi literate.

    ‘My pre-pubescent child is going to grow up to be a dominate!’

    This is the creepy women rather than the more common creepy guy usually. And it’s freaking creepy to project sexual roles onto your children. Because what your child is bossy, or imitating inappropriate behaviour that they probably shouldn’t have been exposed too. Ick.

    ‘I have 193 slaves, unfortunately none of them live on this continent. And that in no way implies that I’m a Newbie whose experience is entirely internet based.’

    Yes it does. It really, really does.

    ‘I was really active in the scene before you, or anyone you know joined the scene, but I’ve been on hiatus. I’m not a newbie and there’s no reason to take precautions as if I was.’

    And we’re back to intense scepticism. I’m sure there are cases where this is the truth – but there’s a million cases where it’s crap for every one where it’s true.

    On behaviours – a failure to pre-negotiate is something I’m sometimes guilty of. I’ll make assumptions, especially if I’ve read the person’s blog or checklists or something previously. Which I know is bad and stupid. And while I don’t think I’m a creepy dom, it’s certainly an indicator when a dominant doesn’t ask you any questions about limits.

    Non negotiated escalation. When on a vanilla date or meet and chat – if someone starts insisting on power exchange stuff (eye contact restrictions, pronoun restrictions) or escalates (moves from friendly social touching to things like the kitten grip on the back of your neck) – without negotiating about that escalation first, it’s a bad sign. At a party if someone moves from a negotiated S&M scene to something overtly sexual or moves from a negotiated flogging to genital/nipple pay without discussing that escalation first – even if it is fun and what you want, it’s still a bad sign for where their ethics are.

    I’m also inherently wary of anyone who uses generic first approach emails. I’ve seen quite good first approach emails that have clearly been copy and mass pasted but don’t have anything creepy in them. But I still see something inherently creepy about anyone who approaches new people in that mechanical a fashion. I think there’s something inherently off about reducing human interaction to a copy and paste task.

    That’s a brief and partial list of creepy dominant things that bug me. I could go on, and on, and on. But god I loathe the mass collection of bullshit and lies that people use to inflate their percieved capabilities. And there is so very, very littel benefit to that nonsense anywhere except the internet.
77. 

    scootah March 21, 2011 at 12:55 am #

    blah, fail whale taunts me with spelling mistakes and auto correct errors because I bitched about the apparent literacy of dominates. Stupid karma.
78. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 21, 2011 at 7:44 pm #

    @ scootah:

    You’re a roll player, and you’re a very short step away from having plastic dice and a beard full of cheetos. If that’s your thing – that’s fine – but please understand that it’s a very short step away from having an awesome world of warcraft character.

    Some of my best friends are roleplayers, who have extensive collections of many-sided dice, and some of whom have very good characters on WoW. Please do not imply that to be such a person is somehow to be considered lesser, or to be looked down upon.
79. 

    Scootah March 22, 2011 at 7:30 pm #

    @Snowdrop – Look, I think I still have some plastic dice and a character sheet in my garage somewhere. But my point is that having an 18th level Bard with 20 charisma isn’t the same as being good looking, and able to sing.

    The Gorean thing is full of people who have completely lost track of the fact that their role playing character isn’t actually them. And that the skills and attributes that they’ve arbitrarily assigned their role playing character aren’t actually skills and attributes that they really possess.

    Being awesome at fantasy football should be considered lesser than being awesome at actual football. Being an awesome person in a fantasy world is lesser than being an awesome person in the real world. And honestly? As someone who has enjoyed role playing games with dice and character sheets, has written role playing game adventures, and has submitted articles to Dragon magazine for publication – it is probably something to be looked down upon.

    While the ‘Everyone’s a winner!’ grade school model tells us that everything is ok – role playing gaming is at best, something you can sometimes do without overly damaging a reasonable person’s perception of you, if you don’t talk about it too much. As a thought experiment, consider at a dinner party of average adults who aren’t from any particular niche, telling people about your awesome hobby, which involves a really successful garage band. Then consider telling the same average adults from no particular niche, or randomly selected miscellaneous niches, about your awesome world of warcraft charcter.

    Replace Awesome garage band with marginally tolerable garage band. Or moderately successful blog. Or art project. Or furniture building experiments. Or series of youtube videos featuring you destroying things frozen with Liquid Nitrogen. It takes a while to come up with a pasttime that’s less cool than role playing. And many, many of the really dorky less cool than role playing hobbies like writing Twilight slash fic, or collecting model trains – are uncool for exactly the same reason.
80. 

    Clarisse March 22, 2011 at 8:45 pm #

    I’d just like to say that I think this tangent is hilarious on a post where I specifically screen potential suitors by asking if they know what a d20 is.

    I agree that RPGs are uncool as a pastime, but I disagree that they should be.

    I think the Goreans are kind of a whole different ballgame, really. It’s like … comparing Goreans to gamers is like comparing people who engage in non-negotiated belt-choking with their partners to people in the S&M subculture who explicitly discuss choking scenes.
81. 

    SnowdropExplodes March 27, 2011 at 10:25 pm #

    A Scootah:

    The Gorean thing is full of people who have completely lost track of the fact that their role playing character isn’t actually them. And that the skills and attributes that they’ve arbitrarily assigned their role playing character aren’t actually skills and attributes that they really possess.

    This much I can agree with. But “lost track of the fact that their role playing character isn’t actually them” is a LONG LONG way away from simply “has an awesome roleplay character”. I know of no roleplay gamers who have forgotten the difference between self and character.

    Being awesome at fantasy football should be considered lesser than being awesome at actual football.

    Why? Because one requires a physical skillset and the other requires a very different mental skillset?

    Being an awesome person in a fantasy world is lesser than being an awesome person in the real world.

    The two are NOT mutually exclusive!

    “Coolness” has nothing to do with “okayness”.

    So if you want to disparage Goreans, by all means do so, but don’t do it on the basis that it’s “uncool”, like RPG is “uncool”. Do it on the basis that the philosophy and behaviours are not okay types of beliefs and behaviours that give you “creepy” vibes (I am assuming here that someone simply being “uncool” is not normally enough to give you “creepy vibes” about them, but if it is, then I have to say that I find that Not Okay). As Clarisse said: “comparing Goreans to gamers is like comparing people who engage in non-negotiated belt-choking with their partners to people in the S&M subculture who explicitly discuss choking scenes.”
82. 

    Erl April 5, 2011 at 6:49 pm #

    I just had a date lecture me the other night about how I can go out and get laid anytime I want, and I’m so lucky and he’s so resentful. Jesus.

    I know this was, wow, like, three weeks ago, and probably covered upthread, but seriously? For serious?

    No, but seriously?

    Dude, Clarisse, sorry! That is extremely lousy date behavior and apt to make anyone snappy.

    I mean, I can’t even get my head around it. You are on a date, dude [i.e, your date]. That is not the time to talk about how poorly received your sexual advances are.

    I’m sure this has been covered, but I just have a “guh” moment when you run into something that’s so stupid, self-damaging AND vicious at the same time.

    Anyway, hope the dativerse has been better behaved since then.
83. 

    Clarisse May 2, 2011 at 3:52 pm #

    In re: the Miguel tangent above, Thomas MacAulay Millar has a new post about sexism and domism in the BDSM community:
    http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/domism-role-essentialism-and-sexism-intersectionality-in-the-bdsm-scene/

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

1. Talking About Kinky Sex – Bondage Blog - June 2, 2011

   [...] Thorne writes: I occasionally come across people who ask me how they can get their partners to do BDSM without [...]

2. Sex Positive St. Louis » Blog Archive » Intention, Attention and Awareness: Figuring out Consent, pt. 2 - July 4, 2011

   [...] mood, or turn into a power struggle. But it can be a way to share desire and build anticipation.  Clarisse Thorne writes about an experience that she had, where she and her partner were in the same headspace and were reading each other’s cues well, [...]

3. Mystics & Groupies - November 4, 2011

   [...] so interested in that kind of sex, I am totally interested in that kind of honesty.  For example, Clarrise Thorn writes about one of her first BDSM encounters and lists the questions her dominant partner asked at a [...]

Leave a Reply