Feministe has been posting recently about men who don’t like particular sex acts, namely, period sex and cunnilingus.
Everyone has the right to say no. This includes men. For what it was worth, I think Jill did make a gesture towards there being people with “legitimate” reasons (spine issues, disliking the sight of blood) not to like cunnilingus or period sex. The problem with that, though, is that there is no illegitimate reason to say no to any sex act.
“I hate the taste of pussy” is an okay reason not to eat pussy (although may I suggest dental dams?). “I can’t breathe when I eat people out” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. “I was forced to eat a woman out and now it triggers me” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. “Dunno, just don’t like it” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. Any reason is a good reason not to eat pussy. This is because it is your body, and therefore what you do with it is no one else’s business.
However, the right to say no applies both ways. If a cis woman’s partner says “I don’t want to have sex during your period,” she has the perfect right to say “well, I want sex during my period, so I will go seek a more compatible sex partner” and stop having sex with that partner. Ideally, that would quickly separate out the things each partner is not willing to compromise on from the things they are.
Of course, this isn’t the perfect solution. One partner may end up compromising on something that’s really a dealbreaker for them for the sake of the relationship, or because they love the person, or because they’re so desperate for a partner, any partner, that they want to, and this is non-optimal. However, given that all the other options are, at best, extremely rapey, it’s the best of a lot of shitty options.
And, yes, “pressure all men into eating pussy or having period sex because otherwise they’re misogynists” is really rapey.
I think, however, Jill did have two decent points that were lost in the miasma of “it is okay to say no to sex.” The first is that there are a certain number of people who are honestly disgusted by pussies. (My favorite is a female friend of mine in high school who wouldn’t masturbate because touching your vulva is disgusting.) Sometimes, this manifests as a dude who won’t eat pussy or have period sex because OMG GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSS.
Don’t fuck that guy! He is a douchebag and also probably not good in bed. Also, do not fuck anyone who thinks penises are OMG GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSS, because they are also douchebags and probably not good in bed. But the problem is not the lack of oral sex; the problem is the disgust for a person’s genitalia. Pussy-possessors of the world, even if Pussies Are Gross Dude has period sex, you still shouldn’t fuck him, because he thinks your genitalia (and thus your sexuality) is disgusting.
Her second decent point is that if your partner doesn’t care about your pleasure, that is a giant Red Flag. Everyone gets to have boundaries, of course. But people who are actually good in bed have accepted that no two people’s kinks match up 100% and in a sexual relationship sometimes you will have to do sex acts you’re not that fond of. If you refuse to do any sex act that doesn’t turn you on, no matter how much it turns your partner on, you’re kind of a douchebag. Compromise is what grown-up sexual relationships are all about.
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Right? Period sex and giving oral to women aren’t exactly misogyny litmus tests in my experience. I think it’s definitely OK for men to be uncertain about those acts or dislike them for various reasons. And I think that in her posts, Jill basically forgot the simple fact that “no” is a complete sentence. A dude does not have to provide me with a doctor’s note about his spinal damage to explain why he doesn’t want to lick my pussy.
That said, yeah, a general disinterest in my pleasure or distaste for my genitals is a very bad thing, and a refusal to have oral or period sex can indicate either or both of those things. My general rule for oral is that I want it to be reciprocal and frequent. I’m pretty sure I would have a really hard time keeping up a sexual relationship with someone who didn’t enjoy both giving and receiving. But you know, that’s personal.
Is period sex a thing that is expected? I thought it was generally a taboo.
Druk: I appreciate period sex, at least. I think whether women (and trans men!) like it depends on their own feelings about their genitalia/period’s grossness or lack thereof and whether they feel took icky during their periods to want to have sex at all.
Weirdly enough, I have problems with telling women not to fuck a certain kind of person, even if I most emphatically do not belong to that kind (i.e., my response to offered period sex would be “sure, why not, don’t worry about the blood, I don’t mind if you don’t”, and to asked for cunnilingus “sure, why … ” and the rest would be incomprehensible because after the second word, my mouth and tongue would be too busy doing other things than to enunciate words).
So, while I appreciate the effort to direct women’s sexual attentions away from guys unlike me and therefore indirectly towards guys like me, I still don’t think that it is a third parties’ prerogative to judge a woman’s choice for sex partners as flat out wrong; whether or not a partner is sexually good enough for a woman is her decision and hers alone.
@ Ozy
“I think whether women (and trans men!) like it depends on their own feelings about their genitalia/period’s grossness or lack thereof and whether they feel took icky during their periods to want to have sex at all.”
It can’t have to do with not liking the mess and finding blood to be sticky and abrasive as a lubricant?
Oh yeah, or soreness and vaginal depth issues? Not every woman dislikes period sex because she hates her body.
Thanks for this Ozy. I already made my feelings clear in the other thread, so i won’t bother repeating them here.
Typhon, “soreness and vaginal depth issues” is part of what I meant in “feels too icky to have sex.” And, of course, not liking the mess is a perfectly legitimate reason too! Because all reasons to not want to have sex are legitimate reasons!
EW: I have a very firm “people should not fuck douchebags” policy, including subtypes “don’t fuck people who think your body is gross,” “don’t fuck people who won’t use condoms,” “don’t fuck people who expect you to rape them on the off chance they’re into that sort of thing” and “don’t fuck people who insult you during sex.” Beyond that, it’s really not anyone’s business.
This issue is utterly bizarre and more evidence that a dogmatic approach to ideology leads people to all of a sudden forget what it’s like to be part of the human species. It’s already a stretch to assume that men who don’t want to have sex during a women’s period think vaginas are gross, because they most likely don’t equate menstrual blood with female genitalia in the first place. Humans generally are put off by any type of substance that our bodies expel because at that point we then think of it as waste. Just think of the demonization saliva undergoes once it leaves the mouth and becomes spit. Even semen, which by certain criteria shouldn’t be considered waste, is treated as vile in mainstream porn.
tu quoque says: “men who don’t want to have sex during a women’s period … most likely don’t equate menstrual blood with female genitalia in the first place.”
Uh, how do you figure that?
And this post compared to Jill’s posts is a breath of fresh air.
“Uh, how do you figure that?”
Um, I’m not sure how I could make what I wrote any simpler. I certainly don’t equate semen or urine with my penis. Do you feel like your vagina is melting away when you menstruate?
“I’m pretty sure I would have a really hard time keeping up a sexual relationship with someone who didn’t enjoy both giving and receiving. But you know, that’s personal.”
As a non-op or pre-op (still internally debating the merits of either) trans women, who happens to be too sensitive for her own good (when close to orgasmic level, I get all sensation-overload and beg to stop, like being tickled to death), I can’t receive oral that good. And I got over the deal about it emphasizing my difference, because my boyfriend is really good at that. I don’t ask to receive oral, but will let him when/if he feels like it (yet it’s not much of a physical benefit here). I, however, will gladly offer oral when asked or if he doesn’t mind my offering. I see no contradiction there because we don’t give the same thing exactly. He offers me other stuff at other times. And no one’s keeping count.
Ozy,
you know there actually *are* people who have a psychological condition that manifests as fear of vaginas even though they are heterosexual. Not sure how common that condition is, not very much, I reckon.
Funny how no one even considered HIV in the context of period sex/blood.
As for Jill’s posts, including the one about dealbreakers, it’s good to see feminists finally having to deal with the problem of applying their concepts to the real world. That can only do good.
Ozy,
re “don’t fuck people who think your body is gross” -
have you come across a lot of people who hold that attitude towards their sexual partners? Who are they? I mean, why would they want to have sex (being physically intimate with another person’s body) if they consider the other person’s body to be gross?
“Um, I’m not sure how I could make what I wrote any simpler. I certainly don’t equate semen or urine with my penis. Do you feel like your vagina is melting away when you menstruate?”
Ah, I thought you were using “equate” to mean “associate.”
@Ozy 10:29: Louis CK reference! *highfive*
About the post, I completely agree with it and you have basically read my mind. You do that often!
@ Ozy
“Typhon, “soreness and vaginal depth issues” is part of what I meant in “feels too icky to have sex.” And, of course, not liking the mess is a perfectly legitimate reason too! ”
It was the use of the word ‘icky’ that threw me. I’d suggest ‘uncomfortable’ instead.
In my own personal situation I have a thing about blood. It bothers me. I can handle it coming out of me but when it’s all over my husband it bothers the hell out of me. I’m also really finicky about stickiness. I don’t even cuddle for any length of time because of the sweaty-sticky issue.
On my husband’s side he’s a farm boy and I doubt anything that could come out of my body(naturally) would phase him in the slightest. Plus stickiness does not bother him.
Incidentally the cuddling thing is probably the biggest sticking point for us. I’m glad he doesn’t consider it a deal breaker nor is he as hard line as the women you’re referencing(ie. you’re an asshole for not fulfilling my needs) but it still bothers him that I can’t stand cuddling.
I wish I could cuddle without going into an OCD meltdown.
“One partner may end up compromising on something that’s really a dealbreaker for them for the sake of the relationship, or because they love the person, or because they’re so desperate for a partner, any partner, that they want to, and this is non-optimal.”
My girlfriend pretended to be a boy because her girlfriend wasn’t comfortable with another woman… I probably would’ve crawled back into the closet if my ex had asked me to, just so long as I got to keep my spiro.
Ozy: I find this smbc sums my thoughts on the subject very well. Anyone who tries to tell me what to do with my body, except a professional health opinion, can merrily expect me to put them in the “douchebag” category.
Personally, there are several issues involved for me with the period thing:
-Many menstruating people get hornier during their menstruation, many do not or have their sex drive very much reduced. I myself am nigh anorgasmic during my period, and getting me excited and worked up actually will most likely give me really bad pelvic pain on top of cramps.
-I DO think of it as dirty — menstrual discharge is not just blood, it’s sloughing off of a layer of dead tissue. I don’t ask my boyfriend to give me head rubs when I’m particularly dandruff-y. I wouldn’t scratch his head if he had really bad dandruff, either.
Men, of course, are equally allowed to decided what to stick their parts into (or what people or parts are allowed into them). And some simply don’t want the sensation or feel squicked by it or have safety issues about blood-borne illness. It’s one thing to say “Ewww, periods!” and quite another to cuddle quietly with her and tend to her menses related wants and needs (heat pad, painkillers, chocolate
) while saying “Sorry, sweetie, I don’t feel comfortable doing that”.
I think the same of oral. TBH, I’m not sure I would be comfortable giving cunnilingus where I’m fine with fellatio. Perhaps it is just being uncomfortable with having my face covered in vaginal secretions. Maybe this is my gray-a-ness or straightness talking here.
But I agree it’s all about compromise! I like the idea of pegging – boyfriend doesn’t. He digs something I don’t? Oh well! We have lots of things we can do together and feel entirely fulfilled. People have the right to dump whoever they please over whatever they want: but nobody should be considered an “asshole” because they have aversion to certain sex acts or sex itself. Prude shaming is to men what slut shaming is to women, after all. “Don’t you want sex? You ARE a man, aren’t you?”
I myself, falling under the asexuality umbrella (In short, Grey-A. A tl;dr explanation of my ace-ness available on request), found the comments of the oral thread VERY, VERY uncomfortable. I have found on several occasions that a surprising proportion of feminists are so focused on the idea of slut-shaming that they have a very… uncomfortable view towards aces and any supposed idea of sexual privilege ( http://ontd-feminism.livejournal.com/542915.html – Aces might feel triggered by this; I know I was pretty upset to the point of punching pillows and all). As an ace person, I do feel marginalized and erased and have felt less-than-human for my asexuality, pathologizing isn’t uncommon, and no, I don’t feel comfortable outing myself to people IRL. (My boyfriend and I met online and he’s fully aware and I’ve never “deceived” him about it.)
Yeah, compatibility is key, and everyone has their hard limits on things. But let’s not call people “assholes” or bigoted when they’re not (sometimes reasons can be, but certainly not always). I can only imagine how a mysophobic (“germophobe”) person or a person with OCD regarding cleanliness would feel. (Not to forget blood phobias). And there are, after all, actual gynophobic people and androphobic people who usually have either had extremely little exposure to one gender over their formative years, or have had some psychological trauma in people who are actually straight.
…there’s not much I can really add to this except my own preferences and anecdotes. I will state for the record that I am firmly behind the notion that you can, for a variety of reasons, dislike having sex with a woman while she is menstruating and still be a good human being.
Personally: though I don’t necessarily enjoy the mess or the decidedly… ODD sensation of fingering a vagina that is lubricated by occasionally lump blood, I nevertheless am fully capable of enjoying either fingering or manual sex whilst my partner has a case of the monthlies. If my partner and I are horny enough, it’s no object, really. It’s just a matter of planning ahead and being prepared for cleanup.
I do, however, draw the line at oral sex during menstruation — it’s a hard limit for me, and my partner is one hundred percent fine with that (in fact, my partner, who is also interested in women, wouldn’t dream of going down on someone while said person was menstruating).
Oh, I forgot! With regard to oral sex in general:
For me, it boils down to compatibility. There are going to be people out there who like giving oral sex, and there are going to be people out there who dislike it. If you’re someone who likes receiving oral sex, then it makes sense to find someone who likes giving it. If not, it’s necessary to compromise or even find a new partner, depending on how much of a deal breaker it is for you.
Likewise, if you’re with someone who likes receiving oral sex, I figure you and your partner have the responsibility to give it the old college try and, if that fails, talk about alternatives or compromises.
This was the post Jill should’ve written. Good write-up ozymandias42.
Seriously, I would never leave a relationship over any particular sexual position or act. I think that would be douchbaggy and shallow. I mean, if it’s enough of a reason for a guy to go for a different girl because someone else gives head and swallows, then, honestly, what the hell was that relationship based on? Everyone deserves sexual gratification, but stipulating specific acts is taking it way too far. My rule is that unless I’m paying for it, then I let her please me the way she likes and if she can make me have an orgasm then the relationship is sound and there’s no cause for alarm. But then again, I’m a strong believer in sex as a form of personal expression. Not as a form of ingratiation.
The best way for a woman to completely ruin the experience is by trying to second-guess what she thinks I want, doing things I never asked for and of course doing a terrible job at it. I’ve had too many women give me head where I felt like they were just wasting my time, actually making it harder for me to orgasm with them, and of course the only reason they were doing such a lousy job that I didn’t ask for is because they thought it meant that I would reciprocate. And yeah, the other really awesome way to ruin sex is when I’m working on their breasts or kissing their abdomen and they start trying to shove my head down to force me to eat them out. Forget it!
Speaking of casual sex, I expect it to have way more limitations than relationship sex, especially because of diseases. And also because going down on a girl you’ve never gone down on is like playing Russian Roulette. I’ve gagged enough times with enough women going down there that at this point I just don’t trust a pussy that I don’t already know. And also, I’m sorry, but period sex is not about blood like you just pricked your finger and there’s a little blood, it’s all kind of decaying, used up tissue that’s getting expelled as a waste product. I’m sorry but in terms of the gag factor it’s the equivalent of a rotten egg or road kill. And hey, I’ll still do a girl on her period as long as she’s enjoying it, but it’s definitely not just any old blood down there.
Not sure if this has come up in other threads, but this is a pretty unbelievable dent in the right to say no: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033972/Frenchman-sued-9-000-wife-failing-sex-her.html
I don’t buy this “people have right to X but we call them DB if they do X” talk. Especially given numerous examples of “oppresive name-calling” (hate speach, slut-shaming, etc.)
Her article is insensitive and evil. It is counterproductive to feminism. Why?
Here we have a man saying, “I do not want to have sex during this time frame.” And a woman saying “THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.”
Excuse me but when a man says “I do not want to have sex right now” he is saying “I do not want to have sex right now” and if you cannot respect that boundary, you are a rapist.
Oh, also I object to “it’s a natural bodily function therefore it is perfectly clean.” If she feels that way she can eat my shit. Literally. I hate it when people fall into the “it’s natural therefore clean/safe” trap. IIRC, Socratese died from Hemlock. Don’t worry kids! It’s totally organic and safe! Right?
Periods aren’t just blood. They’re blood PLUS dead lining of the uterine wall that the body is evacuating because it is, well, going to start undergoing bacterial degradation (rotting) if it hasn’t already.
Plus this feels just a very short trip away from “How dare my man not ask to have sex with me while I’m on my period!” Yes, how dare he not want to initiate sex every second of every day?
I’m sure this is on a feminist blog, but Jill needs to have her feminist credentials checked.
@Ozzy
“don’t fuck people who insult you during sex.”
I’ve actually had a girl ask me to insult her and spit on her while having sex. Not that I will EVER tell her this, but part of the reason I “lasted so long” in that encounter was because it turned me off so much to do things like that.
With the oral thing, I do believe like a few people here that it should be reciprocal. I do appreciate a man who actually knows female oral exists; there was a boyfriend I had when I was sixteen that demanded blowjobs a few times a day, as well as public sex, hero/damsel roleplay (which is nice, but telling your mates we met by you saving me? c’mon!) and actually leaving me alone at a party to watch his friend get laid. When I got up the courage to ask to maybe ask him to go down on me, he called me weird. …no wonder it only lasted three months.
With that said, of course men have a right to say no. That shouldn’t even be an issue.
“…because he thinks your genitalia (and thus your sexuality) is disgusting.”
Sexuality is not only about genitalia you know. That would be pretty sad.
Disagreeing with Jill’s defense of period sex post seems warrant an “Oh noes what about the menz????” response. I expected disagreement, but I didn’t see that coming. I guess I’ll have to adjust my perception of Feministe even further down.
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“This was the post Jill should’ve written. Good write-up ozymandias42.”
Ditto.
What struck me about Jill’s posts is that whether it’s “he doesn’t want to perform certain sex acts on you under certain conditions” or “you don’t want to perform certain sex acts on him under certain conditions” somehow he’s a misogynist asshole that needs dumped. Shouldn’t that be the other way around in one case or the other, if of course the whole point wasn’t male=bad, female=good.
As for my own limits, I’ve tried period sex and did not have a pleasant time of it (what TB said about blood and sticky as well as messy, condom limited the abrasive bit though, at least on my end). My only real limit on cunnilingus is that the girl be trimmed (and it’s the only case where I’m picky about a girl’s pubic hair). I am very much the “cuddle quietly with her and tend to her menses related wants and needs (heat pad, painkillers, chocolate
) while saying “Sorry, sweetie, I don’t feel comfortable doing that”” type though.
I was so upset by Jill’s post on Feministe, and I hope no one takes that position up as a ‘feminist position’. The lazy thinking behind things like ‘doesn’t like oral=misogynist’ is unbelievable. We are all aware that any one of us has the right to end a relationship for any reason, and also that any one of us has the right to refuse to engage in sex that we don’t want. So, why approach the topic from the angle Jill did? No idea.
It’s been over a year, and me and my partner are still finding ways to please each other and compromise on our slightly different boundaries when it comes to sex. The point is, oral sex (or period sex) is one aspect of the relationship, and communication is vital for a good sex life. Seems sad that we need to actually say that, rather than just, well, do it.
Sam: I have met straight women who thought that penises were EWWWWWW GROSS, yeah. And at least one charming gentleman online who talked about how disgusting fucking fat chicks was but it was better than masturbating. …yes.
dungone: If my sex partner has sex with me and doesn’t cuddle me, give me orgasms or hurt me, I will dump him, because we are clearly sexually incompatible. If my partner can’t get off without public sex, which squicks me to no end, I hope zie will dump me, because we are clearly sexually incompatible. You don’t have to keep having sex with someone who is incapable of giving you a sex life you find fulfilling; that’s silly. They might be a great person, but they’ll have to be a great friend.
superglucose: Well, if you want to be insulted during sex, it’s a different matter.
@Ozy:
“You don’t have to keep having sex with someone who is incapable of giving you a sex life you find fulfilling; that’s silly”
But what if you deeply love them? In all my relationships, sex has come after a fairly long period of time (a few months). Sex and compatibility is very important to me; is it more important than being in love with a wonderful, caring, compatible in every other way person? Not for me. So although I absolutely get behind the idea that you shouldn’t settle for someone who doesn’t fulfil you, I also allow for the fact that fulfilment comes in different forms. No one is a perfect match.
Basically I’m saying that I find hard and fast rules like ‘no oral=don’t want to know’ unhelpful, because a relationship is about many different levels of compatibility.
I’m with Glove on this one. I really don’t find relationships to be about sex when I can easily have a number of partners in casual relationships without so much as a fraction of the cost and effort of maintaining a serious relationship. Yet I go for relationships when I can because, as you have been discussing in your other posts, it’s a major source of mental health support for me, gives me a greater sense of purpose, really puts me into a better place than casual relationships do.
Once the relationship is there, it’s “built”, then I don’t have to worry about it. As a male, that’s very important because the mere fact of not having to pursue new partners frees up so much time and energy that I can spend on working out (I run marathons), building a business, enjoying art, etc. When in a relationship, instead of thinking of whom I can go on a vacation with, I can think of where we want to go on a vacation. When I’m single I rarely take vacations, road-trips, or anything else that just seems really pointless and unrewarding. When I’m single, I don’t have the time/energy to enjoy home cooking and healthy shopping, etc. When I’m single, just the basic overhead of chores such as cleaning, laundry, or shopping adds to the level of isolation and actually decreases the amount of time I have for friends. So what I look for in a relationship are compatible personalities, similar interests, compatible goals, compatible financial circumstances, good communication, intellectual compatibility, etc. Basically I look for a relationship that helps me be a stronger man, that helps me take on bigger challenges with more confidence and greater resolve. That’s just what I see as the main benefit of reciprocal love. It’s not about cheap thrills in the sack. I just don’t have those kinds of hang-ups and I consider myself very fortunate and very healthy because of that. Or maybe I’m just older and more mature now than I was back in college when this whole sex thing was pretty much new and I hadn’t had the dozens of partners that I’ve had since. I’ve had my share of waking up in hotel rooms with empty bottles of booze on the floor, three naked strippers in the bed, and a hole in the window where the TV exited. Been there, done it, not going back. And I’m still very much driven, if you know what I mean… but there’s just so much more in life.
Indeed, I understand what both of you mean. I think that basic sexual incompatibility (by which I mean one partner absolutely requires a particular sex act to be happy, and one partner absolutely refuses to do that sex act under any circumstances) is probably rather rare among couples who are willing to work together to come to a compromise that fulfills both of them. I’m not saying that sex is the most important thing in a relationship; of course it isn’t. But it is definitely a factor and it would not be wrong for me to break up with someone because I’d be sexually miserable without pain and they start crying at the idea of hurting me. (Of course, you could also come to another arrangement, such as letting the masochist go to play parties or a prodom.)
Hmm, I am wondering if this can be a factor in the often voiced complaint from women that men just don’t put enough effort into a relationship? That men feel that being in a relationship actually is a welcomed reprieve from the strenuousness of pursuing while women tend to up the effort whe they’re in an relationship – hence the stereotype of women wanting/trying to change the man.
The terms men and women in the paragraph above are of course meant as subsets of all men and women and are steretypes to boot.
I think Jill’s post lumped two very different issues together. “I don’t want to have that kind of sex,” does not imply “because it’s disgusting,” even though way too many people put all 12 words in the same sentence. Way, WAY too many people put those 12 words in a sentence aimed at somebody who has just invited them to have sex. That can be really offensive and hurtful.
In general, I agree that “No” is a complete sentence. If someone is asking you to have sex, and you don’t want to, you don’t owe them excuses or explanations. But if a friend or lover is asking, I think you owe them a polite refusal, if you want to stay on good terms afterwards. (Sometimes a friendship or romantic relationship turns abusive, and you just need to keep yourself safe. That’s different.)
Sam:
I have also encountered lots of people who want to fuck people whose bodies they think are gross. When I used to live next door to a fraternity house, I overheard a lot of conversations among the young men in the yard and on the sidewalk. They expressed a really odd mix of disgust for the bodies of the young women they were trying so hard to have sex with, and intense desire to have sex with them again.
@Ozy, I grant you your point, in a sense – if someone requires a very specific form of entertainment for them to maintain their sanity in a relationship and there is absolutely no substitute that is just as good, then yes, I would leave that person. Frankly, that relationship wouldn’t have happened. It weirds me out just thinking about it. I would view that person as having a pretty crippling problem that keeps them from being able to find happiness and relate to other people, it does not seem like just a mere issue of compatibility. It’s just so… limiting. Yes, it probably seems like a paradox, but I find all of that kinky crap to be extremely ritualistic, preconceived, and contrived. And to need it in that one specific way? Limiting! When someone needs it to the point where they can’t have a healthy relationship without it… woah, really… you really can’t live without this? You need to suck a toe or get slapped or gagged? Sorry, just can’t see that as a legitimate need, I see it as a personality fault or an addition or even a disorder if it’s that much of a need that it keeps you from being able to love someone. Part of what’s so liberating about getting away from religion is that no one tries to tell you what you can and can’t do with your partner… so I just don’t see why someone would turn around and impose those mental blocks and arbitrary rules on themselves and then try to live their entire life based on them – including their choice of lover. That just scares me. Anyway, that’s just me and feel free to disagree, but obviously I agree that I wouldn’t want a relationship with someone who has a deep-seated need like that.
@Tamen, you misunderstood me. I’m not talking about giving up on the relationship. I’m talking about being able to focus on improving myself and being a better man when I don’t have to put forth the extraordinary legwork that men put into initiating relationships with dozens/hundreds of women, paying for hundreds of dates, and basically exhausting all my resources just to get a relationship off the ground in the first place. Women don’t have to do this, they just take this effort that’s done on their behalf for granted. So they probably don’t understand the value of a stable relationship to a man and I honestly can’t expect them to. They seem to be under the impression that they deserve to be courted for the rest of their lives just like the first day they met, when they were playing 12 different guys off of each other for who could jump through the most hoops to win their attention. And in reality, it’s women who are more likely to “let themselves go” and gain a bunch of weight after marriage… I find it quite unbelievable that they complain about husbands who “refuse” to change who they are at that point. Beggars can’t be choosers.
@dungone
I think perhaps you misunderstood my misunderstanding.
I didn’t mean to imply that you gave up on your relationships or that men does. I was trying to talk about the steretype that women put more effort into relationships than men. I am not sure at all that stereotype is generally true – it may stem from an expectation from the woman that the man keep up the level of effort he put in when he pursued the relationship. And I think you did make a valid and true point, namely that many men don’t want to keep up that level of effort when they’re in an relationship because it really can be exhausting. As for who let’s themselves go after marriage is generally not a productive avenue in discussion so I’ll just say I at least only have anecdata about that and that is not enough for me to have any belief one way or the other.
“”Disagreeing with Jill’s defense of period sex post seems warrant an “Oh noes what about the menz????” response. I expected disagreement, but I didn’t see that coming. I guess I’ll have to adjust my perception of Feministe even further down.”"
Not only that but lesbians trying to point out the article was heteronormative (because only men and women have to negotiate period sex, right?) Got shouted down with “Oh noes what about the lezbianz”
And trans people trying to point out cissexism got shouted down with “Oh noes what about teh tranniez”
I was a bit shocked, especially at the reaction to the lesbians, who I always assumed were well accepted in the feminist movement, I suppose one of these days I’ll stop being so naive…
Don’t forget “Oh noes what about teh acez???” and “Oh noes what about teh awtisticz???” in the oral one. (I’ll agree the derail on aces probably wasn’t justified, but still, the comparison to machinery and the general “don’t inflict yourself on us, freak” vibe is pretty nasty)
Ugh… from the original article the period sex one came from:
OrangeYouGlad:
I was a bit shocked, especially at the reaction to the lesbians, who I always assumed were well accepted in the feminist movement, I suppose one of these days I’ll stop being so naive…
I used to be shocked by things like that too but then I learned something. A group’s acceptance in a movement is directly dependent on how useful that acceptance is to the movement.
Glove:
I was so upset by Jill’s post on Feministe, and I hope no one takes that position up as a ‘feminist position’.
And why hope that? I understand the importance that it not be taken as “the feminist position” but given the strong ties to feminism the folks of that site has I don’t see any problem with it being referred to as “a feminist position”.
superglucose:
I’ve actually had a girl ask me to insult her and spit on her while having sex. Not that I will EVER tell her this, but part of the reason I “lasted so long” in that encounter was because it turned me off so much to do things like that.
Difference being it was something she wanted. I’m sure that even with being allowed to insult her there were probably some some insults that would out of bounds for her.
+1 to Ozy’s OP. “You’re a misogynist if you don’t want sex while I’m bleeding” is rapey. “I’m not interested in being with you if you don’t want sex while I’m bleeding” is a reasonable assertion of boundaries. Unusual boundaries, but people are weird in their needs sometimes and they have a right to that. It’s a uniquely feminist form of entitlement to call someone a misogynist because they refuse a sex act with you. Also, I’m really not into pee-play, but I can’t resist:
BTW I also have a natural, healthy colon-having body too, but I’m not into that either.
Dungone: I guess, to me, the way my drive for pain feels is very similar to the way my drive for orgasms feels. If someone was in a romantic relationship with me and was like “no orgasms during sex for you ever,” I wouldn’t want to continue having sex with this person, you know? The same thing applies to me and pain.
Erm, as my only sexual relationship was with a pre-orgasmic woman, I just want to point out that while a man has total control over whether or not he will cuddle with his partner or hurt her, his ability to “give his partner orgasms” may not be under his control. (That’s another kind of “sexual incompatibility”: Where one partner is willing to do pretty much everything to get his/her partner off, but the partner doesn’t know how someone could get her/him off.)
I guess an interesting blog post could be made about performative aspects of male sexuality, anxiousness (as separate from eagerness) about bringing one’s partner to orgasm and pre-orgasmic women.
EW, no, that was not what I meant at all! I was just trying to make an analogy between my interest in pain and my interest in something that I think is a more common dealbreaker. Orgasms and pain are both necessary for me to enjoy sex; they’re not necessarily necessary for a pre-orgasmic woman. (Unless, of course, she wants to orgasm, in which case… well, I have no advice, that’s never been my problem.
) As long as everyone involved is having a good time, the orgasm count really doesn’t matter. 
@ Adrian
“They expressed a really odd mix of disgust for the bodies of the young women they were trying so hard to have sex with, and intense desire to have sex with them again.”
Maybe I’m just showing my age but I’d classify that, with the common ‘penises EW’ among young straight women, as being a transitional thing.
In other words the young men were just starting to grow out of that child-like sexually nervous stage in which girls no longer have cooties but sex is still weird, sort of gross and scary.
If they’re in their late twenties, early thirties then it becomes more disquieting.
“”Don’t forget “Oh noes what about teh acez???” and “Oh noes what about teh awtisticz???” in the oral one. (I’ll agree the derail on aces probably wasn’t justified, but still, the comparison to machinery and the general “don’t inflict yourself on us, freak” vibe is pretty nasty)”"
Agh, really? I skipped comment on the oral post already disgusted by the post on period sex and I’m rather glad I did. Even if the derail wasn’t justified I generally believe in in shutting those things down politely. Not comparing marginalised people to machines and calling them freaks.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say “I don’t feel comfortable doing X” or even just “No”. Not everyone likes or is comfortable with everything.
I’m not comfortable coming down on Jill so quick for her period sex article. I disagree with her that her partner was misogynistic, and I hope to god that she broke up with that guy in a respectful, non-asshole manner (something, IMO, we all deserve unless we’re substantial assholes ourselves). But I can imagine myself being peeved at a partner describing my penis or semen or whatever as gross, so I can at least understand her feelings.
I also think that rights are far from the be-all-end-all of the conversation about assholishness. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of things I can do that are totally within my rights but that are also asshole things to do. For example, I have the right to abruptly break off contact with one of my friends for little/no reason and with no explanation (“you don’t need a reason to not want to talk to someone!”), but that would be an asshole thing to do.
So I think we can still talk about people being inconsiderate and selfish in bed (and in other matters) without having to justify it in a rights framework. I think hammering out what people’s rights are is only the very beginning of the conversation. The rest of the conversation is about assholish behavior that people can appropriately feel aggrieved over, even though we recognize it as important that people have the right to do it.
With that in mind, I can imagine some people refusing oral where it would be an asshole thing to do (e.g. no issues giving oral, just lazy and selfish), even if it isn’t always an asshole thing to do (e.g. serious issues giving oral, declines respectfully), and even though it is always within their rights. And I think their partners’ then have a legitimate complaint when they are acting assholish.
I think why people don’t like to talk about this as much, though, is that it’s not something that you can create black-and-white, clear-cut, legalistic rules about. It’s fuzzy, there is a lot of grey area, and it’s circumstantial. And it also often depends on accurate mind reading (e.g. for motive, causes, etc.) to sort things out with certainty, which we have not yet developed.
So people cling to their black-and-white rights-based rules because it’s easy. But I think we’re missing out on 99% of the human experience when we talk only in these terms. I agree that this sort of rights-oriented discussion is important, but I don’t think it’s good to use it to erase the fuzzier parts of the discussion, which are also valid and important.
I think Jill was speaking about these fuzzier parts in her articles linked from the OP. I may not agree with her conclusions, but I don’t think rights-oriented arguments are really the appropriate response to her article.
Having said all of this, though, I do notice that at places like Feministe the fuzzy parts seem to be applied rather selectively against men, whilst rights-oriented arguments are used to minimize or erase the fuzzier parts when it might highlight women acting like assholes.
Ran into something like this today.
So $guy posts about how his girlfriend, $girl, has been bleeding a bit whenever he fingers her with three fingers. Apparently there are small tears in the vaginal wall and it’s bothering him a little. He sees the blood (which is very red and watery) and is worried he’s hurting her or damaging her. $Girl says, “no, it’s fine, I like it and I barely notice the pain. Keep going, the orgasm is worth it.” $Guy is freaking out a little bit and really uncomfortable with this.
EVERY MEMBER OF THE FORUM SAID “She’s ok with it so you should keep doing it.”
EVERY MEMBER OF THE FORUM MISSED THE POINT which was that $guy was worried and concerned about his partner’s health and well-being as a result of a sex act which was making him uncomfortable and not want to do that sex act.
To which some of them women replied, “That’s condescending.”
I was livid. How DARE someone take the worry and concern $guy has for his partner and declare it “condescending.” How DARE they not let him set HIS ground rules (which could very well be, “No sex acts that make you bleed,” or it could just be “Can we not do this until a doctor says nothing’s wrong and everything’s ok?” or it could even be “man I don’t want to finger you again because it worries me a little.”). When I had the gall to say that if he was uncomfortable preforming those acts, he should not preform those acts until he’s comfortable preforming them, they said “oh no that’s not the point the point is he’s being condescending and worrying about nothing.”
MEN GET TO SAY “NO” TOO AND IT IS STILL A COMPLETE SENTENCE.
But nope, too many times I’m seeing these people (all of them women, all of them self-proclaimed feminists) say things that either outright state or heavily imply that the female partner’s sexual satisfaction comes before the comfort zone of the male partner.
I think it’s a byproduct of the “no means no” mentality, albeit accidentally. See men need to be attentive to make sure that the sex (that they’re always up for and always want) they are “taking” from the woman is something the woman is willing to “give.” Sure, these people can intellectually state “men don’t always want sex and can say no” but, well, they don’t *feel* it. They can say it but they don’t *believe* it, not really. So it ends up in a situation where people, like Jill, make posts like this article.
In a sense what she’s saying is “The only reason a man wouldn’t want to do $sexact is because it’s disgusting and he’s a misogynist! And you should dump him!” The implication of that is that $sexact is something that any given normal man would always want to do, right? Because it’s sex! And men always love sex! The other implication is that *her* needs come before *his* needs. “Hey, I will not go down on you.” “MISOGYNIST!”
The secret though? The message not spoken? “I will not go down on you because when I was fifteen my aunt forced me to eat her out and it causes some really bad triggers for me.” Or maybe “I will not go down on you because I have a trigger where if my mouth gets covered and something is close to my nose I feel like I’m drowning and I start panicking.”
The best part is that because of the way society is, men will almost NEVER admit that they’d been sexually assaulted and will ALSO almost never admit something like “If I feel like I’m drowning I panic.”
(although — and this may be related to the fact that dudes are somewhat hesitant to say woman-hating things around feminist bloggers — I have never actually met a dude who said he didn’t like giving oral sex. I have heard they exist, though, and they sound terrible)
Oh. By the way: I don’t like eating girls out very much. It’s fun occasionally but my jaw ALWAYS cramps and it makes kissing afterwords a little bit of a pain (because of the afformentioned cramps). Also my first girlfriend had a really strong smelling stuff down there. Not *bad* smelling, but *strong* smelling. Kind of like, you know, Garlic? I like the smell of garlic. Stick two broken raw cloves up my nose and I’ll be gagging for breath and begging you to kill me. Whenever I ate her out (or fingered her) the smell would linger for hours. That wasn’t so bad when it was on my hands… I didn’t need to have my hands constantly in my face. But if I’d eaten her out it would persist on my lips for that whole time and I’d start to get a headache… again not because it smelled bad, but because it smelled *strong*.
This girl also thought that oral sex was gross. She never had my penis in her mouth without a condom on (and my god that’s a waste of time). My new gf? Claims to have a gag reflex that’ll cause her to almost vomit if something gets put in her mouth. I full intend to experiment with her (obviously with her permission) and show her some ways to, well, lick me without having to stick the whole thing in her mouth, but I won’t be dumping her because she doesn’t want to give me a BJ… nor will she be dumping me because I don’t want to eat her out.
“He’s not entitled to a pat on the head and approval of his sexist views,”
Ok well here’s the small deal. Yes, I’m sexist. Not because I think women are hot or because I view porn or because I want to have sex with women. I’m sexist against women and it’s mostly in ways I don’t notice (because if I noticed them, I’d do my best to correct them, see how this works?)
One way I am NOT sexist against women is this:
I don’t like fingering girls who are on their periods. I have a bad habit of biting my fingernails and chewing on my cuticles and because of that (and other things) I really just hate getting stuff on my hands. I hate making Meatloaf, I hate playing in the mud (and always have), and I really get a bit squicked whenever I see that combination blood/uterine lining on my hands. Oh also I don’t like eating girls out during shark week.
One other way I am NOT sexist against women is this:
Many women’s vaginas smell very strongly.
I mean come on, you straight girls probably know what sweaty balls smell like I’m sure. I don’t find the scent revolting and actually *do* enjoy the sweaty, dirty smell of my balls when I’m in the middle (or done) with a great encounter… I *also* enjoy the smell of a woman’s vagina and the stuff it produces.
Similarly, I like ice cream, but if you make me eat a gallon of it in an hour, I will throw up.
CLEARLY I HATE ICE CREAM!
I’m imagining a scenario where a person was lactating (let’s assume cis woman for simplicity) and got really strong sexual sensation from being suckled/erotic lactation stuff, and it helped with their aching breasts and nipples or whatever.
So she asks her partner to nurse from her breast; and they decline. Oh well, go pump your own breast milk. It’s still not sexist just because it’s generally women who lactate.
Or if a cis guy only has his best orgasms from prostate stimulation and wants his partner to peg/penetrate him or do some anal fingering, it’s still not wrong for a person to refuse to participate in that, either. (I’ve heard of gay guys who don’t like anal, giving or receiving)
I can’t picture myself fingering a guy’s anus to stimulate his prostate. It’s just… not something I want to do. The article implies that because I don’t have a “real, legitimate reason”, that I must be bigoted for it, or I can be called into question about my personal issues. It doesn’t mean I find prostates icky or prostate-possessors icky.
I don’t know. I agree that “pressure all men into eating pussy or having period sex because otherwise they’re misogynists” is super rapey, but I don’t think that’s what Jill was getting at, at all. (And neither was “everyone should have oral/period sex all the time”, which is what a lot of people seemed to think she was saying.) What I got from those posts was basically this:
a) Everyone has a right to refuse sex for any reason. Granted, this wasn’t the main point of either post, but it was there nonetheless. As other posters here have said, “No” is a complete sentence, and coercion is always, always wrong.
b) ON THE OTHER HAND, a lot of sexual hang-ups do carry cultural baggage that needs to be unpacked. In particular, a lot of them have to do with some fairly misogynistic ideas about women’s bodies, and those ideas are worthy of critique. Sexuality doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
c) Everyone has a right to look for a partner who will meet their sexual needs, and to leave a partner who cannot or will not meet those needs, whatever the reason. And no, it is not shallow to dump someone because they’re not meeting a sexual need or desire you have, if that desire is important enough to you.
So, for instance, let’s say I was in a (hypothetical) relationship with a (hypothetical) dude. I (hypothetically) get pregnant, and this dude, even though he doesn’t want to end the relationship, refuses to have sex with me for that nine-month period because he is grossed out by my pregnant body.
a) He has every right to say no, and I have a responsibility to never, ever coerce him into sex.
b) Having said that, what is actually going on here? Is he grossed out by pregnancy because it goes against our socially constructed ideas about how a woman’s body is supposed to look and function? Is he buying into the notion that mothers (and by, extension, future mothers) are somehow devoid or sexuality, and that everything related to motherhood is unsexy? Is he no longer attracted to me because I’m not thin anymore? Because that’s pretty problematic, and this guy, while he is 100% entitled to say no, may be channelling some serious misogyny. ALSO, straight-up telling me that he thinks my pregnancy is gross is pretty rude and hurtful. (I hope that no one would actually do this, but dudes don’t seem to have a problem expressing their disgust towards menstruation, even though it is something that I experience roughly 1/4 of the time. That hurts my feelings, you guys.)
c) Regardless of his reasons, I would not be happy with a partner who refuses to have sex with me for a better part of a year, and I would be well within my rights to dump him and look for someone who isn’t disgusted by my body. Breaking up with someone because they fail to satisfy your needs =/= coercion. It’s actually kind of just a good idea.
Dudes: would you be okay with dating a lady who thought semen (and/or your penis) was completely disgusting and would never touch it ever? Probably not, right? And maybe you would wonder what her deal was, and why she hated your body so much, and maybe your feelings would be hurt?
It seems like what most people are taking issue with is the notion that a person’s sexual… preferences, I guess, or dislikes, or whatever, can have anything to do with misogyny. Personally, I think it’s a valid argument, albeit a difficult one, because how do we define what’s misogyny and what’s just personal taste? Ultimately, we can’t. Personally, I think that these hang-ups (for lack of a better term) need to be respected on an individual level, but critiqued on a societal level. On an individual level, the only real solution is to dump someone if you’re not happy with them. Ultimately, I think that last bit is what Jill was getting at, and it sounded like good advice to me.
If I think my body is gross, can I let someone else have sex with me?
What about that part:
“Lots of healthy vaginas expel blood. And if you think that’s gross, well, maybe spend your naked extracurricular time with someone who is vagina-free”
You don’t like vaginas? You gay? Some nice little shaming going on here eh?
@Xakudo: I can see your point, bit I think that hwne it comes to sexual taboos/ sexual dislikes/ not feeling in the mood for a certain sex act, the principle should be that you have the absolute moral right to say no, meaning that anybody who wants to question the validity of your reasons or considers you to be a douchebag for using that right would be totally *wrong*.
@ozy: Thanks for admitting that you don’t know what to do about the situation of being with a pre-orgasmic woman who wants to orgasm during sex; when I once brought this issue up on a thread about “women’s right to orgasms”, I was told off for being a douchebag blaming my partner for the lack of orgasms (I wasn’t; I just wanted to counter the notion that in my situation, *I* was to blame for her lack of orgasms) she experiences instead of just stimulating her clitoris during sex – because, of course, that always works, and I would have known that if I had tried … *sigh*
OT: Linkless comment in moderation, any idea why? Was it the huge amount of times the word “orgasm” featured in it?
Ozy: Great post, btw. This is a good, well-rounded look at the issue that gives due respect for men’s perspectives.
@Brett K
“It seems like what most people are taking issue with is the notion that a person’s sexual… preferences, I guess, or dislikes, or whatever, can have anything to do with misogyny. Personally, I think it’s a valid argument, albeit a difficult one, because how do we define what’s misogyny and what’s just personal taste? ”
Jill’s post said that barring allergy or deep aversion to all blood, that it definitely WAS misogyny. Not that it could possibly be and let’s discuss that. But a “dump the misogynist bastard” for every single case.
I do agree that there are people who dislike certain sex acts because they think people’s bodies are gross. But in that case you shouldn’t say “have period sex, or you’re a misogynist”; you should say “don’t be disgusted by your partner’s body, that’s misogynistic. For instance, if you don’t want to eat pussy or have period sex because vaginas are gross, your partner should dump you.” There’s a difference in emphasis here that I think is important.
… a lot of sexual hang-ups do carry cultural baggage that needs to be unpacked. In particular, a lot of them have to do with some fairly misogynistic ideas about women’s bodies, and those ideas are worthy of critique.
Honestly, I am not buying this argument. If the issue is that someone finds a body part disgusting, that is not sexist even if it is something only one sex has. People need to get over the idea that you are entitled to have your body worshiped. You are not. People can find a body part or something that comes out of a body disgusting, and it does not come from any sexist idea. Most people are disgusted by mucus and saliva, yet that does not make them misanthropes. The more important issue is why someone would want to engage in a sex act they find disgusting.
And no, it is not shallow to dump someone because they’re not meeting a sexual need or desire you have, if that desire is important enough to you.
It depends on the desire. If a person refuses to have sex at all, then it is understandable for you to leave them. If a person refuses to do a particular sex act or refuses to do it at a particular time, it is pretty shallow to dump the person rather than find a compromise. Imagine the outrage if scores of men dumped their girlfriends or wives who refused to give them oral sex. Would you honestly argue, “Well, she’s not blowing him, and getting blown’s really important to him, so she’s gotta go”?
@Tamen 8:51 (way back in the thread): You know you’re not the only one who disagreed with her, right? More polite commentators got more polite responses.
@ Brett K
And with your hypothetical dude who doesn’t want to have sex with you while you’re pregnant… what if you’re assuming it’s misogynist when what’s really happening is that he’s _terrified of hurting his kid._ Or you.
@ sugarglucose
“When I had the gall to say that if he was uncomfortable preforming those acts, he should not preform those acts until he’s comfortable preforming them, they said “oh no that’s not the point the point is he’s being condescending and worrying about nothing.””
Interesting anecdote.
I think this comes in under most people’s obsession with SUPER AGENCY MAN(tm)!
People have a tendency to ascribe to men more agency then they actually have. One manifestation of this is taking what seems to be obviously about the man’s personal passive reaction and make it more about the woman’s. Instead of expressing vulnerability, he’s really expressing condescension. Because vulnerability is reactive, condescension is active!
One of the main problems in supporting the dynamic of SUPER AGENCY MAN(tm)! is that being a violent rapist bastard will always be more MANLY then being a guy who is able to admit to himself ‘I was raped by my grandmother at 13 and that’s giving me a lot of boundary issues and some really dark thoughts that I’m worried about.’
So what the people in that forum were doing was making the situation conform to a more mentally comfortable ‘woman-passive/man-active’ dynamic. And calling that feminist, I imagine.
BTW, is that supposed to be feminist? I see a lot of feminists doing it.
BlackHumor: I don’t consider my comment to be rude nor impolite. Granted, it was to the point and wasn’t wrapped with niceties. I do however feel that the response from zuzu was disproportionately rude – and in fact pointless because they had already shut down any discussion with me by I would presume banning me since two other comments didn’t get through moderation.
Is it your honest opinion that that comment of mine warranted that reply? Did it warrant a banning? Please answer that question as I honestly would like to know if my sense of politeness is so out of whack.
BlackHumor: I was taken aback by that “WATM” reaction as well, and not because of its lack of politeness, but rather because of the content: That it’s off-topic to consider men in the comment section of a post arguing that there are some sexual boundaries that make hetero men who have them assholes.
No matter how polte that viewpoint would have been expressed, it would have been hugely wrong-headed.
@typhonblue, yes I agree. The attitude is pervasive. It goes right down to the “man up” responses to men who have any sort of problem with anything at all. And if a men are treated poorly by a women in our society, it’s really because of the sexist standards that men as a group have imposed on women who just can’t help themselves. I don’t think you can really talk about The Patriarchy without creating Super Agency Man.
I find it funny to be so concerned with politeness, when “tone argument” is considered to be a frustrating thing among feminists. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/More_flies_with_honey
Only PoC/disabled/LGBTQ/women/etc are allowed to be frustrated and sarcastic?
@ Skidd
“Only PoC/disabled/LGBTQ/women/etc are allowed to be frustrated and sarcastic?”
What is the Perfectly Privileged Man(tm) allowed emotional range? Certainly not feelings of vulnerability, because they have no vulnerabilities. Or anger, because they have nothing to be angry about. Smugly superior to other less ‘enlightened’ males if they’re feminist?
@ dungone
“I don’t think you can really talk about The Patriarchy without creating Super Agency Man.”
I think the creation of Super Agency Man just might be the draw for feminism among a lot of men. Hell, I’d say it’s the draw among all traditional societies for men to invest in a position that, on the ground, makes them more expendable then women.
Super Agency Man! Doing whatever a Super Agent can! Fighting the Man! And His lies! Catching damsels! Any size! (Well, preferably petite.) He’s SUPER AGENT MAN!
@elementary_watson:
I feel that you are conflating separate issues. I maintain that people always have the right to say no, and do not have to explain themselves. We seem to agree on this point. But I do not see that as erasing of douchebag/asshole behavior that is executed within that right, whereas it seems that you (and many others on this thread–not trying to single you out) do.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I find Jill’s conflation of not wanting to do these acts and misogyny extremely problematic, and I do recognize it as a shaming tactic. And at least as problematic is when she shames men by conflating refusal with always and forever being a horrible sexual partner. And finally there was this bit pointed out by Feckless:
Which introduces a strong element of, “What are you, gay?” (And I believe there are other shaming tactics in there as well… her articles are pretty packed with BS.)
And these all create a highly toxic social environment where men are not able to say no, lest they be deemed bad people or have their masculinity called into question. And that is horrible, nasty, evil, bad, etc. and Jill fully qualifies as an asshole for so loudly enforcing that in her articles. I can only imagine how Jill herself would react if someone posted a similar article with the genders flipped.
BUT, I am afraid that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, here. I think it is useful and important to be able to talk about when people are being inconsiderate and selfish, even when they are within their rights. And I think it is equally important to be able to talk about when people’s reactions to things (female genitals included) may be influenced by problematic social norms etc.
I think it wildly unlikely (and even demonstrably false) that all men who consider going down on a woman to be “gross” consider it thusly due to misogyny. I find it very unlikely that most men who react that way are reacting thusly due to misogyny. But I still think it is important to be able to talk about how problematic views of women’s bodies can sometimes contribute to these issues.
Another example: I have come across women in the USA that think that foreskins are gross. Given the USA’s cultural environment with respect to circumcision, I think it is important to question where these women’s reactions are really coming from. And, further, I think a guy would have every right to be upset if such a women was about to have sex with him until she got his pants off, and then reacted disgusted and left. Granted, this is more extreme than the topics Jill was discussing, given that it is related to genital mutilation. But I am using it to try to illustrate my point.
If we just left it at, “Her no means no, and you’re bad to question her refusal!” I think we would be missing out on some really important discussion. Obviously the woman in that situation has every right to refuse, and the guy has no right to demand sex from her, and we also can’t read her mind and therefore can’t know for sure why she reacted that way. But I think the guy is not entirely unjustified if he feels hurt and aggrieved, and I think it is totally valid to talk about the possibly problematic elements of her refusal.
But this also goes beyond just things connected to social issues. I think everyone is an inconsiderate asshole sometimes, and a few people are inconsiderate assholes most of the time, and I think it is valuable to be able to talk about this as well, and I think it is a frightening prospect that we would have to always justify this in a rights framework (i.e. we can only point out a person’s asshole behavior if they’ve violated someone’s rights acting that way).
That should have read:
…you should say “don’t be disgusted by your partner’s body, that’s misogynistic. For instance, if you don’t want to eat pussy or have period sex because vaginas are gross, your partner should dump you.”
Ok, but would similar advice given to a man whose partner thinks his sperm is gross? I doubt it.
It would be something along the lines of: “Most important you have to respect the boundaries of your partner, don’t pressure her into something she doesn’t want to do. Try to understand why she thinks sperm is gross. Maybe she’s made bad experiences in the past or her conservative upbringing hinders her. Be patient, built up trust, show her that you respect her boundaries, encourage open discussions about your sex-life. There’s a good change that together you can find a solution which is convenient for both of you.”
In contrast the advice given to woman is: “Dumb the motherf… already”
I think the first advice is more healthy, regardless of gender. On a personal note, one of my ex-girlfriends had serious body issues. When we started to get intimate she demanded that the lights had to be turned off. Some positions were off-limits, I suspect, she worried that she might look unfavorable. But we were able to overcome these issues. I liked her enough that I didn’t dumb her on the first sight of any sexual problem. In this case I was more experienced than her. But I have body issues myself and I’m sometimes insecure about my performance in bed. The thought that a woman I like would dump me because I can’t live up to her standards worries me.
Now, I’m not saying you should be the therapist of your partner. It’s a matter of consideration. If your partner has sexual issues or sexual boundaries you are not able to deal with it’s best to end the relationship for both of you. But DTMFA shouldn’t be the answer to any sexual problem you encounter.
There is nothing empowering about being a chauvinist. If you are female chauvinist you are still an asshole. And there is a difference between encouraging women to set healthy boundaries and encouraging them to always put their needs first without any consideration.
@Tamen: Well, nearly nothing warrants a “what about the menz” response, but your objection was definitely a thread hop, variations on it had been brought up multiple times before, and generally contained an implication of “those damn feminists think its okay to rape me” when the rest of the comments thread had already discussed and dismissed the whole “isn’t this rapey” argument long ago.
So I’m not entirely surprised that at least one poster seems to have considered you a troll, though she didn’t exactly respond maturely.
@EW: But other men made very similar arguments and were responded to much more politely (see Lavena at post 292 responding to another man making a very similar argument). Hell, tons of WOMEN made Tamen’s argument for him long before his post (see Q Grrl at post 20 making almost the exact same argument as Tamen).
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that the bad reaction has got something to do with Tamen (or possibly zuzu), not something to do with Feministe.
@typhon: I think the important thing to do here is disconnect “disgust for a normal male/female body part” from “refusing to have sex because of disgust for a normal male/female body part”.
You can refuse sex for any reason, without judgement for the refusal or pressure to change it. But it’s misogynistic (or, it can be misogynistic) to be disgusted by a normal vagina, and it’s misandrist (or can be misandrist) to be disgusted by a normal penis. No extra shame if you refuse sex due to that though; you’d be just as much a misogynist if you swallowed your disgust and fucked the lady with the bleeding vagina anyway.
I think the problem with Jill’s post is that she did not sufficiently disconnect those two, and so she was talking about disgust for period sex when she really should have been talking about disgust for periods.
“And, further, I think a guy would have every right to be upset if such a women was about to have sex with him until she got his pants off, and then reacted disgusted and left. ”
Ahem. When it comes to trans people, people seem to think that your surgical status should almost be public knowledge. Because OMG if a guy saw me as a girl and then saw I had a (pretty small) penis instead of a vulva, he might go berserk. Well, it’s not supposed to be my problem you know – but even feminists will say that I should have disclosed, and basically victim-blame trans people on that basis.
@BlackHumor:
Not sure I agree with that. I think people’s choices and actions have a lot more to do with whether they are ___ist than their gut reactions to things. In fact, I typically have more respect for people that work to manage and get over their issues than I do for people that never had issues in the first place.
Does that mean we get to call women misogynists in a shaming tone if they are disgusted by their own menstrual blood?
@Tamen:
The thing that most bothers me about the DTMFA meme isn’t that it’s saying to dump the guy, it’s that it is doing so in a highly pejorative way. So it’s not that these women feel entitled to break up with these men (which, of course, they are), they also feel entitled to insult and shame them (which they aren’t).
(And incidentally, I find it terribly amusing that a feminist site like Feministe is using “mother fucker” as a derogatory. Because, you know, having sex with a woman who has children is such a horrible, horrible thing…)
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that the bad reaction has got something to do with Tamen (or possibly zuzu), not something to do with Feministe.”
Not with Tamen being assumed to be male?
BlackHumor: EXACTLY.
Thomas: Being disgusted by an ordinary, functioning male body is misandrist, yes. However, I do agree that your first set of advice is healthier, for most situations, than the second set.
Apparently I suck at commenting today. That was to Thomas, not Tamen.
@BlackHumor, just because a bunch of pigheaded women already dismissed the notion that their behavior and opinions are pigheaded doesn’t make Tamen foolish for bringing it up again. Maybe I didn’t understand your point? Maybe enough people have to say it before it starts to register in some people’s heads that their groupthink isn’t how everyone else feels.
The problem with Jill’s post is that she’s a person who only thinks about herself and makes a lot of highly charged and politicized accusations when she doesn’t get what she wants. She’s a bratty, immature woman.
@Schala:
I hadn’t made that connection before, but you’re right. (And for the record: I think trans people have no obligation to disclose, including with sexual partners or potential sexual partners.)
@Zakudo And, further, I think a guy would have every right to be upset if such a women was about to have sex with him until she got his pants off and discovered he had a foreskin, and then reacted disgusted and left.
I agree wholeheartedly. Where were you a couple weeks ago when people were saying that was a legitimate ‘sexual orientation’?
Oh wait, right, that only applies to trans people.
Once again, continue to rock, just using what you’ve said to point out some inconsistencies in previous arguments.
@Ozy Being disgusted by an ordinary, functioning male body is misandrist
And once again, this is why you can’t draw a neat line and separate a person’s sex from their gender… you’ve said that disgust at a ‘male’ body and an ordinary, functioning… (remember your definition of male and female?) is misandry, i.e. hatred of men.
It does sometimes seem like a recurring theme in subversivist writing is that they ‘reject the binary’ but at the same time, still claim membership in one of the two binary sexes… Hence the argument among many, cis and trans, that a vagina, forget womanhood (because we’ll project it onto you anyway) is the ticket to entry to Michfest…
Now, while I understand the need in this society to sometimes acknowledge the legal fictions that surround our personhoods, I never understand the reinforcement of it.
> Dudes: would you be okay with dating a lady who thought semen (and/or your penis) was completely disgusting and would never touch it ever? Probably not, right?
I don’t see it being a complete deal-breaker. If the conditions for sex were “always with a condom, don’t get your goop on me, and I’m not going to touch your penis with my hands or mouth”, then that does limit the type and quality of sex you can have, but sex isn’t everything, you know? Love can forgive many failings.
The only condition would be that this hypothetical woman owns her own emotions — that she realises that the disgust is inside her, it’s not an inherent property of penises.
(The same condition should apply to men. Not wanting period sex? Okay. Saying “menstruation is disgusting, get away from me”? Not so okay.)
@BlackHumor, just because a bunch of pigheaded women already dismissed the notion that their behavior and opinions are pigheaded doesn’t make Tamen foolish for bringing it up again. Maybe I didn’t understand your point?
That seems correct.
By “dismissed” I mean “after a long and wholly reasonable argument, the coercion thing was dropped after Jill clarified what she meant was, while still not nice, wholly out of the realm of coercion”. I think you might be thinking I meant “dismissed out of hand” and so I’m sorry for miscommunicating.
@BlackHumor,
Good comment at Feministe.
So far as that goes, I might agree: disgust at genitals in general could well be sexist. Yet Jill goes farther than that, by insisting that not only disgust at a vagina is sexist, but disgust at everything that comes out of it is also sexist.This seems to rest on the naturalistic fallacy: that what is natural is good. Since genitals and the fluids they create are natural, then we must consider them to be good, or be sexist.
I disagree. Human genitals produce some intense scents and tastes, and it’s not necessarily sexist for someone to be disgusted by them. For instance, smegma is some pretty intense stuff. If a woman finds it disgusting, even to the point where she doesn’t want to give blowjobs, I don’t feel that she hates my penis and hates me. Smegma isn’t optimized to taste good!
- Even if you like someone’s genitals, you don’t have to like everything that comes out of their genitals. This doesn’t make you sexist, or mean that you hate their genitals in general.
- Even if you don’t mind someone’s juices on your hands, you don’t have to like the taste.
- Even if you don’t might someone’s juices in your mouth, it doesn’t mean that you have like them on your face, particularly right underneath your nose.
- Even if you don’t mind someone’s juices on your face during oral, you might be disgusted by the same juices crusting on your face during sex and cuddling after. That doesn’t mean that you hate their juices, any more than not wanting salad dressing to crust on your face means that you hate salad dressing.
The last two points are especially relevant for eating pussy, because it’s generally a guaranteed facial. I actually suspect that some men think that going down on women is gross, not because they mind having the juices in their mouth while they are doing it, but because they don’t like the juices crusting on their face after (especially if I’m not turned on). Those are completely different things.
Like superglucose’s ice cream example above, there are plenty of foods that I like, yet I would find them gross if I had to smear them on my face and leave them to crust there right underneath my nose, and smell them for the rest of the day. I suspect Jill feels the same way about food, but since she (presumably) has never given head to a woman, and excludes lesbian perspectives from the thread, she is ignorant about what it involves and doesn’t know what she is asking for.
I wonder if Jack from Masculiste would tell women “if you are unwilling to let a guy cum in your face and then let the natural life-giving Fluids crust there while you are having sex and cuddling after, then you are a misandrist who hates his Penis.” Or “if you unwilling to swallow the beautiful gift of his Semen and Sperm into your stomach where you will digest it with enjoyment, then you are a misandrist who hates his Penis.”
I think a lot of men would be more enthusiastic about giving head if the physical and emotional commitments involved were acknowledged. Instead of bashing men for being ambivalent about some aspects of oral, we should try to help discover ways to help them become more enthusiastic about it. For instance, I think that some men might stop finding oral sex so disgusting if it was acceptable for them to immediately wash or wipe their face after.
Oral sex by the default script has very little ground between refusing, and between having stuff crusting on your face after it’s over. There is also no space given for compromises like having the guy lick only with his tongue. Unfortunately, Jill’s attitude that women’s bodily fluids must be worshiped in every circumstance (yes, expecting someone to leave your juices on their face is practically worship) stands in the way of any of these solutions.
@Ozy,
Dear Females of the Species,
My ordinary, functioning male Body is a divine thing. But, contrary to popular belief, you are not required to like everything that cometh forth from my Body. You are not required to like the taste of my Semen and Sperm, and you are entitled to be disgusted by my Semen and Sperm crusting on your face. You my respect my Penis in ways that do not require you to take my Ejaculate into your mouth and stomach. You may respect my Smegma from a distance, if Its power if too great for your tongue.
Now, go forth and suck, or do not suck, on the Penes of Men free of feelings of Misandry.
Hugh: I laughed.
But that’s the whole point! Don’t be disgusted by your partner’s body, but it’s okay to not swallow their come if you don’t like the taste of come (or for any other reason), and it’s okay not to like facials if you don’t like the feel of come on your face (or for any other reason). And if you don’t like the feel of girljuices on your face, then you can work around that with face-wiping or dental dams or whatever.
Valerie: It is also a douchey thing to be disgusted at ordinary, functioning trans male bodies. Or ordinary, functioning trans female bodies, or ordinary, functioning genderqueer bodies, or ordinary, functioning bodies of whatever sort. (The “ordinary, functioning” bit is in there because it is okay to be disgusted at, for instance, bedsores.)
@Xakudo:
Quoted for 90% agreement. The 10% non-agreement is that I would rather talk about the problematic cultural memes that might have influenced the woman’s decision to pack up and leave, not about any possible character flaws of the individual woman in question. Just because one person is hurt is by another person’s behaviour doesn’t mean that the other person behaved as an asshole towards the first person, although this view seems to be quite popular with a lot of people in the gendersphere.
We can talk about the way large women generally are seen as unattractive in our culture. We can talk about how douchey it would be for a man on a blind date with an unexpectedly large woman to show disgust for her body and leave without saying a word to her. But that is behaviour which should be inacceptable against any person, no matter how attracted one is to that person. I am fine with discussing behaviour and social norms of attractiveness, but I’m against discussing a person’s reasons for being/not being attracted to someone (if that person didn’t bring his/her reasons up themselves in the first place). That issue is too intimate, IMO, to be be questioned without attacking one’s sense of identity.
So, if a guy answers to a “lick my pussy!” with “ewwww, that would be disgusting”, “why should I, what’s in it for me?” or “do I look like a pussy-whipped cunt-sucker?”, it’s totally okay in my book to talk about the guy’s immaturity, selfishness or disgusting views about what a Real Man(TM) won’t do in bed; but none of these things is inherent in the refusal itself.
If a guy answers with “I don’t feel comfortable doing this”, “I don’t like doing this”, “err, no” or “I don’t like to be told what to do in bed”, none of those would not indicate a deep character flaw in the guy. If you still want to discuss those guy’s problematic views of women’s genitalia, you’d better have stronger indicators that he indeed does harbour such views; concluding this *solely* from the *fact* of his refusal (instead of the way he refused) rather points to the concluder’s problematic views on male sexual autonomy.
(To come back to the woman who won’t have sex with uncircumsized men: Saying “oh, I don’t fuck uncircumsized men” and leaving would be okay in my book; reprimanding the men for not telling before and therefore wasting the woman’s time and bringing her into this uncomfortable position she is in now would be assholish behaviour; panically taking flight would be a sign of worrying immaturity (if the woman is at least in her, say, mid-twenties).
But finding a penis too unattractive to have it in one of your orifices? That’s one of the things that always can happen once a man has taken off his pants in front of a woman he wants to have sex with, at least until it’s become a custom to show the other person a picture of one’s genitaia before taking her/him /going withher/him to the place one intends sex to take place.)
Valerie Keefe:
Dunno, categorization in general is a fuzzy thing to begin with. So I’m not sure I buy the whole “reject the binary” thing based solely on there being people that don’t cleanly fit into our existing notions of sex and gender.
What I find problematic is when people start rejecting things (in this case, people) that don’t fit their mental models because they mistake their mental models and categorizations as reality, rather than simply as things that are useful up to a point. You see the same thing with people who tear their hair out trying to figure out “the fundamental thing” that separates humans from all other animals, or trying to define what “art” is, etc. For some reason a lot of people get really anxious when they can’t force reality to fit into their predetermined categories. But that doesn’t always mean that the categories themselves are total BS or useless.
Having said that, I think it is both useful and respectful to recognize categories other than just traditional notions of male/female. That doesn’t mean those categories have to be dropped, especially since most of the population does reasonably fit into those categories. But clearly there is a need to recognize people that don’t fit it very well, and to recognize that that’s okay, and to recognize that such people should not be discriminated against and should be treated as full human beings just like everyone else.
Not sure.
But my point isn’t necessarily that someone can’t legitimately dislike foreskins. I think it is possible. My point is that in our current cultural climate a lot of (perhaps most) people who dislike foreskins dislike them for problematic cultural reasons. And you can start to get an idea of that by looking at, say, most parts of Europe, where circumcision is atypical.
But yes, I absolutely agree with the parallel that you and Schala have drawn with my hypothetical. I agree that, exactly as with my foreskin example, people are typically reacting negatively to sex with trans people for problematic cultural reasons. And I think we can get an idea of that by looking at other cultures as well (though the specific ones don’t come immediately to mind).
@Hugh: There’s also a bit of the Oralophile Fallacy: “If you like something, you have no problems putting it in your mouth”.
I mean, how many men lovingly lick their fleshlights? (For the rest of this comment, and for rhetorical reasons, I will presume “none”.) Yet they mostly (from what I’ve heard) consider those toys awesome and aren’t in the least disgusted by them.
@ Xakadu
“though the specific ones don’t come immediately to mind”
Native American prior to being Christianized, definitely. Maybe some Asian.
LOL I mean Xakudo.
“And you can start to get an idea of that by looking at, say, most parts of Europe, where circumcision is atypical.”
Why does everyone forget Canada? People hold “countries in Europe” as the example for same-sex marriage too. But I wonder, given Canada has it unilaterally legal since 2006. We’re the invisible country that’s (slightly) bigger than yours, north of it. Hello 3rd largest country of the world, 2nd country here, we exist (and if you’re wondering Russia is #1 by a factor of almost 2 over Canada).
@Xakudo Dunno, categorization in general is a fuzzy thing to begin with. So I’m not sure I buy the whole “reject the binary” thing based solely on there being people that don’t cleanly fit into our existing notions of sex and gender.
Oh, I completely agree. I don’t think that we as a species have a binary gender system… a two-gender-dominant system, yes, but not a binary system… there is no either or… there is only ‘most people identify as one of the two most commonly articulated sexes’ and my only concern is that we aren’t simultaneously reinforcing the binary or for that matter erasing those who don’t fit its strictures through a tautological metric that harkens to birth assignment.
Having said that, I think it is both useful and respectful to recognize categories other than just traditional notions of male/female. That doesn’t mean those categories have to be dropped, especially since most of the population does reasonably fit into those categories. But clearly there is a need to recognize people that don’t fit it very well, and to recognize that that’s okay, and to recognize that such people should not be discriminated against and should be treated as full human beings just like everyone else.
Completely agreed… and not just full human beings but people whose identified sex and gender is inherently recognized and viewed as being as legitimate as that of someone who does not have an inherent conflict with their assigned identity and would suffer stress if they were degendered, just as anyone else would.
@Schala
I have, after some thought on the issue, come to prefer same-legal-sex marriage to same-sex marriage… in the bad old days, I could legally marry my partner if she was cis, or after some wrangling, if she was post-operative, but definitely not if she was unoperative.
@Schala
Jill’s post said that barring allergy or deep aversion to all blood, that it definitely WAS misogyny. Not that it could possibly be and let’s discuss that. But a “dump the misogynist bastard” for every single case.
I agree that Jill’s post wasn’t particularly tactful or nuanced (fortunately it’s resulted in great posts and discussions like this one, though! And some not so great ones too, but let’s ignore those) but to be fair, she didn’t ACTUALLY say “definitely always misogyny” or “dump him in every single case, no exceptions”. A lot of people clearly inferred that – hell, she may have even meant that, but she didn’t say it. She was making a broad generalization, which is probably not the best thing to do for what turned out to be a pretty touchy subject, but she wasn’t giving orders or anything.
@Toysoldier
Who said anything about having your body worshipped? I just want it to be respected, and part of that respect is, to me, not saying that I am disgusting and unfuckable 1/4 of the time. I do, in fact, think that everyone is entitled to that. Also, I have yet to meet any of those people who are disgusted by mucus or saliva – the dudes I know seem to think that kissing and eating pussy are just fine
Also, I find the implication (well, outright statement, actually) that dumping someone for a specific sexual reason is shallow to be pretty offensive, to me at least. Oral sex, for example, is one of my favourite things ever, and I couldn’t stay in a relationship with someone who wasn’t into it. I wouldn’t expect anyone, of any gender, to stay with me if their favourite thing to do in bed was something I really hated. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy in a relationship, and sex is a big part of that for a lot of people. If sex isn’t important to you, fine, but I’m not shallow for making it a priority.
Imagine the outrage if scores of men dumped their girlfriends or wives who refused to give them oral sex. Would you honestly argue, “Well, she’s not blowing him, and getting blown’s really important to him, so she’s gotta go”?
I’d argue exactly that, actually. (And based on her comments on the cunnilingus thread, so would Jill.)
@typhonblue
And with your hypothetical dude who doesn’t want to have sex with you while you’re pregnant… what if you’re assuming it’s misogynist when what’s really happening is that he’s _terrified of hurting his kid._ Or you.
That’s not misogynist, that’s just silly. I’d take them to my next OB/GYN appointment and have the doctor explain why those fears are unfounded. And then there would be sex! (Not with the doctor. Probably.)
The hypothetical was specifically about a dude who is disgusted by my (imaginary) pregnancy. Let’s face it – pregnancy is a bit gross sometimes (like menstruation, like semen, like saliva, etc. etc.) but I still don’t want a partner who’s so grossed out by my body that they won’t have sex with me.
@Thomas
Ok, but would similar advice given to a man whose partner thinks his sperm is gross? I doubt it.
I gave exactly that advice in my previous comment, actually. A lady who hates sperm has every right to not touch sperm, but her partner is also well within his rights to dump her and look for someone who isn’t disgusted by his body. And if she goes on at length about how disgusting sperm is and how perverse it is to come into contact with it (the way I’ve heard some dudes talk about periods) she is an insufferable douche who should stay away from penises (and I don’t mean this in a homophobic “lol she should just fuck ladies” way! Because let’s face it, this imaginary woman is probably awful about vaginas too).
You know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with discussing the issue before getting to the DTMFA stage (and I always thought “motherfucker” referred to people who have sex with their own moms? Which is, in fact, gross), but in both Feministe posts Jill was responding to people who, as far as I can tell, had discussed the issue time and time again, with no success. Not to mention that there can be a find line between discussion and pressuring. Yeah, of course I think everyone’s first response should be “Hey, there’s this thing that’s important to me and you won’t do it, why?” but if you get a firm no, the issue is basically settled and you should figure out whether the relationship is worth living without the thing you like.
@Hugh Ristik
Oral sex by the default script has very little ground between refusing, and between having stuff crusting on your face after it’s over.
Condoms? Dental dams? Washing your face afterwards?
Also, everything BlackHumor and elementary_watson said. Except the bit about how no men lovingly lick their fleshlights. I would bet serious money that this is not true.
@Schala:
I probably should have said Scandinavia, as that was mostly what I was thinking of. The current infant circ rate there is ~2%, whereas Canada and some parts of Europe are significantly higher (8-12%), even if still low compared to the USA.
The differences are even greater when looking at the population as a whole, rather than just at newborn infants. Scandinavia never really circ’d, so the rates are low across the whole population. This is not the case with Canada and certain parts of Europe where the rate decline is a more recent thing. And that seems relevant when speaking about cultural attitudes.
@BlackHumor, if that’s the case then I stand by Tamen. Nowhere did Jill clarify anything to my satisfaction and I did not see anywhere on that thread where people who were offended by her coercive remarks felt that she had addressed them. Where in the thread did Jill say, “oh, sorry for implying that you’re gay unless you fuck my bleeding pussy?” Nowhere. Shaming someone for not doing what you want them to do is coercive. She tried to limit what she meant down to, you know, those guys who we all know who they are, the ones who won’t eat her pussy because they hate women, not the rest of the guys who won’t eat her vagina because, you know… something. That didn’t help her cause, IMO.
The way Jill backpedaled in the comment thread reminds me of politicians who, after making a racist comment, defend themselves by saying, “I didn’t mean all black people, just the bad ones that cause these problems. I have black friends…”
Jill botched the entire post and the appropriate response would have been to retract it in its entirety and actually accept some of the criticism that she received, instead of continuing to defend it and claiming that all the people who were offended by it were making a mistake.
Brett, that’s why I specified my assumption to be made for rhetorical reasons
I think as Sagredo pointed out up above, the problem with Jill’s post was not her assertion that you have a right to break up with someone who does not want to perform sex acts that are important to you.
The problem is that the way she stated it was very insulting toward people who do not want to perform those sex acts. She automatically sets it up as “if he won’t do X he’s in the wrong, you are in the right, dump his rear end!” rather than “if he won’t do X and X is really important to you, maybe you two are just not compatible and you need to realize this; if it’s a dealbreaker, you need to break up.” I think she introduces hostility and combativeness into a situation that can be resolved without it.
Personally, I find the concept of oral sex (I’ve never had sex, but I know what acts are interesting to me to imagine), no matter who is doing what to who, rather gross. (For that matter, I have no interest in anal, either). That does not mean that I find genitalia to be gross, just a particular juxtaposition of mouths and genitalia. I find it interesting that so many people nowadays treat this as if it is a mental disease of some sort rather than a preference.
As for period sex, yes, periods are natural and healthy. So are bowel movements. Would someone suggest that something is wrong with someone who does not wish to have anal sex during the act of defecation? Or have sex while urinating?
Glaivester, I agree with most of your points. The way Jill phrased her posts was far from tactful, and, as far as I can tell, not particularly well thought-out. I tend to assume good faith and I honestly believe that she felt she was just making an offhand, snarky comment without realizing the impact that it would have, and that your second quoted statement is closer to what she intended than your first. On the other hand, that doesn’t change the fact that what she said hurt a lot of people, and she does deserve to be criticized for that, even if I think she is awesome 99% of the time.
On the other hand, I am getting kind of sick of people comparing menstruation with urination or defecation. Menstruation is not something that occurs in private for a few minutes each day. It is an extended process that occupies a good portion of most ciswomen’s lives. We menstruate while going to school or work, socializing, playing sports, arguing with people on the internet, and yes, even having sex. That’s why I brought up the pregnancy analogy – it’s a bodily process that may freak you out, but it’s something that many of us live with at certain times. We can’t ignore it, and we have to live our lives anyway. Treating us like we are gross at those times is unfair and misogynistic (given that it is mostly female-assigned people who experience menstruation and pregnancy).
It’s fine that you don’t like oral, and I hope you find a partner who feels the same way. You have no obligation to like any particular type of sex, or to engage in it. But you do, I think, have a responsibility not to express disgust for other people’s bodies or for the type of sex that they enjoy. As I said earlier, I think that sexual preferences and hang-ups can (and often should) be examined on a cultural level; on an individual level, though, they mostly just need to be respected.
@ Brett K
“We can’t ignore it, and we have to live our lives anyway. Treating us like we are gross at those times is unfair and misogynistic”
Let’s draw a parallel. Men have erections. Erections are often outside of the man’s control so it can happen when they’re going to school or work, socializing, playing sports, arguing with people on the internet and, yes, even having sex.
People still get freaked out and offended when they see an erection and, in some jurisdictions, a visible(but clothed) erection can land a man in jail for exposure.
In fact erections are quite stigmatized(unless they’re in direct response to feminine beauty, then they get a pass). After all, what does a ‘boner’ refer to? (Also look up all the crap the progressives got up to trying to police men’s erections. It’s horrifying and genital cutting was only a part of it.)
Just saying this as a counterpoint to ‘menstruation is stigmatized’; well, so is at least one natural process of the male body. Are we going to discuss ending that stigma?
@Brett K:
You could very well be correct. In any case, it’s still pejorative, and therefore, IMO, inappropriate unless the specific person has actually generally behaved like an asshole.
Not sure I would say entitled, but I absolutely agree with the sentiment.
I had a girlfriend that almost seemed afraid to put my dick anywhere near her mouth. I never pushed, and I was always respectful. She hardly ever gave me oral. In retrospect, feeling like my dick was this scary thing to her was really harmful to my sense of self, and reinforced already prominent messages in my mind that my (male) sexuality was toxic and damaging to others.
So I totally get where Jill is coming from.
She just comes across as an entitled asshole, is all, thanks to her rampant and prominent shaming tactics. Her post reeks of the toxic “You should count yourself lucky to be down there at all!” attitude I have seen from some women. I would feel a lot better about her if she amended her position in a way that acknowledges that people being squicked by menstrual blood or being uncomfortable with oral sex doesn’t make them misogynists or otherwise bad people, for example.
Brett K, I do not see how finding a particular sex act or bodily function disgusting means that a person does not respect your body. More so, no one is entitled to have their body liked or accepted. Same goes for sex acts that a person may like. That is what I meant by worshiping. It sounds like some people want everyone to think their bodies, everything that comes out of them , and everything they do with them is teh awesome, but no one has to think that. People are allowed to find things gross even if other people disagree.
If you only engage in one sex act, then I suppose it is fair to dump the person who will not do it. If you engage in lots of sex acts and a person refuses to do your favorite, it is rather shallow to dump them because it is not as if you cannot do other things.
As for comparing menstruation to urinate and defecation, the comparison is accurate as menstruation is essentially the removal of bodily waste. That it happens for an extended period of time really does not change anything. Humans have a natural disgust for human waste regardless of what hole it comes out of. It is pure coincidence that only women expel this particular waste.
People that are grossed out by genitalia, men and women, are people too, and pretty common at that. I’ve plenty of girls who think dicks&balls TM are gross, and plenty of men who think vag’s are gross, and most have them have still wanted sex. I am comfortable with saying,
“We should not teach people to be disgusted by genitalia”
or
“You’ll probably not be sexually compatible with someone who is disgusted by your genitalia”
I’m not comfortable with saying
“People who are disgusted by genitalia should not get to have sex, and don’t deserve happy sex lives”
Hey! My nose is bleeding!
Anyone wanna makeout, or would that be a problem to you?
If I don’t want to put my penis in a vagina full of blood, it’s not the vagina per se that I have a problem with, it’s the blood.
I don’t even have a general problem with blood. Since (I think!) it’s safe to say that it’s something that everybody have. I just want it to be kept on the inside of the skin. It’s just that seeing bodyparts covered in blood is a big turn-off for me, sometimes to the point of causing blood-pressure drops (and going limp…). It makes me associate with bad splattermovies or slaughterhouse instead of havin a good time.
Lucky for me, the girlfriends I’ve had have themselves lost their sexdrive during periods and never pressed the issue.
On a side note. I haven’t had alot of girlfriends, just a handful or so. But I’ve never been with someone whose period goes for more than 3 days, maybe 4 occasionally. Regardless of contraceptive use. I really feel for you who regularly goes for a full week.
With all respect, I feel like the menstruation analogies are really getting out-of-control silly in this thread. I certainly don’t have any impression that it is analogous to pregnancy, shitting, pissing, an erection, etc. Yes, analogizing it to other stuff can make period sex The Grossest Thing by analogy (anal sex during defecation = period sex!? come the fuck on). But can’t menstruation be its own thing? It is sort of a unique biological quirk, you know.
I think this is a pretty simple thing. Would my partner like me to tell them I find something is gross and turns me off or would they rather me force myself to go through it and then go limp in the process because of said turn off. It is pretty much the same thing with a blowjob, I would rather be informed first and maybe be disappointed, rather than having her make me cum with her mouth and run to the bathroom to spit it out. Now wouldnt that be a turn on.
Jill isnt about equality, Jill is about control and that is so, so obvious.
@ titfortat, I agree with you on this. People should be straightforward about their desires and what they enjoy doing. Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s no nuance in between totally loving a sex act and completely rejecting it… in fact, the come swallowing analogy is one I’m actually kinda on board with. There’s a difference between “YES PLEASE COME IN MY MOUTH” and “eh, if it turns you on I’ll swallow it, just make sure there’s a glass of water by the bed as a chaser” but both of those attitudes are a totally OK approach. As is “look, I don’t swallow”.
I think what people have a hard time with, is that it’s alright for someone to love period sex, it’s alright for someone to tolerate period sex / do it for their partner’s sake, and it’s alright for someone to not like it at all (If you faint at the sight of blood… please don’t try to soldier through…) And yet on the other side, it’s completely ok for someone to reject a person who is not enthusiastic about the same stuff they’re enthusiastic about.
@f.
But lets be honest here, do we actually think reasonable people reject someone they supposedly love for not doing just one sex act? I think not, and Jill is disingenuous at best for implying that.
@Typhonblue
Just saying this as a counterpoint to ‘menstruation is stigmatized’; well, so is at least one natural process of the male body. Are we going to discuss ending that stigma?
Yeah, we probably should, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t a lot of people (especially people on this blog) who agree.
On the other hand, I, and many others, think erections are sexy and awesome. You’d have a pretty hard time finding someone who says the same thing about menstruation.
@Xakudo
I agree with you for the most part, but I feel like you (and pretty much everyone who has discussed this issue, to be honest) are kind of projecting your own issues onto what Jill said. To me, her attitude provides a powerful counterpoint to the “I know my body is gross, I’m grateful anyone wants anything to do with it” attitude that I’ve seen from many women, including myself, at times. So I guess I’m projecting, too.
@Toysoldier
no one is entitled to have their body liked or accepted
Sure, not by your average person on the street. I think we are all entitled to have our bodies liked and accepted by our sexual partners. That’s kind of the point of having a sexual partner, isn’t it? People are allowed to find things gross, sure, but people are also allowed to want, and to seek out, a partner who actually likes their body, and to leave someone who doesn’t.
If you only engage in one sex act, then I suppose it is fair to dump the person who will not do it. If you engage in lots of sex acts and a person refuses to do your favorite, it is rather shallow to dump them because it is not as if you cannot do other things.
What if someone can only orgasm from oral sex? That’s the case for a lot of women. Or, hell, what if oral sex is just really really important to someone? Do you honestly think that’s not legitimate? Because this is really starting to sound like one of those “shaming tactics” you dudes are always going on about.
speaking of which…
@Titfortat
But lets be honest here, do we actually think reasonable people reject someone they supposedly love for not doing just one sex act? I think not, and Jill is disingenuous at best for implying that.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Would you think it was unreasonable for a guy to break up with his girlfriend if she refused to have intercourse? That’s just one sex act, after all.
@Flyingkal
lol, I have totally gotten a nosebleed while making out. It was horrible.
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to stick your penis in a bloody vagina. But not all sex is PIV, and often the blood can be kept more or less out of sight (hooray DivaCup!). Not that you have to have period sex one way or another, but a menstruating vagina is really not nearly as gross as some people here seem to think it is (and my uterine lining is not poo, seriously, can we stop that).
Personally, I can’t even remember the last time I had period sex – my period these days only lasts a couple of days, and is super heavy and awful. On the other hand, when I was on hormonal BC it would go for a whole week and be really, really light, and there was no way I was giving up sex for that whole time. So maybe I’m a bit more invested in this issue than others
My partner at the time didn’t mind, once I reassured him that no, it would not be “gushing like a fire hydrant” – and maybe misconceptions like that are why some dudes are so grossed out by the idea in the first place?
@Brett
Good point, though I doubt they would have ever made it past dating if he knew that.
Personally, I can’t even remember the last time I had period sex – my period these days only lasts a couple of days, and is super heavy and awful.(Brett)
Priceless.
Brett:
Yeah, I’m sorry for the bad analogy, and just as someone said they where tired of them in general. And unlike alot of people here, I have a bad habit of making an ass out of myself when trying to express my thoughts, as they don’t come out quite the way I want them to. I’m sorry for that too. :-/
What I was trying to say was just that, I believe it’s quite common that people are being repelled by the sight of other people’s blood. Or even their own, for that matter. And then calling them misogynist for displaying the very same behaviour in a sexual situation, is a bit far-fetched in my book.
I know that not all sex are PIV (or VAP…
, but for me the same applies. I’d rather not be fingering or otherwise touching a bleeding orifice on another human, unless it’s an emergency or first aid. But maybe I’m just a wimp.
PS. Now that you mention it, I’ve actually _have_ had sex (both PIV and otherwise) with a woman using a cup. And it was fine with me as long as it was fine with her.
But I also agree with someone who said early on that half-dried blood lumps is mostly a less than stellar lubricant.
@Toysoldier As for comparing menstruation to urinate and defecation, the comparison is accurate as menstruation is essentially the removal of bodily waste.
Yes and no… feces is loaded with harmful bacteria. Urine carries a large number of toxic chemicals the body is trying to expel… menses? Not so much… also by this metric exhalation is a waste product, of gaseous effluvia and toxins… Menstruation is actually closer to semen, in that it’s a frequently extraneous byproduct to fertility. (Remember some people in a previous thread saying how fertility was a major turn-on for them?)
I’m not saying it’s a completely groundless limit. For example people equate blood with injury frequently… but just ‘it came out of you’ probably isn’t the reason for most people… the rationale perhaps, but less likely the reason.
IMO, any woman who thinks less of a man based on that man’s unwillingness to fuck her bloody vagina is simply a jerk. Again, this is my own opinion. Other people feel differently, that’s cool.
@ Brett
“You’d have a pretty hard time finding someone who says the same thing about menstruation.”
Yes, but on the other hand, you’re never going to have your genitals cut into(in the west) due to an attempt to control menstruation nor will you ever be jailed for menstruating.
@Brett
Condoms? Dental dams? Washing your face afterwards?
That’s all wonderful and the next time a woman produces a dental dam and a washcloth I’ll take all of that into consideration. The only women I’ve ever met who carried dental dams around in their purse were either lesbians who abhorred going down but felt compelled to perform the act (oh, irony), or people with herpes.
I know plenty of women who don’t carry a condom with them at all, but they still won’t have sex with a guy unless he produces one. I know women who won’t have sex without a condom and they don’t even know how to put one on and don’t want to touch anything down there, and in fact multiple women have asked me, “is it really on correctly?” as if they were incapable of checking themselves.
And yet here you are, telling guys who don’t like periods or going down that they have no excuse and that it’s their responsibility to come well-equipped to ensure that the woman gets everything she wants. Sorry, not buying it.
As a matter of fact, going back to what Hugh said, the experience that most men have is that of a woman who is completely unprepared for oral, hasn’t even thought of showering on the day that she intended to have intercourse, but once the act begins she starts to shove and push the guy by his shoulders to go down there and do the deed. First strike. Then after it’s done and I try to wipe it off, more often than not I’ve had many, many women complain to me that I wiped it off, asking me to leave it all on my face and come up to kiss them so they can taste it themselves. Strike two.
If they’re so insecure about it and want to make sure that their taste/smell isn’t disgusting, they can try it out on their own time and do the aforementioned things to prepare for the act, instead of asking a guy to let it crust over on his face for the next hour. And yes, insecurity is what I attribute it to. It’s not the guy who dislikes the girl’s body, it’s the girl who is so insecure and thinks that her body scares people off who has an insatiable need for a man to do her on her period and then let it all crust over on his face so that she’ll feel better about herself. Hello Jill, projecting much?
Had Jill written a post that encouraged women on their periods to offer these things to men then that would have been quite a different post and a very nice gesture, very considerate of her, but that’s really not what she did. She really went after the idea that her body should be worshiped no matter what and told women to DTMFA any guy who they deem to insufficiently worship whatever it is that they would otherwise feel insecure about. She really didn’t get into actual misogyny, either, like of the sort where some subcultures try to shame men who would go down on a woman or religions that consider all genital functions (male or female) to be “unclean.” Had she written a post about that, it would have been well-received. But instead she actually, seriously, literally suggested that any guy who doesn’t want to do her and her period blood should turn gay and encourages women to DTMFA. What a princess!
Guys don’t owe it to women to help build up their self confidence by worshiping their bodies. Actually, that’s just needy, immature, and a huge turn-off. Here’s a little secret… once you have enough partners, you realize that some you’ll want to go all out with and do everything to please them and it’s usually because you are madly in love and they had treated you well and made you feel very special, while at other times you want to enjoy the other person’s body without giving them the full Hollywood treatment… you just want to relax and don’t really want to push your own boundaries for this particular person at this particular time. A huge factor here is how good the other person is in bed… I’ve had relationships that were just as important to me as any other but where the sex was less frequent and frankly not quite as good, just because the woman was not as sexually driven as other women I’ve been with. Sometimes it was because the woman was a little depressive and needed help, etc. Nothing to do with them disliking my body, nothing that I ever got angry about and held it against them because I felt this juvenile need to have my body worshiped. So who are you to dictate terms for when and how other guys should or shouldn’t do the deed with anybody they meet? Do you really think that sex has to be something that takes place on Mt Olympus or else it shouldn’t ever happen at all and we should all be insulted by a slightly inferior product?
Here’s an interesting question to ask yourself in response to any particular criticism of one gender.
Would the criticism be best resolved by replacing men or women–autonomous beings with their own preferences–with robots that can be programmed to respond in exactly the right way while looking optimally good? Or does it invite actual compassion and understanding between the sexes?
I would say Jill’s post fails. And any other that is best resolved by replacing a person–generally unpredictable with their own quirks and vulnerabilities–with an automaton.
As someone who has slimy near-black clumps of blood soaked dead tissue come out of her bits, well… it IS kinda groty. I wash my hands after peeing, I wash my hands after changing my tampon. In fact, evolution proposes that one possible reason humans menstruate opposed to simply reabsorbing uterine lining like 90%+ of mammals (most mammals with fertility cycles bleed when they’re MOST fertile, not like menstruation at all) do is defense against STDs.
Overt menstruation and why humans do it is one of the least understood things about our evolution. As far as I know, the hypothesis is that it’s a sort of monthly “spring cleaning” to help control disease. It’s also probably the part of the cycle that’s least resistant to infection – normal bacterial flora in the vagina is disrupted, so there’s enhanced risk for bacterial vaginosis (much like how douching can result in infection).
(The reason feces is loaded with harmful bacteria is that it contains dead bacteria that live naturally in your colon. E. coli is essential to human digestive system, it just can mess you up if it’s one of the few pathogenic strains. Other species [Rabbits, hamsters, etc] actually eat their own droppings to re-digest them to gain more nutrients. In the first world where parasites aren’t much issue, feces isn’t terribly dirty, it’s just not useful to have in the body.)
@ Skidd
“As someone who has slimy near-black clumps of blood soaked dead tissue come out of her bits, well… it IS kinda groty.”
YES. Please for the love of god can I be squicked out by blood and weird lumps without being self-hating?
Also urine is generally sterile and can’t harm you. It’s not toxic, it’s just a metabolic byproduct that the body has no use for so it voids it. It’s just a ‘quirk’ of men that it comes out of the penis. So, yeah, don’t like golden showers… must be misandrous…
Please for the love of god can I be squicked out by blood and weird lumps without being self-hating?
Obviously… everybody’s got squicks, some of them are counter-intuitive, some of them are not… for example, I’m into some degredation but freeze up at the mention of the word slut. I have panicked seconds into the first (and last) two times someone tried to use my bits for the manufacturer-recommended sex-act once because there was some blood, residual or not, and I withdrew to the corner saying I didn’t want to hurt her.
You’re allowed to feel weirded out by anything, obviously. So am I… but there’s a big difference between explaining why I doesn’t feel right for me and explaining why nobody should evar want it and if they do they’re sick freaky freaks. (If you want to have your blood pressure shoot up about thirty points you could read femonade saying all penis-in-vagina sex is rape always…. though she’s just a generally triggering and horrible human being.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Hazards
And yes, you’re right about the urine… I’m conflating it with animals that excrete ammonia in their urinal composition.
@typhonblue
Also urine is generally sterile and can’t harm you. It’s not toxic, it’s just a metabolic byproduct that the body has no use for so it voids it. It’s just a ‘quirk’ of men that it comes out of the penis. So, yeah, don’t like golden showers… must be misandrous…
You know women urinate too, right?
@TitforTat
What’s priceless about that statement, exactly? That I defend period sex even though I don’t have it on a regular basis? I did specify that my periods used to be different (while was on hormonal BC and, incidentally, in a relationship) and that at that time, period sex was really important to me.
To be honest, I can’t actually remember the last time I had sex at all
That’s nobody’s fault but my own, though.
@Flyingkal
Yeah, cups are amazing. The disposal ones even let you have PIV/VAP sex without blood getting in the way! And yes, crusty dried blood is really gross – though, to be fair, so is crusty dried regular vaginal discharge (how long are you people waiting after oral before washing your faces? I’m not saying do it right away, but it takes a pretty long while for that stuff to actually get crusty), smegma, old sweat, etc. As dungone said, showering is pretty important if you expect someone to have intimate contact with your genitals, and it’s a sign of serious disrespect for your partner if you don’t at least do them that courtesy. (Likewise with not carrying condoms. Carry condoms, people.)
But you know what, respecting your partner’s body does not equal “worshipping” and it’s pretty dismissive to equate the two. This is exactly what Jill is talking about: people (particularly dudes) who think that basic respect – say, not telling your partner that their genitals are gross – is somehow special treatment. It’s not. It has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with not having sex with someone who insults you. The whole “women who are assertive about their needs are haughty bitch princesses who want their every move to be worshipped” meme is misogynistic and far too common.
And dudes: if a woman thinks your penis is disgusting, DON’T FUCK HER.
@skidd, great points… which reminds me, when my girlfriend started having extremely long periods, we started attempting period sex and it resulted in her getting a serious infection and there you had it, no more sex for a very long time… actually we even broke up for a while because she felt that sex was no longer enjoyable and felt that it was a sign of our relationship failing. It wasn’t until she got back on health insurance, went to the doctor, and found out what the problem really was that we have slowly rebuilt our relationship. Fact of the matter, her dr told her not to use tampons anymore, either. Of course, maybe you wouldn’t call that a “normally functioning” scenario, except for the fact that what Jill had meant by “normally functioning” was nothing more than “bleeding” and had not taken higher risk for STD’s and other infections into account at all.
Jill’s advice is just deleterious to healthy relationships on so many different levels, let’s count them all…
1) She perpetuates the attitude that healthy relationships are based entirely on sex.
2) She encourages women to engage in risky sex that puts them at risk for infection
3) She is dismissive of non-cisgendered relationships that contradict her theories
4) She is dismissive of men won’t accept that it’s perfectly healthy for men to their own likes and dislikes
5) She encourages women to politicize their personal sex lives (ain’t feminism grand?)
Anything else? I’m sure there’s more…
@ Brett K “What if someone can only orgasm from oral sex? That’s the case for a lot of women. Or, hell, what if oral sex is just really really important to someone? Do you honestly think that’s not legitimate?”
Exactly. For many women, if their partner won’t go down on them then they WILL NOT ORGASM with that partner, ever. So yeah, it’s totally reasonable to part ways with someone who won’t do that “one little sex act”.
@dungone
“2) She encourages women to engage in risky sex that puts them at risk for infection”
Can we please drop this line? Period sex is not especially risky and framing it like this borders on shaming people who engage in it.
…I’m not sure how actual medical science is supposed to be shaming? Period sex DOES put women at a larger risk of infection, both from STDs, yeast and bacterial infection.
Have it from an Ob-gyn: http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/101/specialist/berman/sex-during-period.aspx
I won’t say it’s SUPER DUPER dangerous, and I won’t say “don’t do that” to women who do like it (I don’t), but I do think one should be aware of the fact, and do their own risk assessment.
@Brett
No I just found it amusing when you used the phrase “super heavy and awful”, it had me thinking many guys saying “exactly, gross”, though you obviously didnt mean it that way, right?
Dungone: There’s a difference between “worship” and “like and accept.” I don’t expect my sex partners to think I’m the most beautiful person alive or hail me as a sex deity. I expect them to think I’m attractive, to not complain if some part of my body doesn’t look the way they want it to, to not compare me unfavorably to their favorite porn star or model, to not say “ewwwww, gross” at my sexual fluids, et cetera. I think these expectations are reasonable for everyone to have.
And, you know, just like it’s stupid to attribute one reason (misogyny!) to why some men dislike a sex act, it’s also stupid to attribute one reason (insecurity!) to why some women like a sex act. Some cis women like tasting their juices because it’s fun and kind of silly or because they like marking their partners or whatever, no insecurity involved. Assuming you’re having sex with someone multiple times, you can say “I’m sorry, I don’t want to eat your pussy without a washcloth and dental dam” or even carry your own. I mean, hey, some dudes like having my juices crusting on their faces.
@doubletrack, if that’s all you’re willing to acknowledge about my comments, while at the same time making a note to agree with Brett, who is just plain wrong in numerous places, then I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and feel no reason to drop anything. Just because you say so? Are you a qualified doctor? Since my girlfriend got an infection due to having period sex, I really have no reason to follow your advice and I’ll choose to follow her doctor’s advice, instead. Bear in mind that I’m not disturbed/disgusted by periods; I have even gone down on them. What I’m not doing, unlike you, Brett, and Jill, however, is dismissing the fact that there are plenty of women (and men with women) for whom periods are a very different experience from yours. So for Jill, and for you, to try to tell those couples how they should approach their sex lives continues to be asinine… so my point remains, I’m not dropping it.
It’s probably just as risky as anal sex. And it’s not as risky as conservatives make it out to be.
@Ozy, and to take your reasoning one step further, there are guys who like or dislike completely different things depending on who they’re with. There’s some women who I would have never gone down on, sometimes I don’t even know why I feel that way, it just is how it is. It may in fact mean that I didn’t like that particular person’s body parts, but once again I don’t think that a single woman whom I’ve slept with has the wherewithal to make claims about how I am with all other women. I think you and I agree more than not on this, since you took Jill to task in the first place
However, what Brett and Jill and others have been advocating is a lot closer to unconditional worship or at least “forced to like,” than anything resembling a recognition of men’s agency during sex. You’re not pushing it as hard as others, but there’s still a little bit of it there. I’ve never expected a woman to like every single body part or else to shut up about it, as a matter of fact, because I consider myself secure enough to appreciate constructive criticism, to make compromises based on their dislikes, etc. I’d hate to be the emperor with no clothes when it comes to my sex life… is that what Jill is asking for?
> And dudes: if a woman thinks your penis is disgusting, DON’T FUCK HER.
That’s fine to say, but the truth of the matter is that a large section of humanity finds penises — or indeed vaginas — to be icky and gross. A lot of people have sexual hang-ups, and neither piling additional shame on them nor denying them sexual contact is going to help.
I forgot to add, regarding insecurity, I didn’t want to make it out to be the single motivating factor for wanting to force men into accepting certain acts, but it’s there for sure. Let me acknowledge right here that insecurity is also a motivating factor for men, who, likewise, want to “mark” their woman with a facial or anal or threesome or otherwise have the girl prove that she’s willing to go all the way in order to show her devotion to him. The most secure guys out there are the ones in a happily monogamous relationship who aren’t trying to force their lover to accept every last bit of their libido and not threatening to leave her if she refuses to do it. In Jill’s case, with the way that she jumped the shark straight into accusing her boyfriends of misogyny, I will say that yes, based on what I’m hearing, I will definitely infer quite a bit of insecurity there.
@ozy: While I don’t think that a woman wanting/needing (for some definition of “needing”, IIRC some feminists are rather sceptical about men talking about their sexual needs) oral sex do so because they feel insecure about their genitalia, I *did* get a vibe from Jill’s comments that her thought process went like “culture tells women to have issues with perfectly normal, healthy vaginas; a man refusing to perform oral sex on his partner reinforces these toxic messages, which is why those men should be considered unfuckable by all women,” taking women’s insecurities about their vaginas as a given.
@ Brett
“You know women urinate too, right?”
Then it’s misogynist too!
You know if people want to think guys who are okay with period sex are awesome, I’m fine with that. (Hell, it means I get another reason to consider my husband the most awesome man ever.) But saying there’s something wrong with guys(and they deserve to be labeled social outcasts) who don’t is like saying there’s something wrong with girls who don’t swallow or who dislike having a guy’s cum on them or don’t like to give blow jobs or whatever.
Maybe they just don’t like it. It’s possible not to like something for no other reason then you don’t like it.
As for the orgasm issue, there is a not-insignificant number of men who can’t orgasm through PiV intercourse too. Does that mean the women who are partnered with them are obligated to provide them whatever sexual act does cause them to orgasm?
How about we all relax and watch a little video.
I don’t agree with the last paragraph of the OP. I don’t expect anyone to do things they’re not interested in and I don’t want to be expected to do things I’m not interested in either.
@ Valerie
lol at Coureur de Bois battling the ruddy rapids.
@dungone “@if that’s all you’re willing to acknowledge about my comments, while at the same time making a note to agree with Brett, who is just plain wrong in numerous places, then I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and feel no reason to drop anything. Just because you say so? Are you a qualified doctor? Since my girlfriend got an infection due to having period sex, I really have no reason to follow your advice and I’ll choose to follow her doctor’s advice, instead.”
I agreed with a specific portion of Brett’s post. You can tell which part that was because I, you know, quoted it.
Yep, your girlfriend got an infection from period sex, sure. I have it all the time, and I’ve never had an infection. My doctor even knows about it! Does my anecdote beat your anecdote? Or could we acknowledge that ALL sex carries risks, these risks can be mitigated in a variety of ways, and period sex is no more risky than other types of sex, and thus not worthy of any special stigma…?
“What I’m not doing, unlike you, Brett, and Jill, however, is dismissing the fact that there are plenty of women (and men with women) for whom periods are a very different experience from yours.”
Can you point out where exactly I said that? If not, could you stop woefully misrepresenting my position?
@typhonblue
My girlfriend got angry after seeing Dave Foley in drag on the halloween party episode of News Radio and shouted, “Why aren’t you trans?!” at the TV, since he definitely won the bone-structure lottery.
@typhonblue “As for the orgasm issue, there is a not-insignificant number of men who can’t orgasm through PiV intercourse too. Does that mean the women who are partnered with them are obligated to provide them whatever sexual act does cause them to orgasm?”
No, it means that they can end relationships in which women won’t do any of the acts which can make them orgasm and not be “unreasonable”, which was the point being argued.
@TitForTat, frankly… I know what I like in bed, and if a guy isn’t interested in that kind of thing, I will dump him sooner rather than later. I think that sexual incompatibility and unsatisfying sex are things that will destroy my relationships over the short or long term, and after investing lots of time in relationships that didn’t work for me sexually and having them fail, I’m pretty much over putting up with individuals whose likes and dislikes don’t align with mine. Even if I do feel like we are emotionally compatible and have a lot in common. I can compromise on certain things and tend to be willing to try out whatever a partner wants, and if someone doesn’t have that same basic attitude it just isn’t gonna work out.
And it’s worth adding that this philosophy isn’t just about sex. If someone is so obsessed with a certain genre of music that they won’t go to any other types of concerts, or only wants to see summer blockbuster movies or only artsy-fartsy indie movies, or if they refuse to try the food I like, it is just as much of a red flag.
YMMV of course. I much prefer singledom to a relationship with someone whom I can’t accomodate or who won’t accomodate me.
saying there’s something wrong with girls who don’t swallow (Typhon)
Well, you know the old saying……The difference between like and love is spit or swallow. Oops, now how mysogynistic was that.
@ dungone, I’m sorry but period sex does not necessarily cause infections. Vaginas are unique and strange things, and some of em react badly to the randomest of stuff. For example, I can only wear cotton underwear because synthetics cause Vagina Issues. And yet I sincerely hope my ex-boyfriends don’t go around telling the women they sleep with to stop wearing synthetic fabrics because my doctor once advised me personally to do so. Because that would be silly.
@f.
Let me ask you this, if it was only one sexual aspect that your partner wouldnt do but they did match pretty much every one of your spiritual, financial, familial, and social ideas………would you still dump them?
If it were oral? Yes. There are a couple billion people on this planet and surely one of them matches me spiritually, financially, familially and socially and is also willing to lick my twat every once in a while.
Admittedly a big part of this is that I’m pretty damned monogamous. If I am going to go the distance with someone, he had better be willing to… go the distance.
I’m not sure why you’re calling it an anecdote when it’s something I’ve heard more than one ob-gyn talk about? It’s medical science. ( http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/101/specialist/berman/sex-during-period.aspx )
Or that everyone should be aware of possible risks involved and then decide their own level of comfort? I don’t want to come down on anyone, I just think everyone needs to be aware so they can make their own decisions. It’s not inherently UNSAFE, no. But it certainly can and does give women infections.
I’m not sure why you’re calling it an anecdote when it’s something I’ve heard more than one ob-gyn talk about? It’s medical science.
Or that everyone should be aware of possible risks involved and then decide their own level of comfort? I don’t want to come down on anyone, I just think everyone needs to be aware so they can make their own decisions. It’s not inherently UNSAFE, no. But it certainly can and does give women infections sometimes. I consider some forms of BDSM to be significantly riskier, but I don’t stigmatize it (I personally have ropes and spanking involved in my relationship, after all).
@Skidd “I’m not sure why you’re calling it an anecdote when it’s something I’ve heard more than one ob-gyn talk about? It’s medical science.”
What, that period sex can give women infections? Yeah, no doy. So can PIV sex. So can fingering someone. So can synthetic undies (see f. above). So can any number of sexual activities, so there’s no need to stigmatise period sex as “risky sex”, which was the original claim I objected to.
“Or that everyone should be aware of possible risks involved and then decide their own level of comfort?”
Definitely, for all kinds of sexual activity, or activities full stop.
@ f. “If it were oral? Yes. There are a couple billion people on this planet and surely one of them matches me spiritually, financially, familially and socially and is also willing to lick my twat every once in a while.”
Ha! Word.
@f.
Wow.
@f, you have a well-reasoned comment and I’m inclined to agree with it more-so than an argument that that builds on the notion that it’s about liking every aspect of their partner’s body, including period sex, irregardless of how satisfying the sex is in all other respects. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet… for one thing, these are not exactly standards that are socially acceptable for men. Everything you laid out could still work right into the sexist view that real men have to be ready and willing to have sex at all times and that they’re not allowed to say no.
A man would have a hard time sharing your views mainly because if he did, he would run up against that same sexist attitude, which also says that men want too sex and are all potentially creepy rapists who will make women uncomfortable, etc. At least, I’m so used to limiting my sexual experience in order to avoid a whole lot of stigma that at the end of the day I don’t know what else to saying to you except good for you, it must be nice being able to view your sexual needs that way. I think perhaps that’s why a lot of us men are having a difficult time accepting that it’s Okay for women like Jill to dump a man for refusing to give her every last thing she wants. We’ve been brought up to be a hell of a lot more tolerant than she seems to be.
What’s more, I agree with everything you said about this being a great philosophy for things other than sex – obviously if you’re an artist and he hates art, or you love him but he spends all day with his dog, then those are legitimate reasons to break up. But including sex in this philosophy, I think, is at least somewhat dangerous. First of all, what if you’re mistaken, what if the sexual problems you’re experiencing have something to do with you and should be addressed by changes that you need to make, not by him? What if it’s your health that’s preventing you from having good orgasms, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, who knows because there are so many different things that could go wrong with sex that your partner really has no control over. Unlike common interests where it’s clear when two people just don’t enjoy each other’s company, when it comes to sex it’s very difficult to say why it might not work even if you’re physically attracted to the other person. In my personal experience, a lot of women simply don’t understand their own sexuality and actually don’t know the answers to what makes their vaginas run. I know this because I’ve been with enough women where they discovered brand new ways to get off just by being with me. Sure, maybe they should have dumped the last guy to get with me so I could show them, but who was to say that I would have known when they themselves didn’t? Had they known and they told their last partner, then their relationship could have been saved, no? This focus on sex, IMO, encourages extremely compatible couples to give up when they should really put in more effort to find common ground and do some self-exploration to make things work. At least with the way our society looks at erectile dysfunction, we start out by focusing on what could be wrong with the man’s health and we don’t jump to the conclusion that the first thing the guy should do is DTMFA. But not being able to orgasm? Seems that as far as feminism is concerned, it’s always the guy’s fault. Incidentally, no real purpose for this anecdote, but one time I was in a relationship with a girl who could get off just by thinking about me. Solution to period sex, perhaps?
@f, I take the part about the reasoned argument back… you’re going too far. FWIW I’m only willing to have sex with women who wear Italian lace Requirement. There are a couple billion people on this planet and at least one of them must match me in every single way and still wear Italian lace. Guess if you were allergic to that, I’d have to dump you.
In all seriousness, what if you didn’t know about your issues with synthetics and you decided to wear synthetics for the first time while in a relationship with someone. What if you kept getting infections and you mistakenly thought it was caused by the way you were having sex? That’s actually what happened to me because of an infection caused by period sex and I got dumped because the sex started to suck. Please convince me that it wasn’t the kind of Eat Pray Love attitude being espoused here that ruined a great relationship for no reason?
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Hah, dungone, I think maybe I should’ve been clearer about the time horizon involved. In the past I’ve given it about 3 – 4 months for communication about sex to get clearer. Plus, this is such a two-way street. I’ve tried some interesting stuff in the name of helping guys realize their fantasies, so I feel it’s only right for my partner to do the same for me. That kind of openness in general has been a good filter for guys who have a different philosophy on sex, so I have actually never had to deliver the “I am dumping you because of no oral” speech.
I’d say this philosophy only works if both partners are familiar with what works for them, too, and the ins and outs of their bodies in re: what can cause the delicate and precious pH balance in one’s most intimate Georgia O’Keefe painting to take a nose dive, and such. Or are willing to figure it out together. One of my saddest breakups was with a hot Russian mathematics student who got me Nabokov books as a birthday present, but had trouble orgasming a lot of the time and refused, absolutely refused, to change anything about the sex we were having together, go see a urologist, countenance the idea he might be using a death grip while masturbating, you get the picture. He was super dissatisfied with sex but didn’t believe it could change at all. THAT is the attitude I can’t live with, in a nutshell.
As for the Italian lace dilemma, well, that is why the phrase “let me slip into something more comfortable” was invented
Rules I live by and rules I expect any partner of me to live by:
Feel free to:
a) Break up with anyone who doesn’t want to have the kind of sex you want.
b) Ask anyone to do any sex act – even ask again: “Are you sure you can’t do that?”.
c) Withhold any equivalent sex act if you partner says no to do some sex act. Childish, but fair and you of course get to say no without any reservations as well.
Don’t:
1) Threaten to break up with anyone unless they do the certain sex act they didn’t want to do.
2) Ask anyone to do any sex act tens and hundreds’ of times (aka nagging, pestering etc.).
3) Call anyone any names when they says no to an certain sex act, and particularly not in an attempt to get them to do the sex act in question.
4) More far-fetchedly, but still plausible: Do not surprise them with the sex act they’ve said they don’t want to do: go for anal in doggy style, neglecting to mention you’re menstruating when having a quickie in a dark room.
5) Don’t pretend that you don’t know the difference between a) and 1) and the difference between b) and 2).
What the sex act in question is is of no importanse – whether it is kissing, pissing or VAP (I am so adopting this TLA) – this applies to all.
@Tamen:
Amen to your list.
@dungon:
I had an experience like that, but it was more a gradual thing that came up with one partner due to ways that she was treating me. I felt totally broken, because normally I love giving oral (even on periods), and yet it got to the point with her where it felt like a chore. A chore I felt icky about.
It was amazing when I found my next sexual partner, and I realized I was back to myself again. I love giving oral. Fucking love it.
Perhaps one of the reason’s Jill’s oral post bugs me is because it reminds me of some of those attitudes of that ex of mine. Maybe other people are different, but for me it’s like… if you’ve gotten to the point with a partner where you’re thinking in those terms, then it’s kind of a lost cause anyway, because at that point you’re part of the problem too. Sex isn’t a competitive sport (…unless you’re into that kind of thing).
I think we’re all talking past each other at this point anyway, but there’s one thing I’d like to point out: the titles of Jill’s posts on oral and period sex were “Dealbreaker Indeed” and “In Defense of Period Sex”, respectively. They were not, I don’t know “There’s no legit reason for not liking oral” or “Everyone must have period sex all the time” or “Dudes don’t get to say no” or anything awful like that. The core statement in each post was, essentially, that it’s okay to want certain things, and to ask for those things, and to end a relationship if you’re not getting those things. Sure, Jill said a lot of other stuff that you may or may not disagree with, but the central message of each was pretty important, and pretty hard to debate IMO.
I think there’s a discussion to be had about when asking for things becomes coercive, and how men are expected to want all sex all the time, which can be massively destructive, and how everyone has different preferences when it comes to sex acts and how difficult it can be to negotiate this within a relationship. On the other hand, it’s pretty disheartening to see so many people arguing that period sex/menstruation in general really is disgusting, or that’s it’s shallow to end a relationship because you’re not getting the sex you want/need, or that women who have sexual needs and/or want to be partners who like and respect their bodies are shallow and entitled. That’s exactly the kind of bullshit Jill was trying to counteract, and whether you like her or not, you have to admit she had a point there.
Apart from that, Tamen basically summed up most of my thoughts on this issue, and did it far better than I could. Thanks
@Brett, damn straight, it can be extremely shallow. In fact I don’t know what shallow is, if not that. If you’re having trouble with it, try reversing the roles and imagine a guy who leaves a girl because she won’t give him period sex. If it wasn’t a shallow thing to do, then Jill wouldn’t have bothered to go out of her way to excuse some guy who has a debilitating fear of blood or whatever it is she imagined to be the only legitimate reason for a guy to refuse her whenever she wanted it. You see, she already admits that she can live without it if she had to, in order to not be the shallow asshole herself. You see what I mean? She doesn’t respect men’s preferences at all even though she doesn’t really *need* period sex or oral.. In fact, I would wager that more often than not it’s women who are denying period sex and oral from men, but that’s besides the point. Just try reversing the genders and see if you still feel the same way. Are guys justified in dumping women who get painful cramps or diminished sex drives on their periods or PMS? After all, we’re talking about “needs” here, right?
As I put forward in my rule 5), there is a difference between breaking up over something and threatening to break up over something. If a guy decides he can’t live without sex for a few days a month and his partner does’t want to have sex those days, yes then he can break up with her. In this example the woman are better of not being in a relationship where the man resents her for not giving her what he wants and the man really would be better of with someone he doesn’t resent.
Will the woman think he’s an asshole for doing so, yes, most likely, but she of course may think whatever she wants about him. You are only in a relationship as long as the other party wants to be in the relationship and as frightingly this may be it is no less true.
Most couples who find themselves in this situation communicate and tries to reach a compromise – perhaps the woman decides to have sex some or all of those days or the man decides that he really can live without sex some or all of those days. Or the man (in this case) decides to not rise or pursue the issue. All is fine. However, if he introduced a threat/ultimatium in this negotiation over a compromise then any compromise which may be reached is tainted and it is very likely that the woman (in this example) resents the man for putting forward that ultimatium and “forcing” her decision. Depending on circumstances the feeling of being forced by an ultimatium can be very strong and if the issue is a sex act the feeling may very well extend to feeling violated – mixed with self-loathing because one does not refuse to do this.
It’s an ethically imperative to not put your partner in that situation and if you do the odds are very high that the relationship will disintegrate after a while.
If no compromise is reached then can one make and voice the decision to break up over this issue. Do not voice it unless you’re going to follow through.
Rule 3 is closely related. Many people would go to great lengths to avoid being called certain names. Calling someone misogynists when they refuse to do some sex act may very well lead to them feeling pressured into doing that particular sex act in order to disassociate themselves from being called misogynist. Brett K., rule 3 is where I believe Jill failed. Because even if the reason for a person’s aversion for period sex is misogynistic it is still a big no-no to pressure him into having it. Two wrongs do not make a right.
All this other discussions around menstruation blood’s consistency and smell, whether it is comparable with semen or not or if people are shallow or not for breaking up over an issue and so on are just red herrings.
Tamen, I know you mean well but I hope you realize that not everyone subscribes to these sort of post-modernist interpersonal relationships. If anything, you’re awfully close to the naturalistic fallacy: yes, people break up, sometimes for shitty reasons, and yes we’re allowed to hate it, but in the end this is just how it is, we are all better off by definition. I mean, it’s a lot like if someone randomly walked up to you and shot your dog and when you asked them why they did it, their response was, “I guess it just wasn’t meant to live. Don’t you think?” What ever happened to doing the right thing, to putting in a valiant effort? Is there even such a thing anymore or is everything just “meant to be”?
Can we actually say, without reservations, that yes, this person was an asshole and their behavior should be condemned? How can we do that if we don’t have a pretty good set of standards for what is and what isn’t an acceptable reason to give up on a relationship? On the one hand you’ve taken a pretty decent stab at coming up with that sort of standard, but on the other hand you seem to be saying that it doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m pretty sure that this is, at its core, a mile-wide hole that opens us up for double standards. “Oh, so my friend cheated on you? You should just move on, then… its best for you… my friend is a good person, they just need to find someone more appropriate for them… tough luck… you deserve to be happy…you should get help, maybe therapy? They’re still my friend, though… nothing will change that…”
@Tamen
Once again, I agree. I think a dude would be justified in breaking up with a woman if having sex during her period was important to him and she wouldn’t do it. Likewise if she wouldn’t receive oral (I was actually in this situation with a woman once – I loved giving oral, she hated receiving it. That wasn’t what ended the relationship, but it was one of the things that made us incompatible as a couple).
Also:
Rule 3 is closely related. Many people would go to great lengths to avoid being called certain names. Calling someone misogynists when they refuse to do some sex act may very well lead to them feeling pressured into doing that particular sex act in order to disassociate themselves from being called misogynist. Brett K., rule 3 is where I believe Jill failed. Because even if the reason for a person’s aversion for period sex is misogynistic it is still a big no-no to pressure him into having it. Two wrongs do not make a right.
You have a point here. I think her argument about misogyny makes more sense if you take into account that her posts were meant to tell women that it’s okay to have desires and to leave a relationship that doesn’t satisfy those desires, not to tell men what they are and are not allowed to do. That’s why I brought up the point about the titles. “In defence of period sex” means that period sex is okay, not that not having period sex is awful. Yeah, the fact that Jill, writing for a primarily female audience and being a notoriously busy person, didn’t consider the effect that her arguments about misogyny (which, while valid, might have been a bit of a generalization in this case) would have on some men, is a flaw in both posts. On the other hand, I don’t think it makes her a bad person, and I don’t think that it invalidates everything she said.
@dungone
Again, I’ve got to ask: what about intercourse? Is it shallow to break up with someone for refusing to have intercourse? It is, after all, just one sex act.
Also, breaking up=/= cheating. Cheating is never okay. Breaking up with someone, if you’re unhappy with them, is morally neutral even if I don’t like your reasons. Breaking up with someone for expressing disgust for your body, which is what this discussion was originally about? That’s not only justifiable; it’s a damn good idea*.
(*Which isn’t to say you have to, obviously. You can stay in a relationship for any reason, too! Giving advice =/= telling people what to do. Otherwise advice columnists would be brutal tyrants.)
And to add one more thing: I do think that Jill’s pieces are worthy of critique. I think Ozy did a pretty good job of critiquing them, even though I don’t agree with every point she made any more than I agree with every point Jill made. I think that this is an important topic to discuss (especially the ultimatum issue that Tamen brought up – when is an ultimatum justifiable, and when is it coercion? I’m honestly asking because I have no clue). I don’t, however, this that Jill is misandrist a rapist / the Antichrist / etc for saying what she said.
Once again, I agree. I think a dude would be justified in breaking up with a woman if having sex during her period was important to him and she wouldn’t do it.(Brett)
Really? You would be justified to break up with someone if they picked their nose and you didnt like it. The truth is, if all it takes is not having sex during someone’s period for either individual then I would say they need to take a good hard look at what constitutes compatibility.
A relationship is by nature a delicate thing, it is an alignment of two (or more for those of that persuasion) people where all involved agrees to be in an relationship. Whatever social standards there are for acceptable reasons for dissolving that relationship does not change the fact that as soon as one party says it’s over then it is over. The one deciding to break up is the one who has to weigh pros and cons, be they the partner’s emotional state, social protocols, their own desires and so on. When they’ve done that it’s done. So when someone breaks up over lack of periode sex even if society has declared that one shouldn’t break up because your partner won’t do period sex the break up no less a fact. Strengthening that social rule by perhaps even legislating it (for instance like only granting divorce on certain grounds) the end results would only be that those who wants out of the relationship for that reason invents other more socially acceptable reasons for getting out.
For me “putting in an valiant effort” signifies a desire and want to be in the relationship and is a state one never is in after one has decided to break-up – but always before.
Personally, as much as I love my wife, the moment (as much as I hope it’ll never occur) she says she doesn’t love me or that she is leaving then I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with her. I’d wish she’d love me and that she didn’t want to leave, but I wouldn’t want an relationships as long as she doesn’t and does.
“Again, I’ve got to ask: what about intercourse? Is it shallow to break up with someone for refusing to have intercourse? It is, after all, just one sex act. ”
Anal or vaginal intercourse, they are two sex acts. And I can’t physically provide vaginal intercourse, and expect it could be an issue, yes. I’m also much more open to the idea of anal (than the general public) because as the sole remaining penetrative option, it’s at least that.
@Tamen
People can do whatever they want, but lets put this idea(period sex) into some kind of context. If you have a really bad period, you potentially will be bleeding for about 6-12 days, give or take. So, that leaves roughly 19-25 days for the opportunity of having great, mindblowing sex. Do you not think that if someone gets along on pretty much every other level except period sex but they still feel the need to leave because of that, is that not just a little off???
An ultimatium is always coercion by intention. Although a low level coercion. One use ultimatiums because that is the only way or the fastest way to persuade someone. It is often used when a pro-argumentation does not succeed. It is persasion by might in the form of a threat which will be put in effect by the one putting forth the ultimatium in case of non-compliance. An ultimatium without a plausible and effective threat is laughable.
The question is rather; when is low-level coercion acceptable?
A hard question for which I have no clear answers, but I would be really careful to put it into any sexual settings or settings which may cause harm to the other person. No person is harmed by doing the laundry even if they don’t really want to, but a person may be harmed by doing a sex act they don’t really want to do.
What kind of person Jill is beside the fact that she broke rule 3 I don’t have neither much knowledge or opinion about. Rule 3 address an integral part of rape culture – people’s right to say no to sex have long been undermined by calling them names when they exercise that right.
Titfortat: If you ask for my personal opinion, yes, I would think that that would be off. So off that I probably would think/assume (to the extent I was bothered to) that they didn’t get along on pretty much every other level. My thinking that would probably have negligent effect on that person’s decision to break up – and it would also be after the fact.
Since we’re into hypotethical situations, what if he asked her for period sex and she replied with calling him pervert and the vilest names for asking for such a thing? Another example: if the guy asks the woman if she could shave her genitals and she replies with: Are you a pedophile, who else would want a naked …!? Would it be off then?
I think that all of these situations could potentially be dealbreakers for some people. I don’t get to decide for someone whether or not they should stay in a relationship; I only get to decide for me. If someone hates nose-pickers, they should probably break up with me, because anyone who gets involved with me is going to see me pick my nose at some point. If someone called me (or a dude version of me, let’s say) a pervert or pedo, I would definitely break up with them. If someone refused to have period sex? Eh, that depends, and I’ve never been in that situation so I couldn’t say. In any case, I don’t think anyone is shallow for choosing not to remain in a relationship with someone, even if I personally don’t particularly like that reason. They’re just a different person with different priorities, and everyone involved would probably be worse off if they stayed.
(I just got dumped, by the way, for what I consider to be a pretty dumb reason, and I STILL respect everyone’s right to choose to end a relationship for any reason.)
Tamen, the ultimatum question is a difficult one. I know that personally, I’d prefer to have a warning that the relationship would end if something didn’t change (the fact that I didn’t is why I’m really bitter about my breakup, actually); on the other hand, I can see how an ultimatum can be super coercive, especially when it comes to sex. This is particularly true when the person giving the ultimatum doesn’t actually intend to end the relationship and is just using it to manipulate their partner – and I’m sure that happens a lot.
I guess the other thing is, when does something become coercive, when sex is involved? Asking isn’t coercive, obviously. Saying “please” isn’t. Nagging is, most of the time. Saying “Hey, this is really important to me and I don’t know if I can be in a relationship without it, so we probably need to figure out some kind of compromise” – I don’t know, but is it worse than “Hey, this is really important to me and I know you’re not up for it, so we’re over”?
And I agree with you broadly on Rule #3, but I don’t know if it necessarily applies if you’re talking in broader terms and not actually saying it to anyone in particular. If a woman tells her boyfriend that he is misogynist for not wanting to perform cunnilingus, then yes, obviously, she is engaging in some coercive name-calling. But – to provide a female equivalent – if some dude online (say, in an advice column) says that women who won’t give BJs are prudes (or misandrists, I guess?), I, for one, don’t feel like I’m being coerced into giving them. I know this opinion exists, I may or may not agree with it, but it doesn’t influence how I feel about my own sexuality. Does this make sense?
@Schala True enough, they are quite different, although either one could be a dealbreaker for some people. I was mostly just arguing that if it’s shallow to break up with someone over one sex act (say, oral, or period sex, or fisting or roleplay or…), then it’s shallow to break up with someone over intercourse – something that I think a lot of people (especially straight dudes) value very highly and wouldn’t want to go without. I don’t think it’s possible to argue that one is shallow while the other isn’t without arguing for a hierarchy of sex acts, which I doubt anyone here wants to do.
then it’s shallow to break up with someone over intercourse (Brett)
Yep, now how simple was that…………
is not an ultimatum, it’s a call for negotiations about a compromise. Not a bad thing at all – unless you actually don’t intend to compromise. If that’s the case then the negotiations for a compromise will quickly devolve into an ultimatum.
Ultimatums preclude compromises.
“Hey, this is really important to me and I can’t be in a relationship without it, so you need to do this or else we’re done”
is an ultimatum.
As for your last paragraph – yes, when applied in broader terms as your example it probably will not affect you as much as if your SO said so to your face. It does however contribute to the cultural narrative about what sex acts one can’t refuse – hence a part of rape culture as defined by Ozy. And given enough of those advice columns saying women are misandrist when they won’t do blow-jobs the chances that a sex partner say it to your face increases as it becomes a social accepted stance.
Except that it’s not, if it’s enough to make you unhappy. Sex is extremely important to a lot of people. Lack of sexual satisfaction is a good enough reason to end a relationship – even if only one sex act is leading to that lack of satisfaction.
@Tamen
As for your last paragraph – yes, when applied in broader terms as your example it probably will not affect you as much as if your SO said so to your face. It does however contribute to the cultural narrative about what sex acts one can’t refuse – hence a part of rape culture as defined by Ozy. And given enough of those advice columns saying women are misandrist when they won’t do blow-jobs the chances that a sex partner say it to your face increases as it becomes a social accepted stance.
True enough. I think the counterexample I gave – about women who won’t give BJs (or have anal, or facials, or whatever) being prudes has probably contributed to that aspect of rape culture in some ways, so I can definitely see the same thing happening to men.
On the other hand, I think there really are guys who have misogynistic reasons for refusing to give head, for example (one that Jill pointed out, and that I’ve actually heard in real life, is that it’s somehow effeminate, which is a whole level of WTF, but is surprisingly common nonetheless). There’s also the fact that women’s sexual desires are often ignored or written off. How can we talk about those facts without contributing to that aspect of rape culture? I think we can – not here, necessarily, since this is a blog about men’s issues and not women’s – it’s just a question of figuring out how to do it.
@ Brett
“There’s also the fact that women’s sexual desires are often ignored or written off.”
I think men’s sexual desires outside of PiV intercourse (or the idea that a lot of men don’t get off from PiV intercourse) are often ignored or actively stigmatized.
Wanting oral sex seems to be seen as being a disgusting sexual imposition on a woman and/or a way of dominating her. Wanting anal sex is the same as wanting oral sex except ten times worse. Wanting a hand job instead of PiV sex is rarely addressed because in the stereotypical sex acts hierarchy, men prefer PiV to hand jobs, blow jobs to PiV and anal to everything else.
And that’s not even getting into the stigma attached to nipple play, foreskin play(if he has one) or anal play(on the guy).
Looking from the outside in the Man Sex Script is: Get Hard, no matter what, PiV for as long as possible(hopefully till she orgasms), Get Off, no matter what. If she doesn’t orgasm, it’s your fault; if you don’t orgasm it’s your fault. If she doesn’t get wet, it’s your fault; if you don’t get hard, it’s your fault.
In this sense the Standard Sex Script, while defined by a male orgasm, is really more defined by the idea that men don’t have the right not to orgasm.
Well, Brett, if you ask me there are really narratives for each gender that suggest we should all be downplaying sexual desire. For women there’s the whole “ladies only have sex to keep a man, they don’t actually like it” thing, and for men there’s the “too driven by sexual desire, prone to exploiting partners” thing. Like, yes, people do need to be careful that they aren’t pressuring a partner to perform sex acts that partner isn’t into… but at the same time, there is simply nothing wrong with wanting a satisfying sex life, articulating one’s desires, and taking steps to find compatible partners. Plus it’s not like you can just un-expand your horizons.
Part of what might help square this circle is the fact that people don’t universally like or dislike the same stuff. I would definitely not stay with a guy who is unwilling to give oral, because it’s a big part of sex for me. But, I’ve heard from enough women who can’t get off from oral at all, and are completely indifferent to it. Men who have a difficult time with giving oral sex are probably well advised to find a woman who isn’t particularly into it.
This is where I thought the Feministe posts went off the rails… So all men should be willing to give head, and have period sex, but women have the option of being passionate about, indifferent to, or completely uninterested in, receiving oral and having sex during our periods? Umm, pretty sure people naturally have diverse preferences, and we’re best off looking for someone whose preferences overlap with ours to a large extent.
Or, I mean, for some couples sex is nothing close to a high priority, so compromise that leads to more stuff getting taken off the menu is a good option for some people, too.
@Brett
You know what, your idea is pervasive in our society today. You can have it all if you just wait and find that “right” person. I have no doubt that sex is important to many people. Just like money is important to others and thin women for some others. That still doesnt change the fact that if you relate to someone on multiple levels but still feel the need to show them the door because they dont have period sex, you are probably just a tad shallow. I would think its not rocket science to figure out someone doesnt match your sexual interest from a very early standpoint. If you get to the point where you love them and then dump them because they dont like period sex or pretty much any other kind of sex I think there is something wrong with your thinking process. But hey,what do I know, being a privileged white heterosexual man.
Brett K: I’m pretty sure there exists men who have misogynistic reasons for not giving head, just as there are women who have misogynistic reasons for not giving head. As I’ve stated in an earlier comment:
typhonblue:
For quite a while after a girl started to fuck while I slept I were anorgasmic. This caused no end of hassle and I quickly learnt to fake an orgasm rather than to deal with the fallout of me not having one. Another time I was having sex with a woman who were quite loud, so much that at a certain point I became unsure whether I was hurting her so I stopped to check. Her anger and vitrol made it perfectly clear that me stopping were not an option. I avoided her after that. I was also tired of having to explain at least once to every girlfriend/partner that me declining sex were not about them – when I am too tired to have sex and just want to sleep the idea of having to spend a long time dealing with someone’s inability to accept that at face value is high on the list of thing that gets tiresome. I’ve had women grope me in bars, women lifting up my shirt in bars, women telling me what their estimate of my penis size is. The common belief that only women experience sexual crap irks me to no end. I don’t believe I am an unusual anomoly who has been extraordinarily unlucky.
@ Tamen
“For quite a while after a girl started to fuck while I slept I were anorgasmic.”
I’m sorry Tamen.
Discovering how easy it is to fake orgasms when practicing safe sex and resigning quite quickly to just enjoy the sex and not chase the elusive orgasm, thus removing addition anxiety issues probably helped me get past it faster.
@typhonblue
That’s the script as you (and probably a lot of men) experience it. And it’s a shitty script. But trust me, the script offered to women is no less shitty. I don’t want to play Oppression Olympics here, so can we just agree that no one is really a winner here? Because I really do sympathize, and I feel like detailing my experiences on this blog would only feel like an attempt to downplay yours, and that’s not something I want to do.
@f.
I basically agree with you. I think we interpreted the Feministe post differently (and maybe that was a failure on Jill’s part, I don’t know – she certainly left a lot open to interpretation) but overall, yes, you are right. If there’s anything we’ve gotten from this discussion, it’s that we all have different desires, and that’s okay.
@TitforTat
I don’t think you and I are really going to agree on this issue. For the most part, that’s okay! You and I are different people and we clearly have different priorities. Sex is a big part of what makes me happy. Money and thinness (the examples you brought up) are much less important, but they might be important to other people. I, personally, am the sort of person who would rather be single than be with someone who does not make me happy.
So, does breaking up with someone who doesn’t make me happy mean that I am shallow? No, it means that I would rather be single than in an unsatisfying relationship. Maybe you feel differently. That’s fine. Please stop calling me shallow, though. It hurts my feelings.
@Tamen
I probably should have addressed that particular point of yours (the one you just quoted) in the last comment I made, because yes, I agree with you 100%. Just as someone has a right to break up with someone even if I disagree with their reasons (even my ex, and seriously, fuck that dude), someone has a right to refuse sex for any reason. Even if their reason is douchey. It doesn’t matter. Their partner still has zero right to coerce them, and should go to jail if they do. So, yes.
Also, the situation you described is absolutely awful. I’ve experienced similar things, and they have been absolutely sickening every single time. I’m sorry you had to go through that, and I hope you’re okay now.
@Brett K
Typhonblue is a woman btw.
Anecdote here, but a lot of people think I’m a man too, on feminist blogs, because I defend men’s point of view, participation and consideration.
It’s part of a consideration for other trans women, and also men, who I don’t wish to live through the same thing I did. That’s because I lived it.
Typhonblue’s motive is different, but no less about avoiding this fate for others.
@Schala
Wow, I had no idea. I certainly respect both of you for defending men’s point of view, but I think my point still stands. The Standard Sex Script is shitty for everyone. I don’t want to get into the ways in which it’s shitty for women, because that’s not the point of this blog and it’s kind if hard for me to talk about anyway, for personal reasons, but nobody is a winner there. That’s why this blog exists.
@ Brett
I never intended to make it an issue of who has it worse. I just got the impression (wrongly or rightly) that you might not have been aware just how profoundly bad the standard script is for men as well. At least in my opinion.
My interest isn’t in deciding who has it worse, my interest is in a clear understanding of how things suck that incorporates all points of view.
“Also, the situation you described is absolutely awful. I’ve experienced similar things, and they have been absolutely sickening every single time.”
Well, yeah. Because what happened to Tamen was rape. And it sounds like he lost, at least for a time, a large part of the pleasure of sex. Horrible. But not surprising. And it’s unfortunate that he didn’t feel safe divulging his anorgasmia to his partners because of the pressure of the Standard Script(tm) for men. (I hope I’m not putting words in your mouth, Tamen)
@typhonblue
I realize, in retrospect, that that was what you were doing, and I totally see where you were coming from. I have some idea of how bad that script is for men, but obviously, never having experienced it, I’ll never fully understand it. I just try my best, as I hope many men do when it comes to how much the script sucks for women.
I also agree that what happened to Tamen was rape. Anorgasmia is an issue for a lot of people (and has been for me as well, at certain times) and is fraught with all kinds of cultural baggage, much of which can lead to coercive and otherwise awful situations. Anyway, though, Tamen, I hope you are okay now and I really hope that you continue to comment here, because you are awesome.
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My wife had unprotected sex with some random before we where married. When she came home she encouraged me to go down on her which i did. I found out about this after we got married.
Now many years later I just cant do it. I gag getting close and have vomited several times attempting.
A couple of times the vomiting happened when I was under the pressure of “if you wont do this you don’t love me and perhaps we have no future”. The woman told everybody she knew that I hated women so much that the smell of vagina made me vomit.
It is really not something I find easy to explain but saying “I don’t do that” just about always offends. There really is some double standard when men try to say “no”.
BTW I also never ask or let women give me oral either because I know I can not reciprocate.
You’re missing the entire point of that period sex article. It was not written to say that men who won’t have period sex suck and they shouldn’t have a choice. It was pointing out that vaginas have been looked at as these gross, dirty things for too long and it makes vagina-owners ashamed and self-conscious. So when your boyfriend says “eewwwww icky period vag” it’s not exactly the nicest way to treat your significant other.
Stacie: I certainly agre with the non-niceness (to put it mildly) of saying “eewwwww icky period vag”, but if that was the point then the author would be much better served by not writing
Note, she didn’t write that you’re kind of a dick if you say in an abbrasive manner that period are disgusting, no she wrote that you’re kind of a dick for thinking it.
Here the thought chaing seem to be:
Like sex, but don’t like period sex means not not liking normally-functioning vaginas which again should disqualify you from ever fucking a woman. I mean, how else than “suck it up and fuck my menstruating me even if you don’t want to because otherwise you’re a dick who doesn’t deserve to have sex with women” can this be read?!
“You’re missing the entire point of that period sex article. ”
And you’re mising the point of this post. this post is saying it is rapey to guilt-trip and manilpulate your partner into a sex act he doesn’t want to do. the point of the original article are to at issue, its rapey and hypocritical tactics are the issue.
Believe me, we all get the genital-shaming bit. Penises are considered deadly weapons in the Patriarchy and in many comments in feminist spaces; we get the shaming bit from the day we’re born. Words for vaginas and penises are used as pejoratives all over the place. We get all that.