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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

From slutty to horny.

Female horniness is an important, and missing, narrative in our culture.  We have a well-developed idea of female sluttiness, but that's a different thing.

Sluttiness, as popularly perceived, is:
•External. A woman looks slutty, she dresses slutty, she acts slutty.  Whether she feels slutty is not something we generally talk about.
•Indiscriminate.  We seem to draw very little line between "will have sex with multiple people" and "will have sex with anyone and doesn't care if it's an alley cat."
•Mysterious.  Why is a slut slutty?  There are some attempted answers out there--need for attention, trying to get something from men--but most often she just is.  It's a character flaw or something.  Just as a slut's internal experience of sluttiness doesn't get talked up much in the popular narrative, neither does her reason for choosing the slutlife.

Whereas female horniness in the popular imagination is rare.  Admittedly our idea of male horniness is pretty scrambled too, but we have some concept of it as a near-universal male experience.  On the rare occasion a woman is horny in the mainstream culture, usually it's comical or even threatening.

This is getting better over the years.  Slowly.  But it's still not an accepted thing that a woman can just plain want to get her grind on.  (Actually, seeing women as horny isn't new; it's just undoing the work of the Victorians.  In medieval Europe women were often described as lustful and desiring--the ideal of the sexless woman in Western culture is only about 200 years old.)

Here are the things about horniness that seem to make people nervous:
•Horniness is internal.  It's defined entirely in terms of a woman's experience of her own body and feelings.
•Horniness is selective.  I'm horny for some of the men but not all of the men, and that's some sort of radical statement apparently.
•Horniness is humanizing.  Women get horny just like people do!  It's impossible to get all "woman, she is a mystery" on this; if you've ever had that warm tickly feeling in your pants, you know exactly where a horny woman is coming from.
"Nervous" is an understatement.  These are the things about horniness that drive people--male and female--to completely deny that women's sexual desire exists and matters.


I don't want to make this post just about "slutty is bad and horny is good."  The behaviors commonly called "slutty" are not bad or dirty; that was the point of the Slutwalks.  But they're a painfully incomplete portion of female sexuality.  Without understanding that women can not just invite sex but actually want it, we can't make sense of any of the issues surrounding women's sex lives.

The biggest one being: Only when we accept that women can want can we accept it when they don't want.  If sex is only ever something women tolerate, then being forced to tolerate it is not so fundamentally different from tolerating it to sustain a relationship.  This isn't just about rape either.  It's also about women in the condition of tolerating sex and not expecting anything more; women who have learned to disregard their own desires.  Women are taught how to say no, and more recently how to say yes, but we're still not up to saying "I want it."


I feel sort of weird living in a society where it's radical to say that I want my good-to-rub parts rubbed, that I want to choose who does it and how, and I'm not going to apologize for this. But it is. I guess I'm a revolutionary then. Slutwalk is old news; let's have a Hornywalk.


[Programming note: I have finals this week, hence the light posting. I have a guest post about STI testing queued up next and I'll try to get things back on schedule after finals.]

65 comments:

  1. For what it's worth, it's apparently also a radical statement (for different reasons, possibly) to say that male horniness is selective.

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  2. You know, one of the things I've heard about the Twilight books was that it's one of the first really well known of YA books to acknowledge female sexual agency. Bella wants Edward's sparkly bone. It's one of the reasons that I think it's resonated so much with women of many ages- the permission to lust after someone.

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  3. @fjp Eh, I've seen enough "LOLs fat women are utterly utterly repulsive" scenes in films, movies, books, magazines, and probably sky writing to put a damper on that theory.

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  4. Sorry, JFP I meant. Observe: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477051/

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  5. Along with the concept of the indiscriminate slut comes the idea that her partners are of lesser value - "she'll give it up for just *anyone*" - and that can carry with it all kinds of horrible things like racism, ageism, fatphobia and lookism, etc. Not that I think anyone who's slutty should necessarily have sex with every person who wants them. Of course not! I just find it disturbing that some partners are considered 'less valuable' and more likely to make someone who has sex with them a slut who doesn't care who they sleep with.

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  6. I think the thing with male indiscriminacy is more that men are supposed to be attracted to any "attractive" woman. Men can get away with not being attracted to an "ugly" woman, but there's not much room to say someone's hot but just not your type--guys get a lot of "yeah, but you'd do her" and "what, are you gay or something?" for that.

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  7. Part of the reason I enjoyed the movie "Thor" so much, apart from my nerdiness, was that throughout the entire movie Natalie Portman's character was emanating raging lust for Thor. It was a refreshing depiction of female sexuality, in that it suggested that women experienced attraction and just plain horniness. And it didn't doll her up in a bodycon dress and stilettos to suggest that she was "sexual". A lot of media seems to insinuate that a woman's sexuality can only be expressed by looking sexy. I would love to see more acknowledgement that women are people that sometimes feel sexy feelings.

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  8. As a woman, I've always felt uncomfortable with my sexuality. I've been masturbating since I was a toddler, long before I knew what sexual feelings were, and I've never heard of any girl I know masturbating. This is obviously partially because masturbation is something some people don't talk about, but it's also because a lot of women have been trained to only think of sexual desire as having to do with a partner. When my friend was going on and on about how she wants cock, how she misses her ex because she wants sex, I said, "You know, masturbation could really help with some of that. I know it's different than sex, but it definitely helps with some of the feelings." My friend completely freaked out. When I've talked to her and my other friends about it, they've said they just don't get why someone would masturbate. They can't even think about being sexual without a guy.
    I think this says a lot about how our culture only acknowledges a woman being sexual as an object of male desire.
    As always Holly, thanks so much for the wonderful insight. Society needs more people like you who say what society would like to keep quiet.

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  9. http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2010/05/guest-post-by-bruno.html

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  10. Anon 10:56 - YES! I loved Thor! If you haven't seen it yet, check out this awesome blog post on Thor as a legitimately feminist superhero movie.

    http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/is-thor-a-feminist-movie-yes/

    Also, the bifrost = most fabulous method of space travel ever.

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  11. I have always been a hornier than average woman or at least a woman who is hornier than most women will admit to being. I really like sex and I want to have lots of it. I think I'd be happiest if I could have sex with a partner every day. Unfortunately I'm not conventionally attractive and I haven't been able to find a partner who matches my degree of sexual interest so I don't end up having as much sex as I'd like. I masturbate and do have some casual sex which might get me branded as a slut but I'm certainly not predatory. I have great respect for consent and want only partners who are absolutely sure they want to be there with me. I'd love to see more acknowledgement of the horny woman who isn't scary or a social reject.

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  12. I remember watching 'Up In The Air' and being amazed that Anna Kendrick's character had casual sex with a random guy... and didn't get judged for it OR suffer consequences of any kind. She didn't catch an STI or get eaten by werewolves or anything.

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  13. Holly, good luck with your finals!

    RE: Anonymous at 11:18 on the 7th - I've been lucky in that regard, in that I have several female friends who are perfectly willing to discuss masturbation. The first time I heard them comparing and contrasting vibrators they'd used, I was kind of shocked, because I was still programmed to see female masturbation as an Incredibly Dirty Thing. But instead of voicing that shock, I listened. Thanks to them, I became comfortable with the idea of masturbation - and learned a few things that came in useful when I eventually decided to buy my first vibrator.

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  14. i like slutty though,and calling myself a slut,because it describes my attitude to sex when i am not horny.

    That said a great point on the need to accept horniness in women so we can accept when they are not horny.We still live in a world where "I thought she wanted it" is an acceptable(to some) defence.

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  15. I like slutty too! I don't think it's bad, just incomplete. I like to say I'm slutty and horny.

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  16. @Holly I was original anon because I forgot my password for a bit. Anyways, your take might be confirmed by those dudes that break out epithets like "ugly" for any women that doesn't meet their tastes, as if they're objectively unattractive, but thankfully I think most men don't do that. But I do think that it's very easy for a man to find some small flaw with a woman and get out of the 'constantly horny' requirement.

    I think though that those forms of media which insist men are constantly horny and will take all comers surround their male characters with women that at worst are 'hollywood ugly.' Those sorts of media just disappear non-conventionally attractive women so they don't have to deal with violating the at least one of the 'men are constantly horny and not picky' and 'women outside a narrow range are objectively repulsive' tropes. I think though that media is most comfortable breaking the former rule rather than the latter. I honestly think it's a false equivalence to think the pressure to be attracted to every passable woman all the time is equal to the pressure for women to fit within a narrow range to be considered attractive at all, especially when the former can be easily side-stepped by finding some minor flaw with the woman in question.

    When I was reading your piece my mind immediately jumped to a scene in the 40-year-old virgin wherein a women MASTURBATING (after she and another character had agreed to have sex, even) was regarded as scary and freaky and an utter turn-off (except for the one character that was understood to be an undiscerning weirdo). Here is a woman who has stepped out of bounds by being horny, and thus is now seen as threatening and therefore unattractive. The men are allowed to reject her based on her "scary" behaviour, and easily get out of the "everything that moves" requirement.

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  17. @Holly. I can see your point,I have been thinking about it today,and have a blog post of my own floating about. I think one of the reasons I want to defend the term slut is because in my head it is complete. The slutwalks were a great protest,however,dressing one way or another does not make someone a slut,(and there are male sluts too).I suppose I worry that the word is being diluted in being reclaimed.It doesnt ,to me, mean just sex positive, although the two are intertwined.

    Anyway,good luck with the finals and I am really glad I found your blog.

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  18. It's only recently that I've realised that I can have sex even if I'm not in a relationship if I find someone who wants to. Very recently in fact. I had casual sex for the first time last month. I did it because I suddenly became incredibly, distractingly horny, more than I ever had before. I couldn't concentrate on anything else and masturbation helped very little, so I had one off sex with someone. It was with a friend, and someone who I knew had experience of casual sex and who I felt comfortable with.

    And...it was great! Sorted my problem right out. :D But not only that, it didn't utterly destroy my self esteem or cause everyone to suddenly magically 'know' and call me a slut everywhere I went or anything else I assumed when I was younger (I'm 22 now). Afterwards my friend and I went back to exactly how we were before.

    I think in society sex is often seen as so tied to love that it seems like it should have some earth shattering impact, or cause one or other partner to suddenly fall in love and pine away to nothing. (I mean, maybe that CAN happen, but I bet it's unusual and I have sense enough to know that casual sex should be avoided with people who seem like they might have feelings for you that you don't reciprocate, it sends the wrong message.) And of course, as someone above has written, it's notable in a film if a woman has casual sex and isn't punished for it in some way. But it would be great if sex was perceived as also tied to horniness- horniness combined with love, or just horniness on its own. And above all it should be horniness from both parties, not just the man.

    Being a horny person who does something about it is quite a revelation for me as I spent years denying my sex drive (raised Christian, and even after I counted myself as non-Christian and was having sex in relationships I still found myself denying that I was horny to myself for some reason). I didn't have an orgasm until I was 21. I thought orgasms were that uncomfortable feeling you get when someone touches your clit directly for too long, and therefore that I didn't like them, until a boyfriend accidentally gave me one a year ago. This is really embarrassing to say!

    This post gives me the opportunity to say how much reading this blog for the past year has changed my perceptions about sex and my own sexuality and given me freedom to express it. So thank you so much Holly, you have inspired me. :)

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  19. Paying close enough attention to women to figure out how they're feeling on the inside? Sounds like feminazi nonsense to me. Sex should basically be like a Chinese food menu, only if Chinese food menus were more like the Chinese food menus in bad stand-up comedy routines from the 1980's.

    Actually, everything should be more like it is in bad stand-up comedy routines from the 1980's. Women are so controlling and illogical! HAHAHAHA

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  20. So when did masturbation become such a weird thing? I'm serious: I grew up in the 60s/70s assuming that everyone masturbated, with most people starting between 10-13 and some earlier (and to the extent that anyone told me about their habits, I was right). Was I in some sort of weird bubble, or is this part of the general backlash against women? Is there some anti-Judy Blume out there telling little girls it's icky to touch themselves?

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  21. You know, your blog seriously helped me realize my feelings.
    I had an ex that I dated for about 2 years and she came from a religious family (they went to church but didn't find out about it till a year in) and well, she was my first and I was 16 so my sex drive was pretty serious. And I really felt guilty for it. I only now realize that in my mind she "tolerated" it, even though I could clearly see she was enjoying it too, she just couldn't say and/or accept it. And I felt bad about spending day having sex and afterwards thinking: man, i's such a selfish pig, I know she doesn't enjoy it as much as I do, but here we are it's already 21:00 and it takes here an hour just to get home. And I felt that she was reluctant and she just let me have her body out of kindness of heart.
    And now I see that when she really didn't want it and said something like "not today" and so forth, I acted as "well she never really wants it, so today she just doesn't want it a little more, big deal, I already feel selfish, might as well have some sex with it" and pressed on (i didn't physically force her, just kept on with my advances, like caressing her) and usually I had my way and we had sex.
    And now, after reading you blog, I realise how that situation could have easily escalated into rape (I don't think I would've done it, but well, no one ever does).

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  22. hey gippeus: if your girlfriend said no, and you ignored her verbal cues until she gave in, that's... rape by a number of definitions. :(

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  23. And now I see that when she really didn't want it and said something like "not today" and so forth, I acted as "well she never really wants it, so today she just doesn't want it a little more, big deal, I already feel selfish, might as well have some sex with it" and pressed on (i didn't physically force her, just kept on with my advances, like caressing her) and usually I had my way and we had sex.
    I hate to break this to you, but if she said no and you just kept going until you had your way... that's not something that could have been rape. That's straight-up rape. It's not violent rape, but when someone says "no" and you say by your actions "your refusal meant nothing to me" and then you have sex--that's rape.

    I don't mean this in the sense of "so you're a horrible person and should go to jail" because all I know is that you were a horrible person and you're not going to jail so that's a couple of moot points there. I mean that in the sense of take this stuff seriously in the future. Just because you didn't use force or threats doesn't mean this was a just-silly-ol-me, fuzzy-relationship-problems thing. It's a big deal--like, a woman who feels differently could call the cops over it big deal. Keep that in mind the next time you're having sex and just go to sleep unless you get a "yes please."

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  24. "They can't even think about being sexual without a guy."

    This seems really strange to me. Isn't it just a normal part of exploring yourself? However, I think it might be tied somewhat into the idea of girl parts being mysterious/inaccessible. I say this because I have met GROWN WOMEN (ie 22 and older) who had never seen their own genitals. That is, they never took a look at themselves in the mirror or anything. Now, I know you have to go to a *bit* of effort to check it out down there, but it seems to me really unfortunate that a woman or a girl would not bother to take the time to see what her own anatomy looked like.

    So...I guess if you've never even seen what it's like down there the idea of exploring it in a more tactile way would seem more weird.

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  25. Holly, Just wanted to say - best of luck with the exams.

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  26. When I was reading "Catcher in the Rye," I always had to stop a second every time Holden described himself as sexy. I'd be like, "Wow, he's confident..." and then realize he meant horny. And there are so many words like that! In "That Terrible Strength," which is an apocalyptic C. S. Lewis sci-fi, the main character's husband is looking at her and thinking about how voluptuous she is, and C. S. Lewis goes off on a tangent about how the wife isn't voluptuous, she's inspiring voluptuous feelings in him--one of the best tangents he ever went off on--and the first time I learned that the word voluptuous meant "relating to orgasm." There are so many words that go through the transition from meaning "horny" to meaning "attractive," but the only other one I can think of right now is hot.

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  27. Reading this post and the comments and what they have to say about culture, it feels like people are looking at the idea of female horniness coming out in popular culture and being a Thing is new. I haven't many words on this topic that aren't said elsewhere (or here, for that matter) more eloquently and by brighter minds, but the entire debate put me in mind of a particular song from an old Julie Andrews movie; The Sound of Music.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL27-VldopA

    It came out in 1965 and one of the subplots features a sixteen year old girl falling in love with a seventeen year old boy who has a job as a courier. It's very sweet and innocent, but there's a moment in their little duet, right near the beginning. Frederich begins his little condescending speech (which continues throughout the song) informing Leisl that she has no idea how to deal with the lusts of men and the world of sex.

    ....and she leans right in and in two words shows exactly how she feels about getting to know the lusts of men.

    His face is priceless, as if it's simply never occurred to him before that women have libidos to rival or surpass those of men and he's clearly a little overwhelmed by this very interested young woman. It's stuck out from the entire three hour film as one of my favorite moments for many years, and is a good example of how this kind of thing was being noticed and pointed out in pop cultural media, even if to comic intention, for a long time.

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  28. That whole "Your life, little girl, is an empty page that men will want to write on" is definitely weird. Goes back to the idea that girls'/women's sexuality doesn't develop on its own and needs to be "awakened" -- e.g., in The African Queen when Humphrey Bogart shows Katharine Hepburn what for and she wakes up the next morning with practically a personality transplant, after having presumably been exposed to the Magic Bogart Bits.

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  29. Anon 8:32: I had a similarly weird moment reading an old book I have about cognitive behavioural therapy. I'm guessing, from context, that in the '60s or '70s the phrase "turned on" meant "really emotionally excited/enthusiastic/inspired" in a general sense that was not specifically tied to sex.

    But yeah, there's a part of the book where the author is talking about the value of pursuing things you're passionate about. And he says (I paraphrase), "I love being a therapist. I feel like helping people is my calling in life. And to tell you the truth, as I sit here writing this book, I'm feeling really turned on."

    It was most alarming. But he used the phrase a few other times later on and it became clear that It Does Not Mean What I Think it Means.

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  30. @perversecowgirl

    Absolutely, as in, "Turn on, tune in, and drop out."

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  31. Holly, obviously I get it NOW. The idea that it was rape didn't cross my mind at that time and, well, now it does. And it's awful, because i loved her. That was my first time I didn't know a thing.
    Not trying to redeem myself here or anything but it's tad different around here (I live in Russia) you probably remember that old joke that there was no sex in USSR, and well it's a little better now, but not enourmously so. Sex is still filth and "good girls" should not desire sex, that's men prerogative. Well it's basically everything you said above and before in your bog.

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  32. Gippeus, while I do thin that according to the defnition that was rape, it doesn't mean that you can't be a good person. In Catholic theology, you now, that guiltfest hardcore enough to make all other guilts ashamed, there is a policy that sin = doing something while 1. knowing that it's bad, and 2. wanting to do it despite it's bad. Now, you suspected that raping her was bad, but your grasp on the whole situation was based on deeply erroneous data. So just go, drink three Bloody Maries, say sorry to the girl if you are still in touch (maybe explain the whole mess), pledge to do only consensual sex in the future, and you are forgiven, based on my internet-given powers as an anonymous commenter. Amen.

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  33. I really love your blog! Been reading it for a couple of weeks now and this is going to be my first comment since this post hit home. I've always been acutely aware of my sex drive. But in the past, being the supposedly conservative Catholic schoolgirl that I am, I would never act on it. When I started having sex, I felt embarrassed whenever I wanted to initiate, so I'd do all these sneaky seductive techniques to get my partner to feel all hot and bothered while I feign innocence. Then blah blah one day I just felt like my horniness is going out of control, so I stopped being shy about my sexual desires.

    I've never looked back. It's nice to not to attach the feeling of shame when it comes down to my personal sexual business.

    Horniness is really internal. Thank you for pointing it out. Sometimes no matter how sexy I dress, when I'm not feeling it, I'm just not feeling it. I wish people would realize that the two can be very well unrelated. Hornywalk would be a good follow-up to Slutwalk, just so the complete point is made. Good luck on your exams!

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  34. @Lain: I agree with you totally. It's weird. When I was a kid, I tried to get a good look at every part of my body, because it could do so many awesome things and I wanted to know everything about myself. I masturbated from my toddler years until my mom caught me at it at 7 and told me "nice people don't do that."

    Interestingly enough, that childhood masturbation was done solely because it felt nice; during my teen years, I did it solely as part of a fantasy about a future husband; as an adult, I


    @Anon 8:32: He never said that the woman herself wasn't voluptuous, only that men call women that without regard to her inner feelings (similarly to how we label lambs as "pure" and wolf cubs as "evil" without regard to their natures--simply because they look that way to us). In other words, whether or not a woman is horny isn't the point to most men--she makes THEM horny, therefore she is "voluptuous." Hey, isn't that the problem Holly is talking about?

    @Holly: Good luck on your exams, and thanks for this awesome post!

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  35. Laura: I'm anon at 8:32, and I'm pretty sure we agree? Jane was doing her hair at that point, and she was pretty pissed at Mark? So if you define "voluptuous" as "horny" or "feelings related to orgasm," as Lewis seemed to, she was probably pretty much not voluptuous. And I realize that that's the problem Holly's post? Which is why I mentioned it in a comment to her post?

    Thanks!

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  36. Re "turned on" in 1960s: books.google.com/books?id=x1UEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA16

    "Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users"
    "People pass on the sidewalk looking stoned, wearing buttons saying "Turned On" or "Let's Get Naked and SMOKE."

    And yeah, people definitely used to say things like "He's the one who turned me on to Jimi Hendrix," meaning "He's the one who got me interested in Hendrix's music."

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  37. I'm almost afraid to comment here because it seems I live in a different world entirely. I'm in my late 40's, and since I was 10? I've been very aware of my own horniness, and female friends and acquaintances were aware of their horniness too, and talked about it.

    My mom would talk about men on television and who "turned her on" and who was handsome but didn't "turn her on." A girl living in the same apartment building when I was 12 talked about masturbating under the bathtub faucet. When I was a teen, a friend of mine always said, "Ooh baby hop on it," when she saw a cute guy. These are just a few memorable examples. So I've never experienced a world where women didn't express their horniness.

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  38. Since I am apparently searching out unicorns, it is nice that someone who appears to know assures me that unicorns exist. Did you have a falling out with Bruno?

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  39. @Anon 12:57: Both C.S. Lewis AND Holly are saying, "A lot of people judge women based on their outer appearance more than on their actual personalities and desires, now cut that out." I don't see how you're missing that point.

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  40. Eurosabra - If you think a woman who wants to have sex is a "unicorn," then it follows that either celibacy or rape are your only options.

    So I'm really disturbed that you aren't voluntarily celibate.

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  41. @Bethany The Martian

    Couple of problems with that. Sure, Bella wants Wardo's disco stick, but they don't actively discuss sex, in Eclipse she just goes for it. And then he has to stop her to protect her 'virtue'. All of their interaction in this scene comes across as imminent rape (Bella's end, trying to get Wardo to have sex against his will) or various types of abuse (Wardo's end, trying to force her into marriage, telling her she has to accept his monetary gifts, shutting down all avenues of discussion involving sex and only allowing what he wants).
    End result? A clustermuck of Cosmo's 'don't communicate, just take' attitude, and the idea that female desire should be controlled by men so the wimmins retain their virtue and therefore their 'worth'.
    I would rather have better, more equal displays of female horniness than this.

    Sorry if this is a slightly delayed reaction to the original comment; I was having a hard time getting beyond "what? no, terrible example."

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  42. I feel like the whole concept of "slut" comes from the commoditization of female sexuality, that it's a product, which a woman gives away, trades for love and/or security, or sells for money. Also intrinsic to the concept of a slut is the idea that this commodity (her sexuality) has a rightful owner, whether it's her hypothetical future husband or just the people she truly loves, or with whom she is at least interested in having a long-term relationship (a more liberal idea, though still restrictive and implying ownership). Under this worldview, a woman is a slut if she "gives" her sexuality to someone other than the rightful owner, even if she only does it once or twice, but especially if she does it a lot.

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  43. Third possibility: I have rare but consensual sex with sexist women who do not label their desire "horniness" or communicate it verbally because such labelling and communication are intrinsically male, or at least masculine, in their estimation. They communicate consent just fine, however.

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  44. Macha: You're close. I find it very telling that while men may not want to sleep with "slutty" girls, it's usually other women who get most vicious about it. The same as feminism's history of problems with sex workers and male-targeted sex toys.

    Sometimes the commodity model of sex benefits women (e.g: women who expect a man to "earn it", or who use a supposed scarcity of pussy as a bargaining chip). In these cases, you have people who lash out at those who flood the market. Sometimes - and I don't think I need to give any examples for regular readers - it hurts them. I guess my issue is how often the focus is on symptoms, with too few people looking at the built-in tradeoffs and underlying mechanics.

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  45. Good luck with the exams and what the hell is that in the photo?

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  46. "...I want to choose who does it, and how...."

    Sorry, you can only choose from among those who volunteer. Or are you that entitled?

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  47. Usually I just delete this kind of troll comments, but this one is kind of hilarious.

    Are you seriously suggesting I want to rape people, or are you saying that it's unfair I don't let men rape people? Or some muddled combination?

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  48. Oh, and the thing in the photo is a particularly... yonic... winter squash.

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  49. "...you can only choose from among those who volunteer..."

    Er, no. She can also choose to ask someone who hasn't volunteered and see if they're willing. Somehow I don't think Holly would have a lot of trouble with that concept.

    (different anonymous, obvs)

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  50. This is getting better over the years. Slowly.

    I've been thinking about this some more, and I'm convinced it's gotten much worse in the U.S. just recently. Maybe we've turned a corner and it's gotten better again, but from what I've been hearing recently from women in their twenties, their upbringing was in some crucial respects much less sex-positive than mine in the 1970s (with all the myriad faults that the 1970s undoubtedly had).

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  51. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  52. Okay, commenters who can't tell the difference between "I want to decide who I sleep with" and "I want to rape men" are officially not invited to play in this post any more.

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  53. "And now I see that when she really didn't want it and said something like "not today" and so forth, I acted as "well she never really wants it, so today she just doesn't want it a little more, big deal, I already feel selfish, might as well have some sex with it" and pressed on (i didn't physically force her, just kept on with my advances, like caressing her) and usually I had my way and we had sex.
    I hate to break this to you, but if she said no and you just kept going until you had your way... that's not something that could have been rape. That's straight-up rape. It's not violent rape, but when someone says "no" and you say by your actions "your refusal meant nothing to me" and then you have sex--that's rape.

    I don't mean this in the sense of "so you're a horrible person and should go to jail" because all I know is that you were a horrible person and you're not going to jail so that's a couple of moot points there. I mean that in the sense of take this stuff seriously in the future. Just because you didn't use force or threats doesn't mean this was a just-silly-ol-me, fuzzy-relationship-problems thing. It's a big deal--like, a woman who feels differently could call the cops over it big deal. Keep that in mind the next time you're having sex and just go to sleep unless you get a "yes please.""

    I'm not sure I see it this way. I realize that there are a lot of emotions and stigmas that come with sex, and making analogies to other things can often upset people, but I think that here it's necessary in order to take the shock out of the discussion process. For instance, if someone invites you out to the park and you say "no", but they say "But there will be ice cream" and you say "no", they continue "and we could play catch", and you say "no", and they continue "and you can play with the puppies" and so forth until you want to go, are they forcing you?

    Now, if someone says no to sex and one starts rubbing their crotch, that's of course an entirely different circumstance. But if they say "no" and the other party continues holding hands or caressing their palm until they turn to start making out, I don't think it's much different than the park example. Of course with the requirement that no desire for the hand holding to stop is expressed, implied, or felt.

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  54. I guess in short, my point is that there's a very sharp distinction between persuading someone to have sex and rape.

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  55. i seriously love your blog. thank you thank you thank you for sharing and speaking truth.

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  56. An excellent post, although I do disagree with some of the phrasing you used. You said: "if you've ever had that warm tickly feeling in your pants, you know exactly where a horny woman is coming from." This implies sexual arousal and horniness are the same thing, and in my experience they aren't. I know what sexual arousal feels like, but I also know I have never felt horny. They may occur at the same time for a lot of people but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.
    Other than that little niggle, I thought it was a very well written post.

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  57. An excellent post, although I do disagree with some of the phrasing you used. You said: "if you've ever had that warm tickly feeling in your pants, you know exactly where a horny woman is coming from." This implies sexual arousal and horniness are the same thing, and in my experience they aren't. I know what sexual arousal feels like, but I also know I have never felt horny. They may occur at the same time for a lot of people but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.
    Other than that little niggle, I thought it was a very well written post.

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  58. Another informative blog… Thank you for sharing it… Best of luck for further endeavor too.

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  59. Thank you so much for posting this, and I hope exams went well.

    I'm a 19 year old girl who over the years has been through all the stages- innocent, learning, slutty, everything. I've been there, done that and lost the t-shirt, and it never made sense to me why it was such a BAD thing that I was sleeping with someone I wasn't dating.

    I never got pregnant that way or an STD or bitten by a rabid duck or anything for what I've done. Nature gave women nerve endings down there and an ability to feel desire. It shouldn't be the shameful thing that it's portrayed as.

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  60. Thank you everyone for your comments they have stopped me worrying. I have been feeling really horny for a while now, in fact it's all I can think about and I was starting to think there was something wrong with me. So thanks for putting my mind at ease x

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  61. When I have sex with my wife, I sometimes feel like she's just not that into it, which is a real buzz-kill for me. I need to know she really "wants" sex before I can have any pleasure myself. I love romance, oral, helping around the house, praising and worshiping her, so I hope that's a good start. What should I do if her words say one thing but her efforts say something slightly less sometimes?

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    1. I'd try talking to her about it first. It sounds like you don't have a good level of communication set up, and that's a must. Unfortunately it also sounds like she wants you to "read her mind" (but I could be wrong.)

      There's no way of knowing if your wife is afraid to say something, ashamed, or aloof, or any number of other possibilities, without you talking with her first.

      Good communication is a must for any relationship, but especially a marriage/long-time partner. I wish you good luck and truly hope that things work out for you in that department. Once you get good communication going, many things in the relationship, not just sex, should hopefully become more clear and easier to handle. :-)

      ---Ukky

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