The female price of male pleasure

[flamingdem]

http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure

The world is disturbingly comfortable with the fact that women sometimes leave a sexual encounter in tears.

When Babe.net published a pseudonymous woman's account of a difficult encounter with Aziz Ansari that made her cry, the internet exploded with "takes" arguing that the #MeToo movement had finally gone too far. "Grace," the 23-year-old woman, was not an employee of Ansari's, meaning there were no workplace dynamics. Her repeated objections and pleas that they "slow down" were all well and good, but they did not square with the fact that she eventually gave Ansari oral sex. Finally, crucially, she was free to leave.

Why didn't she just get out of there as soon as she felt uncomfortable? many people explicitly or implicitly asked.

It's a rich question, and there are plenty of possible answers. But if you're asking in good faith, if you really want to think through why someone might have acted as she did, the most important one is this: Women are enculturated to be uncomfortable most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort.

This is so baked into our society I feel like we forget it's there. To steal from David Foster Wallace, this is the water we swim in.

The Aziz Ansari case hit a nerve because, as I've long feared, we're only comfortable with movements like #MeToo so long as the men in question are absolute monsters we can easily separate from the pack. Once we move past the "few bad apples" argument and start to suspect that this is more a trend than a blip, our instinct is to normalize. To insist that this is is just how men are, and how sex is.
This is what Andrew Sullivan basically proposed in his latest, startlingly unscientific column. #MeToo has gone too far, he argues, by refusing to confront the biological realities of maleness. Feminism, he says, has refused to give men their due and denied the role "nature" must play in these discussions. Ladies, he writes, if you keep denying biology, you'll watch men get defensive, react, and "fight back."

This is beyond vapid. Not only is Sullivan bafflingly confused about nature and its realities, as Colin Dickey notes in this instructive Twitter thread, he's being appallingly conventional. Sullivan claims he came to "understand the sheer and immense natural difference between being a man and being a woman" thanks to a testosterone injection he received. That is to say, he imagines maleness can be isolated to an injectable hormone and doesn't bother to imagine femaleness at all. If you want an encapsulation of the habits of mind that made #MeToo necessary, there it is. Sullivan, that would-be contrarian, is utterly representative.

The real problem isn't that we — as a culture — don't sufficiently consider men's biological reality. The problem is rather that theirs is literally the only biological reality we ever bother to consider.

So let's actually talk bodies. Let's take bodies and the facts of sex seriously for a change. And let's allow some women back into the equation, shall we? Because if you're going to wax poetic about male pleasure, you had better be ready to talk about its secret, unpleasant, ubiquitous cousin: female pain.

[TeapotInATempest]

1. Sullivan seems to believe that femaleness is the lack of maleness

At least, that's the logical conclusion of his little testosterone shot argument.

And that is pretty much misogyny in a nutshell.

[flamingdem]

2. His article came out before some better articles

like this one. Thus, he's the one quoted by the media.

I have to admit that my first reaction was - why didn't she just leave. This
article addresses that very well. These issues are finally seeing the light
of day, I missed that since I'm just so used to the status quo! Imagine
changing that.. even just a little bit.

[Volaris]

4. Yeah but his dumbass drew the wrong conclusion from the facts.

We all start as female at conception. He thinks that adding testerone to that equation, negates the innate femaleness we all posess in our psyche, and hes wrong. It ADDS to it.

Mysogyny (like all hatreds) stems from ignorance. He doesnt understand what makes him a Man. And that makes him a boy, and not worth listening to, IMHO.

[Orrex]

12. Can you clarify that bit about "we all start as female at conception?"

What determines femaleness, in that equation?

A fairly convincing argument can be made that the Y chromosome, present at conception, has something to do with the determination.

[Volaris]

13. Insofar as I remember AnP classes, every embryo starts as female.

When the chromosome triggers kick in, testosterone input starts a developmental cascade of growth changes; the result of which ends with being male instead of female.
I'm on my phone and can't easily link, but I'll get back to you if you'd like more information=)

[Orrex]

15. Thanks.

My biology classes are long in the past, but I seem to recall that the sperm contributes either an X or a Y chromosome to the X chromosome present in the ova, thereby determines the biological sex (XX or XY) of the embryo.

Granted, statistical anomalies are possible, and myriad factors influence gender and sexual identity, but that's not quite what we're discussing here.

[Nitram]

3. I've known women who liked sex as much, if not more than I do.

The biology of sex would suggest women have a far higher potential to enjoy sex than men do: multiple orgasms, as well as far more complex and neuron-rich genitals. I'm not saying that some (many?) women do not experience pain during sex, nor that men should not be understanding and compassionate when it is communicated to them by a sexual partner. But this article seems to suggest that women as a group just don't enjoy sex as much as men. And I believe there is abundant evidence that is not in fact true. I would agree that society needs to change the way men and women are brought up to change male entitlement, and to encourage women to stand up for themselves and be comfortable with who they really are. You can't have one without the other. I blame our society's regressive and puritanical views of sex for the pain and confusion between the sexes when it comes to sex.

[RandomAccess]

6. Nonsense

But this article seems to suggest that women as a group just don't enjoy sex as much as men.

There's absolutely nothing in there that suggests this.

I think youi're wrong here too:

I blame our society's regressive and puritanical views of sex for the pain and confusion between the sexes when it comes to sex.

You seem to think that women's experience of, enjoyment of, participation in, and eagerness for sex is or should be equivalent to men's. Ain't gonna happen. When, for example, have you EVER heard any man complain that the level of emotional intimacy just hadn't been high enough for him for him to want sex? The fact that women are built differently goes way beyond the physical.

[Nitram]

7. Nonsense, yourself.

I have indeed heard men complain about a lack of commitment and emotional intimacy from women with whom they've had sex. As I wrote above, I have personally known women with just as much sex drive as any man. I've known women who didn't want to cuddle after sex, and men who did.

I would maintain that the very title of the piece suggests that women as a group just don't enjoy sex as much as men. And the implication of "When it comes to 'good sex,'" she told me, "women often mean without pain, men often mean they had orgasms" is the same. You yourself wrote at the bottom of your post that "women's experience of, enjoyment of, participation in, and eagerness for sex is or should be equivalent to men's. Ain't gonna happen." How does that differ from the idea that "women as a group just don't enjoy sex as much as men?"

I stand by my assertion that our civilization's inability to discuss sex and relationships from an early age without fear and guilt is the primary reason men and women have been conditioned to behave in ways that are antithetical to healthy relationships and mutually beneficial sex. We should educate our children from a very young age to treat each other better, and gain a fuller understanding of the ways in which men and women can communicate in ways that lead to happier relationships..

[RandomAccess]

9. Whatever

[alarimer]

14. If women don't like sex, it's because their partners consider their pleasure unimportant.

For too many men, women's pleasure is a mere afterthought, if it occurs to them at all. And that is what infuriated me most about the Ansari piece. Here's another fucking guy that thinks HIS needs are ALL that matters. Women encounter this many, many times throughout their lives until they find someone who isn't like that. And even then, not everyone responds well to constructive criticism so we might then be stuck with someone with whom sex is utterly boring.

I think comprehensive sex ed needs to include education about consent, yes, but also that women have wants, needs and desires that deserve to be respected and considered as something more than an afterthought.

So yes, society's attitudes are puritanical and regressive, but also young women especially are expected to be "up" for anything, including terrible sex with young men who don't know what they are doing and don't care about anything but getting off. Women, as always, get the short end of the stick when it comes to sex. We are objects and expected to be available all the time for sex, but god forbid we complain that the sex is terrible or the men are selfish jerks. Then, we are sluts for wanting our needs to be considered.

[Nitram]

16. It can also be that they don't communicate their needs to their partner.

Different women, and men, have different needs and preferences. it is not one size fits all. So to speak.

[RandomAccess]

5. Oh, boy BOMBSHELL level truth:

Women are enculturated to be uncomfortable most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort.

and:

... he imagines maleness can be isolated to an injectable hormone and doesn't bother to imagine femaleness at all. If you want an encapsulation of the habits of mind that made #MeToo necessary, there it is. Sullivan, that would-be contrarian, is utterly representative.

The real problem isn't that we — as a culture — don't sufficiently consider men's biological reality. The problem is rather that theirs is literally the only biological reality we ever bother to consider.

[flamingdem]

8. Yes, bombshell level and new ways of thinking

for this boomer.

[GeoWilliam750]

10. Women often seem raised/socialized to have the "Need to Please Disease"

[Nitram]

11. That is why we need to address both the disease and the need to please the disease.

[Blue_Tires]

17. kick