Utkast: Sep. 25, 2015
Why women need to shout about sexual pleasure
Over 50% of women would like to be having more sex, according to a recent survey of users of the fertility app Kindara. Contrary to popular stereotypes about men having higher sex drives than women, 75% of the 500 women polled would like to be having sex more than three times a week, and 13% would prefer six times per week. The survey comes hot on the heels of a new Tumblr called ‘How to make me come’, which has been making waves by sharing women’s intimate accounts of sex and orgasm, in their own words.
“Kissing me will make me feel like I am more than a vagina (which I am)”, begins one essay.
Another says: “Giving the direction ‘fingers inside me with clitoral stimulation’ seemed to cause as much confusion as telling him to look behind something to find the milk.”
It might seem like the idea of women enjoying, demanding and taking the lead in sex is hardly a revolutionary concept in 2015, but it could be argued that the advent of online pornography has turned back the clock on the sexual revolution, at least from a feminist perspective. I speak to girls at school who have seen porn on boys’ mobile phones and think that sex is something at best aggressive, at worst violent; something that will be done to them when they ‘give in’; something that men initiate and perform for their own pleasure while women submit. I have spoken to boys who have seen it and are confused and bewildered by the role they feel will be expected of them. One young woman who wrote to me had been having sex with her boyfriend for the first time when, with no warning, he started trying to throttle her. Shocked and scared, she managed to push him away. But it was he who broke down in relief, asking her: ‘Wasn’t that what you were expecting?’
Sexual empowerment and feminism remain closely linked in a world in which women are expected to perform sexually but not necessarily to make their own demands. The idea of the personal space as political remains deeply relevant while we still battle to extend the popular understanding of rape beyond the mythical shadowy stranger in a dark alleyway, despite the fact that 90% of victims already know their rapists.
As we debate consent at university and contend with the deliberately obtuse who suggest it is unfair to expect a man to explain how he knew a woman consented, the notion of consensual, empowered female pleasure is one we need to shout about.
The reclamation of sexual control is complex, particularly in light of the centuries-old exotification and colonisation of the bodies of women of colour, the erasure of sexual orientations and gender identities that fall outside the heteronormative, gender essentialist mainstream, and the prejudice and violence faced by sex workers and trans women.
What feels like sexual empowerment to one woman doesn’t necessarily look the same to another. For example, the idea of a woman instructing a partner in the specifics of how to turn her on might feel different for women who are already battling sexual stereotypes associated with their race, profession, sexuality or gender identity. But it is exciting and important that spaces are opening up for women to speak out in their own words, publicly (and sometimes anonymously), about what was once considered stigmatised and taboo.
We still desperately need to shout about the importance of female pleasure and sexual agency in a world where our hyper-sexualised media equates ‘sexy’ with one young, thin, white, large-breasted, long-legged, submissive, heterosexual stereotype.
‘How to make me come’ isn’t the only platform offering women a space to speak openly about their sexual experiences – the sharing of personal stories is also an integral part of Pavan Amara’s My Body Back Project, which supports survivors of sexual violence to reclaim their bodies. For some women, taking back the narrative of sex is a crucial part of regaining control. Alongside its Café V workshops and health clinics, My Body Back also offers free poetry and creative-writing workshops, which aim to help women reclaim their physicality through their own words. Amara says: “After any sort of sexual violence, the way you think about sex and your body changes, so you think it’s not under your control or you have to go with somebody else’s likes and dislikes and you lose that connection to yourself. We looked at taking that back.”
We live in a world in which the ubiquity of the male gaze constantly packages women for sexualised consumption, yet the notion of women enjoying their own sexuality remains startling to some. The victim-blaming responses to some of the hacked nude photographs of celebrities demonstrated the extent to which our society is still unwilling to allow women sexual agency, even as it projects acceptable ‘sexiness’ on to them. It doesn’t help that we still have to contend with nonsense such as Glamour magazine’s recent (now infamous) advice about opening the door naked and satisfying our partners’ every frat-boy fantasy.
The fact that so many women disclosed their sexual desires to an app doesn’t necessarily mean that they feel similarly confident relaying them to their sexual partners – in fact, their reported dissatisfaction might suggest otherwise.
In the age of online porn, which shows women going from 0 to panting with next to no foreplay and having suspiciously regular screaming simultaneous orgasms with very little apparent effort from their partners, for women to share their stories about sex and climax isn’t just powerful. It’s a public service.
O0O
Over 50% of women would like to be having more sex, according to a recent survey of users of the fertility app Kindara. Contrary to popular stereotypes about men having higher sex drives than women, 75% of the 500 women polled would like to be having sex more than three times a week, and 13% would prefer six times per week. The survey comes hot on the heels of a new Tumblr called ‘How to make me come’, which has been making waves by sharing women’s intimate accounts of sex and orgasm, in their own words.
“Kissing me will make me feel like I am more than a vagina (which I am)”, begins one essay.
Another says: “Giving the direction ‘fingers inside me with clitoral stimulation’ seemed to cause as much confusion as telling him to look behind something to find the milk.”
It might seem like the idea of women enjoying, demanding and taking the lead in sex is hardly a revolutionary concept in 2015, but it could be argued that the advent of online pornography has turned back the clock on the sexual revolution, at least from a feminist perspective. I speak to girls at school who have seen porn on boys’ mobile phones and think that sex is something at best aggressive, at worst violent; something that will be done to them when they ‘give in’; something that men initiate and perform for their own pleasure while women submit. I have spoken to boys who have seen it and are confused and bewildered by the role they feel will be expected of them. One young woman who wrote to me had been having sex with her boyfriend for the first time when, with no warning, he started trying to throttle her. Shocked and scared, she managed to push him away. But it was he who broke down in relief, asking her: ‘Wasn’t that what you were expecting?’
Sexual empowerment and feminism remain closely linked in a world in which women are expected to perform sexually but not necessarily to make their own demands. The idea of the personal space as political remains deeply relevant while we still battle to extend the popular understanding of rape beyond the mythical shadowy stranger in a dark alleyway, despite the fact that 90% of victims already know their rapists.
As we debate consent at university and contend with the deliberately obtuse who suggest it is unfair to expect a man to explain how he knew a woman consented, the notion of consensual, empowered female pleasure is one we need to shout about.
The reclamation of sexual control is complex, particularly in light of the centuries-old exotification and colonisation of the bodies of women of colour, the erasure of sexual orientations and gender identities that fall outside the heteronormative, gender essentialist mainstream, and the prejudice and violence faced by sex workers and trans women.
What feels like sexual empowerment to one woman doesn’t necessarily look the same to another. For example, the idea of a woman instructing a partner in the specifics of how to turn her on might feel different for women who are already battling sexual stereotypes associated with their race, profession, sexuality or gender identity. But it is exciting and important that spaces are opening up for women to speak out in their own words, publicly (and sometimes anonymously), about what was once considered stigmatised and taboo.
We still desperately need to shout about the importance of female pleasure and sexual agency in a world where our hyper-sexualised media equates ‘sexy’ with one young, thin, white, large-breasted, long-legged, submissive, heterosexual stereotype.
‘How to make me come’ isn’t the only platform offering women a space to speak openly about their sexual experiences – the sharing of personal stories is also an integral part of Pavan Amara’s My Body Back Project, which supports survivors of sexual violence to reclaim their bodies. For some women, taking back the narrative of sex is a crucial part of regaining control. Alongside its Café V workshops and health clinics, My Body Back also offers free poetry and creative-writing workshops, which aim to help women reclaim their physicality through their own words. Amara says: “After any sort of sexual violence, the way you think about sex and your body changes, so you think it’s not under your control or you have to go with somebody else’s likes and dislikes and you lose that connection to yourself. We looked at taking that back.”
We live in a world in which the ubiquity of the male gaze constantly packages women for sexualised consumption, yet the notion of women enjoying their own sexuality remains startling to some. The victim-blaming responses to some of the hacked nude photographs of celebrities demonstrated the extent to which our society is still unwilling to allow women sexual agency, even as it projects acceptable ‘sexiness’ on to them. It doesn’t help that we still have to contend with nonsense such as Glamour magazine’s recent (now infamous) advice about opening the door naked and satisfying our partners’ every frat-boy fantasy.
The fact that so many women disclosed their sexual desires to an app doesn’t necessarily mean that they feel similarly confident relaying them to their sexual partners – in fact, their reported dissatisfaction might suggest otherwise.
In the age of online porn, which shows women going from 0 to panting with next to no foreplay and having suspiciously regular screaming simultaneous orgasms with very little apparent effort from their partners, for women to share their stories about sex and climax isn’t just powerful. It’s a public service.
O0O