So, on my second day of public health graduate school, I have a five hour break between classes and absolutely no homework to do yet. Solution?
Dazzle you with my biting wit and sharp intellect.
In case you don't know me, I am 24, awesome, in graduate school, blindingly beautiful, going on my third move to New Orleans, made of sexy, ready to humble you with my modesty.
Despite the title of this blog, I am finding that with blogs the hardest part is actually coming up with a title. I like having a starting point, and usually that is the title. I enjoy delicately weaving in references that give an elegant throw-back to the first morsels of brilliance you were lucky enough to encounter. However, the fact is, sometimes that title just doesn't come, and what is a girl to do? Leave my loyal reader in the dust? No, diligent fan, I will not cease to disrupt your World of Warcraft game with some hilarious but enlightening satire! I will float on, despite a clear starting point, and hope desperately that I arrive on something winning and not altogether disappointing.
However, can I really compete with titles like this?
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/08/24/semen-facials-are-like-weddings/
I mean, oddly enough, that was the original title of the Tom Petty song I referenced in my title. Because...if you've ever had a semen facial, well...you get the idea.
I think this lady makes a fascinating point: sexual degradation and mutual love and respect are not mutually exclusive, but we rely on the convenience of degrading acts because of the sexual fulfillment they derive without considering their implications. These implications are not confined to the simple disgust most of us have for the domination of women through humiliation, but the mere, and from what I can gather, undeniable fact that most of what we do sexually as women is designed to please the man we are sleeping with (sorry, lesbians, I'll get to you another time) and not ourselves. Discussing this with a friend, I came to the conclusion that perhaps because women's sexuality is more nuanced (or we believe it to be based on the lack of un-sexist psychological research until fairly recently) men lose interest in truly satisfying a woman at a young age because they don't know how to, and women get used to this routine of men not knowing what they are doing, normalizing it in their minds. Somehow, without the possibility of sexual fulfillment, they still feel pressure to get men off, knowing full well that masturbation will be the only friend giving them a helping hand in the orgasm department. I have never had an ideological problem with facials, but I cannot deny the pressure I feel during sex to satisfy my partner sexually without considering my needs, and that a lot of the satisfaction I get out of sex is knowing that I am pleasing someone else, so much so, that it becomes its own type of orgasm, an ego orgasm. But, at the end of the day, the ego is not what needs to orgasm. Men, however, seem to have no problem being pleasured for pleasure's sake. It is something they have become accustomed to, as most of sexual imagery is male dominated, and seeking their own pleasure becomes as normalized as women attempting to give it. As a good friend says, men get used to throwing out "weak attempts and still getting their rocks off."
Of course, these generalizations are very broad. But I think the blog succeeds in explicating the bedroom/rest of life dichotomy; that humans are indeed capable of being against and sometimes repulsed by something in theory, in conversation, in observation; but in practice, it becomes clear that disgust is often a close relative of arousal. However, getting a man hard is not a substitute for enjoying a sexual experience, through and through. Sure, let some dude jizz on your face, call yourself liberated; I am not here to judge. But let's all ask ourselves why we do the things we do, and whether or not we are getting what we want out of it. By ignoring the conversation of what women want and just shouting our liberation to the skies because we like jizz on our face and can say it, we lose sight of the entire purpose of sexual liberation: getting off.
I guess waiting (for an orgasm) really is the hardest part.
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hmm - I know a particularly conservative-minded psychologist whose entire philosophy centers around the preservation of the marriage unit as the ultimate force for good in the production of happy civilized human beings, and she says that any husband worth his wedding ring MUST give up lordship and mastery of the household to his wife to whom such things, theoretically, matter more, but has the right to expect spontaneous good sex at least twice a week.
ReplyDeleteShe elaborates on the lines of, "Women feel unloved if the are not periodically treated to random acts of consideration, unexpected tokens of affection, and unconditional compliments, whereas men feel unloved when they are turned down for sex. He feels that same pout coming on when she says, "not now," that she feels when he says, "sure, you look fine."
I'm not sure what to think of this. On some weird level it seems to make sense, and yet it also seems unlikely. Aren't people more complicated than that?
You are not sure what to think of what? Me or Dr Laura?
ReplyDeleteIf you are saying people are more omplicated than Dr. Laura, than I completely agree. I absolutely hate the women expect love and men expect sex bs. I think both expect both at varying degrees depending on the person. Men need to know they look fine to their partner on some level, and women need to be surprised with spontaneous sex.
If you are saying people are more complicated than what I was saying, than I have to say I thought my theory of human nature was a little complex; that women and men's sexual needs may be similar, but the ways they go about achieving it are starkly different because men begin to expect it and women begin to expect little in return. Therefore, it isn't so much the Dr. Laura theory of women don't like sex as much, but that there isn't enough emphasis on how to make women orgasm, and that is compounded by their strong, societally influenced desire to please men.
I think I responded...
I meant that Dr. Laura's theory seems too simplistic and yet still often accurate - the unaswerable question being, "Does it seem accurate because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy/theory designed to describe an already-extant society/set of gender roles, or does it adress some intrinsic divergence?"
ReplyDeleteYour theory seems reasonable to me. Orgasms have pretty much been scientifically proven to be good for you in almost every way (right?) (unless your heart's weak, and then you shouldn't be in love anyway..) so any uneven distribution of orgasms merits some scrutiny.
Not that I'm for a purely egalitarian system of orgasm distribution - people should get what they earn and what they deserve - but if all the wealth (orgasmically speaking) begins to get concentrated in one camp, it's a sure-fire recipe for some down-home class conflict, and nobody likes that ... except marx ... and Engels ... and that dillwad Paulo Freire
Mer, I would agree with you if I agreed with miss hess, but she lost me a little in her wedding analogy. I don't think we as women have found a way to rationalize weddings because they bring us joy (particularly by bringing men joy). I think they bring people joy because marraige has evolved past what it once was (for some anyways), which makes me wonder if there is more to facials. I do however fall into her duplicity by being ideologically for facials while never actually participating in one.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile I am compelled to wonder why Dr. Laura was brought into this. No offense Will but her quote brought about as much to this argument as any idiom. She is far too simple, but a broken clock is right twice a day.
My argument had nothing to do with the wedding argument, so i don't really see how it precludes agreeing with me. My point was that now, currently, regardless of history, most of what is done in the bedroom has a decidedly male slant, because of the influence of porn, patriarchy, whatever. Of course this is not everyone, nothing is. Her article just made me rethink where I derive my enjoyment, and wonder how broad of an application I was capable of. I think that there should be more emphasis on female pleasure if we are really going to understand it.
ReplyDeleteIf you are just dying to talk about weddings (like I clearly was not) I think she has a point, but it isn't her best. I think it is undeniable that much of feminine material history has been re-appropriated from a negative to a positive. From dish soap to contraceptive, we are just supposed to adore being women and all of the products and gender stereotypes that entails (see current.com/sarah-haskins.) But yes, I will agree that it only matters how you view your wedding individually, and enough people view it as a natural progression of an equal relationship that it isn't just that anymore.
Meaning, it isn't just a re-appropriation anymore.
ReplyDelete