I want you to spit in my mouth, call me a whore, come all over my face and then respect my opinions on gender politics.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.
Someone recently emailed me explaining that although he likes my blog, he doesn’t like the post I wrote about buttsex (in which a dude gets all sexy and dominant and forces his dick into my ass) because:
“I’m quite a big feminist these days, and that article especially just seems demeaning to you in a way that undermines feminist aims in gender relations.”
If someone can explain this to me I’ll give you a medal. In what way does my being demeaned (assuming I’ve consented to it) ‘undermine feminist aims in gender relations’?
Saying that female submission is somehow anti-feminist smacks of such patronising misogyny that I’m surprised someone had the balls to say it directly to my face (or inbox).
What undermines feminist aims far more is refusing to participate in a sexual act that both partners find arousing purely because you don’t want to hurt the poor woman taking part in it.
“Sorry, love, I’m afraid I can’t fuck you in the arse. I know you want it, and I really want it too, but I think participating in such a symbolically misogynist act would undermine the equality your sisterhood has strived for. So put your pants back on, darling.”
I don’t want to tear too much into this one individual – others have said similar things. I’ve been told before that I should be careful with what I say about submission, lest it leads people to think that I believe women deserve to be bound, gagged, humiliated and defiled. I’ve been told I shouldn’t publicly discuss my opinions on consent-play in case it induces guys to rape.
What could be more anti-feminist than censoring honesty about female desire in case it induces idiots to grab the wrong end of the stick?
Men are stupid and only think with their dicks
Fuck feminism just for a second, and let’s have a look at misandry. Do we honestly, truly believe that men are so goddamn stupid as to believe that the way they treat women in the bedroom necessarily has to be the way they treat them outside it?
Some men no doubt do see women as sexual objects, but how dare we assume they’re all the same? I have never met a man who thinks that because I submit to him in the bedroom I’ll be anything other than my usual feisty cock-stamping self in the pub. No man I know has ever assumed that because he has literally pissed all over me, he gets to metaphorically do the same when we’re not fucking.
Guys can separate their sex life from their normal life – degrading a woman in the bedroom does not inevitably lead to degrading all women outside of it. Let’s not patronise men by assuming that they are one-dimensional creatures who cannot understand the difference.
I am a filthy, intelligent, dirty, confident little slut
How is it possible for a man to accord women the same respect as he’d accord men if he also wants to mess a girl up by jizzing in her face and seeing how many fingers he can force into her gaping, willing cunt?
Well, because sex isn’t a fucking university debate, that’s why. When you shag you’re not championing a particular cause, you’re not stating your opinion on the way the world should be – you’re doing things that make your dick hard.
You can come all over my face, rub it in and make me eat it while crooning that I’m a filthy fucking slut who totally deserves it. You can squeeze my tits so hard it hurts and tell me I’ll take it because it’s what you want to do. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to do any of this in the street, a business meeting, or a situation other than the bedroom.
Likewise just because I squeeze your balls until you wince and force butt-plugs hard into your lubed-up ass it doesn’t mean that I don’t also respect your views on the economy.
You can tell me to shut the fuck up and do what you say in bed without implying that I should also do the hoovering, bear your children, earn less money than you and be denied my right to vote.
If I enjoy it and you enjoy it, let’s do it. We can discuss the philosophical ramifications over a pint in the pub afterwards. When I’ve cleaned your fucking jizz off my face.
___________________________________
UPDATE: the guy who wrote the email has now joined in to reply in the comments. Please check out what he says, because it’s important that I don’t just get on my own ranty platform and try to make you all think what I think. But also check it out because he’s very thoughtful and interesting, and heartfelt disagreement is one of my favourite things.
Related posts:
- On submission and self-esteem
- On nice guys, hard truths, and the Friend Zone
- On the smell of your vagina
Part-time writer, full-time pervert.
“just because I squeeze your balls until you wince and force butt-plugs hard into your lubed-up ass it doesn’t mean that I don’t also respect your views on the economy.”
t-shirt slogan right there.
*loud assertion of agreement*
Apparently when my boy’s first girlfriend wanted him to do bad things to her, he needed some persuasion away from a rather confused “but isn’t that a bit sexist?” While I find this adorable, I am extremely glad that said girlfriend was, by his account, pretty thorough in persuading him. And if he had *told* said girlfriend that she shouldn’t want to do such things because they demeaned her, he would have richly deserved the bitchslap I rather suspect she would have administered. For grown men to be coming out with that shit? Really not okay.
Yes, some of the things we do in bed demean me, and I bloody love it. When we’re not fucking, he is one of the most charming, respectful, treats-me-like-a-human-being-with-interesting-and-valid-opinions men I’ve known. He also knows better than to mansplain things to me, particularly things to do with feminism.
(Oh, and I love it when he holds me down and forces his dick up my arse.)
I like the word ‘mansplain’
I also think the idea of saying that something someone has asked you to do in bed is ‘sexist’ is pretty jarring. Sexist why/how? And specifically – how can something that a woman has asked you to do in bed be *more* sexist than you telling her that her desires are inappropriate to the sisterhood.
Exactly. Like I say, in someone who was juuuuuust getting to grips with sexuality and gender issues, and who was genuinely confused and questioning, it’s rather sweet.
Sub/dom is only ever fun for me if the sub is someone I respect as a person, not a sex object.
You can’t take power/control/dignity from someone who you don’t see as having power/control/dignity in the first place.
GAH, hit reply on half-formulated thought. Yeah, so anyway. Being a bit confused as a young un = quite sweet. What this guy did just sounds like slut-shaming (sub-shaming?) with a dose of concern trolling.
Damn, now I feel bad, as this guy was also quite young. But anyway – it wasn’t written just to rag on him. It’s a not uncommon attitude that could do with being discussed anyway, not just me raging out at one individual dude.
Yes, this too. Attitudes like that (and, you know, points to him for at least wanting to be getting it right) aren’t formed in a vacuum. There seems to be a new puritanicalism taking hold and it disturbs me.
Puritanism, even.
Hmmmmmm……….. no.
See below please.
Hi. So basically I’m gonna write a really long essay-style reply here defending what I said. Although I should say straight away that, had I known you were gonna write a blog post about that email, I would have made myself a lot clearer in what I said about this, since there are some things in this post you’ve attributed to me that I don’t agree with.
Firstly though, I’m gonna refute your assertion that I’m a ‘patronising misogynist’. Categorically. I made the comment I did not because I want to protect ‘damsels in distress’, treat them like delicate little flowers and look down on them as the ‘lesser sex’ that I as their guardian must protect from evil, but because firstly patriarchal oppression but more specifically (and of more relevance to my comments) rape is a fucking horrific crime for which the perpetrator has an almost 1 in 20 chance of being convicted (according to a 2004 study i’ve seen). I mean, we all know this, but to be labelled as misogynistic because I passionately ‘rape culture’ and try to look for and correct (as radical feminists do) aspects of societal norms and practices that encourage this culture seems to me a pretty nonsensical thing to have placed upon me. And I must say I was genuinely insulted when I read that sentence. But never mind, I’ve got thick skin I suppose. MOVING ON.
So yeah as I said, rape is the topic of this post, and I wish in hindsight I’d initially made that clear. Your ‘on buttsex’ blog post doesn’t specifically say anything about rape, obviously, but what it does do is hold implicit beliefs about the nature of rape culture that I’m uncomfortable with.
This is the bit that made me frown, and gave me a not very nice feeling in the pit of my stomach:
“And he was pushing. And it hurt. And at that moment I really really really didn’t want to.
So I said. “No, it hurts.”
And he said “I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to go all the way in. I’m going to push it right into you. OK?”
And I said “Please don’t.”
“One… two…”
“No. Please no.””
I make that three “no’s” and a “please don’t”. Yet I’m sure you would champion the ‘no means no’ slogan intended to make men take responsibility for their behaviour in the bedroom, as any one of us reading this would. I’m sure you also know that more rapes are committed by men that women know than are committed by strangers. One thing I don’t know is how many of the men that women know have previously slept with those women, but I’m betting it’s not an insignificant proportion. So, in reality, what that quoted bit of text says to me is that, in your opinion, ‘no means no- except sometimes it means yes’. Which, obviously, undermines the whole thing entirely.
I do, of course, acknowledge the fact that you may well have a previously, explicitly stated, arrangement whereby in some circumstances he knows that you’re saying no but mean the opposite. Maybe you’d told him so earlier that night (although since this wasn’t stated in your blog post, I don’t think I was wrong to assume that this wasn’t the case). Anyway to some degree, I think that’s unimportant- I would argue that the act, within any context, perpetuates a view of gender relations within the bedroom that hinders the ‘war on rape’ or whatever you want to call it. As I said earlier, it’s rape culture that to a large extent perpetuates the prevalence of rape as well as the horrific conviction rate. Thus I’m opposed to absolutely anything that contributes to this culture, no matter in how small a degree.
I could go on for bloody hours about rape culture and only approx. 35% of it would be in any way interesting, so I guess I’ll cut my losses there. BUT I did wanna talk about another aspect of your post- that is the seeming separation between different spheres of one’s life. It’s not quite the ‘public/private’ distinction that modern feminism often builds its critiques on, but it is sort of reminiscent:
“Guys can separate their sex life from their normal life – degrading a woman in the bedroom does not inevitably lead to degrading all women outside of it.”
Of course, in individual circumstances this is completely true. I wouldn’t dispute it. But culture and societal norms can’t be located within individuals; culture is about normative feedback loops of discourse, ideas permeating throughout society, all that stuff. To criticise the actions of a man performing consensual acts within the bedroom isn’t necessarily (emphasis on necessarily) to criticise him personally, but to criticise the culture of which he is a part of and contributing to. Same goes for women too; in ‘disapproving’ (sounds so sort of victorian that I had to put it in quotes) of your blog post, I’m not criticising your life choices; but simply the cultural norms you identify with.
Here’s where the tricky part comes, though.
Would I say then, that male domination in the bedroom leads to misogyny within society as a whole? I honestly don’t know. But neither do you. I was going to say that only a psychological study would be able to determine this, but on further reflection I don’t even think this is true; as I said, culture isn’t located within individuals, but permeates in some form amongst all members of a socio-cultural group. Thus a highly dominant male in the bedroom may well be intellectually and emotionally committed to gender equality, but his dominant persona could affect or inspire another man to pursue to a greater extent actions and views that go against the first man’s core beliefs. To ignore this line of thinking like you do is, in my opinion, to deny quite a large part of post-structural feminist discourse. BUT, and I have to stress this, I DON’T KNOW AND I COULD BE TALKING SHIT. Thus I don’t judge the vast majority of what turns you on. Maybe, with a long term partner into that stuff, I may well try some of the extreme stuff. Who knows.
However just like I can’t disregard your lifestyle choice and opinions, in the same way I would argue that you can’t criticise mine. I suppose I have to agree (however grudgingly) that this applies to rape fantasies to the same extent as it does any other dominant-submissive scenario. BUT given what I consider the incredible delicacy of rape as a topic (not because I don’t want to make delicate, pretty little girls sad, but because rape is a fucking horrible crime that ruins lives and deserves the utmost scrutiny, which includes looking into the lives of normal people (that is to say, not-rapists) and trying to establish ways that their lifestyles might be improved to help those who have suffered from rape), I would strongly discourage rape fantasies, despite the fact that it might turn you on (think: feedback loop of socio-cultural norms), just because, y’know, I want to be on the safe side.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. No hard feelings etc.
I don’t really have the time to go into a full answer, but I just want to quickly say – my boy does all sorts of terrible things to me, including disregarding my cries of “stop!” and such, but he is only able to do these things BECAUSE I SAY SO. I actually feel safer in bed with him than with previous (vanilla) partners. I am not sure why I should be expected to revert to suppressing my desires because they somehow “might” cause some unspecified “other man” to think it’s ok to actually rape people.
Also, if my boy’s “dominant persona” is going to influence other men to commit rape, how is that anything to do with what we do in bed?
Not all coherent, but I hope you get the general idea.
OK, so there’s loads in here to discuss. Let’s go with the on-topic stuff first. You say that your objection to that blog was mainly because of the potential to construe it as rape. The problem I have with this is that if you’d read the entire blog entry rather than just that one very short bit of prose, you’d have seen that I was extremely positive about it and found it very hot.
So any assumptions you make about it beyond that are essentially projecting things onto me, and in doing so making the wild assumption that I don’t properly understand my sexual desires. And yes, that *is* patronising.
You also say this:
“I do, of course, acknowledge the fact that you may well have a previously, explicitly stated, arrangement whereby in some circumstances he knows that you’re saying no but mean the opposite. Maybe you’d told him so earlier that night (although since this wasn’t stated in your blog post, I don’t think I was wrong to assume that this wasn’t the case).”
Well, I *do* think you were wrong to assume this wasn’t the case. Read the entry: it’s me talking about how hot that incident was, on a sex blog in which I mostly talk about seriously hot things that I like. It pisses me off that people look at that and, because I haven’t specifically added a disclaimer that says “oh by the way I am actually an intelligent woman who has complex relationships with the boys I fuck” people assume that I have been violated. And, yes, that *is* patronising too.
OK, next point. You say:
“I make that three “no’s” and a “please don’t”. Yet I’m sure you would champion the ‘no means no’ slogan intended to make men take responsibility for their behaviour in the bedroom, as any one of us reading this would.”
This isn’t your fault, as I don’t expect you to read everything before you make a comment (that would make me bloody demanding), but as a matter of fact, I don’t *necessarily* champion that slogan:
http://www.girlonthenet.com/2011/11/12/on-consent-and-the-meaning-of-no/
I think that the issue of consent is incredibly important, and that understanding your partners wants, desires, and boundaries of consent is one of the most important things in a relationship. But I also think that with boys I trust I should be able to play at being unwilling without in any way advocating actual rape.
On submission/etc as a cultural issue rather than an individual one: you’re right, I am not an expert. But, and it’s a big ‘but’ – I’m not the one criticising or commenting on the individual sexual choices made by people in consensual relationships.
If what we do in the bedroom leads to societal attitudes that we dislike, I’d argue fairly vociferously that perhaps we should educate society about the distinction between sexual play and real life gender relations. This is important – bloody important – because the only other option (and the option you seem to be advocating) is that we self-censor our desires in case the wider world is corrupted by them.
If what I am doing in my bedroom is not harming individuals then there is no reason for me to stop doing it. If it gives society weird views about how men and women should interact, then the way to solve that is not to stop getting violently fucked in the ass, the way to solve it is to redouble efforts to show society that your sexual preferences do not necessarily dictate who you are as a person or how you are compelled to behave.
I don’t really have the time or effort to reply to this (I have an exam tomorrow morning I haven’t actually revised for yet. So good at life), but just to say that whilst there is stuff you’ve clarified here and I can get behind, there’s still stuff that I think either misses the point of what I was saying (just like I missed the point on some of what you were saying), or that I just flat-out disagree with.
So, agree to disagree, I suppose. How bloody lame huh.
Agreeing to disagree is totally OK. Probably not in an exam context though, so good luck with the revision =p
There is a big difference between submitting to a guy who cares for you & respects you out of bed and just submitting in general – I love to be dominated & every guy I’ve played with very much knows the dofference between in bed & out of it and I refuse to change my behaviour because some people are idiots.
Such well-argued points that I can’t make my mind up which of you I agree with. I will say this though: an ex of mine used to get very turned on by the idea of rape and was always pushing me to indulge her fantasy of being forcibly fucked against her will. (I’m afraid I find the idea of girls saying ‘no’ very UNsexy so her fantasy didn’t really work for us.) Anyway, one night she was raped in her bed by a taxi driver. She doesn’t think rape is hot any more.
‘an ex of mine used to get very turned on by the idea of rape and was always pushing me to indulge her fantasy of being forcibly fucked against her will…. Anyway, one night she was raped in her bed by a taxi driver. She doesn’t think rape is hot any more.’
Seriously?? This has *such* a ‘so she learnt her lesson!’ tone about it. I’m sure you didn’t mean to, but your tone strongly implies that her fantasy was responsible for her rape. Two points of response: 1, in no way whatsoever is any woman (or man for that matter) ever responsible for being raped; 2, fantasy rape and actual rape have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
“Fuck feminism just for a second, and let’s have a look at misandry”
<3
Surely any half decent feminist would say that it’s a truly great thing for a woman to be able to openly (to a degree) talk about her, rather interesting, sex life.
Your buttsex article isn’t degrading to women- its about you enjoying a man fucking you up the arse. The very fact you can blog about this, shows you do not feel degraded.
On the issue of consent- a woman might say ‘no’ several times during sex. Does she mean it? I think you’d know of she did; tone, volume,body language are all equally as strong indicators. The word ‘stop’ is much more unequivocal than the word ‘no’
Really really love this comeback post. Obviously what is done between consenting adults is entirely up to them and, in an ideal world, shouldn’t have to be concerned with the impact on wider society.
But the amazing irony is in the fact that this is on a blogpost. You write about the sexual stuff you do, other people film it,it gets put on the Internet, impressionable teenage boys spend hours looking at porn on the Internet, they see this stuff and think its the norm. Some of the good boys might not think twice about it, other ones might be making out with a drunk girl and when she says no, not take it very seriously and some horrible boys might just let this kind of rape fantasy porn leak into their mentality and contribute to their overall impression that rape is just a part of human life and not really such a big deal.
It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to realise that maybe rape fantasies come from an odd place and could very well lead to – in the bigger picture – a much odder and not very nice place.
I see your point, and it’s an interesting one. But ultimately I cannot possibly agree. It assumes a kind of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ attitude towards human beings (particularly straight men) that I utterly reject.
Let’s assume that you’re right – that writing about consent issues on a public blog *does* encourage boys to rape. In order to hold this opinion you have to assume
a) that teenaged boys are so easily influenced that thought for what their partner wants would never come into play. Essentially: all you need to do to turn a teenaged boy into a rapist is to tell him that one woman likes being dominated. I’m sorry, I just cannot agree. Moreover you seem to be implying that people, as a rule, are so prone to generalise that they assume everyone wants the same sexually. “Well, GOTN likes X therefore everyone must like X.” And I don’t think that gives humans credit.
b) that anyone having these sexual desires should never communicate them publicly. Which is, you know, repressive and odd. Imagine if someone *had* these thoughts but wasn’t willing to communicate them to a partner. While you might worry that my oversharing causes people to act badly, I worry that not sharing leads people who have these feelings (which, by the way, they haven’t made a conscious choice to have) feel fucked up and freaky and unwilling to communicate with their partners. And a lack of communication makes for bad and sometimes dangerous sex.
Finally, the accusation that I might be encouraging more people to have fantasies that involve playing with the issue of consent: maybe. I’ll totally own that one. But if my writing is that goddamn influential to impressionable young minds, you’ve also, surely, got to accept that I’m teaching them not only that it’s a sensitive and important issue, but one that they *should totally discuss with their partners.* And if you are into this sort of thing, and you discuss it with your partner then you can establish mutual boundaries, safewords if necessary, and make sure that what’s happening is something that you both consent to and enjoy.
Layla – respect. That is everything I have a problem with in this and the ‘buttsex’ post.
wow and i thought me and my right hand had a bad sex life!!!!!