Porn-soaked fantasies are being presented to young women as freedom. Credit: Sean Zanni/Getty
The sexual revolution was supposed to set us free. No more shame, no more fear, no more “lie back and think of England”. We were freed, in some ways. Wider access to contraception, and the decriminalisation of abortion, freed women from the terror of unwanted pregnancy. Sexual education freed young people from ignorance. The liberalisation of attitudes towards homosexuality freed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from stigma.
But history is rarely simple, though there are some who would like us to believe that it is. One narrative about the sexual revolution, currently dominant within the Liberal Left, presents a rigidly teleological framing: the gospel according to Progress, with a capital ‘P’. The bad old days are behind us, we are told, and we have now entered a new era of liberation. Woe betide anyone who does not feel liberated.
In spite of all this freedom, women are still expected to prioritise their partners’ sexual desires over their own. The other week, for example, The Times ran an article on the politics of anal sex among straight people, noting that young women are under increasing pressure to consent to it. “Among the heterosexual people I interviewed,” wrote Lisa Taddeo, “anal sex went from being a whispered desire or fear to carrying with it a unique shame that surprised me. Interestingly, that shame was levied against the women who didn’t want to do it.”
Buzzfeed editor Patrick Strudwick took issue with the piece, accusing The Times of assuming its readers were “Victorian prudes”. In 2017, Teen Vogue editor Phillip Piccardi made similar comments when criticised for publishing a guide to anal sex intended for teenage readers, featuring a diagram of female anatomy that failed to include the clitoris.
Both these men seemed to be oblivious to the fact that, without a prostate, women are not physically equipped to enjoy anal sex in the same way that men do. The vast majority of women report that it is painful and the vast majority of men know this, but many pressure their partners into it regardless. For some men, it seems that the pain is the point, given the popularity of porn featuring aggressive anal penetration that leaves female performers with serious injuries.
It is hard not to point the finger of blame at the porn industry, endlessly creative in its commodification of female suffering. In 2010, researchers analysed more than 300 popular porn scenes and found that 88% contained physical aggression, overwhelmingly committed by men against women. The online porn of today makes the Playboy magazines of the 1960s look laughably tame. Boys and girls are now typically encountering porn for the first time during adolescence, and copious research reveals a correlation between porn consumption during sexual development and changes in attitudes and behaviour, including increased sexual aggression in boys. Is this what liberation was supposed to look like?
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Subscribe“Many of these tweets were sent by women “¦ “
Apparently. But all it takes is one stolen photo to make 56 year old porn addict Earl into 23 year old porn enthusiast Earline. I have seen too many of these posts and tweets by “women” who are just too perfect, too precisely psychologically in-line with what men want to believe about supposedly bouncy, happy-bunny women who supposedly like porn. It’s such bullsh*t, and they eat it up with utter gullibility because it’s what they really want to believe about us.
This is also the single biggest reason why I don’t buy into the “trans” business. If this is what men think we are, how trustworthy are their ideas when they claim to feel “just like women” inside? They think they are women because they want to inhabit a male-created porn fantasy! How much more male can they get?
Interesting and thoughtful article, though I take slight issue with this:
“young women mostly say that they would prefer a committed relationship to a hook up, but that this choice is not available to them, since young men are mostly satisfied with the status quo.”
I would say that a *minority* of men are happy with the status quo, typically the ones who tend to do very well out of it. A much larger majority are increasingly aggrieved, however. We see this through data from apps such as Tinder and OK Cupid which shows a large majority of women going for a small minority of men: https://medium.com/@worston…
Women are more sexually selective than men and in this context it makes sense. The globalisation of the sexual marketplace – for want of a better term – has given women more options in terms of finding a high status mate when it comes to a hookup (though you’re right to say that this may not be what they actually want long-term). This is one of the big drivers of the increase in the numbers of male incels – not the hardcore misogynistic ideologues, but the growing number of average men who simply can’t get a girlfriend. Every women who uses social media is familiar with the legions of reply guys and ‘thirsty’ men who slide into their direct messages. However the other side of this is every moderately attractive women with an even slightly prominent instagram profile is now being hit up by minor celebrities with blue tick accounts. This is the globalisation of dating and the average man must now compete with these high status men in order to get a girlfriend. The vast majority of male incels I have spoken to are not looking for sex but for a girlfriend and intimacy, hence why hardly any of them visit escorts.
To be sure, you’re right to say that this doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness for women – those high status men who are doing well out of the status quo are often only looking for hookups, as you say; they have a great deal of choice facilitated by dating apps and Instagram etc, so it makes a certain degree of sense from their perspective.
Anyway, an interesting read.
“This is one of the big drivers of the increase in the numbers of male incels – not the hardcore misogynistic ideologues, but the growing number of average men who simply can’t get a girlfriend.”
You’re not connecting the dots. Yes, the supposed* increase in the number of men who can’t get dates is directly driven by the hardcore misogynists, because those men are the ones who make women extremely unwilling to take the physical risk of dating a guy they don’t know. We do not have a choice but to treat all men as if they could kill us, and that means that we cannot take chances. If “nice” men cannot find dates, they have no one but not-nice men to blame for it, not the women who are taking perfectly sane and reasonable steps to stay alive.
And women do not simply want “high-status mates.” Look around you. There are a lot of paunchy, bald, chinless married men around. What women want on a date is to have a g/d orgasm and not get strangled, for pete’s sake. This is not unreasonable.
In other words, there is very little symmetry to the situations that men can’t get dates they want because women are unwilling to risk our lives, and women can’t get dates we want “¦ because women are unwilling to risk our lives. While we’re both unhappy with how things are playing out, it’s the asshole men who shoulder 100% of the responsibility.
* And is there really an increase in the number of men who can’t get dates? I’d wager most men had a hard time dating for most of human history, and that many of them can get dates but not with the porn-star supermodels they feel they are entitled to.
You seem to be making some assumptions about men and their propensity for violence against women that are excessively cautious, in my (male) opinion. Yes, there are some nasty and violent people out there, mainly men, but a reasonable approach would be to accept that, take suitable precautions on initial dates and walk away the moment that you see you probably made a wrong decision. Otherwise you end up being so risk-averse that you miss out on someone you would actually like, or even love. I presume you do have have some male friends at least?
“Yes, the supposed* increase in the number of men who can’t get dates
directly driven by the hardcore misogynists, because those men are the
ones who make women extremely unwilling to take the physical risk of
dating a guy they don’t know.”
This argument is completely undone by the fact that young women are going on more dates than ever, facilitated by apps such as Tinder and Bumble.
How exactly has the globalization of the sexual marketplace given women more options? How on Earth does the existence of one decent man halfway around the planet impact your average female schlub in the flyover? Just because I can send away for Japanese pickled plums from ten time zones away and get them a week later doesn’t mean I can send away for a decent man who won’t try to strangle me during sex from ten time zones away and have him show up packed and packaged on my doorstep a week later. Good lord and butter.
“How exactly has the globalization of the sexual marketplace given women
more options?”
Well, at the higher end you’re now seeing top tier men (celebrities for example) contacting women via Instagram and flying them out to different countries for dates. This is widespread now. People poo poo it because they’re not a part of this world, but it’s happening a lot. Even if the women in question do not take up the offer, they see their own SMV (sexual market value) as higher as a consequence. They are subsequently less willing to date men who 20 years ago would have been considered on their level. The globalisation of the sexual market place drives the value of local men down just as the globalisation of the economy drives down the value of local labour. Women are the sexual selectors and men are being selected from a much wider pool of men than previously.
If we look at an app like Tinder, around 20% of men are matching with around 80% of women. The other 80% of men are getting very few matches. We’re reverting to something like a polygamous state of nature. I’m not making a value judgement about this; it’s simply what’s happening. There is a lot of data coming out about this, some of which I’ve already linked to in the comment above.
I attended one of the world’s top business schools 25 years ago and as a result have a number of male friends who are high status (“rich business executive” image), travel a lot internationally (for business and leisure), and (for varying reasons) are single. They describe to me a world which reflects closely the one outlined by James Ralph. Like Mr Ralph, I am describing, not approving (personally happily married for 25 years, monogamous). I personally find the whole thing distasteful.
I agree with you, however, that I don’t think the situation gives the average woman “more options”- other than the “option” to join the queue of women happy to throw themselves at these “high status” men. The power dynamic in these hookups is pretty clear and highly asymmetric. But I do support Ralph’s conclusion that these plums exist and are available to be bid for should you wish.
Your scope is much larger than it needs to be though. The internet allows us to connect with people we never would have been able to before. And I don’t have to mean areas 10 time zones away. (Though that isn’t necessarily out of the question.) I met my husband of 10 years now through the internet. And we never would have met without out, despite living in the same city. Before the internet your options for meeting someone were largely at physical places you visited, or through similar connections. We lived on opposite ends of the city. We had no similar connections. We never would have visited the same grocery stores or bars. And realistically, just because you can’t order a man (or woman) from 10 time zones away, doesn’t mean you can’t strike up an online conversation with them, that leads to phone calls, a connection and the decision to meet and see where that connection might lead. So yes, there truly has been a globalization of the sexual marketplace.
No. The problem is that average men think they are worthy of exceptional women, and refuse to date within their own social level. Even you admit it:
“…every ð—ºð—¼ð—±ð—²ð—¿ð—®ð˜ð—²ð—¹ð˜† ð—®ð˜ð˜ð—¿ð—®ð—°ð˜ð—¶ð˜ƒð—² ð˜„ð—¼ð—ºð—²ð—» [sic] with an even slightly prominent instagram profile is now being hit up by minor celebrities with blue tick accounts. This is the globalisation of dating and the ð—®ð˜ƒð—²ð—¿ð—®ð—´ð—² ð—ºð—®ð—» must now compete with these high status men in order to get a girlfriend.”
Essentially, you resent that women have choices, and that you just don’t measure up against the competition.
Duplicate comment, see above.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to personalise it, but anyway …
Average men may think they are worthy of exceptional women (if by exceptional we mean aesthetically beautiful, which is a slightly different thing). However the same is true of women who want the high status men who they are getting a taste of through dating apps such as Tinder and Instagram (which is effectively a dating app). Their subsequent complaints about men not wanting to settle down are specifically targeted at these higher tier men who are unwilling to settle down with an average woman because they have options. You see, it works both ways.
Women are more sexually selective than men, therefore you are always going to have more thirsty single men who aren’t getting any than you are women. Feminists usually cling to blank slate theory (although to her credit, the author of this piece is not one of those people) and pretend this isn’t a factor, when there is a mountain of evidence (both empirical and anecdotal) to support it.
Both men and women behave ruthlessly when it comes to dating. The idea that one sex is inherently virtuous is complete nonsense.
The author misleads in a couple of ways when she quotes one of the surveys, the survey that found that 71% of young men admitted to spitting on, gagging, slapping, or strangling their partners. First of all, slapping is included here, which means that if a guy gave his partner a little slap on her butt, that would be included. Why is this then included with the other, much more disgusting acts like gagging or strangling? Also, the author failed to mention, or realize, that the men said that a full 41% of their female partners ASKED for these acts to be done, or even INITIATED them!
“Also, the author failed to mention, or realize, that the men said that a
full 41% of their female partners ASKED for these acts to be done, or even INITIATED them!”
Yeah this is where radical feminist ideology falls down. In the past 18 months since I’ve been single and dating again, I’ve been asked to do some of the things in question – spanking, choking etc. – by women. It’s *always* been women initiating/asking for it.
And so we’re back with the old false consciousness argument: the person engaging in a particular behaviour has been brainwashed by society (of course it’s never accepted that the theorist could’ve been brainwashed by theory).
Ideologies which purport to know better what the person they wish to liberate wants than that person knows themselves are inherently tyrannical.
An excellent article other than failing to grapple how many men also struggle with cultural expectations of their sexual behaviour. Porn tells no more truth about men than about women – it’s pure fantasy detached from emotional reality. Very few men are wired to act in that fashion and the article fails to understand the sexual similarities between the sexes.
I feel that the author is making too many assumptions about men, we are not all sexual predators nor are we stupid enough to equate porn with real life. As to the question of a**l sex, I have met women who enjoy it immensely. and others who are horrified, I think it has far more to do with pleasure of the mind than physical pleasure, to do with submission and control and eroticism of the situation. My female partner (in all things ) of 20 years demands it regularly., although I am reluctant because I do not wish to either hurt or dominate her. Lesbians of our acquaintance also indulge in a**l play. therefore I think the author`s reaction is more to do with her than humanity at large.
When you get to a certain point in your life I think many women realise that they’re just chasing something that doesn’t exist anyway. Sexual fulfilment? There are more important things and the promise of the so called liberation of the sixties is a fantasy and one that has caused untold damage but it has taken me forty years to learn that.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of this article’s critics are defensive men, and they are missing the point. Ultimately, sex is less safe for women than it is for men, for several reasons.
Firstly, it is physically invasive and often painful. Men who have sex with women can never empathise with this. Secondly, birth control is still deemed to be the sole responsibility of the woman. Few men take it upon themselves to prevent pregnancies. Further to this, STI’s are more likely to be passed male to female than they are female to male, making it easier for men to rationalise ‘chancing it’ by not using protection. Yet, women who do not take hormonal precautions are frequently criticised by their sexual partners for being irresponsible.
Already, sex is an uneven playing field, and this is before accounting for the facts that sexual satisfaction is often harder for women to achieve than men and, fundamentally, men are usually stronger than women. Unwarranted quasi-violent sexual acts are made all the worse for this.
We all know about gender inequality issues and the impact they have. We know about objectification, cat-calling and rape culture. Women are s**t-shamed, and for the opposite. There can be no denying that in this respect, men have it better.
All of this in the very foundation of sex surely must make it difficult for straight men to make a legitimate case against the points made by Louise Perry.
Kitty, by criticizing Louise’s article, I’m not saying it’s a load of garbage. It has a lot of great things to say. I agree with most of it. Foremost to me is probably wondering why anyone would want to inflict unwanted pain on someone they’re making love to.
But it’s an important piece of information, which Louise left out, that 41% of the men in the British survey she cited said it was the woman who asked for or initiated the violent sex. That is a very significant number of women. A lot of men speak up and say they had no intention of doing any of those aggressive acts, but they were asked to. If 10% of women wanted these things, that’s one thing, but 41%??
I feel that in fundamental ways sex is an uneven playing field in the other direction. I feel it’s grossly unfair to men. Women control the sexual arena, not men. That’s so obvious when you see all the desperate, even wrong, ways in which men try to get sex. A woman just has to go anywhere and she can get free sex. A man can not. Men think about sex much more often than women, in general, and they get aroused much more quickly. Men go to great lengths to get what women can get without effort. Many men would love to be cat-called by women. Most men would love to be told by random women that they are sexually desirable. We crave it so much. I feel this is a big reason why men do what they do – we crave sexual validation so much, because by and large we get so very little.
This is the true uneven playing field.
So basically you are insisting on the right to absolute victimhood.
I think a big part of hook up culture for men and women is a key word missing here: validation. You talked about women who lose or put on weight to desexualise themselves, but I think also that another side effect of especially gaining weight is an increased need for physical validation, to feel sexually desired when your body size is different to the mainstream ideal. You mentioned commodification in porn, but what hook up culture offers is an accessible way to commodify one’s body, too. Like consumerism, it’s something that’s inclusive, that you can be one of the club. I do think that lad culture has a great impact on women too, as it is a simplified ideology focused on belt-notching, and a way sexual promiscuity can be self-mythologised into a sort of social credit.
But ultimately it is men who benefit most from female sexual liberation, as you point out in terms of the orgasm count, and lack of attention given to female satisfaction. There was an article in the New York Times in 1994 that looked at consent and also failed to include the c******s, so this is nothing new (discussion here https://youtu.be/Or1_13OZhh…. The great illusion of casual sex is that it is exactly what it says on the tin. The idea there gender equality through a mutual transaction in sexual pleasure is false, not only through the imbalance of pleasure, but in the exercise of power. I think it can also damage the self-confidence of some men, in that in using women for sex they slowly see themselves in only one light. Similar to the fanatic romantic, who sees in every conversation or encounter the potential for true love, hook up culture simplify heterosexual relations. I think it’s becoming increasingly hard for single men and single women to begin, let alone sustain, close friendships, without the anxiety of sexual tension.
Becoming a nun or a monk is also an offer of inclusivity, as the lifestyle and discipline on offer is one of asexuality, a way to de-sex yourself. Having spent some time in a monastery in Herefordshire, I was surprised to find the only member under 60 to be a young man who’d just finished university. This is only one person, but I wonder how many other students who DON’T go off a become Benedictine monks would find appeal in the promise of an asexual life.
Couple of typos:
The vast majority of women report than it is painful
as one you student put it
“I wonder how many other students who DON’T go off a become Benedictine monks would find appeal in the promise of an asexual life.”
Relief, maybe. I wouldn’t call it appeal. I’ve lived it and continue to live it at the age of 54. I wish it were different, but it’s like cutting off a gangrenous limb. Sure, you may choose to get it loped off, but you didn’t want to. What you wanted was better choices. But in today’s world, you either get used like a toilet or you stick to your own company. Having fulfilling, kind, loving sex with someone who actually cares about the human being you are isn’t on the table — and even expressing the desire for that, as the author said, gets you labelled as either a frigid prude by the woke left, or as a male-identified insufficiently committed feminist by most of feminism. I’ve had both accusations levelled at me, rapidly and without fail, as predictably as the sunrise.
That’s an interesting way of putting it, the relief of not having to worry about sexual relationships any more. But my suspicion that a lot of monks don’t actually transition into asexual, as I have my doubts about asexuality as a concept. When you say you wish it were different, that you didn’t live an asexual life, where do you stand on the involuntary celibate ideology? That also seems to be an outcome of the confusion of sexual liberation. I also think these things go far beyond left, right, woke, anti-PC, to something that acts as a divide between all sorts of groups of people.
I think “involuntary celibate” is a nonsense term that was created in response to a world of constantly available 24/7 online porn. Most of humanity has been “involuntarily” celibate for most of our lives — it’s just that that avalanche of garbage has us all convinced that everyone else is having the sex of a lifetime constantly. Look online and you can find dozens of sex pundits writing articles about their threesome with Russian supermodels, as well as a constant barrage of porn. But none of us are having the sex we wish we were having, and we never have in the history of the species — but now we are just constantly exposed to ridiculous images of it, so we’re a million times more conscious of the lack.
And I also think that, as I said above, there is zero symmetry to the following situations:
1. Man is angry that he can’t get dates because women fear for our lives and safety.
2. Woman is angry that she can’t get dates because women fear for our lives and safety.
To pretend that the people who are equally to blame for this are:
1. Overly picky women, and
2. Misogynist, porn-addicted violent men
is ridiculous. In both cases, the blame lies with misogynist, porn-addicted violent men. I’m angry as all hell that the reason that I have remained single for my life is because I’m legitimately worried about my safety and being expected to do a second shift of housework after getting home from the office, and enraged male incels are bloody convinced it’s actually because I want someone with a millimeter-precise jaw width, a certain shape of eyelid, and who makes more money than me. No, it’s because I don’t want to get f*cking strangled and expected to do all the cooking and cleaning in the bargain, dipwads. Calling those both “incel” is insane, and implies a symmetry that simply doesn’t exist. It’s a stupid term and needs to die.
I don’t believe that men benefit from female sexual liberation. Some men get a lot more sex which I doubt gives them any long term fulfilment & the other men find themselves waiting until women reach their thirties and panic into accepting any man in order to have a baby – also not particularly fulfilling for the man.
You write at one point: “history is rarely simple, though there are some who would like us to believe that it is””¨”¨”¨. Well you could put every feminist who seeks to persuade that the totality of history is simplistically one of tyrannical and oppressive patriarchy, couldn’t you? (You rather walked into that one!).
Then just a couple of sentences later:”¨”¨”¨”¨ “In spite of all this freedom, women are still expected to prioritise their partners’ sexual desires over their own.””¨”¨”¨
So, history is a bit complicated, but being omniscient about all sexual expectations in all male/female relationships is something feminists can apparently do with immediate facility -just so long as the conclusions establish and reinforce a ridiculously simplistic ongoing narrative of victimhood and oppression!
It’s pretty funny really!
I wonder where is your evidence for such a statement? -empirical evidence preferably please, not something that was cooked up at the last gender and identity social science fare -hint: asking another feminist for an opinion that just reinforces your own doesn’t count.
Similarly, since when did one instance of something happening in a handful of relationships equate to the same thing happening in all relationships?
Your approach just ends up reducing all sexual relationships to being about one thing: in your view it’s all about power – because power is what feminism idealises above all things.”¨”¨”¨ Your analysis, like all feminist analysis, never says what it is that you think women do really want sexually -I suspect because the answer is essentially so multi variant and so diverse, so subjective and situation dependent, that it defies simplistic, reductive analysis.
If you read Nancy Friday’s collection of women’s sexual fantasies, for example, you would discover a wide, and often wild, range of sexual fantasies which women hold -many varied and different, bizarre, colourful, violent, loving, passionate and compassionate, many extraordinarily taboo. In real life, some women (and men too) actually do derive more pleasure from giving pleasure, some associate experiences of pain with pleasure, some don’t. Some women do appear to genuinely like a**l sex -and the absence of a prostate does not seem to bother them – perhaps they experience the pleasure in it from another source of stimulation.
But because you’re so sure about its essentially oppressive nature you can’t, or won’t, believe them. They must be, according to your narrative at least, ‘the unconscious victims of patriarchal oppression’. The great irony of feminism is that the last poeple on earth it trusts to make decisions are women themselves!
What if, in sex, some women like to feel the forceful strength of a man? No one is insisting this is for everyone (apart from you insisting that that is what porn is insisting upon – with nothing to validate this save for poorly researched anecdotal evidence and no evidence to quantify the actual take-up of this ‘message’).
Preferences and practices change from partner to partner and from relationship to relationship. They can vary in the same person according to the relationship they are in; or according to the developmental stage of their own life. Sex is occasionally violent and loveless -precisely because it is a reflection of the complexity of human nature and the erotic imagination, which can also, at times, be violent and loveless. But again the feminist narrative dictates that a woman cannot possibly be right, or right minded, to consent to violent and/ or loveless sex. Well, history is against you on that one because it has been happening like this for millennia. As Nancy Friday discovered, people have all sorts of strange, incomprehensible, desires that require fulfilment.
It becomes a problem, obviously, when there is an absent of consent in which case we are talking about sexual assault, or rape -a matter of criminal behaviour. I acknowledge the work of your campaign against sexual violence absent of any consent. But the stories of your victims do not comprehensively cover the meaning of all sexual practice, or even necessarily relate to that much of it at all. I believe there are (relatively speaking) very few people who do not know rape and sexual assault is wrong behaviour -though you of course would likely assert the existence of a pervasive ‘rape culture’ whereby you see evidence of assault and rape in all sex. Rapists do not generally experience sexual pleasure from sex because rape really is is about power – which is why it is not sex.
I also suspect that in spite of the expressed moralistic tone of your grandmother’s times people were getting up to all sorts of things sexual -as they have been since time immemorial!
Feminism does not appear to know the answer to the question of your article; ‘What sort of sex do women really want?'(as if there could be a single sort of sex that all women really want!). But I imagine it has some pretty stringent dictats on the sort of sex it thinks all women should have. I think sometimes feminism wishes to criminalise all sexual behaviour which it does not deem politically correct according to its principles. The many varied world of sexual expression is not something the rather simplistic feminist narrative can cope with apparently -in the feministic world sexual relationships are simply just another expression of power, oppression and subjugation. I cannot think of anything more authoritarian and tedious than a world in which sexual relations and pleasure has to be measured by the yardstick of equality and political correctness!
I wonder what ‘good sex’ looks like to a feminist practising radical principles of empowerment and equality -strict equality of pleasure received and given, equal time to each protagonist in any one position, no loss of control or lack of conscious awareness of the relevant dominance hierarchies, explicit consent for all acts, shameful recognition and atonement for the inherently patriarchal nature of the missionary position (if allowed at all given the appalling practises of missionaries during the oppressive period of colonisation) etc… etc…. I caricature of course but there is something potentially very prescriptive about bringing sexual politics into the world of sexual relationships.
I think you may find that women opting out of sexual relationships could have more to do with their personal issues and difficulties in becoming freely expressive sexual beings- men of course face the same dilemmas -the feminist narrative has hardly helped by instilling the notion that having sex in the way they might want to have it is somehow politically disloyal to the feminist cause. The notion that ‘all sex is rape’ , for example, can hardly have helped women feel secure in the expression of their sexual identity.
I think you are missing a couple of important points here.
Much of what (more sexually adventurous) men do in bed isn’t aimed at arousing themselves, that isn’t usually a problem, it’s aimed at arousing the woman they are with.
Also female attitudes to, and enjoyment of, sex seem to vary a great deal more than men’s – from actual dislike, through tolerance to wild enthusiasm. And from unimaginative to frankly wild. Indeed, the wildness, not to say political incorrectness, of some female fantasy is an open secret.
A common complaint of many women is the unadventurousness of their male partners, sorry guys, so I’m not at all surprised that you had many women calling you a prude. Dull, unimaginative sex will still bring the average man a degree of satisfaction – but it doesn’t generally work that way for women.
Thank you for this interesting article, it highlighted to me the effects of the industrialisation of sex on perceptions of normality. My only question is, what do you think can, or ought, to be done about it?
Crikey. Most of us married folk never have any kind of crumpet, ever. Let alone a menu..
Louise Perry’s thoughtful article is to be commended. It is unfortunate that it need even be said that one should not find one’s pleasure in doing something to a woman (or anyone else) which causes her pain or into which she has to be cajoled. Perhaps where express education fails, another remedy lies in diversion: some are excited by causing pain to a lover, but surely many more by being invited as a diversionary alternative instead to do something she wants. There is room for another article actually about Miss Perry’s (or her editor’s) ostensible topic of “What sort of sex do women really want?” Emphasize the positive. Where there is love, it will seek to serve desire. And where there is female desire, it can speak up. Yours faithfully, Michael Upton.
I know you think this gynocentric pandering is going to get you laid. But you are wrong.
For some people, sexual relationships are a safe place in which to explore both sadistic and masochistic impulses -which everybody has to some degree according to peronsality and situation. So I don’t think there is a ‘should’ or ‘should not’ about it. I appreciate you are addressing a non consensual situation where it goes without saying it isn’t appropriate, but the fact that men and women request to act the role of victim and perpetrator in consensual sexual relationships is worth acknowledging in order that the meanings of these behaviours can be thought about more deeply. If it all becomes too taboo, or socially condemned (which is the tone of this piece for example), then these feelings are just repressed; they become too unconscious and unavailable for thought -this often leads to them being enacted in much more destructive, unhealthy and usually recriminatory ways. This can also lead to a very simplistic understanding of situations in which victim and perpetrator roles are understood only from a ‘good’ victim ‘bad’ perpetrator perspective. These situations are of course usually far more complex than first meets the eye.
Thanks Scott and J BM. There’s sometimes a choice between calling a spade a spade and trying to persuade someone else (say a feminist journalist) that another opinion could be possible, even for her. We may suspect that we actually agree what a spade should be called, and that the real issue between us is the question whether there is anything to be gained by more persuasive language. Many a canny chauvinist has found that there is …
I would be grateful if you could reword for the less intelligent, like myself. I read it 3x and still don’t understand your point.
Pure gynocentric pandering. You would think that this outpouring of insincere empathy toward this misandrist diatribe would ingratiate you to this man bashing author but it will not get her or one of her chorus to sleep with you. It is a waste.
Since the sexual revolution of the sixties, translated as the Pill + Feminism, young women have been told they are as good as men and can act the same in both work & sex. However, they are not the same. For thousands of years women have had to be very careful in their choice of mate & that intrinsic biological function cannot be changed be feminism, which is encouraging women to go against their grain.
There is little real thought in this article about “What sort of sex do women really want?” The body of the article is: What sort of victim do women really want to be?
Outrageously inflated figures such as “71% of young men are committing acts against their partners that would unambiguously be recognised as criminal” is just untrue. Show us the study including the method by which this “fact” is proved? You won’t because it doesn’t exist.
I agree that there is an erosion in the empathy men and women toward each other in dating. But the authors conclusion is flimsy in that it is the SJW dogma – Men be bad!.
All credible research links the majority of developmental issues of boys and girls to “Father Absence”. All the way back to the Moynihan Report (1965). This is supported by every major family research report since. Children without fathers 5 times more likely not to graduate high school, 9 times more likely engage in high risk behaviours and 20 times more likely to be incarcerated. Lower resilience and higher mental illness rates.
When fathers are made absent by toxic Femanazi policy and Family courts, empathy and intelligence of children degrade. Read Warren Farrell’s new book “The boy crisis”. Take a few minutes and watch two intelligent people talk about the disconnection between men and women in the modern enviroment: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Empathy especially degrades in males and intelligence in regard to boundaries and social regulatiory behaviour degrades in both boys and girls. However presents differently. Now more than a third of families have children growing up without fathers and the problem gets worse. (55% of low income households children deny contact with fathers Ref: CMYRU)
Looks like the Labour Party and local council just don’t have the secret ingredient that is biological fathers are by having regular and equal contact with their children.
This article is one reason why families are make weaker. It has a strong call to action for tough penalties for any man that disapoints a woman on a date. Violence and vengence are your solution. Are you kidding? Not having a good time? I suggest you leave and go home.
I put it to the reader the Porn universe is not the driver but the mirror of a callous society that puts the needs of the family last. As Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Want empathy and understanding first you have to give it. Want compassion and peace perhaps shrill and calls for violence vengance against men is not the method to achieve it.
So this is all men’s fault, I see. Women made all the choices and men carry all the responsibility for those choices. Very destructive Louise and convenient, but absolutely on message for the Femanazi progressives.
If I can suggest an alternate theory to your pain in the butt problem supported by Dr Warren Farrell in his new book “The Boy Crisis”. Warren states the Destruction of the Western family by taking fathers en-mass out of homes destroys boys. A 700% increase in jails since 1977 and 93% men as occupants. Warren’s research shows the character void left in both boys and girls as a result of the Family courts driven by Femanazi demand has resulted in decimating the natural bond of Fathers and children. This has had a profound effect.
There are horrible outcomes for girls listed including low self-esteem and poor mating decisions. But Warren stresses the most extreme outcomes are for boys learning social boundaries and behaviour control. Which addresses the disconnect you percieve between the young mans desire for a**l sex with ambivilance toward whether this has any enjoyment for the young woman. Warren’s research shows it is fathering that teaches boys boundaries, empathy and personal regulation. He cannot state more clearly the Labour Party is not an effective surrogate replacement for the natural father. Rather the opposite.
It is important to note that Warren takes great care throughout this book not to discount the contribution of mothers to healthy children but does expose that the different natural parenting of fathers serves a vital component to the development of all children. Please check out former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Warren discussing the book: https://youtu.be/8Jet7oeDYf8
Negotiation for sexual access is best explained by Dr Diana Fleischman. I recently interviewed her for a documentary. She states Women and Men are negotiating for different things with sex. The outrageous Feminazi propaganda that postulates that all men are oppressive and all women victims has created a terribly dysfunctional sex marketplace because it has convinced men they are crap and women not to expect better. So in my opinion the Porn marketplace is not the driver but the mirror of the years of regressive policy and practices disconnecting fathers from children and marrying mothers to governments. It has produced very weak and unresilient children that are both performing poorly. This is not making a better society.
Dianna’s research shows Men develop status to be chosen by women for sexual access. Her research shows that it is women who do all the choosing of who has access to their arse. And they are very choosy. For 10,000 years half of males have had no offspring at all. Up until recently women have had 3 offspring on average. How this translates into modern dating on sites like Tinder is that the top 20% of males on Tinder get the access to screw 80% of the women on Tinder. All by the choice of the women. Dianna told me and my own research confirmed that women only “date” up the status chain, whilst men date all the way down. 60% of men on dating sites get 0 responses. Wonder why porn is popular – that is the reason. InCel’s are involentarily celibate, not volentary.
Warren says that to make nations great again, we need to “Make families strong again”. Children need both parents equally and the current family court system is so biased against fathers that the suicide rate is 11 times that of women, but because it is men dying that is just not a problem for most leaders, in fact quite a few from the Labour party revel in this outcome. And meanwhile it is the children that suffer the most. So much for “the best interests of the child”. Just the best interests of the Globalist agenda – weak masses to rule!
The greatest genocide of modern times is the Family Courts of the Western world. Kills men, women and their children. Better than NAZI gas chambers.
It would seem from this information that the best way for women to save their own arse is to stop sticking it into men and boys for a change. What do you think Louise?
The porn the author blames is a mirror reflecting back distain young men feel as a result of being told “your masculinity is toxic”. The vigour and efficiency of eroding the human rights of men has a consequence. Basic Newtonian physics of an equal reaction to force. So alas, this porn evolution is not a well from which men draw a lack of empathy but the reflection of society’s effort to dispose of them and their humanity.
I am not sure the author got the meaning of the word liberation? It just means the power to say no. It does not mean freedom of being asked, challenged, and pressured.
Women could be expected by an individual, or even their peer group, to prioritize their sexual desires of their own but that is in the end their own choice. Every choice is based on a complex set of trade offs that only the unique individual can make. That is what freedom implies.
Your alternative is worse, it means we must assume that women have no agency. Men must get the duty to protect women against their own complacency. Really? Is that what women’s lib strived for? And what then about all those annoying powerrrrr girrls that seem to overwhelm my TV nowadays?
How can we ever call it a day with feminism if something as trivial as women feel pressured is a reason for its existence?
Men just want very different things in sex than women. What this author seems to want is that men stop asking what they like to experiment with. Is that liberation according to her? Men slavishly guessing every potential desire of their partner? How do you envision such a mind policy? How do you enforce such a policy? Women’s lib gave women full agency to say no. I do hope it does not want to take away the freedom of men.
And no mam, you’ve not understood one iota about men, sex, and porn. Sadly this ignorance is all too commonplace among women, although it does not hinder them in spouting their unfounded opinions.
You’re missing something crucial here, dude: the reason sex exists in the first place is not to entertain men but to make humans. I never wanted kids and celebrate the creation of birth control as the single greatest advance in human history, and even I know that.
In other words, if in the judgment of women, the “very different things” men want from sex indicate that they should be disqualified from being fathers, then those men shouldn’t be getting laid. Period. For you to miss this so bluntly and then claim that the author is the one who doesn’t understand sex is laughable.
Any man who considers strangulation to be a reasonable part of sex should under no circumstances be given the chance to be around the small, vulnerable being who might result from sex, and the easiest way to ensure this is for the majority of women to turn him down flat, whether she wants a baby or not.
If sex was not entertaining for both genders there wouldn’t be a human race.
‘In the judgment of women’ – you imagine you know the consensus of women then? All women. That’s a pretty grandiose claim.
Given the booming world population, and the longevity of the human race, it seems a little far fetched to infer that men and women want ‘very different things’ from sex -that may be a popular feminist trope, but it doesn’t appear to stand up very well to reality testing does it?
You don’t define what you mean by ‘strangulation’. To death? Yes, certainly a bad thing. A hand around a throat? As part of consensual sex? What if it is the woman’s hands around the man’s throat -with consent? How does your moral judgementalism adjust to these situations, and the thousands of nuanced situations inbetween?
The capacity to express both violence and gentleness, love and hate, pleasure and pain -sometimes to the same object and at the same time -is innately human; extremely complex and dependent on the people and the situation. It is fascile to just reduce it all to one meaning just because you lack the imagination to conceive of different meanings and interpretations of human behaviour.
As I stated, you have no idea about male sexuality and you seem to look at female’s sexuality through rose colored glasses. Most men hate violence in bed and 50 shades of Grey was a huge hit by an almost exclusively female audience.
No, you are wrong, women do not have the power to say no, when we are going to be judged harshly when the answer doesn’t please you. In in a significant number of situations, we risk our lives by saying no. Even simply trying to escape a man’s come-on attempt can be dicey. I don’t know even one woman who never felt she had to give a man a wrong number because he was aggressive and she was afraid of angering him with outright rejection. Men corner us, imposing upon our personal space with their physical strength, always putting women in the position of having to think three moves ahead, planning our exit strategy. It’s exhausting.
Yours is the sex that perpetrates 99% of domestic violence and sexual assaults. It is YOUR JOB to fix yourself; it is not the responsibility of every woman to fight tooth and nail for our boundaries and a basic level of RESPECT. You owe us that. Stop behaving like an entitled infant.
If women really do not, as you assert, have the power to say ‘no’ (for fear of ‘harsh judgment’ of all things!!) then what can you propose as a possible solution?
Going by your description of women, it is hard to imagine how such a frail and fragile species could ever hope to thrive or survive in this world -whatever the measures put in place. It seems as if, going by your description of the female sex that it is one so hopeless and helpless that they are fit for not much more than soft asylum.
If this really is your experience then I am genuinely sorry for it -but you cannot assert it as the universal truth of all women.
It certainly does not accord with my view, or experience, of women. My mother certainly was not like that, nor my sisters, nor my bosses at work.
The fact that the female gender has, thankfully, not just survived, but thrived, for millenia rather contradicts your more enfeebled perception of the femaile sex.
(By the way, using caps to hurl your views at the screen in typefont never fails to give the impression of someone acting exactly like an entitled infant).
Women do have the power to say no.