sex is not the enemy

What we need to let ourselves do is acknowledge that sex is a big deal for some people, and really not a big deal for others. We need to get better at saying “Eh, that’s not really my thing, but if you like it, rock on with your cock on” and meaning it. Otherwise, we will only continue to be opaque to each other. We will miss the enormous pain in someone who would really like to get some, but isn’t. We will miss the pain in someone who doesn’t want to have sex but feels obligated to. We will miss all the people who can’t reconcile the contradiction between their utterly filthy fantasies and the social role they find themselves in. Understanding can only arise from acknowledging our mutual incomprehension.

posted 7 hours ago

I often feel that, in so many areas of what we might call progressive politics or ideologies, we leave ourselves last. We retain that distorting lens of what we’ve been taught, not what we actually think. So – we celebrate a diverse range of body shapes, but tell ourselves we’re too fat to be attractive. We think gender fabulousness is a great thing – and then worry we’re too different to be accepted. We know that kyriarchal lies are, well, lies…and then listen to them, echoing around us, making us feel ashamed/unworthy/less than.

posted 4 days ago

A recent Boise State University study of 484 heterosexual women showed that “50% of the women had fantasies about other women that involved some kind of sexual experience”. Does this mean they’re bisexual? Lesbian? Bicurious? Who knows and, to a degree, who cares? We don’t need to label every thought that comes into our minds, unless doing so helps us in some way. I’d imagine that there are plenty of heterosexual men who’ve entertained a homoerotic fantasy at some point, but are reluctant to admit that for fear that doing so would “make” them gay. The same goes for sadomasochism and dominance and submission. Plenty of people get off to BDSM scenarios they wouldn’t necessarily want to try, yet too many are ashamed of these fantasies and don’t even fully admit them for fear of being seen as somehow deviant, when the fact is that eroticising power, helplessness and pain are extremely common.

Attraction and action are two distinct things. Sometimes they are one and the same, and visualising yourself in a given sexual situation will lead to wanting to pursue it, but not always. We need to put a higher value on the act of fantasising and recognise that it can help revive a relationship or be a tool in figuring out what arouses us. Maybe you fantasise about being with someone other than your longterm partner, or watching them with someone, or having sex in an exotic location, or being watched, or something that couldn’t ever happen in real life. Allowing yourself the freedom to simply explore what turns you on, sans judgment, is important.

posted 6 days ago

Sex education should focus not just on the mechanics of heterosexual sex and how to keep it safe – important as these are – but on varieties of sex. Sex between girls, sex between boys; the importance of enthusiastic consent – in effect, discussion of how to have good sex rather than just safe sex. The fact that girls as well as boys enjoy sexual activity is important to emphasise. I’ll never forget overhearing a conversation on a bus where a boy was asking a female friend of mine, both around 18, why girls masturbated. That alone demonstrates to me the need for better education.

posted 1 week ago

It’s highly flawed to talk about the impact of “pornography” on young people as if it were a monolithic entity. Of course there is some porn which contributes to the general objectification of women in visual media. Some porn is misogynistic, tasteless and dehumanising. But to tar all sexually explicit content with the same brush shows a woeful ignorance of what’s out there. A lot of porn is pro-woman; even more is pro-human, quite simply a celebration of real human sexual expression without any strong bias either way.

posted 1 week ago