In case you were unaware, one of the things that I am good at is mocking people who seem to believe in the universal male or female experience. The purpose of such articles are usually to get laughter that sympathizes with whatever gender truths that we experience that moment. It’s so universal, either it is transgressive for daring to say it out loud or it needs to be whispered so the other team doesn’t steal the playbook.
Take this article from the Viking, “The Unfortunate (Sexual) Things About Being a Man:
Being a man is generally pretty awesome – you get to punch stuff, grow facial hair, and exhibit a general anger towards any and everything you see – but having a penis does have its low points, specifically when it comes to sex and relationships.
Wow, being a man sounds soooo awesome that I would hate to piss on his parade by alerting him to the fact that I can/have indeed punched stuff and that I too, could grow facial hair if I missed my regular moustache waxing appointments. I’m not naturally bald beneath my skirt either so please excuse the inappropriate scratching when it starts growing in. But being a man is so fucking awesome and with that comes responsibilities:
1. Men are driven by sex at all times(yes, even when we are visiting you grandma):
Women and/or guilty, politically-correct males might attempt to say that women and men have nearly-identical sexual urges (thereby chalking up womankind’s lower levels of horniness to some sort of gender-wide mental strength of character), but it is simply not true. The first American Pie movie included an 18-year-old female character who had never had an orgasm of any sort. The character (played, ironically, by Tara Reid) was viewed as slightly unusual in her sexual inexperience, but the fact remains: the character was plausible.
A female could hypothetically live to the age of 18 or thereabouts without ever having felt the intense, painful sexual urges of their male counterparts, and thereby never having had an orgasm (lord knows I dated a woman like that). For any male not under the watchful eye of a guilt-cultivating religion, such inexperience is unthinkable, almost impossible. While we are not singled-minded mongoloids who think only about sex at all times (no, we don’t think about it every seven seconds), the desire is nonetheless always present in the back of our minds, for better or worse – usually worse.
He’s got one thing right, that is a woman could make it to 18 without experiencing and orgasm but the trouble that he runs into is that orgasm=desire. Perhaps because our organs are as he calls “internal”(what about the clitoris dude?) it is easy to assume that for women, sex is all “internal”. Without the evidence of a flaccid penis it could be difficult to discern a content female, and that I can sympathize with. Just a hint, women want sex… but unlike the male orgasm for women it is often something they have to “learn” and therefore sex is very possible without the “prize”.
2. Men can only have one orgasm
It’s odd, then, that despite the fact that men seem to have immeasurably larger sexual appetites, the actual act of fornication is much less enjoyable for us than it is for women. Men are only allowed one orgasm – thrust, squirt, done – and the whole thing is finished in 3-8 seconds.
Women, on the other hand, can have multiple orgasms with no pause in between. According to some stuff I found,
“Women are capable of sustained orgasm, called status orgasmus. These start with a 2 to 4 second “spastic contraction” and last twenty to sixty seconds. Masters and Johnson (1966) published a chart of one woman who experienced a 43-second orgasm, consisting of at least 25 successive contractions.”
Actually, this depends on how you define “pause”, physiologically the orgasms that women experience are very similar to a man’s, just like there are some men who can remain “hard” after an orgasm some women will let you continue to penetrate them after one as well. Multiples are controversial in the sense that some people do not need a refractory period to achieve another orgasm, whilst some need at least 20 minutes. For younger men this time period is greatly reduced, however research has shown that with age men become more satisfied with their orgasms and have much longer refractory periods without decreasing their satiation with sexual experiences.
Now, there are obviously many men who can have orgasms within two seconds of commencing sexual intercourse (more on that later), and obviously this woman’s case is not typical, but still; women can potentially have one orgasm per minute (if not more), and their orgasms last, as a minimum, twice as long as the male orgasm. This may not come as much as a surprise, but men are physically incapable of enjoying sex on the same level women do. We don’t even get close.
Actually, it is likely that women have been more open to orgasms by other means beside penetration. While men may consider the “act” itself as “sex” and the only means of orgasm because of the biology(penile tissue) this is not necessarily true. Ejaculation, because often it occurs simultaneously as orgasm may misguide folks to assume that it is evidence of orgasm, where in fact they are two totally different physiological experiences. And if you are young man you may not be aware that it is totally possible for you to orgasm without a fully erect penis!
3. Men can “fail” at having sex:
At the risk of quoting a monologue from Clerks, female participation in sex can (but definitely shouldn’t be) reduced to simply “being there.” So long as the woman is present, has a vagina, and allows the male access to said vagina, she is having sex. The sex may be bad, or awkward, or she might not actually climax, but when a woman has a penis inserted into her vagina, she is, at least technically, having sex.
I’ve got news for you buddy, if women invented a dick-splint that would be analogous to lube. Either one would allow the incredibly narrow definition of “sex” that you have, the incredibly heteronormative view of PIV(that’s penis in vagina) as the accepted physical act of bumping uglies. Ignore oral, disregard anal, and certainly not foreign objects like fingers or adult recreational accessories. The flip side of a man who has a world view of “erection=consenting vagina” does not mean that it is accepting visitors, neither does a flaccid penis mean that it doesn’t desire to be in a warm wet space. See? It works both ways, just because you can assist the physical mechanics does not mean that the other party is exactly endorsing the experience.
I would never pretend that bringing a woman to climax is not a difficult, lengthy, and often tedious experience for the woman, and this is what makes sex so difficult for men – men have to juggle the pleasure of the woman (assuming the man in case is a real man and doesn’t engage in sex solely for his, and nobody else’s, enjoyment) along with the real possibility that they might actually fail at having sex. Women, hypothetically, only need to (A) be present, and (B) pray that their partner has at least a hint of sexual prowess.
Um, okay… wow. To be honest with you? Reaching an orgasm is never a tedious experience for me, perhaps for my partner who wants to pretend that he is a real man and cares that he is not the only one to reach the “o-face” in this encounter, but hey if he can sit still for a second and refrain from doing what worked on his ex-girlfriend over, and over I may be able to show him. Rarely does that happen, usually I have to bitch up and explain to him what doesn’t work for me, turn on the lights, then whine that I am different, all the while his erection is fading.
I am aggressive, so quite often my orgasms have more to do with me seeking them out rather than waiting on the “cum-fairy” to bring them to me. Usually when there is a great connection it is effortless, but despite the author’s assumption a hard patient penis is not what will do the job. It takes a man who realizes that I want sex and orgasms as much as he does, and even though his body may be foreign to mine I’m willing to explore more than the hard rod that he has to offer me and expect the same.
cross-posted at Sassywho
My last post and a call for writers
from SassyWho @ Feministe 29 Jul 2007 6:19 pm