Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

Archive for the ‘Sex and Women’ Category

Women are watching more porn than ever. At least, that’s the conclusion if you read The Sun’s latest survey (and I will admit, The Sun must be taken far less seriously than other newspapers).

Around 76 per cent of women now admit* to using porn – a ten per cent rise on the two-thirds of girls who admitted to watching porn with their partners in a survey last year.

The most popular format is online porn, which is watched by 61 per cent of couples. Just one couple in 20 looks at magazines, while 18 per cent get their kicks watching porn DVDs on the telly.

The survey of 4,200 women also revealed four in five women like to dress up for their other halves and indulge in role play.

The most popular outfit is a French maid, used by 42 per cent, followed by nurses, chosen by a quarter of women.

The survey was actually by a site called Netmums which gives you an idea of the demographics. Apparently women have a lot less time and energy for sex at the moment but they’re putting more effort into it when they get the chance.

* I hate how newspaper use the word “admit” like porn use is a crime. It casts the whole thing into a negative light. Thankfully the article includes interviews with (and photos of) three typical porn-loving women. This is a really positive thing to include because it shows that women who like a bit of porn are just everyday, normal chicks who want to enjoy their sex lives using whatever tools are available to them.

This morning I read an opinion piece by Natasha Walter in The Times Online called How Teenage Access To Pornography Is Killing Intimacy In Sex. The headline is pure moral panic but I was surprised to find that this extensive article actually contained a real attempt to be vaguely balanced in its anti-porn argument. Normally these kinds of pieces are all hysteria and generalisations and Dworkin-style feminism. This one went close to that but then tried a bit harder. These paragraphs were what gave me pause:

Now that the classic feminist critique of pornography — that it necessarily involves or encourages abuse of women — has disappeared from view, there are few places that young people are likely to hear much criticism or even discussion about its effects.

Many women who would call themselves feminists have come to accept that they are growing up in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and will be part of almost everyone’s sexual experiences. I can see why some are arguing that the way forward really rests on creating more opportunities for women in pornography, yet I think it is worth looking at why some of us still feel such unease with the situation as it is now.

I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women, and I do see that the classic feminist critique of pornography is too simplistic to embrace the great range of explicit sexual materials and people’s reactions to them. Yet let’s be honest. The overuse of pornography does threaten many erotic relationships, and this is a growing problem. What’s more, too much pornography does still rely on or promote the exploitation or abuse of women. Even if you can find porn for women and couples on the internet, nevertheless a vein of real contempt for women characterises so much pornography.

It’s very rare that writers actually acknowledge the existence of alternative porn such as the stuff I make. And I find that rather pleasing because it means they can’t get away with the “all porn is bad” or “all porn hurts women” nonsense. They also can’t then start arguing for censorship because they’re aware it would harm sex-positive erotic expression.

And the fact is that I too have major concerns about the ongoing misogyny and negative attitudes that pervade mainstream porn. I too wonder what it’s teaching young people and whether it’s reinforcing sexism or making guys into bad sexual partners.

My problem, though, is with the assumption that this is absolutely and definitely happening to a large number of men. And the reason I have a problem with it is because there is no scientific evidence to back up that claim. In the article Natasha writes:

For a long time I was sceptical about the claim that the internet had really changed people’s access and attitudes to pornography. Those who want it have surely always been able to find it, whether they were living in 5th-century Athens or the 1950s. But the evidence (my italics) has convinced me that the internet has driven a real change for many people, especially younger people.

She then goes on to quote statistics about how many teens and men are using porn but she fails to then offer any proof that the use of porn is then causing harm.

And that’s the real problem with these kinds of articles. The writer can come up with numerous individual anecdotes that back up their point (in this case, a lengthy interview with “Jim” who became obsessed with porn as a teen) but there’s no real, proper research offered to back up those individual cases.

I too find it disturbing when I hear of women saying their partners became crap in bed after they’d gotten a little too interested in mainstream porn… but can that be extrapolated into a wider trend within the male population?

Fact is, no huge studies have been done to prove it. And here’s the other problem: you’re gonna need a seriously massive study to see any kind of trend. Because the internet means that everybody looks at porn now and if you then think about whether this ubiquitous thing is having a visible, quantifiable effect on vast numbers of men… well, I just don’t see it. In theory we should be witnessing the wholesale destruction of relationships, increasing sexism in our everyday interactions, major psychological problems becoming commonplace among men but it’s just not there.

Instead you could point to the studies that show incidences of rape and sexual harrassment fell in the last ten years. Or even the recent very small survey in Canada that sought to answer these very questions. The researcher originally made headlines because he was unable to find any men who didn’t use porn for his control group. But he did discover that the men in his study watch porn with a cynical eye and that it doesn’t lead to criminal behaviour.

Thus, I don’t really buy into the argument that mainstream porn is making men into complete bastards even if it does make some kind of logical sense. And yet I do want to continue the discussion about what meanings mainstream porn IS constructing and what it means for teens who are, unfortunately, getting their sex education from porn. I’m all for talking about what’s wrong with the depictions of women and sex and advocating for a more positive portrayal of sexuality.

And I’m certainly keen on bringing men into the conversation and hearing what they think about it. Because too often articles like Natasha’s make generalisations about “what men think” without recourse to actually asking them. I actually like to hope that most guys do take porn with a grain of salt, aware that it often appeals to negative emotions or base impulses. And perhaps if we can get that discussion going, more men’s consciousness can be raised to the point that they’re aware of the problematic nature of mainstream porn.

Education and communication is the solution to this puzzle. It always is.

For another view on this, please read The Thin Line Between Pearl-Clutching And Concern at The Pursuit of Harpyness. A good dissection of the issue AND I just love the term “pearl clutching”.

The Australian Classification Board has decided to ban any adult films that feature female ejaculation because they deem the liquid expelled during squirting to be urine. Thus, it comes under the umbrella of “water sports” which our good censors deem to be an obscene activity that should never be depicted on film.

Never mind that female ejaculation has been scientifically documented. Not all women are able to ejaculate but those that do tend to expel a clear liquid through the urethra from the paraurethral ducts during orgasm. There’s some debate as to what the liquid exactly is comprised of but most experts agree that it is NOT urine.

For more information on the whole deal about female ejaculation, read New Scientist’s 2009 article Everything you always wanted to know about female ejaculation (but were afraid to ask). You might also want to have a look at Violet Blue’s page on the G-spot.

There’s also plenty of anecdotal evidence from women who experience ejaculation. Those who are in touch with their bodies and their sexuality know that squirting is very different to urination.

The whole issue has been well documented elsewhere so I don’t need to add much more beyond saying that it is a very real phenomenon. It also needs to be pointed out that Anna Span has only recently made the British Board of Classificiation see sense on this topic – and even then the decision has been made begrudgingly.

What all this discussion about squirting and paraurethral glands and water sports does do is shine a light on the nonsense of declaring some bodily fluids OK and others “obscene”.

One thing all the censors seem to agree on is that semen is an above-board bodily fluid. It can be ejaculated anywhere – internally, onto a woman’s body or face, across the Russian wallpaper – and it can even be mixed into milkshakes and drunk. If 20 guys all want to ejaculate their semen onto a woman lying on the floor waiting – or onto each other – that’s A-OK, thanks very much. Nothing kinky about that, it’s just normal sexual activity.

If a woman ejaculates onto a man’s face, however, that’s a fetish. That mean’s in Australia it’s offensive, obscene and Australians should not be allowed to see it lest it corrupt our immortal souls. Or something.

The same goes for urine and menstrual blood. Beyond the pale. Those bodily fluids have no place in nice normal sex, thank you very much. (For more on menstruation porn, please read Tasty Trixie’s excellent post Menstruation: The Last Taboo?.

Like so many aspects of censorship, this careful delineation between “good” bodily fluids and “bad” ones shows up just how ridiculous the concept of “obscenity” can become. By what reasoning is semen OK but female ejaculate or urine bad? Is it just simple, individual squeamishness?

Look at the ban on water sports as an example. If we consider that some consenting adults happily indulge in urine-play in their own bedrooms (or bathrooms), why should it not be able to be depicted on film?

I’m not in any hurry to see that kind of thing because it’s not my bag and I know that plenty of people feel the same way but our own sexual preferences shouldn’t mean that other less popular sex practices should be banned. I don’t have to watch films with water sports; that’s an individual, adult choice. In theory, that’s what “classification” is about – telling me what to expect from a film so I am free to make my own decisions.

As always, if it’s safe, sane, consensual and done in private then it’s nobody’s business but those involved. This should apply to acts shown in sexually explicit films, books and websites as well.

Squirting is a very real aspect of female sexuality. By labelling it “obscene”, the censors are making a statement about what a “normal” woman should experience in bed. They’re saying that those women who are able to ejaculate are freaks, somehow, and that the enjoyment of their natural bodily fluids is fetishistic – psychologically wrong.

That’s a pretty damaging and sexist thing to say.

I should also point out that the Classification Board considers fisting to be an obscene fetish as well. Never mind that fisting is an activity consensually enjoyed by many lesbians, an intimate sexual act that can form a common part of their everyday sexual repertoire. Nope. Those lesbians are obscene and kinky and wrong as well.

Consensual adult activities such as spanking, piercing and the dripping of candle wax are also banned.

Australia’s censorship laws and the decisions made by the Classification Board seek to define a “normal” version of sexuality, one that is increasingly vanilla and yet still male-oriented. Their rules help to maintain the porn status quo and, unfortunately, it limits the opportunity for alternative expressions of sexuality.

It also puts a lot of independent and female-produced erotica at a disadvantage.

A lot of the ground-breaking films and websites made by feminists overseas feature acts the Board deems “obscene” and yet these are the porn movies that are breaking the old mould of misogynist, cliched porn. I originally became interested in porn because I liked the idea of it but hated the majority of stuff I saw (mostly produced by mainstream porn companies in the US). Since then I’ve found so many great artists who are putting their vision of erotica out into the world in a holistically ethical way – and their work includes spanking, female ejaculation, fisting and BDSM as part of a wider vision of female sexuality.

As a writer, webmistress and filmmaker I’m keen to make a difference, to help make sex positive, female-friendly material but it’s demoralising when even the government gives the thumbs up to facial cumshots but declares female ejaculation to be wrong.

I’ve written it before and I’ll say it again. By all means, classify and rate media to assist adults to make decisions. But do not have the presumption to officially declare one thing “offensive” and “obscene” based purely on subjective, personal opinion.

And that’s what it is with the Classification Board. They pretend to reflect “community values” but they refuse to conduct any research into exactly what people really think. They are the unelected moral gatekeepers for the rest of us, making decisions to ban material based purely on their own judgement, without recourse to real data on what “reasonable adults” think or whether what they are banning causes any harm to the viewer.

In a free society, someone else should not be able to make that decision for me. I’m a grown adult and I consider myself to be perfectly reasonable and ethical. I do not find female ejaculation or spanking or piercing or fisting to be obscene. It hasn’t turned me into a mad rapist, or a drug addict, or any kind of degenerate person. Being able to view these things on the internet has done me no harm whatsoever.

Of course, I do find plenty of other things to be distasteful or offensive but I would never dream of stopping anyone else from seeing them. If it’s safe, sane, consensual and done in private, it’s none of my damn business.

* Pic is of Deborah Sundahl’s Loving Sex: The G Spot And Female Ejaculation. Presumably this will now be banned in Australia along with other educational films on the topic like Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to the G-Spot and Nina Hartley’s Guide to Female Ejaculation. If they’re not banned, it might be because the ejaculate only went onto the sheets. Suddenly, accuracy is everything!

I’ve received a circular from the Eros Association, the advocacy group for the Australian adult industry. Thanks to shit stirring by a fundamentalist Christian group, the rules have been tightened as to what adult films can be imported into Australia.

The Classification Board has explicitly stated that films featuring female ejaculation will now be seized and considered RC – refused classification. Effectively banned. This also means that female ejaculation sites will be considered RC (prohibited) for the purposes of the internet filter planned to be introduced here this year.

Eros says:

The Classification Board have determined that female ejaculation is not a real event and therefore all issue from a women’s vagina is piss and therefore covered under the parameters in the Guidelines for ‘golden showers’. This means that if the shower happens to land on the body or in the mouth it is determined to be an offensive fetish and goes RC. The Classification Board’s finding that female ejaculation does not exist is something we will contest with them as there is a body of scientific (and personal) evidence that says otherwise. Even last month on the ABC Science Show with Dr Norman Swan, they spent an hour with scientists discussing this phenomenon and how it was not urine.

I’m glad Eros is going to fight this. It gets me hopping mad that a government can perpetuate this nonsense and are so eager to do the will of prudes and ignorant religious nutters who wish to meddle in the sex lives of others.

The sooner our outdated classification (censorship) system is abolished, the better. They should not have the right to ban films based on subjective, religious, unscientific, biased and sexist opinion as to what is and isn’t “obscene.”

* Please read my follow up post The Strange Politics of “Obscene” Bodily Fluids.

* Update 27th Jan: Please read my new post: Now Australia is banning small boobs

I’m disappointed I missed it this year: International Gynae Awareness Day (and week) was on September 10. It aims primarily to encourage the breaking down of entrenched social, and cultural taboos, still surrounding most things ‘gynaecological’.

It was founded by Kath Mazella, who 15 years ago endured radical surgery to overcome vulval cancer; she had her vulva and clitoris removed to save her life. She’s now working to make sure this doesn’t have to happen to other women.

Now I considered myself to be fairly well informed about sexual health matters so I’m amazed I’d never heard of vulval cancer. And to be honest, it scares the crap out of me. Cervical cancer, ovarian cancer… we all know about those. But this? Losing your clit? That’s fucking dreadful! How do we check for this? Do doctors even know anything about it?

Thankfully, the GAIN site has information here.

One of the things Kath campaigns on is the correct usage of the word “vulva” to describe the female genitals. She, like me, is sick of people calling it the vagina.

Even today, we find it difficult to talk about our genitalia, and to use the correct name for these precious parts of our own bodies. The founder of GAIN – Kath Mazzella, a survivor of vulval cancer was surprised, then angry, and finally frustrated, to continually hear many, many women, the world over, refer to their “vulva” as their “vagina”!

Shockingly, Kath has even been told by government funding agencies to tone down her language because the word “vulva” is pornographic. “Vagina”, however, is OK. Can you believe the nonsense some people perpetuate?

In any case, this post is a plug for Kath and her good work. And also to show off that spectacular logo: isn’t it cute?

The Murdoch Newspapers have this week been plugging a book called Why Women Have Sex by Cindy Meston and David Buss. After surveying 1000 women they authors claim they know the “real reasons” why women have sex and say that desire, lust or attraction come a long way down the list.

The 1,006 women interviewed as research for the book gave some very surprising answers. One claimed she did it for a spiritual experience, because it is “the closest thing to God”. Others listed “cure for stress headache”, “to make my sexual skills better” and “for a clearer complexion”.

But the majority, 84 per cent, admit they have sex to ensure a quiet life or to bargain for their partners to carry out household chores. One said: “I have sex to relieve the boredom. Because it’s easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do.”

I’m not sure what to make of this research. I don’t doubt that women do have sex for a variety of reasons including keeping their husband happy. But this quote makes me a little suspicious:

“Research has shown that most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all,” the authors, who are both psychology professors at the University of Texas, conclude.

Um, what research is that? Because I’ve never heard of it and it seems a ridiculously broad thing to say about “most women.”

Add to that the way that the Murdoch papers, such as this report in the Courier Mail, seem keen to ramp up the idea that all women are just manipulating men using sex. It’s also shocked that a woman would have sex for sheer pleasure. “Rather than love or romance, for many women sex is just about fun,” says their report. No, really? You’re kidding me?

I’ve just come back from my 2 yearly pap smear appointment and thought I’d make a too-much-information post about it. I’m feeling like someone’s attacked my insides with a blender – and this despite the fact that the doctor is a really good and caring GP. Why is this procedure so horribly awful? Surely there’s some other way we can test for cervical cancer other than spreading your legs for a stranger and letting them scrape away at your bits with a miniature toilet brush?

I found myself doing the “keep yourself nice” routine – having a thorough shower and shaving my legs, putting on some makeup. This from a furry princess who is often found wearing pyjamas all day. Why do we do this? Perhaps it’s to feel a little bit more comfortable and in control during what is, essentially, an unpleasant experience when we often feel exposed and helpless.

And then I had a smile about the old urban myth of a woman turning up for her pap smear with glittery nether regions.

Apparently Joan Rivers’ method for making pap smears better was to “learn to throw your voice.”

I did laugh at the little sign in the surgery: “I won’t panic, cry or scream. I’m the doctor.”

I also had to resist becoming a geek and talking about this shot film on Youtube when one of the interns knocked on the door as I’m lying there behind the curtain with legs akimbo.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. The results of the 2009 Feminist Porn Awards have given me a bit more motivation.

It seems to me that the new wave of queer and dyke porn is showing the rest of the adult industry how porn should work. From the way they treat their talent and audience to the content that is produced, the lesbians are doing things differently.

I’m not talking about your standard “girl-girl” stuff, of course. I’m talking about the authentic dyke and queer porn as created by Shine Louise Houston’s Pink and White Productions, or the Good Dyke Porn website, or NoFauxxx, or Madison Young or Nica Noelle or Maria Beatty. These are people, companies and websites who are blazing a new trail, ignoring the old rules about what porn should look like and how it should be made.

The big thing that strikes me is the huge difference in attitude within the lesbian community when it comes to appearing in porn. Apparently the waiting list to appear in Shine’s The Crash Pad Series is enormous. Women are actually queueing for their chance to be in a lesbian porno.

And when they do have their moment in the spotlight, they’re damned proud of it, thank you very much. And their community looks up to them for doing it. There’s no shame, no stigma, no embarrassment. Appearing in lesbian porn is considered to be an exploration of sexuality or an interesting life experience. They are treated extremely well by the filmmakers and are often part of a larger porn-oriented community that supports each other. And dyke porn doesn’t stick to stereotypical body types. Doesn’t matter how you look so long as you’re a good lover on screen.

Contrast this with the way the mainstream, heterosexual industry works. Women are still paid more than men because there’s a stigma attached to being in porn. Actresses are still treated with a lot less respect by a lot of porn companies. There are heirarchies of sex acts to negotiate (”her first anal!”), cosmetic surgery to consider and the growing fear of being washed up at 23. Meanwhile, anti-porn feminists will refuse to believe that mainstream porn actresses are anything other than victims.

When it comes to the content of lesbian porn, things are different again. There are no cliches or rules to be followed. What appears on screen is what lesbians actually do in bed. There’s a sense of realism and a determination to depict sex in honest and meaningful ways. On top of that, there’s no hesitation when it comes to kink or hardcore. Dyke porn can get as dirty as it likes.

There also seems to be a real connection with the audience in queer and dyke porn, an attempt to listen and reflect what the audience wants to see. Contrast this with the endless race to the bottom that is occurring with mainstream porn, the repetition and lack of quality that is regularly churned out.

The ethics and groundbreaking qualities of lesbian and queer pornographers and not unique to those people, of course. There are plenty of other filmmakers and webmasters trying to do things differently. I like to think that I’m one of them. There’s a real desire to create meaningful, ethical porn and I’m sure there’s also a huge audience waiting for it.

And yet I can’t help but feel a little jealous of the lesbians at the moment. They are just going gangbusters. Their audience can’t get enough of the content they create. And damn, they’ve got women waiting months to fuck on camera for them. I’ve got no idea where I’m going to find talent for my next scene!

Imagine a future where all porn was like the current wave of lesbian porn. No sleaze, no stigma, good ethics, decent pay, happy filmmakers, happy talent and happy customers.

I hope it happens one day.

The Huffington Post has a great interview with Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing, about the rise of the “virginity cult” in the US, specifically among Evangelical Christians, and how it is symptomatic of a larger push towards removing women’s rights.

Oh, I definitely think that virginity is a myth. I think that virginity is a huge lie. Having your first sexual encounter certainly is important, and I don’t mean to demean anyone’s understanding of their sexuality or how they want to think of themselves in that way. And I think that can be a really powerful experience and a wonderful first thing. But, as a concept it’s more dangerous than not, because it puts us into these virgin or not virgin categories, which doesn’t really give us a very nuanced perspective or understanding of sexuality.

Well worth reading.

The Sun is practically exploding with excited bold print in this article (and I use the term loosely) about a survey into porn viewing habits.

They’ve found that 66% of women watch porn. Well, duh. This is compared to 88% of men, out of a survey of 1000 Sun readers. I must admit, the 66% figure is a lot higher than all the other surveys I’ve seen on this topic, but maybe it makes a difference that readers chose to fill in the survey and that they are in the demographic of “people who actually read The Sun newspaper.”

The age demographics suggest that younger women are more likely to enjoy porn, but not that much more than women aged 26 and older.

65% of women said they’d watched porn with their partner or husband with a third of those saying they used it for foreplay.

The Times Online has an extended article on an elite swingers/sex club currently operating in London – Killing Kittens. It caters specifically for women and aims to take the sleaze out of swinging.

It’s about women — not alpha females who storm up to men — but feminine and sensual ones who can go and dance around in their underwear and drink with no pressure and no expectations, just free to feel sexy and have fun.” This “girls make the rules and only girls can break the rules” ethos certainly seems to work for many of the ones who go. Much of the feedback is positive. Wildly so. “For me, it’s a bit of a journey,” explains a recent female convert.

An interesting idea. Unfortunately the writer of the article attacks the issue with a distinctly sex-negative bias. She questions the idea that anyone would want to have guilt-free sex, suggesting that there must always be something wrong with the participants.

Just spreading the word about two academic researchers that need porn-loving women to fill out their surveys.

Firstly, a Women’s Studies MA student called Hayley is asking feminists for their views on porn. Here’s you chance to kick Andrea Dworkin in the butt again, girls. Tell her what you think here.

Secondly, PhD candidate Susana Mayer needs to know about the sexuality of post-menopausal women – especially those who like porn. If you’re over the hot flushes, click here to help her out.

It’s worth taking the time to help research into women and porn. For so long we’ve been hearing the “women aren’t visual” schtick. It’s nice to get some real science and research on our side!

Do you remember your first introduction to sex education?

I found myself pondering this as I read about the new documentary The Joy Of Sex Education. The doco looks at the history of sex ed films, from the earliest “look out for VD” propaganda from WW1 to the hippy-influenced fun of the 70s through to today.

It occurred to me that there was never a moment in my life where I didn’t have some kind of knowledge about sex. That’s because, thankfully, I was a child of the seventies and my parents believed in sex education. They weren’t hippies by any stretch, and they certainly suffered from various red faces when it came to the crunch, but they gritted their teeth like good people and… well, they bought us a book.

Yes folks, I’m talking about that classic tome of rudeness, Where Did I Come From?

This amusing book appeared not long after the arrival of my baby sister when I was five and I absolutely loved it. Especially because it had the EXTRA RUDE PAGE where the man and the woman “got as close to each other as two people can get.” I can still remember smuggling it out of the house so I could snigger about it with my brother and his friends.

Obviously that attitude is not the most perfect approach to sex ed, but we were young and had picked up that sex was naughty. Prior to that we’d done the “I’ll show you yours thing”, except that, unfortunately, I was the one who did all the showing. Bastards.

That’s not to say that I didn’t learn anything; indeed, the book does give a nice, straight-forward approach to sex, refusing to stint on details about pleasure or orgasm. (Interestingly, some reviewers on Amazon are horrified that you would tell a kid about orgasm. Why leave out the good bit?)

Still, Where Did I Come From does have its flaws. For a start, it left me believing the sperm have cute little faces and top hats. Damn, was I disappointed to discover they don’t.

But the main problem with the book is the way it gives the wrong information about female sexuality. Men have a penis, women have a vagina (and that’s all). Rubbing the penis in the vagina is what causes the “nice feelings.” There’s also not a lot of info on where the egg comes from or female anatomy in general (”boys have a penis, girls don’t”). So I must admit, this book helped to create my teenage misconception about how women have orgasms.

It didn’t help that, when I was about 4, my mother had sternly told me to stop sticking my hand down my pants. To give her credit, I think this occurred because I had an embarrassing habit of touching myself when visitors were there, especially the minister’s wife. These days we tell kids that it’s something you save for your bedroom but Where Did I Come From notwithstanding, masturbation was still taboo in 1977. So discovering my own body did have a certain stigma surrounding it.

I had other sex education moments as I grew up. There was the time I was taken along to the school library to see a “special film”, an evening organised by the local church. Don’t remember much about the movie except thinking that sex must be equivalent to a religious experience if the church was involved.

I do remember learning the details of human reproduction in year 7 science class at school, mainly because I was in the almost horrific situation where my Dad was the teacher. Still, he did very well and it was all terribly detached and factual.

“Personal Development” classes in high school recycled the usual reproductive stuff but they were also really big on condoms. AIDS had just become a problem and so safe sex was where it was all at in Australian classrooms. Unfortunately there was no discussion of pleasure, clitorises, orgasm or how to negotiate with a partner in bed. Useful stuff like that was out of bounds.

One memory I have is of finding the courage to put my hand up and ask where the sperm went once it was inside you. My teacher informed me that it stayed up there and was absorbed by the body.

I can’t believe I was lied to about the wet patch!

As for the other details, well, Dolly Doctor filled in a few gaps, although the advice column didn’t mention orgasms or clitorises that I recall. Acne and tampons seemed to be the main obsession. And I did enjoy the odd furtive peek at 1980s porn magazines, a habit that left me in no doubt of the inherent sexiness of stockings and suspenders.

So there it is. I didn’t grow up ignorant but I did encounter some misinformation and a few negative attitudes along the way.

I sometimes wonder if today’s kids are doing any better. Certainly there’s still a determination to keep any mention of pleasure out of sex ed classes (that’s if they’re not pushing abstinence-only) and I don’t think they discuss any of the really tricky issues surrounding sex.

But then again, sex ed classes are always a lesson in embarrassment more than anything else. I’m actually glad kids have access to the internet so they can research this stuff in privacy.

And then overshare it on their blog 30 years later. Like you do.

A couple of good links:
Where did all the good sex-ed lit go? (”It was my Most Favorite Book Ever. And after a disastrous show-and-tell session at Christian day care, it was also mandated to be my Most Favorite Book Ever That Was Never to Be Taken Out of the House Ever Again.”)
Where Did I Come From Book Review (”I should note that Peter and Arthur have also teamed up to bring us What’s Happening to Me? and hopefully after this offering will reunite to answer the timeless, Whisky Tango Foxtrot?”)

The Independent has a he-said, she-said article discussing women and desire. Much of it rehashes the New York Times article from a couple of weeks ago, but I felt the need to blog these two paragraphs, just because I liked the sentiment.

So female desire can be a paradox – as Prof Chivers reports, we may want to be ravished roughly in an alley and also want someone who can be tender and caring. But I’m always amazed by how male writers manage to make that sound impossible, when really, women are not that complicated. Our sexuality just doesn’t parallel men’s; we can’t always be viewed through the same filter. So perhaps when they study women, scientists should drop the unifying theory idea.

As Mary Roach says, “[Scientists] saying that they want to increase orgasms, or boost libido is much more helpful than saying: ‘I want to understand women.’”

Catharine Townsend has a point. Why do men always find this complexity confusing? Surely they experience the same thing? Men and women are not automatons, we all want variety in bed and in our relationships. Everyone has their own kinky fantasies… so enough with the “what do women want?” question.

The New York Times has an extensive article on research into female desire and lust, profiling the hardworking scientists who are studying this relatively new field of human sexuality (i.e. nobody’s bothered to look into what turns women on. Go figure.)

What I found really interesting was the discussion about how the old ideas of romance and relationships aren’t what really get the juices flowing. It’s being lusted after that makes all the difference.

Definitely rings a bell with me.

The problem was how to augment desire, and despite prevailing wisdom, the answer, she told me, had “little to do with building better relationships,” with fostering communication between patients and their partners. She rolled her eyes at such niceties…

“Female desire,” Meana said, speaking broadly and not only about her dyspareunic patients, “is not governed by the relational factors that, we like to think, rule women’s sexuality as opposed to men’s.”

“Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it. “When it comes to desire,” she added, “women may be far less relational than men.”

For evolutionary and cultural reasons, she said, women might set a high value on the closeness and longevity of relationships: “But it’s wrong to think that because relationships are what women choose they’re the primary source of women’s desire.”

…

From early glances at her data, Chivers said, she guesses she will find that women are most turned on, subjectively if not objectively, by scenarios of sex with strangers… “I’ve often thought that there is something really powerful for women’s sexuality about being desired. That receptivity element. At some point I’d love to do a study that would look at that.”

There’s also some interesting speculation about why women will get physically turned on by all sorts of things, even if their mind doesn’t register it.

Genital lubrication, she writes in her upcoming paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior, is necessary “to reduce discomfort, and the possibility of injury, during vaginal penetration. . . . Ancestral women who did not show an automatic vaginal response to sexual cues may have been more likely to experience injuries during unwanted vaginal penetration that resulted in illness, infertility or even death, and thus would be less likely to have passed on this trait to their offspring.”

Evolution’s legacy, according to this theory, is that women are prone to lubricate, if only protectively, to hints of sex in their surroundings.

It’s a very interesting article, well worth reading.