Feministe has been posting recently about men who don’t like particular sex acts, namely, period sex and cunnilingus.
Everyone has the right to say no. This includes men. For what it was worth, I think Jill did make a gesture towards there being people with “legitimate” reasons (spine issues, disliking the sight of blood) not to like cunnilingus or period sex. The problem with that, though, is that there is no illegitimate reason to say no to any sex act.
“I hate the taste of pussy” is an okay reason not to eat pussy (although may I suggest dental dams?). “I can’t breathe when I eat people out” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. “I was forced to eat a woman out and now it triggers me” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. “Dunno, just don’t like it” is an okay reason not to eat pussy. Any reason is a good reason not to eat pussy. This is because it is your body, and therefore what you do with it is no one else’s business.
However, the right to say no applies both ways. If a cis woman’s partner says “I don’t want to have sex during your period,” she has the perfect right to say “well, I want sex during my period, so I will go seek a more compatible sex partner” and stop having sex with that partner. Ideally, that would quickly separate out the things each partner is not willing to compromise on from the things they are.
Of course, this isn’t the perfect solution. One partner may end up compromising on something that’s really a dealbreaker for them for the sake of the relationship, or because they love the person, or because they’re so desperate for a partner, any partner, that they want to, and this is non-optimal. However, given that all the other options are, at best, extremely rapey, it’s the best of a lot of shitty options.
And, yes, “pressure all men into eating pussy or having period sex because otherwise they’re misogynists” is really rapey.
I think, however, Jill did have two decent points that were lost in the miasma of “it is okay to say no to sex.” The first is that there are a certain number of people who are honestly disgusted by pussies. (My favorite is a female friend of mine in high school who wouldn’t masturbate because touching your vulva is disgusting.) Sometimes, this manifests as a dude who won’t eat pussy or have period sex because OMG GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSS.
Don’t fuck that guy! He is a douchebag and also probably not good in bed. Also, do not fuck anyone who thinks penises are OMG GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSS, because they are also douchebags and probably not good in bed. But the problem is not the lack of oral sex; the problem is the disgust for a person’s genitalia. Pussy-possessors of the world, even if Pussies Are Gross Dude has period sex, you still shouldn’t fuck him, because he thinks your genitalia (and thus your sexuality) is disgusting.
Her second decent point is that if your partner doesn’t care about your pleasure, that is a giant Red Flag. Everyone gets to have boundaries, of course. But people who are actually good in bed have accepted that no two people’s kinks match up 100% and in a sexual relationship sometimes you will have to do sex acts you’re not that fond of. If you refuse to do any sex act that doesn’t turn you on, no matter how much it turns your partner on, you’re kind of a douchebag. Compromise is what grown-up sexual relationships are all about.
Thing of Things 
” no two people’s kinks match up 100%”
Lol this was before you met Topher
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And I am hoping that their assertion that anyone who thinks genitals are gross is “a douchebag” was from before they met me, and trying not to be too offended.
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I go the impression Ozy meant to describe a one-place “OMG GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSS” rather than a two-place one. Stating your negative reactions to other people’s bodies as if they’re XML tags written on said bodies arguably does make you a douchebag.
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Seconded. I’m a trans guy and I think pussies are disgusting (even on other people), but I’m pretty sex-positive (again for other people, I’m probably asexual).
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I feel the same. I came back from that terrible article to find that ozy used to think that I’m a douchebag, that I hate female sexuality and that no one should have sex with me.
fuck, i don’t control what i’m repulsed by and what i’m not.This is completely irrelevant to my character and to what i believe about sex.
(In case anyone is interested: I’m not asexual by any stretch of the imagination. I think the origin of my repulsion from vaginas was when a friend showed me a porn of a woman masturbating (eww) when i was relatively young. It got less severe over the years, to the point where I can fantasize about PIV, but I don’t see myself doing cunnilingus anytime soon.)
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This is one of those things where, if you know the context of the discourse, you will know the type of people they were referring to. Which, I’m pretty sure this was never meant to refer to people like Scott.
Anyway, there is a current of thought in the darker corners of the manosphere where a bunch of (evidently) hetero men seem to truly loathe the female body to the point of preoccupation. Anyway, read enough of this stuff and you will soon pattern match “vagina gross” to “raving misogynistic douchebag.”
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So, Veronica, isn’t that kind of a problem for you? I mean, if I had discovered that I was pattern-matching a morally-neutral attribute to negative attitudes, I’d consider that a bit of a warning sign about the media and experiences in my life.
Perhaps you should take the advice you gave Bugmaster about focusing too heavily on toxic feminism to heart with regards to your your forays into the manosphere. Yes, there are a lot of people out there who find female genitals disgusting for ideological reasons, but there are a lot of people who just don’t like them for non-ideological reasons. Consider also that the majority the non-ideologues are not the ones making a big production about their dislike, and it should be obvious that you can’t effectively rely on your casual associations and prejudices to judge the strength of a link.
I mean, I’ve personally noticed something similar with regards to a certain kind of homophone and a loud, strident disgust with anal sex. There are quite a lot of people out there shouting about how anal sex is gross and will kill you (and you’ll probably deserve it), and many of them are homophobes, but that is not enough evidence to judge whether or not any random person who doesn’t like anal sex is a homophobe.
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I think the problem here is we’re missing a step. It seems to me like “pussy is nasty” -> “i am a douchebag” is incomplete. What Ozy and veronica seem to mean is “pussy is nasty” -> “i will treat people with pussy worse” -> “i am a douchebag”
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“Anyway, read enough of this stuff and you will soon pattern match “vagina gross” to “raving misogynistic douchebag.””
It’s a pretty straight path from the first to the second.
I say the same about all the dick-hating that goes on.
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Yeah, genitals seem almost *objectively* gross to me, including my own. Bodies in general, really, if I stop and think about them, but the whole uroanogenital region is especially bad. So many germs! So many weird fluids!
But then there are a lot of things that gross me out that I deal with for one reason or another — smelling certain kinds of food, picking up cat litter, handling spoiled food. You can in fact be squicked by something and handle the squick maturely.
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@halshan: From an evolutionary perspective, disgust is basically a disease-avoidance mechanism. Looked at that way, disgust with other people’s gentials makes perfect sense.
Personally, I have a “yeah, considered without the filter of sexual attraction, female genitals are kinda gross (as are male genitals), but since that filter is generally operative when I’m thinking about female genitals in any significant detail, that’s not really a problem” attitude. Human bodies are made of raw meat, wrapped in hairy skin. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of them that I want to rub and lick. *shrug*
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“Pattern matching” is more of an explanation than a justification (which may have been Veronica’s intended meaning).
I have some pretty scathing things to say about this particular feminist trope and the way it affects ace people. In one respect, feminist-y ace communities are actually *worse* off than less feminist-y ace communities, because people feel ashamed of sex-repulsion. There’s this thing on Tumblr where a lot of people believe that sex-repulsed aces are a tiny minority (and in the meantime, survey data suggests they’re about half).
I’m especially puzzled though–past!Ozy is kinky, right? I feel like this is something kinky people should already understand. Sometimes a particular sex act grosses you out, and that doesn’t mean that you have anything against it. This essay seems to draw a distinction between being squicked by a sex act (which is fine), and being squicked by a body part (which is bad). I think the distinction is specious. If you want to draw a distinction, make a distinction between people who are squicked, and people who are squicked and have a bad attitude about it.
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I think part of this conversation is *preoccupation*. It is one thing to dislike vaginas. It is another to have a need to bring it up in questionable contexts. What I mean is, I don’t really need to know your opinion on my junk, at least most of the time. Maybe if we’re going to sleep together, then yeah, we might need to talk about it. (I like my g/f’s junk just fine. She seems to like mine. So yay!) However, when you see blog posts about *things not specifically genital related* that have to drop in lots of crude references to how gross vaginas are, then that kinda reveals something about the writer.
It is this: when your opinion of another human is going to seem *degrading to them*, cuz that’s how their feelings work, even if it’s maybe kinda a neutral fact, then don’t be too eager to share it. If you *need* to share, then do so in a sensitive way. Understand how your words might land on people. A lot of people already have lots of body shame. Don’t add to that unless you must.
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Well said Veronica. That is exactly why we should not call people who dislike certain genitalia ‘douchebags’.
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It is this: when your opinion of another human is going to seem *degrading to them*
But we’re not talking about opinions of other humans; we’re talking about opinions of classes of human anatomical features. How someone even gets to that being an opinion of them, let alone a degrading one, is . . . non-obvious, to say the very least.
However, when you see blog posts about *things not specifically genital related* that have to drop in lots of crude references to how gross vaginas are, then that kinda reveals something about the writer.
It certainly reveals the presence of something, but not always what. Personally, I make a lot of cacophemistic references to both female and male genitals because cacophemism is inherently amusing, because some part of me is still 12. (Another part is prematurely 80, or so I am told by my friends who are weirded out by my love of prunes. I am vast; I contain multitudes.)
A lot of people already have lots of body shame.
I think a big part of this is that I don’t get guiltless shame. Shame that’s much larger than the guilt, sure; I feel a bit bad about the fact that I don’t keep my apartment very clean (guilt), but feel a lot worse about the prospect of someone else seeing it in that state (shame). For people who kinda should be eating healthier and working out more (a group of which I am a member) to have fat shame is therefore unsurprising.
But one can hardly be blameworthy for having female genitals[1,2], even if having female genitals were actually bad[3]. So how does having shame about that even work?
[1]Or, in the case of gender-neutral negative attitudes, for having genitals at all.
[2]With the technical theoretical exception of post-op trans women, I guess, but that’s distinctly non-central with regards to the question “why do many (mostly cis) women feel bad about their genitals?”
[3]Which, for the record, I don’t at all believe to be the case.
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I have seen a fair amount of “vaginas are objectively gross and you’re delusional if you don’t agree.”
I draw the line right around there.
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“I am vast; I contain multitudes.)”
Can we please talk about gut flora in another post? It squicks me out too much. /s
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Squick reactions are morally neutral.
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I, personally, have some measure of influence over my unconscious reactions. If I ever ended up being grossed out by some sex act, if it was sufficiently important to my partner, I would hold myself as obligated to make an honest effort.
The usual caveats apply here.
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So I’m willing to believe that some people are grossed out by genitalia simply because they were socialized to do so. However, I suspect there are a much greater number of people socialized to think assholes are gross (it’s even a common insult!). I’m still waiting to see the essay which argues that such people are assholes and you shouldn’t have sex with them. Particularly anal sex, people who don’t like assholes don’t deserve it.
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There is a large difference between an asshole and genitalia because everyone has an asshole and is (to some extent) familiar with it. Genitalia are polarizing because the majority of people have one or the other. Also, calling someone a dick or a cunt is a similarly common insult that is generally considered to be even more offensive than asshole.
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Your right, my comparison was faulty. Indeed, I’ve also heard assholes compared to opinions, but upon deeper reflection I realized that there is no common practice of talking about one’s asshole in hopes that other people will form similar assholes. I think it goes to show, different things are different from each other. 😉
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Hmm. I think the worthwhile point buried somewhere in there is that there’s a widespread and longstanding social belief that female sexual parts and sex acts aimed specifically at female pleasure are…I’m not sure if grosser is quite the right term, but gross and abnormal in a particular way that male sexual parts and sex acts aimed at male pleasure are not. I mean, it’s an attitude that’s definitely fading these days, but it’s absolutely still around.
There are a nontrivial number of men who think that, basically, fellatio is a perfectly normal and expected part of any healthy sexual relationship, while cunnilingus is an objectively disgusting thing that no man with any dignity would do. And that is kind of a fucked-up attitude. Not one that makes it OK to pressure them into cunnilingus! But it’s still fucked up.
Of course if a man is like, “Cunnilingus kinda weirds me out, so I’m not gonna do it, and of course I totally understand if you feel the same way about fellatio,” that is 100% fine. But I suspect that’s not the attitude the article writer is thinking of, although she should have articulated it more clearly.
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‘There are a nontrivial number of men who think that, basically, fellatio is a perfectly normal and expected part of any healthy sexual relationship, while cunnilingus is an objectively disgusting thing that no man with any dignity would do”
This goes both ways.
Here’s Michael Kimmel, of course, making his usual mess of things:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/04/09/is-fellatio-finished/
Thank God as ever Clarissa tells some home truths.:
Another good feminist discussion: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/01/is_it_good_to_g
…which points out the tradcon opposition to fellatio as degrading to the woman.
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One partner may end up compromising on something that’s really a dealbreaker for them for the sake of the relationship, or because they love the person, or because they’re so desperate for a partner, any partner, that they want to, and this is non-optimal.
This seems like a contradiction in terms. Anything that A will do in order to continue receiving X is by definition not a dealbreaker for A, with respect deals that give them X.
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Here’s my 2 cents. With some exceptions, which I’ll noodle about at the end:
– If my hangups/preferences are making my partner unhappy or reducing my partner’s pleasure, I should try to get over them.
– If my hangups/preferences are going to feed into my partner’s body shame, I think I should make an extrs effort to get over them.
That doesn’t mean I’ll succeed (although exposure therapy is one of the more effective treatments in many cases), but I think I owe it to someone I care about to give it a good try.
So if my partner is really into a position that I find awkward and therefore a turn off, I think I should still at least give it a good try. But if I don’t want to perform oral because I find vaginas gross, I should give it an extra try, or at least lie.
It’s a trickier case if it’s something that my partner might be able to change that might make him/her feel bad. (E.g., lose weight, shave, change oral hygiene).
Exceptions; On the other hand, there are some things that I am very confident I’m never going to tolerate. If there’s no outcome other than making us both miserable, or if I find the act morally offensive or unacceptably dangerous, then I don’t think there’s an ethical obligation to try.
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Preface: Anyone should be able to say no to any sex act.
However, the overwhelming disgust with vulvas and vaginas is not something trivial. The number of women who have undergone purely aesthetic labiaplasty, particularly The Barbie, because men (some women, but mainly men) have decided that long or large labia are disgusting and refer to them as ‘meat curtains’ is certainly significant. This is much less of an issue with the dislike itself and more of an issue with the common social pressure that this dislike of vaginas means women need to pay a lot of money for cosmetic surgery.
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“The number of women who have undergone purely aesthetic labiaplasty, particularly The Barbie, because men (some women, but mainly men) have decided that long or large labia are disgusting and refer to them as ‘meat curtains’ is certainly significant. ”
This exactly mirrors a very common argument in favor of even infant circumcision. It is not unusual to see comments from women to the effect that foreskins are just icky. In fact as I recall there was a bit in Sex and the City where one of the women wheedled her boyfriend into getting it done because of her esthetic preferences.
It all needs to die. Here’s the thing – if that natural genitals bother you, they bother you. So then stay away. Don’t try to force people to modify themselves to your tastes. The same thing as body hair – if it bothers you, stay away from white women, or white men for that matter. I remember a thing a couple of years ago where young women in America were flaunting hairy armpits. I loved it. Good for them! “I’m white; get over it.” Good for them.
And the same goes for beards.
My God, there are 7 billion of us; it can’t be that difficult.
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@Alita: The only way that social attitudes toward prominent labia cause a woman to “need to” pay for cosmetic surgery is if she works in the sex industry (and even then only maybe—there are a fair number of mainstream porn starlets who have protruding labia minora) or if she’s financially dependent on a partner who demands that she get it (in which case it’s not really her paying a lot of money for it anyway). If people don’t like your junk and you do, you tell ‘em to go fuck themselves. In this case, literally.
[reposted as an actual reply, since I screwed that up the first time.
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@osberend: Unfortunately, we live in world where people (especially women) feel that their bodies are sexually inadequate and will go to great lengths to please partners even if they have other options. This is again not a problem of the specific people who dislike prominent labia but it is a problem that women are in a position where telling others to “go fuck themselves” is still socially unacceptable.
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Unfortunately, we live in world where people (especially women) feel that their bodies are sexually inadequate and will go to great lengths to please partners even if they have other options.
Indeed, that is unfortunate that they have those feelings and do not cultivate others, and that they make those choices.
This is [. . .] a problem that women are in a position where telling others to “go fuck themselves” is still socially unacceptable.
This seems like a self-solving problem. You tell people to go fuck themselves, and if others give you shit over it, you tell them to go fuck themselves as well. Iterate as necessary,
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@Alita: The only way that social attitudes toward prominent labia cause a woman to “need to” pay for cosmetic surgery is if she works in the sex industry (and even then only maybe—there are definitely mainstream porn starlets who have protruding labia minora) or if she’s financially dependent on a partner who demands that she get it (in which case it’s not really her paying a lot of money for it anyway). If people don’t like your junk and you do, you tell ’em to go fuck themselves. In this case, literally.
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Misplaced post; can be deleted. Intended location is above.
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I agree with some of the sentiment behind the OP, and I’ve no doubt that the people in the linked articles are being hypocritical as all hell.
However, while you may have the right to refuse anything you want within a relationship, be it cunnilingus or BJ’s or period sex, that doesn’t mean it’s right. You also have the right to do anything you want with your money or your free time; as a practical matter, in a relationship both will be curtailed.
Is it an American or an Anglo-sphere thing? Where the “don’t tread on me” mindset is so ingrained that people value negative formulations of rights (“you don’t have the right to do this to me”) so much more than positive ones (“people have an obligation to treat each other in certain ways”) that they’ll always try to frame what they want in a negative way, even when a positive framing is clearly necessary?
“You have the right to point blank refuse a certain intimate act I really need in a relationship, for any whim whatsoever. But I have the right to break up with you over it! You don’t have the right to control who or if I date!”
“You have the right to break up with anyone for any reason whatsoever. But I have the right to react to it in any non-violent way I want! You don’t have the right to control my feelings!”
“You have the right to react however you want and express it however you want. But I have the right to blog and spread rumors about what a terrible ex you are! You don’t have the right to control my freedom of expression!”
Ad infinitum. This whole thing gets so silly and passive-aggressive, when I think it’s pretty obvious that the first person in this scenario doesn’t really believe that first sentence they’re saying. (Breaking up with someone over something can also pretty easily be argued to be emotionally coercive.) It’s a shame because I agree with them; if you really want and need period sex or cunnilingus, then a good partner should at least try and meet you halfway, should try to make you happy, barring exceptional reasons such as past trauma or medical complications. But this requires acknowledging a difference between exceptional reasons and superficial whims.
Relationships by their nature require positive obligations to one another. We all live it, but I think for reasons of dogma some people try to forget it when discussions become politicized. If one partner feels strongly enough, they can veto certain things, but vetoes should be rarely exercised; the norm should be at least meeting people halfway. Invoking the Principle of Least Interest, whereby the person with the least interest in doing something gets all the power (because “forcing someone to do something they don’t want is so much worse than not getting to do something you want”) is terrible for relationships, intimate or otherwise.
I don’t think anyone here is liable to argue, when I put it this way, that “no, partners shouldn’t try to meet each other halfway!” No, common sense will prevail, and that’s not what I’m arguing against. I do think some people are prone to the silly, petty escalation-of-assertion-of-negative-rights type reasoning above, and act afraid of simply acknowledging that relationships come with certain obligations, when in real life everyone actually behaves as if this is true.
I do know that girls can have all sorts of internalized neuroses about their vaginas, because two of my girlfriends, including my current one, didn’t want me to eat them out. They didn’t/don’t like the idea of me seeing it that up close, and if I ventured to guess also felt ashamed of their taste. (So our typical tit-for-tat wasn’t oral for oral, but oral for finger.) They were both fairly shy and conservative in sexual matters. (As I said in a previous thread, despite being for the most part liberal myself, for some reason I have a habit of attracting conservatives and libertarians – girls and also guys, as friends. I think there’s a lot of truth in the idea that there are liberal brains and conservative brains, and I am a liberal who has a more conservative brain than normal, so I relate to them in some way. But this is all a massive tangent.) I see this as unfortunate, but they see people who do this as kind of gross. Obviously, I don’t press the issue. I think it’s a disservice to themselves to think this way, but hey, in the end it’s their bodies.
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