CALICO LANE

There’s a really prevalent (and I think male, and thus heterocentric) expectation that sex is all about orgasm. Sex is something a woman might want for herself, but that she does for her man (Cosmo language usage intentional): it isn’t over when she comes (although she’d better if she ever wants him to stop pumping away, because he’s a feminist, damn it), it’s over when the man comes.

Outlining this did give me rather unpleasant flashbacks to laying on my back in a frat house, staring at the ceiling and wondering whether I needed to refill the gas tank in my car. I mean… wow, like, I’m seriously squicked.

I got on the topic when Fet left a comment on my last smut post, asking whether I came, and why or why not:

… Apparently you enjoyed the experience, even without orgasming – so one would infer that orgasm was not integral to the experience.

At this point it deserved a little more than a “well, duh”, so I went off on memory lane.  I don’t blame him (her? it?) for squicking me. It just hasn’t been long enough since I was 19.

Nowadays, I much prefer to live in my bubble of openmindedness, where we define sex almost as broadly as the NYPD.

I feel a Figleaf quote coming on. Here, he quotes Em and Lo of Daily Bedpost:

“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Sex is not intercourse. So stop using the two words interchangeably! When we as a society do this over and over again, it gets into the collective unconscious and starts limiting how we imagine the possibilities of pleasure, especially for women. A majority of women (that’s more women than not!) don’t climax from intercourse, so why rush to get there when you can spend time on more rewarding acts? But make no mistake: it’s not like you gentlemen out there can’t enjoy the variety that comes from taking intercourse off its pedestal–hey, if the destination is orgasm, how could anyone complain about the journey there? (Indeed, how could anyone NOT call that “sex”?!)”

Read the quote in context here.

Nicely, if heteronormatively**, said. I always like to go a bit further, though, and stress that “sex,” however you define it, also doesn’t automatically end with male ejaculation.

This is not, by the way, to buy into the idea that orgasms are just “harder” for women, or that women “need” foreplay. After all the “fore” in foreplay is short for the same old “before intercourse to male ejaculation” Em, Lo, all other right-thinking people, and I are trying to nudge out of first place.

Instead, as Em and Lo hint, if the point of sex was male ejaculation then “Jizz in My Pants” would be an instructional video and we could all go home.

Once I stopped snickering I noticed that I even like his footnote.

**Focusing on heterosexuality is just fine in this context, because for reasons that don’t actually have as much to do with *sex* as it does with notions of *reproduction*, heterosexual sex seems to be a lot more consistently… even *institutionally*!… and *unnecessarily* dysfunctional.

I know it can be hard to imagine choosing to have a sexual experience without orgasm. But I bet most people do at some point. Have you ever had sex that was so intense that you forgot to come? Or couldn‘t come? Didn’t want it to end, so you stopped yourself from coming? Were too tired from your glorious exertions, too distracted by your partner, or too contented to bother?

Orgasms are great. But I can have orgasms anytime (and frequently do.) There’s other stuff to do, too!

One last Figleaf quote, since he posted something topical only four hours ago:

Oh, and finally, there are any number of people in kink who don’t care for or even actively dislike, say, being beaten black and blue while it’s happening, who nevertheless get off hard in anticipation, on recollection, or both.

Very cute.  I’m a fan of both.