Did you come?
April 20th, 2009There’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.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:01 am
One big thing that I emphasize in my sexual communication workshop is this point (here presented as I wrote it in my outline):
* AVOID GOAL-ORIENTED SEX.
* … The search is more important than the find.
* … Don’t create stress by expecting a certain result. Give things a try, do your best, and stop if you don’t like them.
* … Certain acts don’t matter as much as enjoyment.
* … Orgasms don’t matter as much as enjoyment.
* … “Not necessarily this time, but sometime, let’s …” is a great, no-pressure attitude to take towards sex.
* … You’re going to fuck up sometimes. That’s okay. Be kind, be thoughtful, pick up the pieces and move on. Screwing up is a great way to learn.
* … You have your entire life to play around with sex. “Life” is a long time. Lucky you.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am
@Clarisse I couldn’t put it better.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:47 am
wonderful post.
I’m situationally anorgasmic. I can’t orgasm if there’s another person near. The best I’ve ever done is gotten off while my roommate is sleeping and even that is so new and exciting that i still twitter about it. When I tell people about my situation they start to feel sad for me, as if there is obviously no reason I should even bother having sex since I can’t orgasm anyway! I ask them if the orgasm is the ONLY good part of a sexual encounter. When they say no I point out how the rest of the exchange is just as pleasurable and the orgasm is only the sprinkles on top or else all our sex would only last a few seconds. This quells pretty much everyone who doesn’t have a forced or controlled orgasm kink.
I have a penetration kink with the idea of being used and what not, but when intercourse isn’t tickling that fantasy, touching and kissing are very much more sensual and erotic for me. Being naked and touched for an hour would be better then intercourse or the traditional porn structure that sexual acts have taken on now a days… grope, oral, oral, intercourse.
Lastly, Don’t overlook orgasms though. They’re amazing, and while I don’t think they are necessary all the time, never being able to share them with a partner in an intimate moment really SUCKS.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:00 am
Great minds evidently think alike, Calico.
I’m glad you were inspired by my (first) post. My latest post on the topic was inspired in large part by your previous ones about your latest escapade. I didn’t know if you’d come or not but yeah, based on everything else you said I sort of assumed it would have been incidental.
I gotta say there’s a fine line for me between on the one hand not wanting to be distracted by orgasms because you’re busy being sexual and on the other just doing that Cosmo “pleasing” thing. I’m guessing you actually thread it pretty well.
Another little epiphany I had while thinking about this was that in the post-70’s “she comes first” era women could just technically “please their man” by lying there while racks up his orgasm score playing pussy pinball. And, yeah, it’s all considerate and stuff but past a certain point how much different from the old “men act, women passively receive” from the slightly newer “men act, women *enjoy* passively receiving?” Because at some people it seems like we got to switch active vs. passive a little. I mean, if nothing else you know how switching in kink gives you more insight into your preferred role? Well, same with non-BDSM sex.
Finally, add “braiding leather whips and rope” to what I do when I’m not blogging: http://www.flickr.com/photos/figleaf/ You know us homemakers have to stay busy with our hands.
Seriously, though, decades ago I used to be a professional leather worker and last Friday I decided to take another, um, err, crack at it.
Take care,
figleaf
April 21st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
That was the question that I had for a long time but was afraid to ask because, well, I didn’t want to seem like a typical barbarian male. Despite being kind of a typical barbarian male.
Thanks for the clarification.
Women who get off on the anticipation of and recollection of being beaten black and blue. Man.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:50 pm
@Bad Man: Oy, that doesn’t make you a barbarian male.
I just didn’t even think of it. There was happy orgasm fun time later, I promise.
Much more often I talk about how BDSM is sexual, and everyone ought to be able to get off if we want to, and public spaces that allow BDSM should allow sex in all its squishy and glorious forms.
But I would never want to say “play MUST include sex (or orgasm)” — that’s as ridiculous as “play CAN’T include sex (or orgasm)”. Especially for values of “pussy pinball”, as Figleaf said: ooh look! I made her come! I win at sex, i.e. the orgasm game. Which smacks of not thinking outside the box where sex is about a (male) orgasm, and of replacing your satisfaction, not with her satisfaction, but with your control of hers by the same stunted criteria. What does that say about your definition of sex? Ugh.
(Relax, I don’t mean YOU you.)
I have trouble sometimes with the orgasm control/forced orgasm/etc fetishes, too. Women have had so much trouble getting their orgasms, I can get really twitchy about any suggestion of when or how is the RIGHT way to have them.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
@ammre
Don’t overlook orgasms though. They’re amazing, and while I don’t think they are necessary all the time, never being able to share them with a partner in an intimate moment really SUCKS.
On the scale of suck from “mandatory” to “forbidden”, that is truly, truly unfortunate.
I’ve had brief periods of time where I could not orgasm at all, due to medication I was taking, and it really fucked with me in the bad way.
April 21st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
@figleaf I literally just went to your site and searched for “orgasm”.
I think I have been extra, super put off by the post-’70s reactive feminist stuff because so many submissive men fetishize it. I mean I’ve literally had men come to me and tell me how they were “raised by feminists to be submissive to women”. (What does this entail? Lots of humiliating them, telling them how they can’t please a woman, and kicking them in the balls, apparently. Because not being pleased is ever so pleasing to me.)
It’s so wrong and it makes me so angry. Don’t you DARE fucking tell me what gets me off and expect me to thank you for it.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
But… but… making a woman come a hundred times in one night is so much fun! *grinning*
Seriously though, yeah. Sex is so much more than just [some object] in vagina leading to someone’s orgasm. Some other things that have been sex for me:
Screaming through a beating until I collapse on the floor (and I too get off on both the anticipation and the recollection of these scenes).
Lying on my back on a dirty dungeon floor, fully dressed, massaging leather conditioner into someone’s boots.
Slowly sliding my lips over a steak knife at the kitchen table, my eyes locked on those of my lover.
Admitting a deep, dark fantasy to someone in the middle of the night, on the phone, with all the lights out.
Cutting off a hank of someone’s hair and laying it threateningly on the pillow next to her face.
The sound of an automatic knife opening, a gun locking into its holster, a whip cracking, or a belt snaking through belt loops.
Being watched intently while using the toilet.
The feeling of a cane connecting with flesh, the reverberations traveling up my arm and lighting up my brain.
I could go on, but I’m tired.
Also, some of the most satisfying penetrative sex I’ve had hasn’t involved my orgasm at all. I really like being “used” for my partner’s pleasure, and have initiated and negotiated that for my own fulfillment many times.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:56 pm
“…tell me how they were ‘raised by feminists to be submissive to women’.”
Yeah, and what’s wiggy about that, I swear, is that an awful lot of that is *their* story about it. It’s like, well if I can’t be treat-you-like-dirt dominant then you have to be because top or toilet paper are the only two possibilities for heteros. Which would be… not feminism.
figleaf
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:10 am
[...] Calico was discussing ‘did you come‘ recently and it got me thinking about the whole orgasm thing. Again. As it happens I was [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Wow.. I remember thinking how hot that post was, that it got me very turned on.
I never wondered about orgasms tho. Never even occurred to me they might be something *missing* in some views. Huh.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:34 pm
“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)”
Made me LOL. Great post.
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Wonderful post!
I wish more men understood that orgasms aren’t the end-all, be-all. I could have really great sex for hours without orgasm, or I could sit on something that vibrates for thirty seconds and have one: which would be the richer experience?
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
I agree with MVX that that’s a LOL comment, and maybe I’m just a Cosmo kind of guy, but “ok, stud, you need to stop, I need a breather” or some other sort of communicative “please stop” (probably mixed with some sort of “you did a GOOD JOB” praise to keep the fragile male ego intact) should work, no?
April 25th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Admittedly I’ve faked a few just to get the pneumatic pumping over with, but generally I’m an easy orgasm and I’m pretty open about it. Ex Man could get me off just by kissing me, which was new and fun and I miss that. The first time a guy got me off by sucking my nipples was amazing and I reciprocated, dislodging some scar tissue where he’d previously been pierced, which was fun.
Odd for me is that there are times when I can get myself off and I find that truly frustrating. With a partner I can orgasm continuously until I pass out (or nearly so, I’m such a control freak), but on my own it’s not as enjoyable. Solo orgasms can be intense, but then I’m done and that’s that. With a partner there’s more exploration and experimentation to keep my busy mind going and my body responding.
April 28th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Like Bad Man, I’d like to avoid being thought of as the typical barbarian male, but I’ll admit when I finished reading the original post, I had a similar question in mind. Not so much “did you come”, but “why is that enjoyable” or “why would you choose to do that”. I guess, for me, I can understand and have experienced slight pain increasing the intensity of arousal. In contrast, what you described in nylons and duct tape seems qualitatively different. I think what drove that home for me was when you wrote “but during, I would rather be somewhere (oh, God, anywhere) else.”
I think I have a hard time understanding both how the anticipation and the remembrance of the event pays for the experience, even setting aside my confusion over how the anticipation and memory would be exciting instead of terrifying or disturbing. The closest I think I can come to similar experiences in my own life is feeling proud I got through something that was tough for me, but I think that’s a very poor analogue to what you’re describing. (I also don’t enjoy roller coasters, most scary movies, or anything else that people seem to enjoy for the rush, so that may be why I have such a difficult time understanding.)
I don’t know if it’s possible to, or if you’d want to, help me understand that, but any info you could pass along would be appreciated.
(Last side note: I hope I managed to phrase everything in as non-judgmental a way as possible as I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think that my incomprehension is anyone’s problem other than my own. I’m just hoping to get help to understand a bit better.)