When I was younger and still thinking of myself as bisexual and pretty much going to end up inevitably with a man, I basically accepted that in order to avoid having a dude put his penis inside of me I would either have to find a “pervert” who would want to do sexual activities that were likely also frightening and uncomfortable but at least wouldn’t get me pregnant, or find a man who was completely asexual. Turns out I was not interested in men so I dodged that bullet entirely, but there is 000.00 support for women who wish to partner with men but who never want to have penetrative sex.
It’s the single thing that even sex-positive writers won’t cover as a legitimate preference or boundary; they’re more likely to cover how to “tolerate” “maintenance sex” and extol the importance of “compromise” than to say, no, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I used to read Dan Savage’s Savage Love column when I was a teen-to-young-adult (for those young folks who might not know, Savage is a popular gay male sex educator who has an advice column, and was/is one of the leading sex-positive and kink-positive writers. Savage writes for both adults and young people, and started the It Gets Better movement with his husband.) and although he’s generally tremendously snarky & often tone-deaf to women’s unique concerns, one advice piece stood out to me as particularly cruel. I’m having a hell of a time finding it but I remember it because I related to it so much. A woman interested in men (I think self-identified as straight) wrote in saying that she was across the board not interested in penis-in-vagina sex and was wondering if it was still possible for her to find a man who could accommodate this. Savage wrote a fairly brief and extraordinarily dismissive response, stating that if she wasn’t a lesbian then it made no sense since that kind of negated the whole point of being with men and that if she wasn’t going to end up alone she better get over herself enough to at least be “game” for it sometimes.
I know Savage has written that it’s common for both gay men and lesbians to not want penetration and has written fairly supportively of this boundary, and although he’s stated that straight men are basically insecurely-masculine prudes for avoiding (anal) penetrative sex religiously he’s supported straight men in refusing it after not enjoying it. But straight women? Cue snide laughing. There are plenty of articles on many sexual health and sex-positivity websites about how to convince yourself into continuing to try to make vaginal penetration work for you, how to deal with it if you don’t enjoy it, how to make it more comfortable (as if that’s always the issue), and so on. It is never suggested when a woman writes in about how she doesn’t like penetration or finds it uncomfortable or painful that she just stop, that she might not like this sexual activity, period, and she has the right to refuse it now and potentially forever. So-called supportive advice about not wanting penetrative sex is always bracketed with “don’t take it off the table”, “don’t do things that would make it harder to have vaginal sex, just in case”, “you can have casual sex without PIV, but long term relationships… that’s a different question”, “maybe you can find the right man eventually, maybe try rekindling your romance with your husband and try in a few months”, and so on. There is zero advice, unlike for women regarding anal or oral sex from straight men or kinky people of various sexuality permutations, on how to get a male partner to stop pushing for penetrative sex when you are female. It’s considered utterly default, and a violation of male sexual prerogative to even ask for a reprieve. There is supposedly no point to a long-term sexual relationship, as Savage said, for a straight man if he does not regularly get to have vaginal intercourse.
Honestly, a huge deal of identifying as trans for me was being able to definitively take away the sexual possibility of penetration, penis-in-vagina sex in particular. It gave me a logical reason to refuse penetration in consensual sexual contexts, and I could potentially even negate the possibility of vaginal sex entirely, or make it implausible, through genital surgery. As someone who had never had a relationship of any sort, nor any sexual contact, I was widely terrified of sex (particularly with men– reasonable, and I was not drawn to it anyway) and I assumed that sexual relationships inevitably involved penetration of somebody, somewhere. I figured it wasn’t going to be me, but so long as I was visibly female my body was essentially “asking for it”, being literally “made” for being penetrated. I nearly exclusively masturbated without inserting anything inside of me but I figured masturbation had nothing to do with partnered sexual interaction, as it was “inferior” to the “real thing”. I thought of masturbating as a secretive and immature activity, and there was no way you could ask for sexual interactions comparable to it from a partner; sex had to be “bigger” and “grander” and involve some sort of flourish that demanded something or other semi-violating of the other person’s skin envelope.
I knew very little about female-female sex, and what I did know was gleaned from columns like Dan Savage’s and other sex-positive, often BDSM-advocating writers, who advertised sexual practices that are actually unusual among lesbians (strap-on blowjobs and ejaculating dildo toys, for example) or only used rarely among other more typical sexual behaviors. So I figured it must be a lot like what straight sex was like, except a bizarre and pathetic mimicry, done sadly seldom by two women that were probably decidedly unsexy. (Thanks, lesbophobes.) I didn’t think any of that sounded appealing, especially what I found when I tried to look up butch sexuality, which was mostly disturbing daddy-domination blogs full of sexualized humiliation of other women and a lot of shit about properly using and identifying with your dildo. So I mostly figured I was doomed and thought my best shot out of this whole dilemma was transitioning, or at least becoming sterilized at a young age (so I could begin teaching myself to tolerate male sexuality without being subject to becoming pregnant).
I’d like women super defensive of penetration to think again about what context they’re operating in when a woman is brave enough to speak up about her problems with it or to ask that she not have to endure it. You exist in a context where people argue that women, by nature, demand to be penetrated, and men have formed a world where socially and legally they can take advantage of this as a justification for their behavior, from everything from ignoring women’s sexual pleasure to literal rape and murder. I think Team Penetration is truly ok without your impassioned defense. Please think about the women and girls listening to you.
titsay
jacobvanloon
dededos
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
