Rethinking Vaginal Penetration

Note: This post contains very explicit language below the cut.

I read a couple of sexuality books recently, and they got me thinking.  One, the Hite Report, stirred up a lot of negative emotions in me, ranging from frustration at the heteronormativity of the whole thing to uncertainty about my own body and responses.  The other, an anthology called Sexual Revolution, was on the most part really good, and had some stellar norm-challenging essays.  A lot of different things came up while I was reading these books, but what I want to talk about today is vaginal penetration.

Oh, penetration.  How confusing it can be.  Penetration can be fun, of course.  It can be psychologically stimulating, and physically arousing.  But it isn’t for everyone.  Or maybe it is, some of the time.  Most of the time?  A little of the time.

Gender and Sexual Scripts

I’ve recently been thinking about my history of sex with male-identified individuals with penises and trying to pin down my limits and hesitance when it comes to sex with such individuals in the future.  It may be irrelevant–after all, I don’t even have many cis-gendered male friends–but I am curious because for me it’s sort of a sexual black hole that’s scary to poke at.

The place that everything is coalescing around is related to sexual scripts.  This is true, in fact, both for sex with men and male-bodied individuals and for sex with women and female bodied individuals (and any combination).  My big thing is that I don’t want to have sex with someone who views our sex or our relationship as “straight” or “lesbian.”

As a genderqueer person, I can’t have “straight” or “lesbian” sex anymore.  And in my experience, the places where sex gets labeled in that way, and where I start to feel uncomfortable and viewed as “woman,” are the places where a sexual script starts rolling.

The straight sexual script is fairly well-known–foreplay, insert penis, sex, orgasm with variations including some oral sex in there somewhere, female orgasm, what have you.  The lesbian script is similar, if more egalitarian–mess around, get aroused, stimulation (often mutual), orgasms (sometimes multiple), sleep.

For me, sexual healing is a lot about removing these assumptions.  It’s about figuring out what kinds of stimulation I like and what kinds I don’t like.  It’s about being with partners that will ask what I like, and tell me what they like, without the sort of quiet assumption-filled sex I have experience with.  It’s not so much about gender, which I used to think it was.   As long as a partner <i>respects</I> the above and doesn’t make any assumptions–whether that’s about PIV sex, or the order of acts, or what constitutes a “sex act”–then I’m happy.

Are Some Sexual Positions Inherently Demeaning?

There was a mention in the book I’m reading about Greek vase paintings, and a particular image of a woman performing fellatio on a man while another man penetrates her from behind, possibly anally, with a hand on her hair.  In the book, this is used as an illustration of how particular demeaning sexual positions were available only with particular classes of women in Ancient Greece.  I don’t doubt that this was the case in Greece, as everything I’ve come across in my studies of Greek and Roman sexuality (admittedly, that was a while ago) suggested that sexual relationships were heavily regimented based on the positions of the partners.  However, it got me thinking about that particular position in modern parlance, and the meanings ascribed to it.

I’ve seen a moderate amount of pornography in my lifetime, so I’m no expert, but what I have seen of this configuration (one partner fucking from the rear, another receiving fellatio) in porn tends to fall under a particular formula that does suggest at least some level of shame inherent to the position.  In heterosexual porn, I’ve seen it used with two men and a woman where either the men are using explicitly humiliating language to demean the woman during the act, or alternatively the men seem to be using the woman as a vessel for their desire for each other (basically ignoring her).  In gay male porn, I’ve seen it mostly in a gang-bang situation, where the bottom is portrayed as particularly eager but there’s still an implication that he’s a slut and there’s some inherent meaning to the position.

Sexuality Is Not a Linear Progression

I’ve written before about the coming out model and how it falls flat, especially in the developing world, because it’s very much based on Western notions on gender and sexuality (and specifically American/European, white, middle class notions).  But it’s also a pretty shitty model in the US, and I think it leads to a lot of problems because queer people end up with the expectation that there should be one formative moment, the “coming out” moment, and then they should know their sexuality, and if they change identifiers, or deviate in terms of who they date or have sex with, it’s a bad thing.  Words like “confused,” and more harshly, “betrayal,” come to mind.

The same is true, I think, in kinky communities.  I’ve come across this idea a number of times that a kinky person is supposed to go through a certain progression in terms of sexual awareness.  First there are inklings that one might like some type of kinky sex, whether very early on or later.  Then there’s the research phase, these days probably mostly online.  Then, at some point, there’s an expectation that you go out into that kinky community, meet people, possibly at sex-free social events, but at some point there is a critical threshold that leads to Comfort at Play Parties.

Of course, not everyone falls into this model.  If you don’t it can be frustrating, for example, to mention that you haven’t actually had very kinky sex before and then have recommendations for 101 resources thrown at you.  Well-meaning, certainly, and the resources may be great, but I always find it kind of funny.  Kinky awareness is not the same thing as kinky activity.

It’s also a bad idea to suggest to someone that public scening is a natural point in the kinky progression, and that if they aren’t comfortable with this sort of space, they just haven’t “arrived” in their kinky evolution.  Not everyone is comfortable with public sex or scening.  Even very sex-positive, sex-aware people can prefer to engage in sex only in private, or only in relationships, or both.  There are many, many ways to skin a cat.

Southern Women and Sexual Communication

It’s difficult for many women to communicate about sex.  No big surprise there.  But is it more difficult for Southern women?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer were yes.

Of course, you have the obvious reasons.  Little or no sex education means that people are just assumed to know how to have sex, without talking about it.  Women in particular are taught that talking about sex is shameful and inappropriate.  Southern law discourages any interference in the silent space of the marriage bed–it’s no coincidence that North Carolina was the last state in the country to make marital rape illegal, in the mid 1990s.

But I would posit that Southern manners, good old Southern hospitality, are also to blame for this phenomenon.

Southerners, and especially Southern women, are taught that it is better to be seen and not heard, that one should always defer to a guest, that when something desireable is offered it is polite to say “no, thank you” twice and only accept on the third offering.  I find myself wondering, when thinking about communication and sex, if these general rules on manners might bleed over into how Southern women behave in bed.  If a partner is not insistent on finding out how to please a Southern woman, will she have the courage to ask outright, rather than deferring to the partner’s desires in an instinctual show of politesse?  I think that many of us who were raised as little girls in the South probably inherited this difficulty, whether we have overcome it or not.