In an effort to be slightly less heteronormative than usual, Cosmopolitan magazine has been running the occasional queer-friendly article. Following last December’s “14 Things You Should Never Say to a Gay Man” and the more recent “8 Things Not to Say to a Transgender Person” is the slightly more-titillatingly-titled “28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions.”
As is pretty much standard with Cosmo sex articles, there are images to go along with the various sex positions, and the captions are detailed and flirty. The blurb for the article reads, “Cosmopolitan.com now has sex positions for the lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, queers—all the lady-loving ladies in the crowd! You’ll never see sex the same way again.”
The comments on the article website range from “thanks for looking past the hetero horizon” to “obviously written by a straight woman.” Still, in an era where female sexuality and pleasures are often considered secondary to male ones, it’s heartening, perhaps, to see Cosmo, that bastion of heteronormative lipstick femininity and please-your-man discourse, offering lesbian sex tips.
The Huffington Post covered this development in queer mainstreaming, along with a queer (as in, strange) turn of events on Reddit, where a woman recently posted an Excel spreadsheet her husband gave her, detailing all her excuses for not having sex with him.
The spreadsheet article suggests that although this form of sex-shaming is ludicrous, it points to a deeper problem in the US relating to the “orgasm gap,”: “The truth might lie in a concept known among sex researchers as ‘the orgasm gap,’ which explores the unequal distribution of orgasms between men and women. It’s highlighted in many studies, including a survey of American adults that concluded that men have three times as many orgasms as women.”
This capsule can exhibit its outcomes for 4-5 hours or more than that but the man must be prepared for counseling therapies, consultation with a levitra cheap online sexologist, and open up about his problems to ED with the therapist. There have been introduced too many medicines or drugs in this field of pharmacy or medication to treat cialis samples this sexual condition. ED as it is commonly referred to, has developed into a great success because of its effectivity in treating erectile function cialis viagra levitra disorder. Enough sleep, reduce the quantities of alcohol and caffeine Utilize relaxation techniques Lose weight with a healthy diet can partially reverse the abnormality. generic levitra india The HuffPost article links to an article from last year by Lisa Wade which describes some of the studies done on the “orgasm gap” and its far–reaching implications for women and perceptions of sexual pleasure. According to Wade,
Instead of being driven by biology, women’s rate of orgasm relative to men is a function of social forces….we often bifurcate the sexual experience in line with gender norms: men are sexual (they experience desire) and women are sexy (they inspire desire). The focus on men’s internal wants and sensations also draws our attention to his satisfaction. Thus his orgasm, but not necessarily hers, becomes a critical part of what must happen for a sexual encounter to be successful and fulfilling. This is part of why intercourse—a sexual act that is strongly correlated with orgasm for men—is the only act that almost everyone agrees counts as ‘real sex,’ whereas activities that are more likely to produce orgasm in women are considered optional foreplay.
If you’ve read your Irigaray, then this all sounds awfully familiar. In “The Sex Which Is Not One,” Irigaray argues, “Female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of masculine parameters…In these terms, woman’s erogenous zones never amount to anything but a clitoris-sex that is not comparable to the noble phallic organ, or a hole-envelope that serves to sheathe and massage the penis in intercourse.”
Irigaray’s original was published in French in 1977, and yet little progress has been made on the larger social scale to overcome these kinds of attitudes towards sex. Wade reports that in some studies, up to 30% of women and 25% of men report not knowing where a woman’s clitoris is located, and that in other studies, respondents reported that during a “hookup,” women often felt they could not demand that their partner bring them to orgasm because it would be “rude” to do so. At the same time, though, we know that women are not physically less able to orgasm than men, because women who primarily have sex with other women report roughly the same amount of orgasms as men who sleep with women. Similarly, women in long-term relationships with men also reported having about the same amount of orgasms as their male partners, according to Psychology Today.
Many responses to the unsatisfied husband with the excel sheet have been along the lines of, “Well, why should your wife have sex with you if you are not pleasing her?” At the same time, we have to also question why women are not more active in asking to be pleased. Wade reports that men in relationships are more likely to be concerned with their partner’s sexual satisfaction than when they have sex for the first time with a stranger, aka during a hookup. Is there no way out of this vicious circle?
After all, we know that women enjoy sex and get pleasure from it. The mainstream success of erotic fiction like 50 Shades of Grey (coming next Valentine’s Day to a theater near you) suggests that women crave sexual pleasure just as much as men. Yet the myth of the female orgasm and the difficulty of achieving it through intercourse have become part of a larger narrative in which women who have lots of sex and orgasms are still the “bad girls” and “sluts,” while women who do not enjoy sex are “frigid” and/or “bitches.” In other words, we are still, for all intents and purposes, in the Victorian era.
I hope that the discussions surrounding these issues continue, because it seems obvious to me that only through more discussion and more communication can these myths be exploded. Men need to acknowledge that women deserve to orgasm just as much as they do in order for a sexual encounter to be successful. Women need to be able to demand that their sexual needs are satisfied. Only through education and communication can these needs be met. Reading Cosmopolitan sex hints is only the tip, as it were, of the iceberg, when it comes to fulfilling women’s sexual pleasures. Slut-shaming, sex myths, body image and male machismo all still stand in the way of a more sex-positive world for both men and women.
