The Complications of Compliments

"If it's not too anti-feminist to say this...."

"Can I be horrendously sexist for a minute?"

"I'm about to say something misogynistic..."

 

These are not phrases that immediately precede words of terrible sexism, as one might think. It's entirely understandable that that's exactly what you're expecting to hear, as we all know that as soon as someone utters the words "I'm not racist, but....", they're guaranteed to finish the sentence with a proclamation of racial prejudice. Ditto "I'm not a homophobe, but...", "I've got nothing against them, but..." and all other passive-aggressive forms of expressing bigotry.

 

However, these three phrases were uttered by men in my life, intelligent men who know that any expression of sexism to my ears will be met with a rebuke so forceful it will burn their faces off, so one might expect them to tread a bit more carefully than the average caveman who complains about gays or people with brown skin or thinks sexist jokes are a way to impress a woman. And you'd be right. What followed the three phrases above were not jokes about washing up or domestic violence, not proclamations that the gender pay gap is just women's fault for wanting to have babies, not suggestions that wearing a short skirt is 'asking for it' nor any of the garden-variety expressions of misogyny that one unfortunately still encounters far too often in this supposedly progressive society. Instead, two were compliments about my appearance, and the other was an admission from a male friend that he had had sexual thoughts about a woman he saw that day.

 

So why such caution in expressing these non-earth-shattering thoughts? Has the stereotype of feminism as hostile to all matters sexual and appearance-based really permeated so far that even the smart, feminist-friendly men in my life are afraid to say "You look nice today?" or "I found the woman in front of me in the queue attractive?".

 

If it has, I'm not going to blame feminism for this misunderstanding. To my mind, it's pretty easy to understand. Feminism never made it a crime to comment on a woman's appearance. What feminism has always objected to, is the treatment of women as if their appearance is the first, or only, thing that matters about them, the disproportionate focus placed on the appearance of women, while men's appearances are secondary to their (already assumed) capabilities as people, the insane pressure on women to appear a certain way, and the framing of female sexuality as nothing more than a performance to visually appeal to others and please men.

 

Unfortunately, paranoia about endorsing any of the last four phenomena appears to be halting men from even entering the arena of complimenting women, to the point where they find it safer to just say nothing, rather than risk a torrent of infuriated abuse. Again, I repeat, that's not feminism's fault - if anything, it's the fault of an insidiously-planted and still much-supported warping of feminism's image to that of the (and oh, god I really hate using this phrase) man-hating, humourless harridan.

 

Even though a quick glance around the average feminist meeting will show you plenty of young, slim, white, long-haired, feminine women whose appearance could frankly not be more media-friendly and who tend to outnumber those who prefer short hair or lumberjack shirts, the feared yet mythical misandrist warrior is still the face of feminism in so many people's minds. Even in those of the men who know and love myself (young-ish, size 10, long-haired, make-up and dress-wearing) and many other feminist women in all our multi-faceted, strident glory. How is it that such a tired and offensive stereotype still manages to wash away these men's knowledge of real women, and replace it with the notion that if they tell me I look nice today, they're going to get their face smashed in?

 

It fucks me off that debates still rage about whether we should be trying to make feminism less 'scary', more accessible and more 'appealing'. I say, absolutely not. I say, I'm all for educating and explaining, but I'm dead against pandering, and I am not dressing up my belief system as anything other than its own messy, furious glory in order to placate those who demand such a disguise in the first place. If you aren't sympathetic to feminism's aims to begin with - and that's not the same as admitting you don't know a lot about it, or don't understand certain parts of it, because those admissions are not a problem in themselves - then it's not my job to make it 'prettier' for you. If you can read and you've got internet access (which your reading my blog implies you do!), then you have all you need to educate yourself. If you're already thinking "Wot, I might not be able to refer to women who reject me as 'prick-teasing sluts'?" with outrage, then me trying to glossy-up feminism for you ain't gonna achieve a damn thing - your problems with women run deeper than any argument I can offer in favour of not treating them like shit.

 

But to the 'good guys' who are confused, who feel that the demand for respect sometimes jars with the way they look at, or think about, women, and feel guilty about that fact, I'll say this. It's OK to find people attractive. It's OK to notice a stranger's body parts. It's OK to fantasize, and even though I know there are feminists out there who deeply disagree with this, I believe it's OK to have fantasies that seem dirty, violent, disrespectful, or involve language or imagery that you would not dream of describing out loud. Why? Because they're just fucking fantasies. They're not hurting anyone. If you're feeling like you want to make those fantasies a reality in a way that disregards the agency or bodily autonomy of another person, then that's a problem, yes. But I refer you to my comments above - if that's your problem, it's not an issue for feminism. It's an issue for the therapist's couch, and that's where you should be heading for guidance. As I said in my previous post about porn addiction, I don't care what sexual fantasies a man has, or what his thoughts are about a woman's appearance, as long as he continues to behave in a way that respects women as full people, not just bodies, and not just there for his entertainment. I'm not interested in policing what's in anyone's head - because god knows I'd be thrown in the clink sharpish if people could see some of what goes on in mine.

 

Also, while there are some lucky people who genuinely don't care about how they look, most of us - male and female - do. Although I agree that the disproportionate emphasis on female appearance is evidence of a sexist society, and that our increasingly visual culture is threatening to spiral out of control, I don't think caring about looks per se is evidence that we're warped as a species. Far from it, I think it's quite natural. Animals groom themselves and so do we. In some Native American societies, it was the men who plucked their eyebrows and painted their faces to appeal to the women. We all want to be noticed, we want to be found attractive, and in most cases, that's because we would rather like to have some sex. If I was planning to celibate for the rest of my life, then I might take a lot less care over my appearance (and who knows, I might still strike lucky, because much as a sexist society tells me I'm nothing without my hair done, my make-up flawless, my legs shaved etck, I can recognise that I'm not actually hideous without those things), but the reality is that I'm a pretty highly-sexed individual, and I want the people I find attractive to want to have sex with me. Shocker! So if someone I know and trust compliments me on my appearance - whether or not they're the object of my attraction -  I might be quite pleased, because it's a little bit of confirmation that my career as a sexually active human being is likely to continue.

 

What I'm not going to be pleased about are the following: wolf whistles, car horns being honked, strangers shouting comments about my appearance in the street, comments that reduce me to nothing other than body parts, being touched without my consent, and a million other sleazy, disrespectful approaches that every woman you know will have experienced at some point in her life. What's the difference between this and my male friend telling me I look nice? It's pretty simple. In one scenario, I know I am being seen as a full, varied and complex human being, with feelings, thoughts, values and a personality as well as a face, hair, a bum, boobs and a vagina, and I know this because the person addressing me has known, loved and respected me for 15 years. In all the other scenarios, I instead experience the horrible sensation of having my humanity disregarded and being defined by nothing more than my body. That's the difference. Every woman knows it, because we've all experienced the shitty, undermining and often threatening way in which the latter is carried out, and if he cares about women at all, every man will make sure he knows that difference too.

 

Now, some man (or woman) might be looking at me from across the street and thinking about my bum or boobs or vagina in a way that makes them feel guilty. They may be having 'animalistic' thoughts, filthy fantasies, imagining my body in all kinds of naughty positions. But unless that person uses their thoughts as an excuse to approach me in a way that reduces me to nothing other than a receptive body, I do not care what they're thinking. I have no wish to condemn that person as anti-feminist. A person having dirty thoughts about me and still respecting me as a human being are not mutually exclusive. If you think the two are, then that is your problem to resolve, not feminism's.

 

It's really not that complicated.

Pleasure or Pressure? The Alleged 'Orgasm Gap'

I read this piece from Alternet on 'The Orgasm Gap' with interest. Subtitled "The Real Reason Women Get Off Less Often Than Men and How to Fix It", the piece considers how "Freudian echoes, anatomical mischaracterizations and gender stereotypes are part of the logic naturalizing the orgasm gap - but there is nothing natural about it." In it author Lisa Wade makes some very valid points, including her demolition of the pesky myth that women just don't need to get off as much as men do, that we prefer cuddles to orgasms, and that we're the more "giving" gender (spew). I do agree that she's bang on that "we often bifurcate the sexual experience in line with gender norms: men are sexual (they experience desire) and women are sexy (they inspire desire)" and that  this damaging idea of women as passive objects to be looked at in turn harms women's ability to be active sexual agents. 

 

(And Christ, if I hear one more person justify the constant objectification of women viz the notion that "the female body is just nicer to look at", I'm going to shove my thread veins against their eyes. Newsflash - the female body can be just as disgusting and fugly as the male body, and I should know: as a care worker I've seen more than my fair share of naked bodies, young and old. The female body that apologists for objectification refer to is a toxic stereotype not representative of the majority of women - it's airbrushed, often surgically enhanced, achieved through the kind of regimes a racehorse would baulk at, and very often fuck-all to do with real, natural femininity. Because Mother Nature actually designed our 'beautiful female bodies' to have cellulite, hair, wobbly bits and funny smells.)

 

Anyway, back to this old orgasm gap. I agree with Lisa Wade that there probably is a correlation between lack of female pleasure and the fact that women are still told that their "primary goal in sex is to deliver a sexy body can focus her attention on how she looks instead of how she feels." Although I have to say, if it really is true, as Wade spectates (without providing anecdotal or statistical evidence) that some women are afraid to have orgasms because their face or body might contort in a potentially 'unnattractive' way, then I find that sad beyond belief.

 

And this is where I find myself a little unconvinced by this study. Or rather, by the conclusions drawn from it. The first study the author cites is 13 years old, and I think it's fair to say that the sexual landscape has changed a lot since the year 2000. Not necessarily for the better, sure, but things move fast in this day and age. Who had heard of vajazzles, ass-to-mouth or read openly about bondage on the London Underground 13 years ago? So I'll be taking that one with a pinch of salt to start with, and as for the second study she cites, it's a study of college students. Hardly representative of the population at large in terms of age or class, and it was only a study of heterosexual students so we can't know how the orgasm rate of LGB students compared. I think this is a key omission in terms of the author's determination to paint women as orgasm-starved victims, because although in some cases this may be true, I think it's painting with far too broad strokes to imply we all are, and that this is because of some failure of feminism or victory of patriarchy.

 

Wade presents the fact that women are much less likely to orgasm during a single 'hook-up' than during a second or 3rd encounter, or a relationship, as some kind of shocking revelation. Personally, I thought the ratio of 3 female orgasms to every 1 male orgasm was actually pretty good going! Not because I consider the female orgasm less valuable than that of a man's - quite the opposite. Making a woman come is a bloody tough thing to achieve. I was put me in mind of an exchange in Kevin Smith's film Clerks, where Dante makes the (admittedly crude statement) "Making a male climax is not all that challenging: insert somewhere close and preferably moist; thrust; repeat...Now, making a woman cum - therein lies a challenge." Much as it is a generalisation, and I do think male sexuality can be oversimplified, I also think most of us would end up agreeing. I remember in my Sexuality & Society classes at university discussing why the female equivalent of Viagra hadn't been successful, and the gist was that female sexual response was still extremely poorly understood, and very difficult to measure. Our tutor summed it up thus - if male sexuality was depicted as a machine, it would be a box with a clear 'ON/OFF' switch. The female equivalent would  be a box covered in numerous mysterious wires, lights and switches without any clear labels or indications of what they did, and you might get a different reaction from flipping a switch the second time compared to when you flipped it the first. Or no reaction at all.

 

So with this borne in mind, why are we supposed to be so scandalised by the idea that when young women sleep with other young men (who we assume are less experienced in the ways of lady pleasing than say, their 30 or 40-something counterparts) who have never encountered their bodies before, they're less likely to come? To me it's less a sign of a patriarchal victory and more simply evidence that nature is a bitch. The female orgasm is tricky and elusive, and what works for one woman might leave another one completely cold. That's why it also makes sense that when a couple hooks up more than once, or gets into a relationship with each other, the woman's orgasm rate rises. Practise makes perfect, we all know that, and familiarity with your partner's body sure as hell helps too. However, Wade concludes that the lack of female orgasms during hook ups must be down to lack of men's investment in their partner's pleasure, backing it up with a statement from a male who says he's "all about making her orgasm" when with a long-term partner, but "in a hookup...I don't give a shit".

 

It's an unfortunate quote, and indeed may reflect many other men's attitudes, although it's important to remember we're not told this and Wade has just cherry-picked one depressing vox-pop out of thousands. The quotes she includes from women are also depressing - they speak of not expecting an orgasm out of hook ups, prioritising men's pleasure, and being too insecure to ask for their own pleasure. And yeah, that's a problem in itself. But Wade's article does seem to contain an implicit message that hook-ups are bad in and of themselves, and relationships are the answer to all. And on that note, frankly, I call some serious bullshit. I've been in very long-term relationships, and I've had hook-ups, and I can honestly say that my likelihood of getting an orgasm is increased by one thing and one thing only - me doing stuff to myself. Whether that's solo, or with the guy involved, that's the only way I've ever been able to achieve it. It matters not whether the guy has known me for four years or four weeks, that's the way it's always been. And to be frank, it has actually made me feel more uptight when the guy in question has decided he's going to be The One to manage to give me an orgasm on his own, because it inevitably involves him reading prescriptive sex manuals ('Do this and it'll drive her wild!' Oh really, will it? EVERY woman? All 3.5 billion of us?), trying out various techniques on me that do absolutely F-A for me, and generally decreasing my chances of being relaxed enough to get any pleasure, let alone a climax out of the experience.

 

I'm not shy of asking for what I want, or demanding that my needs get met, or that I get to be the one lying back having fun stuff done to me. But demanding that my partner be able to give me the Big O makes me feel like my sex life has been boiled down to a bad Cosmo spoof. I don't necessarily want to come during penetrative sex, because the massive amount of concentration involved makes me feel totally disconnected from my partner, as if I'm using him as a dildo substitute. I might want to have my orgasm before penetration, or after, and that's something me and him can do together, which is all groovy. That said, regardless of the radfem sniffiness about such a claim, I also enjoy penetration in and of itself - it doesn't have to make me come. I might feel satisfied without an orgasm at all during the session (this is not BS - it does sometimes happen), and the prescriptive model of sex that dictates your sex is a feminist failure if both of you don't come is not any more helpful to me than the model that dictates male pleasure is all. A readthrough of Shire Hite's Report on Female Sexuality is telling, with women stating,"Now there is such much emphasis on orgasm, a person would feel abnormal not having one" and "I feel a lot of pressure both from men and from women's liberation, to have orgasms or insist on having an orgasm". One interviewees response to the pressure to be coming all over the shop sums up my exact feelings - "I'm not...a two-ring circus".

 

Wade's focus on apparent male selfishness also doesn't reflect my own experiences at all. Sure, my evidence is personal and anecdotal, but then so are the statements she uses to imply men 'don't give a shit' about female pleasure. As I mentioned above, I've had partners who are eager to a fault to try and resolve the orgasm gap between us - after my first sexual experience, the guy in question rather sweetly apologised for the fact I didn't come. I almost laughed out loud and snorted "I didn't expect to!", but held back out of politeness. But I was secretly thinking, 'C'mon dude, go read some feminist responses to Freud. What we just did may have been lovely, but my body ain't set up to orgasm from that'. I wasn't bothered - I had learnt at an early age that orgasms were a gift I could give myself, and let's just say I was always very generous with myself throughout my teen years. And me and this guy were young and inexperienced - yes, we were college students - so I hardly expected to be hitting heights of tantric amazingness anyway. While I agree with Lisa Wade that a model of sex where female pleasure is included and given equal weight to men's is certainly one that can never be promoted enough, I don't think measuring feminism's success by counting orgasms is accurate or helpful. Especially when you're focusing on a very skewed portion of society, who as well as being young and inexperienced, are often obnoxious, impulsive, selfish, insecure and crap at communicating. I might expect academic excellence from college students (sometimes), but I sure as hell don't expect maturity from them, and that includes in sexual matters.

 

As a commenter in the Hite report put it, the 'right' to have orgasms "has sometimes turned into an oppression". And in a society where there's far too many forces dictating How We Should Be Fucking, that's hardly better than when women were considered to have no right to an orgasm at all.

No good can come of watching the Virgin TV channel...

...but hey, sometimes a girl gets bored late at night and flicks over. And what do Virgin like to show at night? Programmes all about sex, loosely disguised in the form of documentaries. I knew I was probably heading for trouble selecting 'Why Men Watch Porn', but it wasn't as horrific as it could have been. The attitude was pretty predictable, starting from the perspective that porn is fine and groovy, with no discussion of its potential to harm women, and that consuming it is 'just something normal guys do'. It was even mildly interesting to watch the results of a study involving men of different age groups rating their interest in different types of porn - and somewhat heartening to see men from all the age groups stating their lack of interest in using it. The reaction of the men's (female) partners to what the study 'revealed' about their sexual tastes was a bit tiresome - the women seemed happy to make excuses for male consumption of porn viz arguments that 'men are just wired differently', that women can distract themselves with 'a bath or a book' or that when we 'get the horn', we're capable of waiting for satisfaction, whereas men have to be satisfied Right Now, Dammit. I thought the women's words were evidence of just how internalised the modern stance on porn has become, that being: it's fine, men need it, we couldn't possibly understand because we're women, there's no point trying to argue against it. I also wondered if any of these women had ever 'had the horn' to the point where a bath or a book just wouldn't do it, and only a date with Ms Right Hand would suffice - cos I know have!

What was probably most dismaying though, was the final throwaway 'stat', which was that 32% of men surveyed thought porn reduced sex crime. That's an argument I get reeeal tired of hearing, simply because it seems to rely on a fatal misunderstanding of what sex crime is, and why it's committed. However, it means acknowledging that the opposition to that argument (that porn increases sex crime), also comes from barking up the wrong tree, which is anathema to some anti-porn feminists. I just think that this simplistic view of male sexuality needs to be dispensed with. If you're sadistic and fucked up enough that you're actually considering raping someone, I doubt that any alternative form of outlet is going to be enough. Rape isn't just about 'needing to have sex really badly' (and please, can we stop saying prostitution is justified because it somehow 'stops rape'? Newsflash - prostitution and rape still continue side by side) or wanting to do something so kinky that no woman would put up with it. Wanting sex and not always getting it is part of life - normal men and women can put up with that. They may masturbate, use porn, or just distract themselves, but to suggest that people rape because they're just too randy, is to fatally misunderstand what rape is about. It's not about sex, or sexual release, or satisfaction. It's about power, humiliation, domination, and controlling another person's body. If that is what you truly desire, then watching porn isn't going to stop you from wanting to go out and get it. Unfortunately, I think too many people 'normalise' rapists as 'regular guys who just got carried away because damn women won't put out all the time'. As if there's never been a rapist who was already in a sexual relationship with a wife or a girlfriend, or who had access to stacks of porn, or who used prostitutes, and went out and raped anyway.

However, as I said, this means also acknowledging the limitations of porn when it comes to influencing men's sexual behaviour. Now, it's important not to make blanket statements about this. When I say I don't think porn causes rape, that's not to say I think it has no impact whatsoever on the sexual landscape. But, as I said above, since rape has very little to do with sex, it stands to reason that its connection with on-screen depictions of sex, will only ever be fleeting. Yes, a violent porn film might give you an idea of how to violate someone, but it's not going to make you go out and do it. The impulse for sexual violence needs to be there already. Porn doesn't turn ordinary men into rapists - it doesn't have the power. It may give men who are already raping or considering rape, some methods for terrorising their victims, but that's where the connection ends. However, that's not to say I don't see the connection with porn and rape culture - one where rape isn't taken seriously because our porned society has numbed us to sexual violence. If we're all exposed to, or able to easily access, porn that sends out the message that women love to be beaten and raped, then our understanding of rape as a crime is going to be affected - even if it's just subconsciously. How many times have we heard rapists defended on the basis that 'she just liked it rough, your honour'? Only this week five men were acquitted of the rape of a woman on the basis that she had had fantasies about group sex, clearly sending out the message that if a woman has a kinky fantasy, she should be prepared to enact it with any man, at all times, and has no right to say no. Something's clearly fucked up - but it's not porn causing the rapes directly. It's a society so numbed to sexual violence, partly by increasingly violent porn, that's allowing rapists to go free, and sending out the message to would-be rapists that they'll always get away with it.

I wouldn't call myself an anti-porn feminist though. I don't believe that repression of human sexuality is ever going to lead to anything good. I think that porn can be produced responsibly, and that porn which depicts violence/coercion can be framed in the language of choice and consent, as BDSM porn always has been. It's the mainstream porn which steals the acts of BDSM porn, whilst leaving out the crucial aspects of consent (and failing to emphasise, as many BDSM sites do, that the actors are just that, actors playing a part and that This Is Not Reality) which I believe does the most harm. It's how to keep the good and dispense with the swathes of bad which is troubling. It was also telling on the programme that many men described a scene of anal sex - which would have been viewed as shocking and explicit a few decades ago - as 'quite tame'. It seems that the more extreme porn is produced, the more bored we get. Perhaps this is a worrying sign of how people will go to further and further extremes to get satisfaction, or perhaps it's a heartening sign that people recognised porn's limitations and will start to turn away from it, maybe even back to real people and having real sexual relationships. I think we are all capable of learning, and the depiction of men as so deeply influenced by porn that they're unable to shake off its 'conditioning' is more than a tad insulting. In the early days of our relationship, my partner admitted to me that the porn he viewed in his younger days made him think that women's genitalia 'worked a lot easier than it really does'. Ha ha, no shit, I remember thinking, and I didn't feel ashamed or guilty about my complex, hard-to-please body, but rather pleased that he had encountered a real woman and learned a lesson.