Bad Sex: An Orgasm Equality Article on Feministe

A lovely woman posted a link on our local Sex Geekdom Facebook page of an article I just love. I love the honesty and vulnerability and the realness. I also love that it's a revolutionary piece - of the orgasm equality variety. Please read the full article here. It's called Bad Sex by EG. I have added her to the Orgasm Equality Allies MegaList cause she deserves it.

I know I'm always talking about people being all revolutionary, but that's just because it's true. There's a sexual revolution bubbling up out there, and I'm just pointing out when I see its little head pop up, hoping it will become more and more clear that people from all over are ready for change; that it's not just random - it's a trend of people being tired of what seems like unfair shit happening for women and sex.

This article would fit into what I feel like is a growing category of articles involving women confessing their experiences of bad sex and linking that to a larger problem with gender inequality in expectations and feelings of worth when it comes to sex. She goes into some great points in this article about a tendency for any 'bad sex' to be pushed into the category of rape or coercive sex and how that blocks a nuanced discussion about female sexual experience. I would particularly check out some of the great discussions that EG gets into in the comments. She is on point.

 In particular, this article recounts the author's first sexual relationship with a much older, married man and how, although it was completely consensual, it was also shitty for a variety of reasons and was part of some long-term damage to her sexuality. I think this long quote below reveals a lot about the need for writing like this.

The thing about dissociating during sex is that once you learn how, it’s pretty easy to do, and doing it–counting ceiling tiles until it’s over–often becomes easier than saying “this isn’t working for me,” so I’ve done it a lot, though not for a few years. And the thing about what happened to me is that I lost all faith in my desire. My gut reaction to feeling attracted to someone was to stay as far from them as I could, on the grounds that nothing good could come of that. When you combine those two things, well, I ended up making myself sleep with men I wasn’t attracted to because I really liked them and they treated me well and it would be a great relationship, women I wasn’t attracted to because I started out being attracted to them but then they started being really nasty to me when it seemed too late to turn back, men I started out being attracted to and whose technique turned out to lack a certain je ne sais quoi. And that’s a lot of lousy sex too. A lot of wondering what was wrong with me that I wasn’t enjoying sex, like I was supposed to. It really did a number on my head. And my body. 

And none of that was rape either. It was all stuff I did to myself. I made those decisions. I consented. I often initiated, because I could think of a good reason not to have sex and “I just don’t really feel like it” didn’t seem like a good enough reason to me. I’ve been to bed with men because it just seemed easier to get it over with than deal with me not wanting to.

These are powerful statements. Let me break stuff down a little.

First, this is one woman admitting that she willingly had terrible sex for years. It's sad and embarrassing. It is counter to the the plethora of media images of women having great orgasmic sex every time they get down to business, and it's against the sex-positive, feminist ideal of a confident, smart, sexual woman choosing her own way and having a fabulous time doing it! Yet, it's also utterly common and completely relate-able. This is feminism giving real talk about the sexual culture for women, and it isn't what people want to hear and what women want to admit, but that's why it's important and necessary.

Second, it is bringing to light something that is universally understood but almost never fully comprehended. Sex, the regular ol' hetero sex people have, can be regularly so nothing to a woman that she can count tiles on the ceiling until it's over. Yes, I understand that there may be mental and emotional inhibitors blocking the normal forward path of arousal, and that may have something to do with the boredom, but let's get real. The physical stuff that's happening during this normal ol' sex isn't getting her aroused or off, and it wouldn't get other women off either. Can we just let that sink in for a minute? Woman are half the people involved in regular ol' hetero sex, and guess what, that stuff is largely only orgasmic for the man...AND, it doesn't seem to be regarded as an appalling situation even though it so is. Regular ol' sex is gone about in such a way that men are always getting the correct stimulation they need to continue arousal and orgasm. If they weren't (for instance if he is losing arousal and thus his erection) then it wouldn't be normal ol' sex anymore, now would it? There would be a change in activity to help him with this, or there would be a 'concern' of some sort. Basically his lack of arousal would be noticed, concerned about, and activities might even be adjusted to address it. Yet, tons of women count ceiling tiles every day without anyone (often including herself) noticing, being concerned, or addressing the situation at all.This woman's problems sit within a larger, gender related problem in our sexual culture, and the more people like this author who bring it up and make us look at that, the better.

Third, it acknowledges the ambivalence, confusion, and wrong-head decision making that comes with detaching from or not trusting one's own desire. The truth is that this wierd sexual situation women exist in, one where the physical pleasure we expect from sex is often not what we actually experience and where our pleasure takes a natural back-seat to male pleasure, does mess with our desire and does mess us up in mind and body. I imagine we all have different experiences and are affected by this in different ways and to varying degrees, but I dare say we are all indeed affected by it.

Fourth, she describes how she felt her experiences with bad sex were because of an individual problems and personal shortcomings. That's part of why these experiences are so embarrassing to discuss, so invisible, and so harmful. All of us women are like this author. We all exist in this f'd up sexual culture that messes us up in very individual ways, and we too often feel like it's probably just us and our personal neurosis. The more we tell each other our experiences, though, the more we will see that at least parts of our problems exist outside of us, and the more we will be able to address the larger problem.

Brava to this author. She is an Orgasm Equality Hero. This is a woman brave enough to tell tough personal truths and insightful enough to see how the truths she experience might be about more than her individual, personal issues even if it doesn't or hasn't always felt that way. That, my friends, is revolutionary, because speaking truth about things that are not spoken about truthfully but that cause unnecessary systemic pain is so, so important. It shines light on the problem so that it can finally be addressed.