Sorry to return so quickly to the fetid mind of MRA blabologist JohnTheOther, but, well, you’ll see why I have.
Here is Mr. TheOther in AskReddit, responding to the question “Women of Reddit, how do you feel about cumshots?” (No, he is not strictly speaking a “woman of Reddit,” not like that’s going to stop him.) Enjoy the irony of the A Voice for Men second banana rehashing, apparently with utter sincerity, an argument once set forth, rather infamously, by a feminist fellow named Hugo Schwyzer. And enjoy the also-very-special response from fellow MRA SuicideBanana, whom we met earlier in the week.
I know Mr. TheOther is concerned about people “quote mining” comments, and presenting them out of context, but in this case, there is no further context. His comment, which I have presented unedited in screenshot form, isn’t in response to any other comment; it’s simply an answer to the question I alluded to above. Mr. TheOther does respond to SuicideBanana’s remarks about him being an advocate and facilitator of violence, as you can see if you clicky click here, but sheds no more light on the issue of porno cumshots as a “pseudo-mystical representation of the sexuality of the viewer.”
Cassandra — well yes, but if this were really about accepting his cum and not power, wtf’s the problem with aiming lower? Depending on anatomy and interests, that could be hot in its own right. (And much lower risk of sharing bodily fluids and all the risks that entails)
That, or keep looking for the women who enjoy facials, seeing how I knew one, I’m sure they do exist.
Because the whole point is complete acceptance, ie refusing anything sexual at all from a man is a cruel rejection of his sexuality, you big meanie? I dunno, I don’t speak misogynist.
(If we’re being honest I think that for that kind of guy facials are basically marking territory, like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.)
“(If we’re being honest I think that for that kind of guy facials are basically marking territory, like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.)”
Well, maybe, but hilariously my former roommate’s puppy marked the box my laptop was sitting on, not the laptop — even poodles are smart enough to know when aiming a bit lower is a good idea XD (Goodness do I miss that little fluff ball)
Oh I know the difference — the poodle knew he’d be in trouble with me for a good long time if he peed on my laptop, these men have no similar fear of how their partners will react. Or worse, think it’s a point of pride to “prove” that he doesn’t have to care.
(notice that I don’t request or really enjoy oral sex all this much largely because of the average heterosexual male response to my ladybits)
Um… I find this a bit problematic. Ignoring my personal preferences as meaningless anecdata (but for the record, my opinion is… her body, her choice. She wants to shave to the skin because it pleases her to do so, fine with me. She wants to remove not a hair, that’s fine with me too. She has a preference in between, that’s fine with me too).
My problem is with the assumptions built into the phrase, “average heterosexual male response”. It ties into my earlier complaint about, “standard heterosexual relationships” (I’m paraphrasing from earlier in the discussion”.
Both of those actually support the idea that men are monolithic, and that the present preference in porn is somehow normative of men general.
From the conversations of the women of my acquaintance (again, not a random sample in a statistically relevant way; since it’s women who are comfortable enough with me to be discussing sex/grooming, which is self-selecting for those who less likely to be the, “be quiet and put up with things” sort) most men aren’t that fussy. If a woman is interested enough to be saying, “let’s go”, they aren’t, (by and large) going to pitch a fit about how she grooms her hair.
Not to say they don’t exist. I have an ex who had a guy hand her a razor, so she could, “clean up”. She looked at him, collected her things and went home.
Abnoy is doing the same thing with the statements about it being, “a het guy thing” when he implies that facials are something the majority of men want.
And, Abnoy, as a territory marking thing, are you arguing men are going around sniffing to see if some other guy has ejaculated on a woman to see if she is, “his territory”. Dude, you’re weird.
Steele: I’ve noticed a lot of feminist hyperbole surrounding facials. It’s common in porn simply because it’s an easy way to indicate the end of a video. No other reason.
Bullshit. The “money shot” didn’t used to be facials, not unless the action was oral. These days the guy says he’s coming, and the actress jumps off and he pulls his pud some until he comes.
In the old days (all the way into the early middle nineties) if they were fucking, he pulled out and came right away.
So it’s a trope, not just a convenient way to show a climax to a scene, and tropes usually carry more than one message.
Maybe this is an age thing? I’ve never had a guy flat-out demand anything in particular in terms of pubic topiary. But I’m 38, and I think Pecunium is a little older, so possibly the women he’s talking about are too. The idea that all women must be shaved bare at all times seems to be much more common among younger people.
“The idea that all women must be shaved bare at all times seems to be much more common among younger people.”
Maybe? I’ve encountered a range from “shave bare” to “a trim would be nice, if you don’t mind?” — I’m not a fan of hair in my teeth myself, so I get the “do you mind trimming?” attitude. I don’t know anyone who shaves bare for their partner though, genders moot; I do know people who don’t care either way though.
So maybe, but it seems like the mid-20s crowd isn’t that big on shaving either, so I’m guessing it’s a demanding asshole thing, and as we all know, that problem spans all ages.
I know that I’ve heard a lot of younger friends complain that the men they fuck have Opinions about shaving, how their vulva should look (size, shape, pigmentation, all of which is commented on, sometimes unfavorably), whereas when I was their age, and with men my age, that really wasn’t an issue that anyone in my own generation talked about running into. Maybe demanding assholery is on the rise.
(This is actually my biggest issue with porn, that it seems to fuel demanding assholery in some ways, and give the demanding assholes more material on which to form their Opinions of What Ladybits Should Look Like. Doesn’t produce that result in all men who watch porn, obviously, but it does seem to come up a lot in terms of where the guys say they got those opinions from.)
“give the demanding assholes more material on which to form their Opinions of What Ladybits Should Look Like”
*that*
I get the impression that before the rise of porn being acceptable, men formed opinions based on their partner(s) — who, being human, had variation — but porn stars all look more or less the same. This is probably part of what’s behind the “woman as interchangeable objects” thing too actual.
I kind of want to blame abstinence only “education” as much as porn here — if you never discuss what normal looks like, how are you supposed to realize there’s actually quite a range to what’s normal? (A pox on showing high schoolers only the most severe STD cases they could find, and then really heavily stylized genital diagrams)
I wish I could remember where I saw that video about the British guy who was making casts of lots of different vulvas and then making a wall display of them. Random people were volunteering, the whole thing was pretty cool, especially viewing the finished result. I suspect that the reason the “this is what it should look like! if it doesn’t I’m freaked out!” response is worse in young men is that most of them haven’t seen many vulvas in real life, so they’re going on what they’ve seen in porn. Seeing images of lots of random vulvas that haven’t undergone any special grooming to make them camera-ready might help.
I think this is the right answer. It also gives a dual explanation for why it tends to be worse in younger guys – they are both more likely to have watched a lot of basically-interchangeable porn, and less likely to have had a lot of previous partners.
I am still in horrified awe of the guy I met a few years ago who complained to me repeatedly that “pubic hair on women is unnatural.” If ever there was a moment to quote Inigo Montoya…
I feel moved to comment here that every one deserves a good sex life. What good is, is different for different people, different strokes for different folks, literally. No one should have ones requests for hygiene or whatever rejected. One can find a partner whose levels of desire are compatible. Orgasms are good and should be indulged in frequenly. Sex is a lot of fun and can and should be discussed, a lot, in bed and out. Ones lover should love you! I hope that most of these stubborn trickster sex manipulators and thier unfortuate partners are young and learning from thier mistakes. I have found that in middle age folks are more understanding and polite. Perhaps expectations are more realistic at 50. My heterosexual realtionship is hot, and sex is frequent and unchorelike. Every one here can have that. Be patient, spend more time becoming a good whole person your self than looking for a partner, and you will find the love you deserve.( Also when I have commented before my name was Owllizard. I guess signed in differently today.)
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”?
(Yeah, you meant “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”, I know)
Cassandra — NSFW link to that project. (It’s soc. images, so it’s no more NSFW than the project itself)
@ ShadetheDruid- This is why I have unscented baby wipes in the bathroom right by the toilet in a prominent location. I don’t expect men to wipe their penises every time they pee, but before oral sex is nice- especially since urine is kind of gross tasting.
@ pecunium- I am not referring to all monolithic heterosexual males, but merely stating that my own partner experiences have been with heterosexual males and the reactions that said partners have had towards my own ladybits.
I have, of course, spoken with many males on the internet who enjoy giving oral sex on unshaved women. I have also spoken with many men who enjoy giving other males oral sex. I do not have some weird belief that all men are the same or have the same behaviors or preferences when it comes to partnered sex acts.
But my experience with the small number of heterosexual males who I have done sexual things with, I have generally received pretty low opinions on my trimmed bush. And I’m really not comfortable with a guy spending a lot of time down there. The first couple times my husband gave me oral sex, I just kind of freaked out and lay there like I was dead. I couldn’t enjoy it at all. Now it’s kind of objectively ok in the rare times it ever happens, but it’s more of a neutral thing, like being licked on my arm. For some reason, I just can’t get into the mindset that all of my female friends seem to be able to get into where they cum their brains out from having a guy licking them there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to, and that makes me feel broken and fucked up- not because I *want* to feel good from receiving oral sex, but I feel that it is my obligation as a Good Lady Sex Partner to honestly feel pleasure when my partner wants to pleasure me because that makes him feel good. But I can’t bring myself to be one of those people who just lies about it.
So I’m kind of stuck, ya know?
In the TMI range. Yes, I’m a bit older than Cassandra.
I’d say about 10 percent of my partner don’t trim at all. 6 percent went bare, and the rest groomed in some way (from timming length, to shaving some areas, though there are a couple in there who shaved bare on occaision, not as a rule).
One of those shaved because on of her other partners insisted on it.
I have personal opinions about what makes for the most fun, but I keep those to myself because 1: They aren’t strong enough to make it a deal breaker. 2: It’s not my body. 3: The “most fun” is a really small difference from “more fun than most people can imagine anything better than” which is what my sex life is, so I’m not really missing out because my partners aren’t putting my idiosyncratic preferences above their tastes because 4: if she’s not happy with herself, because she’s changing her grooming to suit me, she’s not going to be having “the most fun” and putting my pleasure before hers is a quick trip to her not liking sex as much, and both of us losing out.
The age range of the women I’ve spoken to on the subject is from about 22-50 (it’s amazing the amount of personal detail one shares with one’s comrades in the Army, as well as having a lot of female friends).
I do think the pressures are more from younger/jerkier guys. And I blame porn, for some of it. There is the story of Ruskin discovering, on his wedding night, that women had pubic hair and being repulsed. He, so the story goes, had seen nothing but statues and paintings; which all neglected to include it.
The story isn’t verified, but the wedding was dissolved in short order, and he never again seems to have had an intimate relationship with a woman. As to men, we don’t know.
Nah, I was actually thinking, “Fezzik, tear his arms off.” 😉
@Sxrx Winsett- In magical happy hypothetical universe, this would be great, but there’s also the fact that it’s really really hard for people who are generally monogamous (like myself) who can find all of the desirable characteristics in one person AND also have some mind-blowing sex life as well. Sure, sex can be good, but it’s not always THE BEST, and it’s not always THAT GOOD, but there are other things about the relationship that are highly worthwhile (I mean, who else can I have as much fun geeking out about the new Spiderman movie with? All of my friends seem to have their own lives or have moved away. My partner is my best friend and without him, I would be lost). Also, PERFECT OMELETS. Have you ever had a perfect trifold cheese and tomato omelet? THEY ARE HEAVEN.
I understand the idea that partners should communicate and they should do their best to make each other happy sexually, but there are points where people have incompatible fetishy things or fantasies that the other person just isn’t into. And neither of us are willing to open the relationship for sex only due to the fact that both of us are picky and also associate really close partnered sex with part of our own personal pair-bond. Sexing with other people just weakens it (and yes, we know from experience in the past when I used to be with another person at the same time in a dual relationship- the only saving grace was that the sex with the other partner was horrible and traumatic and eventually the relationship ended after far too long of me waiting for the other person to not act like a self-centered jerkface).
So yeah. I don’t particularly like having sex that doesn’t involve a copious amount of neck-licking (there’s this place behind my ear near my neck that seems to have a direct link with my clitoris and drives me crazy with pleasure when licked firmly and I can’t seem to figure out how that happened), and impregnation-roleplay/sextalk, but you know what? It’s serviceable sex with someone I love and someone who gets me horny and hell yeah, sex is better with someone I love than masturbating alone. But masturbating is far better than sex with some random person. Even if I were to find some meaningless sex partner for a one-night-stand and they were skilled at sexual reciprocation, I highly doubt my brain or body would really get much out of it. I guess I’m just too broken and fucked up to work “properly.”
Polliwog — oooh, you mean this gate key? 🙂 (*grumble* the server decided to die yesterday, and it seems the boot disc is in in CT, so all my movies are in some weird technological limbo land 🙁 )
“I guess I’m just too broken and fucked up to work “properly.”
🙁
I’m sad to read that, even though I’ve often the same kind of feelings about myself. That’s just lies, falsehood. Just like “I’m ugly” “nobody can love me” “my body is horrible”, these are thought that we mist fight. You have no duty of enjoying oral sex more than you have of coming just from PIV. You seem to know what you enjoy and what you want (ear-neck thing, monogamy, masturbation,…), why would you HAVE TO enjoy particular sex in a particular way? Good sex is sex you like, it ‘works’ when it makes you feel god, you’re not a tool that has to perform this or this act in order to be good enough.
From what you wrote, I can actually tell that I’m probably more “fucked up” than you are regarding sex, but I still don’t believe I’m ‘broken up’. (well, not counting bad days) I am what I am, and with the body and mind I have I try to get (and give) as much pleasure and happiness as I can, with hope that the future will be even better.
I’m 40, and for the most part, guys my age and older don’t seem to demand anything topiary-wise. The two who did had one thing in common–they watched a LOT of porn. Also they were of the “do as I say, not as I do” school of thought, and hell no they weren’t going to shave or wax. Needless to say, those relationships didn’t work out.
Steele:
1) Citation needed
2) Why, then, do people want to do it in real life?
Cassandra:
I wonder if there’s a perception that it’s easier to get laid, so people can be a bit more demanding? It makes sense that porn is telling people what to demand but I don’t think it’s (entirely) why they feel they feel they can make demands in the first place.
I guess it’s also general sexism that’s to blame for that too.
Argenti:
I see what you did there.
Pecunium:
M3 T00. That makes it not bragging anymore (though I’d phrase 2 slightly differently as regards my own life). I’m younger than Pecunium, though, so I am willing to share my opinions, especially if they’re solicited, but only as opinions.
hellkell:
I think the second part is as important as thefirst; I doubt porn makes people demanding assholes, though it can certainly make assholes demanding, or at least nudge assholes towards demandingness.
Oh Nanasha, I probably should have mentioned that my heterosexual relationship is a polyamorous one. I did say constant communication, in bed and out, right?
You have no obligation to enjoy anything. Some folks are even asexual! I was single for decades waiting for the right relationship and working on building my best life. It is worth it to invest in creating the life you want. In my opinion, a lover who loves you is part of that life. Love is a verb by the way, and you can tell who loves you because they ACT LIKE IT. I’d rather be alone than endure a false face for the sake of another’s preferences. Relationships are wonderfully complicated but we do choose who to have and keep in our lives. Perhaps this takes decades to reach though, so it may be a function of age.
Re: hair issues.
Definitely chiming in on this not being an issue in my brief sexual encounters back in the 70s (I’m 56).
And I think porn has a good deal to do with it–but also wider popular culture showing images of women (*thinking bitterly of GAME OF THRONES where rape is designated as historically accurate, but NONE of the nekkid women have any body hair because historically accurate women in medieval periods all waxes, rilly, truly they did) much more waxed, shaven, photoshopped (also, is it just me or is there a shitload more explicit advertising for things like hair removal/bikini area, shaving, even fer crying out loud toilet paper than there used to be?)
*waves cane at advertisers and shouts for ’em to get off mah lawn*
@Kyrie- I have a weird body. Especially sexually. It took me a year to orgasm from sex with a partner that I actually *WANTED* to have sex with. It was humiliating and stressful which made it even harder to orgasm because of the pressure I felt since my partner wanted me to feel good and felt that he wasn’t a good lover if he couldn’t “make” me cum. In fact, it took me a long time to re-train myself not to only get turned on by rape fantasy crap so that I could actually feel sexual pleasure in a context of loving/mutual sex. So my body just seems to be fucked up to the intellectual side of my brain- the part that really wants to be able to orgasm like crazy during sex. If I had one wish, it would be to orgasm and feel crazy sexual pleasure no matter what I was doing. Perhaps that’s part of the whole “porn” conditioning thing from my relationships and demands of people I’ve been with in the past that I just wished that I would actually *like* so that I didn’t hate it so much.
@Sxrx Winsett- This is a situation in which the underpants rule is really important. It’s cool that you personally are happy with your polyamorous situation, but it’s not right for everyone. And even if I were to become polyamorous, it would be a different sort of polyamory than you probably practice (everyone has their own limits, desires, etc).
Sure, we also change as we age- I can’t say that I’ll be the same sexual being in 10 years that I am today, but I honestly feel that the only person qualified to tell me what I truly want out of life is myself. Besides, sex is only one thing that I need in my life to be healthy and happy. If I prioritize the “sort of sex that I ideally would like” as being lower than “fairly good sex that I mostly enjoy” as well as a host of other things that make me feel secure, safe and mentally well. Some people might find a hot sex life to be more important than these thing, and they are free to prioritize accordingly. However, to be true to myself, I must balance many things at once in order to feel like I can function.
And, honestly, I think that is the most important thing.