“How to satisfy a woman in bed”, “5 ways to satisfy her after you’ve peaked”, and other good “tips” of the kind are now all over magazines and webzines. The question I want to ask is: Says who? And, of course: Can we trust them?
If sex was an exact science, my bet is we would know. Biological and other gendered explanations don’t convince me.
What is the real difference between bad sex and good sex? The number of different positions? The length of the intercourse? The size of the penis? The number of orgasms? …Or is it “just” a question of mood, rhythm, connection and attention?
“When you lick a girl’s vagina and use your finger to penetrate her, you’re stimulating her clitoris and her G-spot simultaneously; very smart move”. You’ve all read something of the kind at one point, but do you seriously picture yourself in bed with a map of the nerves system desperately trying to find the so-called G-spot and then, simultaneously (this is the key), calculating the optimal inclination of the finger you should stick inside of her?
What makes a difference is the knowledge you’ve acquired of your body. Your body, not the human body. Some of us have explored themselves through the looking glass when younger, some have used the mediation of what is called sex toys (this feels good, wow this feels real good…), some have learnt with their own two hands (as Ben Harper would say) and tried it out the “traditional way”, others have experimented with one or different partners (different configurations, different moves, different sexes, etc.)…
Culturally, women tend to ignore pleasure. As a major instrument of control and domination of society (Church and men) over women, sex has been tabooed. Desire and pleasure are sins and sex is for reproduction only. At the end of the 70’s, a majority of women did not take any pleasure having sex.
Has it changed? In some ways yes, but what I call “the pleasure of pleasing” remains the main form of female pleasure. Quite paradoxically, the orgasm has become the ultimate purpose of sex in its mediatic treatment. A sexual intercourse without orgasms would now be considered as a counter-performance, a failure. What does that mean? Basically, it means that now when you don’t come during each and every sexual encounter, more than personally frustrated, you end up guilty as charge. Is the orgasm dictatorship the ultimate recipe for good sex?
My answer would be no. The ideology of performance when entering the sexual matter only brings in the idea of “success” and “failure”, and adds another type of pressure for the participants. It is another occasion to prove yourself. The pressure weighing on individuals thanks to neoliberal ideologies makes its way even to the bedroom (or any room for that matter). First of all, now women have to be able to reassure their partner when they “failed”. Also, they have to be able to reassure themselves: How come I’ve never had a vagina orgasm in my life? Am I a good sex partner?
Moreover, performance goes hand in hand with efficiency and leads to the technicisation of sex: Was it a clitoridian orgasm? Or a vaginal one? Should I massage his balls during the fellatio? Should I penetrate her with my finger while licking? A whole lot of questions mediatic discourses make you believe they have the answer to. Isn’t sex supposed to be the total opposite, a moment of self-confidence and pure pleasure, when you forget about everything else but those bodies touching, and at least relieve pressure? In the end, isn’t the mediatic orgasm dictatorship another way to control sexuality, imposing binds, regulating the relations to the other’s body and to your own, and, in the end, creating new norms?