Sex in MTL: When My Pleasure is a Victim of Social Norms
Sex in MTL. Photo Benoit Vermette.
This article focuses on heterosexual relationships, and on a cis woman’s experience regarding sex in today’s society.
I am a woman and I love sex.
I am a woman and I love having sex with men.
I am a woman and I love pleasurable sex.
Is it so surprising? When I asked people around me, everybody told me that, no, of course, it’s totally natural. And since we made so much progress with feminism, we now know and accept this kind of statement made by women.
So why, then, am I still so surprised (and overly grateful!) when I have sex with a man who views my pleasure and my desires as being as important as his own?
Why don’t I even raise an eyebrow when the man I have sex with doesn’t care about what I want, and focuses only on his own pleasure? I just let it go with a sigh, telling myself that it’s kind of normal, that maybe it’s going to be better next time. But it never is.
Following my reading of this article (HERE), on the Upworthy website, about, and written by, a dad who was praised so much for being a good father, I realized something very important and enlightening. What he said was, “We should celebrate these men. We have to normalize fatherhood. My mission is for people to see my viral picture and be like, ‘It’s not a big deal’.” But we’re not there yet. Gender biases are still putting us in tightly defined boxes, where heterosexual men don’t know how to do their daughters’ hair, and where they also don’t care about their partners’ pleasure.
Negative masculinity and pornography culture makes men (and more often than we would think, also women) obsessed with performance and penetration, as I explained and critiqued in one of my previous articles, What is sex? (HERE). Even oral sex is generally perceived solely as preliminaries before getting to the “main course”, which, again, is almost always penetration. Our view of sexuality is altered by stereotypical gender roles thriving in a still very patriarchal society, and that’s why, in sexual relationships, a woman who doesn’t climax is a normal thing, but a man who doesn’t is weird.
We’re sadly very far from considering that guys who listen to a woman’s desires in sexual relationships are the norm. Yes we did progress. Yes, here in Montreal, if you are a woman who has multiple partners and who openly talks about her love of sex, you may not be called a slut too much.
But we will not reach true equality if considerate men are still seen as exceptions. Equality is not only desirable for women and the LGBTQIA+ community, but also heterosexual cis men, who would like their dad skills and their respectful way of having sex with women to be seen as normal. The same thing could be said about women who would like their love of manual work and cars to be considered a regular hobby for them.
So yes, we have to celebrate those men who engage in feminist sex, we have to say thank you and please do this again, until the day when the ‘outsiders’ will be the clueless ones who come and go like they never heard of a freaking clitoris.
Have a question in need of an answer? an issue in need of explanation? Don’t be afraid to ask Ariane by emailing us or leaving a comment below.
