What's the problem with sex? Your divine Hostess Claudia came to ponder this question after several recent happenings led her fertile imagination and sharp intelligence to become alarmed by what is going on when we think sex, talk sex and have sex.
First off, I noticed that many men simply do not know how to pleasure a woman and have not the faintest idea what foreplay or arousal are designed for. Gentlemen...banging away like an industrial road drill against a woman's pussy or clit will not, and I mean NOT, garner you any favours. Most men don't even seem to think the clitoris is important. Male readers I invite you ~ share your thoughts. Do you know where it is? Do you know how to tease and arouse it? If not, here's a picture to assist your navigations!
...Or perhaps this may be a better way to find out?
Right then, now that we've got the biology out of the way, what's happened to our sex lives? There seems to be so much guilt, shame and fear associated with sex that we've become either paralysed or over invested in fantasy at the expense of true passion or sensuality, and let's not forget that sex is meant to be fun! I have a theory that somewhere in all of this lies a deeper problem, our issues with 'gender' and the way we allow gender to define us in a most limited fashion.
Thinking about this got me considering how so many men have not learned how to express their femininity, and conversely so many women have not learned how to express our masculinity. Men who feel drives other than 'macho' sometimes desperately crave the touch and feel of women's clothes and underwear or the expression of a more 'submissive' role in the bedroom. They may find the only way to let this out is by secretly dressing up in private, occasionally finding a someone or some others with whom they may share this 'secret'; defining themselves at it's most extreme as 'sissy' and risking ridicule and more shame for doing so.
Paradoxically when a woman expresses her masculinity, she is often labeled a 'ball breaker' or a Bitch and may be labeled by men
and other women for rejecting the more easily accepted 'softer' feminine qualities like family, marriage and nurturing.
Artists such as
Eric Stanton and
Robert Crumb (and many more) have been illustrating the allure of such women for aeons yet these qualities are often highly desired and reviled at the same time; I want a Dominant whore as a lover but not as my wife....
This separation of masculine from feminine, and this limited labelling creates both desire and fear at the same time, yet often a desire associated with taboo. Meanwhile women and men are not getting the sex we want or need as self and other imposed restrictions limit our sexual freedoms. It is a rare pleasure to meet a man in touch with his feminity without being emasculated and a woman in touch with her masculinity without becoming 'hard'. In the bedroom the pleasure of discovering this flowing in and out of attributes can lead to an immensely pleasurable and horny experience. The extremes (woman as 'victim' or 'bitch', man as 'sissy' or 'macho') then ease up a little and the willingness to play and to adventure and explore become a whole lot more fun. I for one don't wish to be swinging between extreme polarities, nor do I wish to find yet another man struggling for....oooh let me see.....minutes (!) to find out how to pleasure me.
Three words: G-Spot, clitoris and liberation spring to mind. We are far too afraid of talking sex it would seem and even more afraid of admitting to feelings and desires that we have learnt to 'disown' and yet I believe these disowned feelings are at the root of all sexual violence and many relationship problems.
What are your views? Do you expect a woman (or a man) to look and behave within very restricted parameters? Do you allow for and celebrate diversity? Do you experiment with boundaries? And how much guilt, shame and fear do you live with as a result?
