If you are expecting a titillating description of erotic techniques sure to make you a hit with your lover, stop reading now. You will be disappointed.
What whores know about sex is the difference between Theory Sex and Practice Sex, that is, the sex we say we do versus the sex we actually do. Theory Sex is mutual desire, arousal, and fulfillment enjoyed by equal partners without a power component. This is the myth of heterosexuality.
Practice Sex makes Theory Sex impossible. It makes YES meaningless when NO is impossible. Before you protest that no IS possible, suspend judgment for a moment.
We know that over forty percent of girls have been molested before they were eighteen. We know that over forty percent of women have been raped. We know that women are battered and killed everyday by men with whom they share or shared a bed.
Less that 8% of American women surveyed were able to say that they had never been raped, never fought off an attempted rape, never been grabbed and groped, never been seriously threatened with physical or economic harm if they didn’t put out. Even that depressing figure is deceptive because “rape” is not defined from the perspective of its victims. “Have you ever had sex that made you feel violated?” might be a better question, because for rape to magically transform into legal sex requires only consent. Consent; acquiescence; not desire, just consent. Verdicts in rape cases correlate not to the degree of harm done, but to the relationship between the parties; the better you know the rapist, the less your feelings matter. This is sex in practice.
Marriage is the theoretical home of Theory Sex. Here, despite great disparity in pay, status, and power, there is supposed to be that mutual sex free of domination and submission.
But what about the marriages where sex is part of a beating, or the “making up” after a beating; or the marriages where refusing sex will result in a beating; where saying no means a temper tantrum, or no grocery money, or the silent treatment, or a child’s ruined birthday party? What about marriages where pornography is used to show wives how “real women” should be, as if those pictured women who are having real things done to their real, bruised bodies were enthusiastic participants instead of dehumanized objects, paid or coerced to pretend they like what’s happening to them. What does a woman’s yes mean if she can’t say no?
Even if she loves sex with her husband, but just not tonight, how many nights can she say no before she’d better say yes, and simulate the enthusiasm to go with it? How much inconvenient honesty will he tolerate? If she loves her husband, and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, “yes” is easier; a little acting in a good cause never hurt anybody, right? Well, not anyone who isn’t regarded as a fully authentic human, anyway.
How many of us have wondered, in the dark quiet afterward, what sex is, and if lying and pretending are kindness or cowardice, and would it be OK to just do it without the deception, or will truth make the whole thing collapse like a house of cards? Besides, being “sexy” is much of what makes us attractive and desirable; it is a way of expressing love, if not always real passion. Can a woman ever be authentic if only inauthenticity makes her feel feminine?
Have we dared to wonder if the man we love suspects any of this? Is it OK with him as long as the heterosexual myth is maintained? I ask again, what is sex, what is love, what is a woman?
I’m tired, and I’m going home to cry, not because sexual desire unburdened by dominance and inequality, love that thrives in truth, and humanness are in such short supply. I wept my fill for those years ago.
I’ll cry tonight because I’m afraid people want to believe that they already have those things more than they actually want them.
