Equitable Sex Page 3

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Part II: The Mutual Playfulness of Sex

1.Why is this ‘mutuality’ issue so important to you? Why not simply enjoy making love to your female partner and enjoy her pleasure?

It is important for two very significant reasons:

1. a.One of them is about “having a truthful relationship”. When women say they want to “engage in a mutually loving relationship”, or, as noted above, say “let’s make love”, what is implied is that both parties are going to make love to - and with - each other. But if a woman’s investment in ‘love-making’ consists primarily in making herself available to be made love to, rather than actively engaging in making love to her male partner - in the same manner that she expects ‘love-making’ from him, then the whole ‘advertising’ of the ‘nature of the sexual enjoyment’ is a false premise. Saying “let’s make love” implies that there will be a mutuality to the sexual pleasure, not an expectation of unilateral love-making by the man, and a unilateral acceptance of that behavior by the woman. It would be far more honest (and women are often apt to say they want an honest relationship) to say “let’s get together so that you will make love to me, and to the extent you expect love-making in return, you have got to be kidding!”
2. b.I am a man who very much likes to be made love to by my partner. When women ask what I prefer in a sexual interaction with them, I often have said “I like to receive, in synonymous ways, the very kind of love-making, from my partner, that I give to my partner”. Yet, no matter how clearly I state that, nor how many times I’ve reminded my partners of my request, their behavioral response has been to pretend like my request simply isn’t important to them. Like (and when I was younger, women actually said this) “men don’t want those things”. Did that mean I wasn’t a man because I desired mutual love-making? Did it mean that there was something totally weird about me that I wanted to be pleasured by my partner? Or did it mean “your request is so far outside the realm of my sexual experience that I can’t abide it - and it is making me very uncomfortable”? Because I am a man who really enjoys the kind of reciprocal love-making that I engage in with females. That’s what is important to me, really very important. I look forward to mutuality - and mutual respect - in all facets of life between the sexes.
2.Women often complain that men’s idea of ‘love-making’ is basically “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am”. That’s hardly ‘mutual’! How is your version of ‘love-making’ different from that? And is there a female version of that kind of unilateral sexuality?

1. a.That complaint by women - which is found widely in literature on the subject, in women’s writings - is, I believe, quite the case. There are many males whose idea of acceptable sexual interaction with females is “if I get my penis hard, have intercourse with a woman, and achieve orgasm, then that’s enough for both of us”. This is, truly, pretty damned abusive of women (seeing them as, essentially, a ‘cavity in which to relieve oneself sexually’) and quite frustrating to women who want a more sensuous and emotionally connective interaction with a man. For many women, they need more caresses and slow build-up to achieve an acceptable amount of vaginal secretion that will allow of pleasurable intercourse. And frankly, from a men’s wellness perspective, taking the time to engage in mutual pleasuring behavior, by both parties, allows for a far more intimate, feelings-oriented interaction, one that can bring both parties to a level of sexual pleasure that is consistent with ‘love-making’, rather than ‘raw sexuality’ (though that kind of sex play is fun, at times, all by itself.)
2. b.Yet many women exhibit similar behavior. I call it the “get him up, get him in, get his off” or “up, in, off, man” mentality. A lot of females seem to think their only “responsibility” in the sexual act is to get a man’s penis hard, provide him a means of engaging in vigorous sexual intercourse with his partner, and allow him to get “his rocks off” via ejaculation. If he achieves that, job done! That the man might like to be pleasured in much the same way that his female partner desires a man to pleasure her is either treated as an “unusual gift from God, given rarely”, or “simply not what men want”. And even if they do want it, hey, he got hard, and he got off - what more does he want??
3. Women say they don’t like getting “treated like sex objects”, that they often don’t even like to refer to the sexual interaction as “sex”, but rather want to engage in “love-making”. What’s wrong with that? Why complain about such a request, even if it is unilateral?

1. a.Many women seem to have the idea that “as a female, I have a more difficult time lubricating, and therefore being ready for intercourse”, but the man “only has to become erect to be ready for intercourse”, so therefore I (the woman) deserve extensive love-making caresses, kissing, and other sensitive touch, but the guy doesn’t need all of that. The problem I have with this perspective is that it violates the larger idea of “love-making” being more important than “raw sex”. If love-making is the issue, then it should be mutual love-making. If the only purpose of love-making is to help females increase their ability to lubricate, then it is simply a ‘cover’ for ‘raw sex’, for treating women as the sex objects that they often say they object to being seen as. But if the issue is rather that love-making is about “play”, then both parties to the interaction should benefit from the ‘play’, not just women alone.
2. b.‘Play’, therefore, should be mutually engaged in for the mutual pleasure of both of the sexual partners. If the point of love-making is, in fact, to ensure that neither sexual partner is treated as a sexual object (thereby ensuring that a sexual double-standard isn’t created), then simply focusing on a man’s ability to “become erect” violates that principle. Love-making should be about both parties making love to each other, not simply a matter of a man engaging in love-making for the benefit and sole pleasure of his female partner. In the model that many men experience (and that I, personally, almost exclusively experienced, much to my great frustration), men are supposed to “gain pleasure” by unilaterally giving sexual pleasure to the female partners, with their partners “allowing” the men to pleasure them. Gainly extensive pleasure from their female partners, by being caressed, kissed, stroked (on parts of their body other than exclusively their genitals) is something a great many men simply do not experience, even when they engage in such behavior with their female partners, and even when they pointedly request it.
3. c.My point is that when love-making is unilateral, females are simply trying to “get their cake and eat it to” at the expense of males. They want to argue that love-making is engaged in so that a woman can feel comfortable with the sexual act and more readily lubricate, and at the same time they say that using love-making as solely a reason for a woman to lubricate is essentially just a matter of treating them like sex objects, readying them to the insertion of a man’s penis and therefore about his pleasure, not theirs. But if love-making isn’t solely about lubrication, it can’t also be solely about “getting a man erect”. But, alternately, if love-making is about ‘sexual play’ and allowing a woman to get into the sexual act emotionally and comfortably, why does that argument not apply to men? Why is their emotional comfort not equally important to females?