"But have you examined?"
This is a question that most kinky people have heard at some point or another. The answer is always, always yes.
When you realize you are significantly different from most of the people around you, you will always wonder why. This is human nature. Kinky people have almost all "examined" far more than their vanilla counterparts.
And I think that's a shame. There are far more vanilla people than kinky people, and if anyone should examine the way society has affected their sexuality, it's Team Vanilla. Vanilla people have the luxury of thinking that their sexuality is totally normal and that they don't actually have anything to examine.
After the last round of BDSM wars, I did examine a little more. I wrote a lengthy entry in my private journal in which I speculated on the origin of all my turn-ons, even the completely vanilla ones. And honestly, examining my vanilla desires was more interesting than examining the weird ones, possibly because I hadn't already gone over them a gazillion times. I learned a lot about myself.
Here's homework for the vanilla and the kinksters who have never gotten around to examining their vanilla side -- examine it.
Things To Think About:
- Your favorite position. Missionary, reverse cowgirl, girl-on-top, whatever. Is it your favorite position because and only because it feels good, or is there also a psychological component? Why do you think that is?
- Your physical type. Blonde boys with tans, hipster girls with lots of tattoos, small tits, uncircumcised cocks. Are you attracted to certain races, the look of certain subcultures, certain physical characteristics? Why do you think you have this preference?
- Giving oral sex. If you enjoy this, why? Do you make eye contact?
- And what's your favorite position for oral sex and do you like it for any reason other than convenience?
- How do you prefer to deal with semen (swallow, facial, etc.)? Do you find your chosen method sexy and why?
- Giving handjobs/fingering. If you enjoy this, why?
- Giving or receiving a tit job. (Is there a polite word for that? Because I can't think of one.) For most men I've encountered there's definitely been a psychological thrill for this, and it doesn't feel at all good for me so I assume women who enjoy it must like it for psychological reasons as well. What are they?
- Lingerie, if you're into that. I always think it looks hot, but I've never been able to figure out exactly why I feel that way.
- Likewise, other items of clothing. I don't mean sexy costumes -- I think those fall a little too much onto the side of roleplaying and kink for this exercise -- but I've always found specific clothing items that my boyfriends looked great in. For me, it's usually jeans, but I do remember a certain leather jacket. And I've always liked guys in skinny jeans. Do you have anything like this? Where do you think it comes from?
- What's your favorite place to have sex? When you fantasize about sex, what setting do you think of and why?
- Do you like your sex romantic or do you enjoy the thrill of anonymity? Why do you think this is?
- How do you feel about anal sex? If you enjoy it, is it entirely because you like the feeling or is there something else?
I don't expect anyone to answer these questions in the comments -- it's very personal, and I feel like a bunch of people being completely honest about their physical types would cause a huge kerfuffle -- but I do think they're important things to think about.
Suggestions for more things to consider are welcome.
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You're making an awfully big assumption, which is that people have had sex or will in the future. I don't have a favorite position or any of that, because I have never had sex and likely never will, and not by choice.
So yes, I've examined. I've learned once again that evolutionary biology wants me to get out of the human race. Thanks for that.
"You're making an awfully big assumption, which is that people have had sex or will in the future."
I'm not so sure nattles_thing is making that assumption...
"I don't have a favorite position or any of that, because I have never had sex and likely never will, and not by choice."
I've never had sex and likely never will, and not by choice, and since it's not by choice (unless you count the choice to never try to have sex with a guy against his will) I still do have a favorite position. After all, I've thought about what I'd like to do if I ever have sex and discovered which ideas (including the idea of being in one position or another) turn me on and which turn me off.
Kate, I see what you're getting at, but I read the original post as having the underlying assumption that it is aimed at vanilla people who have sex or will have sex and kinky people who are in the same boat and haven't examined. I don't think this amounts to ignoring asexual or disabled people, or wanting you to disappear. It's just a post about sex. It's difficult to apply every post to every person.
I'd also like to call out that a lot of the language in this assumes heterosexuality/heterosexual activity.
I made an effort to get around that by asking questions that could apply to both gay and straight men and women. I am aware that not all the questions apply to everybody. I am a heterosexual female and I'm aware it shows. (I wrote this while suffering from terrible insomnia, so now it shows a lot more than I thought it did.) All the questions apply to both heterosexual men and women and most of them could be applied to homosexual men or women as well. I'm sorry if I framed them in a way that made them seem exclusively heterosexual.
(And to clarify, although no one has specifically asked -- when I say "sex" I mean any kind of sexual activity. I include oral sex and sex between people of the same gender.)
What questions would you suggest adding to make this less heteronormative?
The only one that occurred to me immediately after I submitted was strap-on play among lesbians, and I'm sorry I didn't include it.
We're not all sexually active, young straight women, believe it or not!
I don't think that you (the general "you") need to be sexually active or straight for this to apply. Some of the questions are written in a heteronormative manner, and some of the questions are specific to sexually active people, and that is problematic, but many of them could be applied to fantasies about anyone.
(Possible TMI, but...) I'm not sexually active and I really have no plans to be any time in the foreseeable future, but I know I'm not a fan of lingerie; just because I'm not putting that into practice doesn't mean it's not something that isn't worth examining why I don't like it.
All of these can apply to sexually active straight women. That's true.
All of them can also apply to heterosexual men. Most of them can also apply to gays and lesbians -- the only exclusively heterosexual one is the one about tit jobs, and I suppose even that could vary depending on the gender identity of the people involved.
I didn't think about this in terms of people who aren't sexually active, and in retrospect that was a bad thing to omit. (Although really, I'm thinking more about what people want to be doing than what they are doing, because not everyone acts on all the things they fantasize about it. I'm into examining vanilla desires rather than vanilla actions.)
I don't know where you're getting "young" from. Old people can (and do) do all the things on this list.
I'll agree that the questions posed are all pretty heteronormative, but I would guess that's maybe part of the poster's point?
Straight, relatively "vanilla" people don't generally have to give their own sexuality or sexual preferences much thought or self-examination because they are assumed to be the normal, baseline sexual activity from which other things deviate. It seems to me that LGBTQ individuals or "kinky" people are constantly forced by those around them and by society in general to justify and analyze their own sexuality, while other people aren't. Perhaps the original poster is saying we should try questioning and analyzing the social and cultural meanings implicit in these "average" sexual activities in the same way we often do with kinkier ones? (That's how I interpreted this exercise, anyway!)
That's exactly the impression I took from it. It's turning the, "But have you examined??" question back around on the people who are least likely to have been asked that question, namely straight, "vanilla" people (I use ""s to mirror the OP). No one is EVER asked, "So, why do you think you're into the missionary position with people of the opposite sex? Have you ever really thought about that?"
That's just what I got out of it as well - that it was specifically intended as questions for those who DO fall into stereotypical norms and thus have less cause and less pressure to question or examine their own sexuality.
I've always kind of thought that, vanilla or not, hetero, partnered, sexual behaviors that most conform to the man-as-active-and-in-charge and woman-as-passive-sexual-object meme are those that merit the most scrutiny. And this is simply because it's more likely than not that it was simply inherited whole-scale from the cultural context. Which isn't necessarily problematic. But it seems to me that unquestioningly adopting all the ways of feeling/thinking/behaving/desiring that belong to your gender and sexual orientation in your culture is very limiting and also serves to reinforce and reproduce these very conceptions.
And this doesn't apply only to sex. It also applies to how we interact with members of the opposite sex in general (when women always defer to men both verbally and physically, and by apologizing a lot, for instance), our clothing and cosmetic choices, our career choices, etc. I must admit that I'm one of those people who has to suppress the urge to roll my eyes when a female undergrad waxes eloquent about how she's majoring in education because she wants to work with kids and help people and whatever. It's not that I don't respect teachers or think that's a valid career choice. But I do think that going into college girls know that it's one of the accepted default careers for women, and it's an easy choice that doesn't buck the system or challenge them in any way (compared to say, majoring in engineering, where they'll be in the minority and will often experience a hostile environment). I'm not saying I despise them for taking the easy way out and conforming to the mold, but I certainly don't respect them for it either. That being said, I realize that some women will legitimately like teaching and be really good at it, and some little girls might legitimately love pink and princesses outside of the fact that they're told repeatedly every day that they're supposed to. The problem is, we'll never know who they are, because they're lost in a sea of conformists who are enacting the script because it's easier and it's never occurred to them to act any differently.
So I guess I don't think anybody has an obligation to examine their preferences and choices. But being self-reflective and aware of the impact of your culture on your development and your worldview is a feminist approach to the world, in my view.
I think that people do have an obligation to examine their preferences, particularly those who are considered the, er, "norm." In this case, "vanilla" vs. "kinky," but in any binary of power vs. oppression. I think that's kind-of the point of this article. Another example would be hereosexuality vs. homosexuality. I've seen a lot of stuff (not here, but in the world at large) about the "cause" of homosexuality, but not really anything about the "cause" of heterosexuality (vs., say, bisexuality - there's an obvious need for reproduction, but that doesn't mean attraction has to be a one-way street).
Also, are you a teacher? If not, you really shouldn't be saying it's the "easy way out." My mother is a retired public school teacher, and d'you wanna know something? It's hard. It's harder than a non-teacher can possibly believe; I'm sure I only understand a fraction of the crap she had to deal with and being all "blah, blah, it was the easy way out!" only does a disservice to some seriously hardworking, hideously underpaid, amazingly important people. Being an engineer might be hard, too, but at least the pay is decent and you don't have anyone telling you that you're slackin' off on your feminist duties by doing something that you're passionate about (and does a lot of good for the community). (My mother, for the record, was a math teacher AND a member of "Wages for Housework." It's exactly what it sounds like. She did not become a teacher because it was the easy way out, she became a teacher because she wanted to, you know, teach.) It's almost as if you're implying that she's a bad role model for choosing a career as a teacher instead of an engineer.
Short version: teaching is hardly the career people turn to when they're looking for the easy way out. I mean, you wouldn't deride nursing students for being nurses instead of doctors, would you?
Last, and least, as a college student myself, I do object to your use of "college girls." We're grown-ups, thanks, and the use of "college girl" (vs. "college woman") is infantalizing and I think something we're supposed to be working against.
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your point and/or responded with more force than was strictly necessary, but the teacher thing is an annoyance of mine.
Actually I teach at the college level. And I used to teach at the alternative high school. And here's what I see everyday. A girl with lots of potential arrives on campus, chooses a major, has a bit of trouble for one reason or another, feels a bit of self-doubt, and wonders if she should switch her major to education. Instead of encouraging her to pursue her first passion, everybody jumps on the idea that she should be a teacher. They pat her on the back and rave about how committed teachers are, how hard they work, etc. Which I agree with. But NOBODY is shuffling male students off on this track. When a male student struggles people tend to encourage him to keep trying, but it doesn't even occur to him to switch to education. WHY? That's all I'm saying.
Incidentally, while I was teaching at the alternative school the school counselor would routinely offer the available slots in the math and computer classes at the local CC to boys, and only offer the CNA (lowest paid nurse) certification courses to the girls. I'm serious. I had to threaten to report them for a title IX violation before they started offering all the classes to everyone. And although this practice is less common, the attitude is very, very common, and kids are submerged in it from a very early age. When my niece was in second grade she said she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher or a fire fighter. Her teachers raved and raved about how she wanted to be a teacher! They simply fucking ignored her other interests. You don't think kids get the message when this kind of shit happens repeatedly? I give them more credit than that.
I'm sorry if it seems to you that I'm disresepcting teachers. I'm not. But the default "decision" by so many girls to go into the lower paid "nurturing" type of jobs is a real issue in our culture, and I won't stop pointing it out.
And yes, I do think there's a problem when female pre-med students are "encouraged" to switch to nursing. Big, big, big problem.
So it seems that what you have a problem with isn't the students themselves, which is what your first post sounds like, but the system that encourages girls to go for lower paid, more nurturing jobs at the expense of other career interests. Is that correct?
Exactly.
Not to derail, but your comments here about this phenomenon are dead on. And frankly, they helped me examine my life plan and those of my peers. I know this issue is a little controversial, but I'd like to see it get community post treatment.
A few years ago, as an art major, I decided to put my goal of being the world's greatest painter in a box, and announced my plan to become an elementary art teacher, expecting to get a warm Thank-you-for-saving-the-world reaction from my family (where the women are generally teachers and the men are generally lawyers). After all, this is how my female friends were received as they one by one put their World's-Greatest-Whatever goals away and glided into education and nursing programs.
But to my surprise, everyone talked to me about how draining teaching would be, how much cleanup and busywork it would take, and how "you have to get the energy from the kids to be a good teacher." I ran into a lot of gendered opposition and obstacles and, well, flash forward three years, and what am I doing? I'm in law school.
And my female feminist cohorts in college? Teachers, nurses, seamstresses, etc. So we aren't quite the gender-crushing crusaders we imagined ourselves to be (it has actually become a private joke). And yet, every single one of us is in love with our individual career choices (and we say "look at how much good we can do as FEMINIST teachers, nurses and lawyers!"). But suddenly, I can't shake the feeling that something is amiss if a bunch of radical-minded feminists ended up choosing the cards the patriarchy dealt for us at birth.
None of this is to say that teaching or nursing (or hell, even lawyering) are lesser careers, but they are well-worn gendered paths with soft landings we've been taught to aim for.
Exactly! And I love the comments about cleanup and busywork, which nobody mentions to female students, because women are supposed to be "naturally suited" to this kind of stuff! It makes steam come out of my ears!!! Either that or I've had too much coffee this morning.
And one of the things that bugs me so much about this is that many people end up in careers for which they're poorly suited. One student at the alternative school had agreed to take the CNA courses after talking to the counselor, and she was the least nurturing/empathetic person I knew. So I was like "nursing would be an awful career for her!" However, she did great in the web authoring class I taught, had a quick, biting wit, and was very independent and somewhat impervious to peer pressure. So my instinct was to encourage her to try a couple of the introductory level IT courses, since she seemed to enjoy that kind of thing and would probably do well in a field where women are in the minority. And I'm sure there are many men who do tend to be nurturing and empathetic, but get discouraged from teaching and nursing because it's not manly enough. What a shame that people can't base their career choices on their personalities and their interests!
And I agree, as I said in my first comment, that examining your preferences is a feminist act. But that's different from telling other people they have an obligation to do so, as many have said on various BDSM posts, which is what the OP is referring to.
"It's harder than a non-teacher can possibly believe"
Unless that non-teacher was paying attention while she or he was a student, thought "wow, teachers don't just have to know the subjects they teach, they have to know public speaking, they have to know crowd control, they have to look 'good enough' to win at least a bit of respect from the class instead of having children ignoring them and getting low grades later or adults marking them low on end-of-semester evaluations then having their employers call them bad at teaching, I don't have all of what it takes to be a teacher..."
I don't think anyone has an obligation to examine -- with the exception of people who think other people have an obligation to do so.
I also think that a surprising number of very vanilla sex acts do have something to do with power -- I know Dan Savage has said something about all fantasies being about power, and the more I think about it the more I agree -- and by your definition that makes them in need of scrutiny.
Anyone who is interested in examining BDSM needs to be interested in examining vanilla. Otherwise, you're examining without context -- you don't go studying eastern diamondback rattlesnakes without knowing something about biology. This leads to some very flawed conclusions, and it's extremely othering to boot.
I also think that a surprising number of very vanilla sex acts do have something to do with power
Agreed, and that's exactly why they're interesting from a feminist perspective.
I am sitting here cackling with glee at the turnaround. (My housemates are looking rather alarmed.) I'm not a kinky person, but I am asexual and honestly, after the n+1th time that someone goes "But why? Did you experience some kind of trauma as a child? *I* think you did. If you don't agree, you must be repressing. Or you're really gay but don't want to admit it! That must be it!" I really want to turn around and make *them* do all the soul-searching they're trying to heap onto me. So I love this idea. Loooove.
Should add (I pressed submit too soon) that, joking aside, I completely agree with examining your desires often being fun, interesting and having unexpected results. For instance, I've a good idea of how my fantasies tie into my being asexual; this has done wonders for my feeling I have a proper, fully developed sexuality in my own right and am not "broken" or unfinished in some way (internalisation sucks, I tell you).
The clincher, of course, is that it happens on *your* terms.
This is just as condescending and insulting as asking 'kinky' people if they've examined their behaviors. Fighting fire with fire never works.
No, I think self-examination is good for everyone.
I agree. But why do we have to assume a specific group of people has not done so, and then instruct them to do it, and how?
We don't. It's obnoxious.
I feel like that's really the point of this entry. It's saying "If you want kinky people to examine, examine yourself first." People assume kinky folks haven't examined, which is really what gets us kinky folks because, believe me, we have. I don't think there's anything wrong with examination, as long as it is done respectfully and equally.
Out of curiosity - why the apostrophes around the word kinky?
If the OP had just left it at that, it would be different. But s/he clearly spent a lot of time writing what s/he would like other people to do.
I put 'kinky' in scare quotes because I don't buy into the whole notion of 'vanilla' vs. 'kinky' kinds of sex-- I think it's very subjective and definitely on a continuum.
I liked this post up until the "homework" part which I agree is obnoxious.
But I think the overall message is a good one. It's simply pointing out that people rarely question vanilla desires and that it can be an enlightening thing to do.
In S&M conversations, even the more respectful anti-BDSMers ask for examination. It's not always in the obnoxious way I'm describing, but there's always a lot of talk about how sexuality isn't above examination, sexuality is influenced by society, we should look at how that happens.
I don't think sexuality is above examination, as long as said examination is respectful. Since sexuality is so personal, I don't think that individual preferences can be examined very effectively by anyone other than the individual.
I agree that we should all examine our sexualities, just as we should examine all parts of our lives. But telling X group of people they need to do it, and telling them how... that's condescending. Something like "I think we should all examine our desires and here's a list that might be helpful" would have been a better way to go about this. You could even specifically mention people who have 'vanilla' sex. But to address it like this... not cool.
I'm sorry if I came off as condescending. As I've mentioned upthread, I wrote this at seven in the morning because I had insomnia. There are a lot of things I would have changed if I'd written it after having slept.
That said, kinky people have had this kind of thing thrown at us fairly regularly for a very long time without any kind of caveat, and I don't think it's at all unfair to specifically target this at vanilla people.
"That said, kinky people have had this kind of thing thrown at us fairly regularly for a very long time without any kind of caveat, and I don't think it's at all unfair to specifically target this at vanilla people."
If you don't see the logical failure there, I'm loathe to point it out.
Good to know (seriously) that you would have changed some things here, though.
What's the issue? I found this post to be very much akin to the "Unpacking the Knapsack of Privilege" posts.
Kinksters are constantly having these kinds of questions put to them with nary a second thought. It's annoying, condescending and presumptuous.
Do you think these questions are annoying, condescending and presumptuous? Good... then I think this post was successful. And I hope other people take this sentiment away from it to.
Asking "Vanilla" people these kinds of questions can be rude and condescending.
Asking "Kinky" people these kinds of questions can be rude and condescending.
We've examined. For reals.
Lots of people are of the opinion that it's cool if we tell kinksters to examine themselves because they deviate from some standard and "maybe it's because of patriarchy" or "maybe you're fucked up somehow"... and you see it alllllll over the feministing threads.
And that, is annoying.
Food for thought, indeed. I have nothing to add. I can hear my brain chomping away as I write...
Another point is that I think it's interesting how if you are practicing vanilla, heterosexual sex, you're not encouraged to consider at all sides of you that might be kinky. I'm not saying that all vanilla people are, but I think that some of us are kinky, and yet end up in vanilla situations because that's just how it goes. Maybe that doesn't make a lot of sense. Personal example:
So I'm a fairly kinky lesbian, but my first sexual relationship was with a guy. Both of us virgins, him vanilla as the day is long. Now even when I identified as bisexual, I wasn't into a *ton* of submission with guys, but I would have liked for him to, for example, hold my wrists down, or something very tame like that. I could not for the life of me ask. I couldn't even ask for oral sex, or for kissing below the mouth. But no one was encouraging me to ask for anything more. I was in a "normal," vanilla, heterosexual relationship where all the sex was man on top and in a bed, where the guy has an orgasm, the girl doesn't, and everything's nifty-super. (I know this isn't what all vanilla sex is like, I'm just talking about a particular variety). The boyfriend certainly didn't think to ask or suggest that I might have particular desires other than the same-old. And as a lesbian, the same thing is a problem. I know I'm kinky, but the only surefire way to meet kinky people is play parties and other BDSM events, and I'm not comfortable there because I'm not into casual sex. Fortunately, dating websites make it a little easier, but on the whole it's always more likely that I will end up in a relationship with a girl and *then* have to express preferences.
So what I'm saying is, I think it would be nice just to foster a general environment of openness and encouraging partners to talk about sex, no matter what their position on the vanilla/kinky continuum.
You really don't need to engage in casual sex or play to hang out with the other kinksters. If there's a munch or similar gathering in your area, that's a meetup specifically designed so people can just chill out together, without the expectation of play or sex. Sometimes people do end up hooking up with people they meet there, and sometimes they end up in long term relationships, but that's not the purpose. The purpose is just to meet people and spend time with them in an environment that is not sexually charged.
If you're not comfortable with that either, though, that's understandable (a lot of people aren't necessarily interested in being part of a BDSM 'scene,' even if they're kinky) -- just wanted to point out that many, many groups run a specifically non-meat-market meetup.