This opinion piece on The Week discusses MeToo and how it relates to the performative nature of what’s considered attractive for women and heterosexual sex and it’s focus on male pleasure. I found it a really enlightening connection to make and thought it would be really interesting to discuss here. I’ll also cross-post a link on Savage Love later this evening as I’m sure it would lead to some interesting discussion. This didn’t quite feel right in the OT or the PT but I’ll link to this in both.
Trigger warning for the piece as it discusses rape, harassment, coerced and painful sex.
http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure
Two highlights for me:
“The old implied social bargain between women and men (which Andrew Sullivan calls “natural”) is that one side will endure a great deal of discomfort and pain for the other’s pleasure and delight. And we’ve all agreed to act like that’s normal, and just how the world works.”
“One side effect of teaching one gender to outsource its pleasure to a third party (and endure a lot of discomfort in the process) is that they’re going to be poor analysts of their own discomfort, which they have been persistently taught to ignore.
In a world where women are co-equal partners in sexual pleasure, of course it makes sense to expect that a woman would leave the moment something was done to her that she didn’t like.
That is not the world we live in.”