One year ago I wrote about my vagina and men’s opinions of it. Things have not improved.
When I was in my 20s and already a
doctor, I still let my sexual partners believe they were the experts in
female anatomy, despite the fact that I was studying to be an OB/GYN.
These men would tell me things that were untrue and I would count
ceiling tiles while they fumbled around in the wrong ZIP code, if you
know what I mean.
Instead of
correcting them, I just nodded and faked my share of orgasms because I
prioritized men feeling comfortable over my own sexual pleasure.
It’s
enraging that faking orgasms to satisfy a man’s sexual script has not
been confined to the trash heap of bad history. Studies tell us
that up to 67 percent of women who have experienced penile-vaginal
intercourse have faked orgasms. All for reasons painfully familiar to
me: not wanting to hurt my male partner’s feelings, knowing I won’t be
listened to, feeding his ego or simply wanting the sex to end.
We rarely talk openly about what’s required for a woman to have a good sexual experience, and so many heterosexual women learn the mechanics of sex and female orgasms from movies (most of which are written, directed and produced by ... men). What I like to call the three-strokes-of-penetration-bite-your-lip-arch-the-back-and-moan routine.
As if.
The
other place women learn the mechanics of heterosexual sex? From the
least educated person — a male partner who, statistically speaking,
likely induced many fake orgasms.
More than once
I’ve had a male partner ask to have his female partner’s clitoris
pointed out during a gynecological exam. While it’s great that he’s
interested, I also think, “Come on, dude, you’ve been together for 10
years and you’re asking me?”
So
I smile, give him an anatomy lesson and point out that he was with the
local expert all along. It’s no wonder that the joke about men being
unable to ask for directions never gets old for women.
Women deferring to men about most things is infuriating enough, but about their most intimate body parts?
We need the patriarchy out of the bedroom as much as we need it out of the boardroom.
Many
years ago I decided to take back my body and claim my confidence. This
was about both owning my years of education and accepting only a worthy
male partner. A man truly interested in learning what I like.
I
learned that a healthy conversation starts early on in the sexual
encounter and may include “Tell me what’s working for you.” Or even
better: “Show me what you like.”
If those conversations were unnerving to my partner or not accepted, well, thank you, next.
As
I began to think about how women often prioritize their sexual
responses to please men, I looked at other aspects of gynecology with
that in mind. And once you start viewing every discussion we have about
the female body from the perspective of how it
advances the patriarchy or how it pleases men you can’t un-see it.
It is a red pill.
Consider
vaginal discharge. Even though urinary incontinence is far more common a
problem, it’s discharge that brings women to the office in tears. It’s
discharge that is referred to, and something else I can only describe as vaginal mayhem, in absurd articles about “winter” or “summer” vagina.
Articles designed to prey on intimate fears about intimate places — as
if the vagina, an internal structure that is capable of handling
menstrual blood and stretching and even tearing to deliver a baby, is
constantly one drop of water or wrong pair of underwear away from total
meltdown.
One or two milliliters of normal discharge — a sign of a healthy
There is a ridiculous myth that vaginas
should be abnormally tight for sexual pleasure, which is the
justification for so-called vaginal rejuvenation. As if the tightness of
virginity is somehow desirable to women. And every OB/GYN I know has
been asked by a man to sew his female partner “extra tight” after she
has split open to deliver his baby. Sometimes they are joking.
Sometimes
they are not.
Women are so worried
about their labia minora (inner lips) protruding beyond their labia
majora (outer lips) that they are requesting surgery even though 50
percent of women are built this way. They are requesting labial
reduction even though the labia minora is a sexually responsive body
part that plays a role in orgasms.
Yes, I’m angry with men. The things I
have heard women cry about — things told to them by men — are weighing
more heavily on me as I age because they’re not going away. If anything,
it feels to me as if the anxieties are increasing.
Social
media likely plays a part: the growing number of platforms where women
can be subjected to unattainable — and unhealthy — standards. Equally
nefarious is the possible profit motive: doctors benefiting financially
from women feeling badly about their anatomy, so that they undergo
unnecessary and understudied procedures.
I want all women — straight, gay or bisexual — to know that their sexual enjoyment is for themselves.
While it can be shared, for too long the sexual pleasure of women has
been defined by the expectations of a patriarchal society. If any man
(in my experience of listening to women, passing judgment on women’s
genitalia seems a uniquely male trait) is fortunate enough to see you
naked, the only questions he should actually have are how-to’s and “How
did I get this lucky?”
SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES