July 28, 2010

Ever since hearing you say on your podcast that all men use porn, I have had a burning question: What about us women? If all men get a pass to have this whole other sex life, which is (mostly) external to their partnerships and is sexually satisfying, then I think all women should have a pass as well. Ideally, it would be a pass to enjoy something universally arousing to all women, something that would sexually satisfy us, but it wouldn’t be something that turns most men on; perhaps it might even repulse them.

If there were something that met my criteria, I wonder how it would play out in our relationships? Also, I am not sure what it could be, as women are a little bit more complicated.
Desires Erotic Balance

Something women enjoy but men do not… something erotic… a free pass for just the ladies… something that repulses most men…

Cupcakes?

The now-ubiquitous cupcake isn’t explicitly sexual, I realize, but our culture does encourage people—women in particular—to sublimate their erotic desires by stuffing their faces with food. And most of those squat, round, and pink-frosted things look, to my jaded eyes, like so many squat little cocks, DEB, so many growers-not-showers with pink sprinkles, and most of those cupcocks are inhaled by women. So, cupcakes.

But if cupcakes don’t do it for you, DEB, then how about a free pass to enjoy, eyedunno, maybe porn?

“We’re actually in the middle of a porn-for-women revolution as millions—yes, millions—of women are loudly, even proudly, proclaiming their interest in porn,” says Violet Blue, author, blogger, activist, and tireless foe of anti-porn boneheads everywhere. If you were reading Blue’s blog—tinynibbles.com—you would know that one out of every three consumers of Internet porn are female, according to a Nielsen NetRatings report released in 2007.

“What’s interesting isn’t just the growing number of women using porn,” says Blue, “it’s that they’re doing exactly what DEB suggests. It’s part of their own private sex lives that are mostly external to their relationships; they’re using porn as reliably as their favorite vibrators.”

What women have lacked up to now is the same “free pass” men enjoy.

“Guys are encouraged to have this other sex life with porn,” says Blue, “that’s seen as normal and healthy. But despite the numbers, our culture is having a hard time admitting that women like porn. Anti-porn feminists ignore the female viewer. The only people, besides Oprah, acknowledging the female viewer are the anti-porn Christians who see it (and female masturbation) as a disease they can cure!”

Blue directs female porn consumers to Our Porn, Ourselves (ourpornourselves.org).

“On OPO, women are talking about liking all kinds of porn, even stuff that goes too far for some guys,” says Blue. “Women are making each other feel comfortable about their newfound access to porn, openly having their desire to watch sex (and jack off to it) validated the same way that guys do.”

Does being GGG require her to be a good actress, or does it require me to pretend that I believe her when she claims she enjoys the three-ways we have together?
Is This A Silly Problem?

This isn’t a silly problem, ITASP, not at all.

Open relationships only work—closed relationships only work—when they make both people happy. You’re not happy, ITASP, which means your open relationship isn’t working.

Time to renegotiate terms.

Tell the wife to stop fucking other people for a while. (And, yes, you should have the authority to do that—both partners in an open relationship should be able to call a time-out.) If your wife balks, concede that there are lots of hot guys out there who want to fuck her and that you’re asking her to pass up on some opportunities for hot sex. Then remind her that you’re the guy she married, that you’re the guy she’s hoping will stick around once hot guys aren’t lining up to get in her pants anymore, and that there will still be hot guys out there who want to fuck a year from now.

While you’re not fucking other people, fuck each other, fuck a lot, work to reestablish your sexual connection.

Then when you’re ready to start fucking other people again—and you’re not ready until you’re both ready—your wife should agree that over the next year, she will fuck only guys who are interested in fucking you both. That’s going to mean passing up on some hot guys who are only into her, of course, but that’s a sacrifice she should be willing to make in order to save her marriage. It also means that she’ll have to work harder to find hot guys who are into you both—do whatever you can to help—but she’s likelier to make that extra effort if it’s the only way she gets to fuck a hot guy who isn’t her husband.

Hopefully by the time your three-way-or-the-highway year is up, ITASP, you’ll have a few regular thirds on deck—hot guys who are into you both, guys your wife won’t have to pretend with—and then she can do some solo adventuring without shredding your self-esteem in the process.

My kinks aren’t interesting, NR, and my marriage vows specifically forbid me from disclosing that sort of information.

Here’s something interesting: “A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew,” the Guardian reported last week. After the dude “introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship,” the two “had consensual sex in a nearby building.” The woman went to the cops to report that she had been raped only after she learned that the man wasn’t Jewish.

Now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with one-night stands, or with being a slut, or with fucking the shit out of a guy you’ve only just met (that’s how I met my husband), but I gotta say: When we have consensual sex with strangers—when we go home or to “a nearby building” with someone we’ve only just met—we’re not just taking a chance on a person we know very little about. We’re taking a chance on our own bullshit detectors. And no one’s bullshit detectors are 100 percent accurate. So someone who can’t bear the thought of accidentally fucking an Arab or a Republican or a married man or a guy who makes less than $250,000 a year really has no business fucking strangers. That person owes it to himself/herself to get to know people a bit better before visiting any nearby buildings with them.

Not because it’s okay to lie. But because people do lie.