Girl on the Net

I’m absolutely gleeful about today’s guest post, team! And not just because it has one of the best closing lines of any guest blog I’ve ever published, but also because the message is something we could all do with hearing. We have all been given various cultural scripts about what sex is and how we should be doing it, often feeling like we’re ‘doing sex wrong’ if things don’t happen for us the way they do for characters in porn, TV, films, and elsewhere in our cultural stories. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you’ll know that un-learning these scripts (unpicking, unpacking, dismantling, rewriting) is a valuable thing to do in order to embrace our true desires. But how the hell does one go about doing that? Today’s fabulous guest blogger explains her search for good sex…

“You’re doing sex wrong!”

About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to have more sex.

Being something of a goal-oriented overachiever, I came up with a plan: I would treat sex like any other hobby I enjoyed. I would read more sexy books. I would talk about it with sexy people online. I’d learn new sexy things. And most importantly, I’d try it all at home.

This plan has led to me discovering the joys of masturbating in the shower. I find myself laying under the warm water, body shaking, back arching, mouth open. I’m captivated by how much silkier and heavier the liquid between my legs is than the water on my stomach. I want to write poems about the sheer joy of my orgasms.

So many orgasms.

Here’s the catch, though. As glorious as they are, my orgasms never felt like explosions, or shattering, or any of the other euphemisms they used in those smutty books I read. What got me there never seemed to be what I saw in porn. Those orgasms take work.

And that inevitably leads to a little voice in the back of my head whispering “hey, you’re doing it wrong.”

After 40 years of living in a cis woman’s body, you’d think that voice would no longer surprise me. It has always been slithering into my brain, ready to pounce on any gap between my expectations and my experiences. I hadn’t realized it could still be speaking up while the rest of me was focused on feeling good.

What Sex Is Supposed To Be

We all learn What Sex is Supposed To Be from somewhere, be it partners or porn, and I’m no exception. The culture I grew up in is simultaneously prudish and prurient, teaching women to be sexy but not sexual. My sex ed classes spent more time on pregnancy than pleasure, and the patriarchy always centered the penis.

Those lessons created a weight I didn’t know I was carrying. For all that we have (mostly) accepted that women also enjoy sex, there’s still a very strong narrative about how that sex should be done.

Take those smutty books I enjoy so much. Your average hetero sex scene will go like this:

First he’ll get her off, with his hands or his mouth or a combination of the two. He’ll get the pressure and the speed just right; that’s how we know he’s the best lover she’s ever had. She won’t be able to stop herself.

Then, they’ll have p-in-v intercourse, because it doesn’t really count as sex without penetration. She’ll come again. Maybe someone will get a hand on her clit, maybe not, because it’s all about that penis magic.

Finally, her second orgasm will “send him over the edge,” and he’ll come inside her. They collapse together in simultaneous bliss.

There’s no learning curve, no getting-to-know-you fondle. It’s hands and mouths and stroking, chased with some good old-fashioned pounding. I’m a fan of all those things, but they still aren’t going to get me off as reliably as my trusty magic wand.

I get that these are fantasies, since these books are clearly fiction. Still, they still add up to a specific story about sex. It’s hard not to start thinking that multiple orgasms are the norm, or that that you shouldn’t need a vibrator to help you get there. Everyone orgasms, every time, so clearly you should too. Anything else is clearly your failing.

My search for good sex

The first time I picked up a male/male romance, my main reaction was relief. There was no pressure for me in the sex scenes, no orgasms-per-encounter meter ticking in the background. I could just read about two people making each other feel good. I could just think of things I’d also like to try.

One of the best parts of this project to enjoy sex more is that it led me to some distinctly pervy corners of the internet. Not the kind with the hot local singles waiting for my call – the ones with bodies of all shapes, sizes, configurations and interests. The parts of the internet where they talk about everything from piss sluts to pup play to chastity cages without holding back.

Not everything that comes across my timeline does it for me, and I love that. Exhibitionists aside, they aren’t posting this stuff for a viewer. They’re posting it because it makes them horny, and because they like it. Sometimes, other users like it too.

These corners of the internet remind me just how varied sex is. It’s all so much wilder, hotter, dirtier, and downright stranger than some hetero sex scene in a novel. It’s things I never imagined but now want to do.

I see users flaunting their tummies after a lifetime of trying to make mine smaller. I see users enjoying things that can only be achieved in sketches because human bodies don’t live up to their desires. And I see their fellow users accepting and encouraging it.

It’s pretty fucking amazing.

It’s proof that no matter what the voice in my head tries to tell me, there’s no ‘right’ way to have sex. Sex is whatever one or more consenting adults want it to be, not something that has to be sanitized into conformity. Sex is profound. Sex is raunchy. Sex is something you do on a Thursday because you’re bored.

Sex is fun.

It took this project for me to notice how insidious those early messages really were. I don’t regret my past partners, but I do regret how much I worried about their experience over my own. I still have to remind myself to extend the same non-judgement I have for others to my own body.

I’m going to keep masturbating in the shower. I’ve started seeking out more inclusive and queer things to read. Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to post pictures to those pervy corners of the web myself.

Whatever I do, it won’t be wrong. Good sex is whatever makes my body sing.