Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Hetero 101

Page: 1(2)3 4

*

17:11 / 08.05.06

Why are we talking so much about whether het women like giving oral sex, and not about whether het men like giving oral sex?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:12 / 08.05.06

Uh, kind of what Ill said. Not saying you're doing this, Megsy, but I do tend to find that "sexually repressed" is often code for "won't do what I want."

17:14 / 08.05.06

yeah, Ilmatic, you're right, and I apologise for the generalisation. I should have stressed that such impression comes only from my own personal experience ond should be limited to it. But, in my experience, the women who do not like oral sex indeed are the ones who seem to enjoy sex the least.

17:15 / 08.05.06

Not that I disagree with any of the above four posts, but perhaps we should take this out of the thread to avoid angry exchanges (however well-founded), pending a decision on what constitutes snark?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:16 / 08.05.06

Not that I don't agree with Illmatic's posts, but we've only just broken two pages and the low-snark's gone out of the window. Call the salvage team!

Having popped my head up to say that, I suppose I should contribute, so I'll answer (id)entity- that's a damn good point. Personally I do, inasmuch as I enjoy doing anything if it's pleasing the other person. My general rule is if you're not both having fun, then don't fucking bother. By the same token, if they're doing something to me that I get the impression they're not doing other than out of a sense of duty or whatever, it instantly becomes very unsexy indeed.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:18 / 08.05.06

(Ah, people have beaten me to my first paragraph. If stuff gets deleted, that- and this- can go too).

All Acting Regiment

17:20 / 08.05.06

I think, with regards to the "do women enjoy giving blowjobs" question, it's important to remember that the penis isn't just a tool for giving or receiving pleasure, it's a tool for disposing of waste- and the idea of males pissing is less taboo in our society than that of females pissing.

Therefore, the penis as concept is just as much about pissing as it is sex. Therefore, it's quite reasonable, I think, for someone to have misgivings about it- possibly along the lines of it being "dirty"- that they might not have about the vagina.

Now, you can argue all you want about how there aren't so many germs in urine or how the sebum alkaline produced on arousal neutralises the acid/kills off any remaining microbes in the urethra, but the idea of having a waste disposal unit in your mouth is still there. Someone might be OK with that or they might not, a bit like anilingus. That's obvious to me and I'm quite often surprised when it's not obvious to other het males.

17:20 / 08.05.06

I didn't realise this one was supposed to be low snark. It's not in the abstract or opening post.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:22 / 08.05.06

(Fair point... I guess I just assumed it was there).

17:22 / 08.05.06

Uh, kind of what Ill said. Not saying you're doing this, Megsy, but I do tend to find that "sexually repressed" is often code for "won't do what I want."

Mordant, you are also right, this does happen a lot. But, honestly, I don't do it. In fact, I like to believe that, during sex, I defer to my partner's desires. If I intended to please solely myself, I'd stay home and masturbate.

And (id), I cant't speak for everybody, but I really enjoy giving oral sex. In fact, I'd go as far as to say my favorite thing in het sex is "tongue-play" (not only oral sex per se, but I like licking - and eventually biting - skin). I can accept women who will not give me oral sex, no biggy, but women who would not let me giving them oral sex really turn me off big time. But that's just me.

All Acting Regiment

17:25 / 08.05.06

And just now I've thought of a question. Do women, when sleeping or sharing living/personal space with men, find them to have any habits that are repulsive?

All Acting Regiment

17:27 / 08.05.06

(Seem to have cross posted myself)

17:33 / 08.05.06

Actually, once more in more angry terms - every woman that you've slept with who choses not to give you a blowjob is sexually repressed? What the fuck? Can you not see how that is a really stupid fucking to say? Can't you just try thinking before you post?

Wow, nice seeing you too, man! Ok the, once more in more deffensive terms - I do see it is a stupid thing to say, but it is my personal experience. Not having oral sex is, as far I can tell, a very middle-class thing, and middle-class is the more repressed of all the classes, statistically speaking, around here. I know it doesn't fit your view of what the world is supposed to be. Heck, it doesn't fit mine either. But it is the (sad) true.

Disco is My Class War

17:42 / 08.05.06

Why is it that this thread already has 46 replies, although it was begun less than 2 hours ago, while the other 101 threads are in danger of falling off the page?

This is as low snark as I can possibly make it. I think it's a myth that people don't really talk about heterosexuality, that it's sort of invisible. I see it more like something that saturates nearly every discussion or conversation, sometimes invisibly, but at other times (like now) quite plainly. The things that are being discussed here could be in other threads. Indeed, they could spawn threads for decades, and they will -- of course, without the posts by people who might say, "Well, I'm not hetero, but my blah blah blah...."

So, three questions that issue from the really dumb part of me that doesn't understand:

Does anyone notice that this Hetero 101 thread includes 'everything'?

Why do heterosexual people like to talk about themselves so much?

and

What is heterosexuality? Is it purely a sexual thing? Is it a cultural practice, that includes the domestic behaviours of men that are found offensive by women? Is it a battle of the sexes [sic]? Is it biological?

Oh, and another one: Apart from reproduction, why are people heterosexual?

*

17:45 / 08.05.06

Meg, I think people here are seeing your diagnosis of "sexual repression" as something you can't possibly know or experience. You can only judge a person's behavior as being indicative of sexual repression based on what you observe through the lens of your own prejudice. In order to get at understanding what you are actually saying when you say someone is sexually repressed, we have to get at what prejudices of yours are leading you to that conclusion. what behaviors do you use to judge someone as being sexually repressed? She had a lower sex drive than you thought she should? based on what? She didn't like porn? She wouldn't do what you wanted to do in bed?

So it's not simply objectively true that the women who wouldn't give you blowjobs were sexually repressed. That's something you interpreted about their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Since you interpreted it, people are quite right to call it into question if something seems not right about it. Given the context of gendered power dynamics in sex and desire, I can say without interpreting too much that the effect of saying that women who don't give head are sexually repressed is to invalidate and control how they express their desires to the benefit of men. If you didn't intend that, take a second look.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:52 / 08.05.06

Mister Disco- I get your point, but I'd leaven it slightly with two observations-

a fair few of the posters in this thread AREN'T het-identifying

a lot of the posts in this thread are wildly off-topic.

17:55 / 08.05.06

Oh, and another one: Apart from reproduction, why are people heterosexual?

Well, there's one excellent question. I have to admit, I don't know. Up until joining Barbelith, I've never stopped to think about my (hetero)sexuality.

My therapist once said that it has to do with the "other". People are atracted to what's different from them in some way. If a boy - I'm using my gender as an example, but the same could be a girl as well - finds he fit his group (of boys) perfectly in his formative years, them he would not grow to be attracted to boys, and ends up attracted to girls, because they are "different". On the other hand, a boy who does not fit so well (different personality, interests, whatever) ends up being atracted to boys as well and goes to be bisexual or homosexual (if he really does not find anything in common with other boys, but does find something in common with girls).

I shoud stress this is not my theory, it's something that my therapist told me (she's a woman, btw, if it makes any difference). If you'd ask me, I'd go with a much simpler explanation, like, it's an aesthetic thing: I simply find women attractive, and not men. but that would be probably because I - as said above - never stopped to think about it.

17:55 / 08.05.06

Ganesh said something elsewhere about getting on very well with FTM traspeople as they've both had to think about how they relate to masuclinity in a way that straight people haven't. I think that thinking critically about your experience of gender and negoiating it's difficulties isn't part of most hetreo people's experience to the same degree - including mine - and this thread is showing this to be true, in that we've had some pretty pointless questions, and some uniformed sexist crap.

This is my major worry about the thread - there may be a really interesting discussion to be had about hetreo identity to be had, but a) (As Mr Disco points out) this catergory includes um, everything and b) as I've said, it gives people a licence to babble on inanely.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:00 / 08.05.06

thinking critically about your experience of gender and negoiating it's difficulties isn't part of most hetreo people's experience to the same degree

Totally. It's not something I've ever felt I had to consciously define myself as... I guess it's because societally it's the "default setting"- het until proven otherwise, I figure is the way society would have it.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

18:03 / 08.05.06

unDead, my observation is just that you're saying a lot of things that seem unsubstantiated or are at least lacking in nuance, and i don't necessarily think the "from personal experience" tag justifies the statements. for instance, i would feel perfectly justified in saying something like, "my artist boyfriends have tended to be more emotionally attuned from my point of view than my non-artist boyfriends," but not, "artists are more sensitive boyfriends than non-artists, in my personal experience." see the difference? one allows the reader to draw their own conclusions based on my anecdotal evidence, while the other puts my own generalized spin on things, putting down non-artists in the process.

in terms of the specific comment, i was more put off by how unexamined "sexually repressed" was bandied about as a term. i can think of a lot of reasons that a woman would not like performing oral sex, which could be put under the category of sexual repression, but come from vastly different sources.

for instance, a woman could have had a partner who repeatedly ignored her when she asked to be given warning before ejaculation. or there could have been a woman who had previously gotten an STD through oral sex, but does not like using condoms because rubber is yucky tasting. or a woman may not like the taste of pre-ejaculate, or a woman may have really strong gagging reflexes or a small throat or she may find the whole idea comical or she may come from a culture where oral sex is more intimate than penetrative sex (the Philippines where I"m from is a good example of this). All these reasons can be put under the rubric of "sexual repression," but does that mean they're not valid or must somehow be seen as unjustified?

*

18:05 / 08.05.06

So, I'm interested in hearing more about the determinedness of hetero relationships. It's already been asked, but it's a good topic to get back to, I think.

One of the interesting positive/negatives about being a queer trans man is that I don't have relationship models to follow. I don't see my kinds of relationships in the movies or whenever I go to the park on a sunny day. That leaves me a certain freedom to construct my relationships however my partners and I want to. On the other hand, we don't have a simple common vocabulary of relationship communication. There aren't hundreds of gay trans men asking questions similar to mine of every relationship columnist. It's damn hard to find a book about how to communicate with your non-trans partner written for trans men, or vice versa. And of course I can't necessarily learn about my kind of relationship from observing my parents. Some hetero people seem to use these kinds of resources in figuring out how relationships are "supposed to" work for them, but they also tend to restrict what kinds of relationships one can imagine structuring, for some people.

So how do you understand this trade-off? Do you appreciate having all these models around? When are they helpful and when are they irritating, confusing, or restrictive? How have you noticed your desires and your relationships being shaped by them?

Tryphena Absent

18:16 / 08.05.06

Why do heterosexual people like to talk about themselves so much?

I'm not sure that's a fair comment when this thread was suggested by Deva and GGM and that a lot of the people talking here are not heterosexual. Having said that I still find myself wondering what the point of it is. So far people have focused mainly on oral sex, something common to all sexualities that is a sexual preference.

Has anyone actually got anything to say about heterosexuality in and of itself?

do you feel that there is always a level of 'translation' in communication between men and women?

This is as relevant in the thread on bisexuality, probably more so because people have some basis for comparison between relationships with people of the same and opposite sex. There is always a level of 'translation' in any relationship, I've never found that the physical has any effect on this or even the type of relationship. The issue of translation is constantly eluded to in discourse about heterosexuality as if it's more difficult to talk to someone of the opposite sex about reeellattionships because they're fundamentally physically different and their brains must work differently too. It's a complete myth and the question doesn't belong here more than in Bi 101 because it assumes that people will be able to take that apart without having experienced difficult, uncommunicative relationships with people who identify as the same gender as them.

Sorry if that sounded aggressive- it wasn't meant to be at all. It's just a loaded question for me because I'm a "Sex and the City" delusion hater. I don't believe these gaps are experienced by people unless they're fictionalising in line with a culturally imposed ideal.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:18 / 08.05.06

I'd be interested in hearing from people--other than the het id'd in the crowd--what they think makes a heterosexual. I mean, where would you say queer stops and het starts?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:23 / 08.05.06

I think as far as the determined nature of het relationships go there are 2 sides.

On the positive side there is an established order of things, there is proper terminology for your partner at different stages of the relationship, and in most cases people grew up with examples of het relationships nearby. This leads to the negative side which is that many public (or private) examples of het relationships end badly.

I know my mothers 3 failed marriages (none to my dad, who I haven't seen in 24 years) 2 of which I witnessed led to a lot of my insecurities about relationships.

One thing I have noticed is that when I got engaged people started quoting divorce rates to me. As far as I know when my mother decided to marry for the 4th time, this time to a woman, nobody started talking to her about the failure rate of non-het partnerships.

I was going somewhere with this, but work has been interupting while I write it, so I have lost sight of my goals.

18:27 / 08.05.06

Nina, I was (and still am, when I get round to it) also going to post the 'translation' question in the Bi 101 thread, and ask about whether bi-id'd folks eroticized or had difficulties with gender difference in their opposite-sex encounters, so I agree with you that the issue isn't confined to heterosexuals one. I also agree that it's a myth - in fact, I was extremely careful to qualify my original post with lots of things about how these ideas circulate 'in popular culture' and 'in representations of heterosexuality'. What I asked was how that myth affects people in the different ways they negotiate and practice opposite-sex attraction and relationships. (I'd say that the heat of your response suggests that you do feel affected by that myth in some way...?)

Why do heterosexual people like to talk about themselves so much?

I'm not sure that's a fair comment when this thread was suggested by Deva and GGM and that a lot of the people talking here are not heterosexual.

I shouldn't be speaking for him, but I don't think Mister Disco was talking about this thread. I think he was talking about the culture at large, which really, really is full of heterosexual people talking about themselves.

18:31 / 08.05.06

unDead, my observation is just that you're saying a lot of things that seem unsubstantiated or are at least lacking in nuance, and i don't necessarily think the "from personal experience" tag justifies the statements. for instance, i would feel perfectly justified in saying something like, "my artist boyfriends have tended to be more emotionally attuned from my point of view than my non-artist boyfriends," but not, "artists are more sensitive boyfriends than non-artists, in my personal experience." see the difference? one allows the reader to draw their own conclusions based on my anecdotal evidence, while the other puts my own generalized spin on things, putting down non-artists in the process.

fair enough, I shall be more careful about it in the future.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

18:37 / 08.05.06

Do you appreciate having all these models around? When are they helpful and when are they irritating, confusing, or restrictive? How have you noticed your desires and your relationships being shaped by them?

I remember all the discussions about how legalized gay marriage helping gay people. I argued at the time that gay marriage would be so great for straight people, because it would expand the possible ways in which people could exist within marriage.

the funny thing is that i'm a total sucker for romantic comedies, even as another part of my brain resents all the assumptions about women needing men to feel complete, etc. these movies validate certain aspects of my experience, while at the same time espousing notions of sexual fidelity and desire for marraige that i'm also deeply suspicious of.

i'm glad that to a certain extent, living in new york allows me to have a broader sense of male / female interactions than in other places. but i do find the cultural assumptions limiting. for instance, i'm contemplating being involved in a non-monogamous relationship right now and as much as i hate it, the social implications of making that choice really do affect me.

so no straightforward answer to whether it's a fair tradeoff, though i do have to say that there are many times when i feel like the grass is greener on the gay side.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:37 / 08.05.06

Deva- you could be right about Mr D's post, actually. I just assumed the second question was following on from the first. Looking again, I may well have been wrong.

18:59 / 08.05.06

Mister Disco, you seem annoyed that there is a thread about heterosexuality at all, which is ironic since the thread down the page is about encouraging a het to start it.

As for,

Does anyone notice that this Hetero 101 thread includes 'everything'?

Hadn't really, no. That "everything" seems to leave out lots of stuff.

Why do heterosexual people like to talk about themselves so much?

This is back to the numbers, isn't it. Lots of heteros around, so lots of heteros talking. Am I wrong in thinking that you find this threatening? Because it is, I suppose, quite understandable if you do. But unless we decide to stop or limit heteros from posting, I'm not sure that there is much to be done.

What is heterosexuality? Is it purely a sexual thing? Is it a cultural practice, that includes the domestic behaviours of men that are found offensive by women? Is it a battle of the sexes [sic]? Is it biological?

I'm not sure that heterosexuality *has* to include the domestic behaviours of men that are found offensive by women, nor does it always involve a battle of the sexes. I'd say that it was part cultural and part biological....like much human behaviour.

Apart from reproduction, why are people heterosexual?

Because they feel like it. Not sure what sort of answer you are after, tbh, but asking a person to justify their sexual preferences always seems a bit silly to me. It more or less assumes that sexual preferences should be universal, in that they can be argued for in some objective manner to all.

19:20 / 08.05.06

Apart from reproduction, why are people heterosexual?

Because they feel like it. Not sure what sort of answer you are after, tbh, but asking a person to justify their sexual preferences always seems a bit silly to me. It more or less assumes that sexual preferences should be universal, in that they can be argued for in some objective manner to all.

Although I do agree with you, Lurid (the question seem to imply that heterosexuality is a "choice", which is a thesis gay people seem to strongly dismiss about their own orientation), I still think the question should be posted because it makes us hets examine our own un-examined suppositions about ourselves, which is something we, being part of the so-called "default orientation", do not do in a regular basis, as non-het people do...

19:29 / 08.05.06

I think the question is (probably deliberately) framed unhelpfully. The question that has arisen elsewhere, about the differences between being x-sexual, and identifying as x-sexual, is surely relevant here too. I am sure we can look at the idea that there is a difference between heterosexual desire (i.e., I suppose, the desire for a person of the opposite gender, operating within a binary gender system) and heterosexuality as a social and cultural system, within which people who identify as heterosexual might also have non-heterosexual desires or non-vanilla desires.

19:32 / 08.05.06

Well, I'd caution taking that as read, Megs, given your own admission re: the unexaminedness of your own sexuality... again you are making extremely broad judgents based on solely yr own experience.

19:41 / 08.05.06

Of course, there was one "I think" in the beginning of that phrase, and it applies to the entire sentence. Perhaps I should start using such expressions as "I think", "maybe" "IMHO" every time there's a coma.

(And I like vanilla, why does evrybody assumes it is dull? I mean, IMHO, it's the perfect ice-cream flavour to put some hot-fudge on it. No metaphor intended)

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:51 / 08.05.06

Apart from reproduction, why are people heterosexual?

Because the few people I've ever had sex with were (presumably still are) male, I'm in a relationship with a man who strongly prefers exclusive relationships and I feel that the world doesn't need yet another theoretically bisexual Goth. That's it really.

Tryphena Absent

19:53 / 08.05.06

I'd say that the heat of your response suggests that you do feel affected by that myth in some way...?

I do. I feel insulted by it and I think people should feel affected by it regardless of their sexuality because it goes beyond that. It's insulting to everyone because it assumes things about gendered groups of people. It's a terrible misreading of the way that women and men interact and it propogates the notion that there is a gender divide that is absolute and not constructed. It's rather like saying "I can't talk to this person because they have big ears and like the taste of artichokes and it makes me unable to understand their use of language." I mean, how did this become a recognised theme in society?

I did understand that you weren't propping it up in any way- it's the myth that I was reacting to, not you!

Page: 1(2)3 4