As for the pre-pubescent argument – meh, never took that shit seriously; I have boobs, unlike a child. Also, does that barb ever get thrown at men who prefer to shave their beards? No.

I repeated those sentiments about porn’s influence in my previous comments because that’s /exactly/ what I see affecting the relationships of the people I know. It’s something that women young, middle-aged, and elderly have complained to me about. They don’t always directly mention porn, but they do lament their partners’ porn-y expectations of them. It’s especially sad for me when I see straight married couples who’ve been together for a very long time suddenly having problems in their relationship because the guy has become hostile, hurtful, and/or just downright whiny about his wife’s appearance or unwillingness to try certain sex acts. Part of the problem in that is the fact that women can never feel safe no matter who they’re with. A guy can be nice for so long, then turn on you and start making demands on your body months, years, or decades later. There’s a sense of, “Okay, I like who I am and according to my longterm partner, so do they. But are they still going to love and desire me [when I age/if I change my physical appearance/if I stop doing all of these preening rituals that I don't really enjoy/if I don't do the thing he desires but hasn't explicitly asked me to do/if I say "no" to his sexual requests/etc]?” And the answer to those questions is way, way too often “no”. It’s easier for some of the women I know to reject a guy who seems like a douche from the start (we’ll call him Caterpillar Douche). But what do you do when your partner gradually becomes a douche and absolutely refuses to be respectful later on (Butterfly Douche)? And when subsequent partners (if you’ve left the Butterfly Douche) also turn out to be douches? Can we get a larger discussion going on that? It’s a really widespread problem and one that more men need to be aware of and, um, stop doing.

And where else did this trend for irritatingly-to-painfully removed pubic hair come from if not from porn? In our culture’s case, I don’t think we can directly blame the ancient upper class Egyptians or classical Greek sculpture, though I have heard men trying to mansplain it that way as though there is something “natural” about the systems through which we create and enforce harmful aesthetic demands on women’s bodies.

Maybe that is natural in the sense that humans everywhere have always created systems of oppression, but it’s just as natural to be attracted to a person’s body in its unaltered state. One way is not better than another, and the no-pube route is only problematic because people who make demands on other people’s bodies made it so. Though the irritation of shaving and excruciating pain of waxing I do also find problematic in their own rights. I’ve always been against anything that causes me discomfort for cosmetic purposes. There’s enough hassle and suffering in life, so why make it that much worse for myself? Also, having unaltered pubes is really erotic for me. I won’t be with someone who doesn’t feel enthusiastic about performing oral on me just as I am. And that /doesn’t/ mean I want them to do it when they don’t feel like it, just that they have to desire me as I am when they are in the mood. They have to want /me/. I wouldn’t ask my partner to alter their physical appearance, either. Your body is YOUR body. You have to accept people as they are and as they want to be. On the other hand, I don’t want to be fetishized for /having/ pubic hair, either, which can be another problem.

Also, back to the mansplainers’ argument… That’s not even an accurate argument. The Greeks removed the presence of pubic hair on statues of the gods because pubic hair was considered erotic and they didn’t want people to fantasize about the gods. So lack of carved marble pubes on classic sculpture = a religious value by which the gods were not to be sexualized for personal gratification. No Pubes wasn’t considered sexy; it was just a way of portraying people more modestly. And then that quickly got turned around and people started creating a hierarchy amongst women by valuing those who had or were portrayed as having no pubes (see art and courtesans in Anglo/European history) higher than lower class women who wouldn’t have had a social motivation or means to do the same. But then, in many cultures, women who are more tailored to a certain aesthetic are valued more than women who don’t do as much to alter their appearance. Just to go on a historical rant for a minute…

I get your point about Dan Savage and I do think that we have to take good advice where we can find it. But I would take the good advice and run. For me, one of the hallmarks of a good activist is someone who actually cares about how their work affects other people. If they are actively doing harm to other marginalized communities, then they either need to reform or we need to stop giving them kudos. And we need to put disclaimers on them when we do quote them so we don’t perpetuate the idea that their discrimination is acceptable. Things have changed since the Civil Rights Movement and second wave feminism. I expect a good activist to reflect on people’s concerns, actually apologize (and not one of those non-apologies), and commit to do better when they’ve done something discriminatory. Savage does just the opposite. He’s outrightly mocked the concerns of the marginalized people he’s discriminated against, and he discriminates against a LOT of people. Discrimination and the inability to check one’s privilege are not parts of a decent activist’s spiel.

Wow, I just realized how much I wrote. Time to sleep. ><;

As for Dan Savage…I know that he’s disliked in some corners and called out for fucking up on certain issues (including here—Marie Anelle has written here about how she’s not a fan.) I do feel like he gets it right more often than he gets it wrong, and I admire his activist work. The truth is, pretty much every activist I admire has at some point offended me or some other group with their stance on certain issues. Civil rights activists being homophobes or anti-Semites, feminists being elitist or racist, gay rights activists being ableist and ageist. Susan B. Anthony was anti-choice. Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist and racist. Very few people are rarely right on every issue all the time, so I try to refer only to the best of people’s activism, and that’s what I was doing here.

You’re 100% right about porn. The most controversial writing I ever did was for Bitch Magazine in a two-parter called “I Blame Porn.” I got blasted from all sides for saying essentially the same as what you just wrote. Here are two links. They’re old, but I still believe everything I wrote then.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/i-blame-porn-1

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/i-still-blame-porn-a-response-2

To give some better perspective to my previous comment, I’m a queer and trans*/genderqueer person (assigned female at birth and raised that way, still presumed to be a cis woman because I don’t look genderqueer according to heteronormative standards (it’s my identity, not a fashion statement) and therefore marginalized as a woman every day – What does a trans* or genderqueer person look like, anyway?) All of my experience with inflexible and demanding guys-as-partners comes either from firsthand conversations about sex with straight, cisgender men or through the lens of (long-) suffering women friends and family members who cross several generations. I have little hope that “it gets better” because that hasn’t been true for my older women friends, my mother, my grandmother, or the great majority of other women I know in committed relationships. Most of the men continue to make whiny demands, be sexist and passive aggressive or cheat when they don’t get their way, while the women’s wants or needs (sexual or non-sexual) are relegated to play second fiddle if they play at all.

My generation was raised on porn. Porn can be fun and an opportunity to explore sexuality. But mostly, it’s one of the main reasons why especially young men who’ve never seen other examples of sex or types of women’s bodies are simultaneously demanding of and disgusted by non-porn star women’s bodies. /And the older men I’ve talked to or been told about aren’t necessarily better./ Some are nicer but still entitled because they think that being nice should get them what they want, as you pointed out. There are plenty of guys I know who love their imperfect women partners, but not without idealizing women who better conform to movie star or porn star expectations. It’s not always that straight men can’t appreciate an average, real world woman. It’s just that they’d rather have something closer to a movie-or-porn star and /they aren’t afraid to make that apparent in both their words and actions/. So the women I know – no matter what their age or the age of their partner – can never go without feeling that pressure and the tense undercurrent of “She – or something about her – isn’t good enough”. The women either bend over backwards to meet their longterm partners’ expectations in a desperate attempt to feel secure in their relationship and because they think it’s the only way they can be loved, or else they drop the act and sadly accept that their partners will never desire and /respect/ them with equal fervor and care. The day to day may be fine in most regards, but there are things about the ways in which their male partners treat them that make them feel deeply insecure and miserable. And that hurts me, too.

I know that we don’t live and make choices about our bodies in a vacuum. So I know that occasionally, women refrain from doing things they want to do with their bodies because the idea of conforming to a patriarchal norm disturbs them and those are valid concerns. Though far more and overwhelmingly often, women do conform to those norms because of cultural/social pressure even if they’d rather do something else if they thought they would still be accepted and loved if they did something more non-conformative. But more often, feminists are construed as only doing non-conformative things to be “edgy” and because “women are angry” (and why shouldn’t they be?) Those statements are just typically sexist attempts to debase the legitimate complaints of women who face marginalization on all levels depending on their race, class, size, etc. I want to acknowledge these things in order to preface my next comment…

I’m completely bone-and-soul exhausted from the physical/sexual/aesthetic demands made on my body, mostly by straight and cis men whose opinions I neither asked for nor want, though women have body-policed me almost as often and usually more directly (as in “don’t wear that”, “wear makeup”, “you’d look better if…”, “you’re just weird because you don’t do x thing and people would like you more if you did”). I refuse to wear makeup, shave or in any way alter any of my body hair, wear thongs (Butt floss = massive personal physical discomfort. So no.), and a number of other things NOT because I’m trying to be a gender rebel on purpose. I do those things because this is who I am. I love myself as I am. This is the only way I can be comfortable in my own damn body. I /cannot/ BE any other way. And I am literally ill over the fact that I cannot be fully respected or loved because I am the way that I am, and that these feelings are reaffirmed in the way that people treat me on a daily basis (sometimes even my own friends and family) and in the other relationships I see around me. The longest and most loving relationships of my life have always been undermined and ultimately torn apart by the fact that I’m unwilling or unable to change my physical appearance even briefly for another person’s satisfaction. I can’t be someone I’m not. I’m not comfortable pretending to be someone I’m not. It makes me indescribably depressed and even physically sick to try. I’m clean and attractive, but I won’t and CAN’T wear perfume or makeup. (In addition to just always hating the stuff, I was diagnosed a few years ago as being allergic to some of the ingredients in a lot of generic cosmetic substances.) I like the way that I dress, I won’t dress more “like a girl”. I like my imperfect body /exactly/ as it is, I won’t undergo bodily procedures that aren’t necessary to maintain my medical wellbeing. I’m genderqueer. I’m not going to be someone else for you. You should be with someone who is compatible with you. I have all of two or three friends who love me for me. The rest – friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, strangers – are all discriminatory against my genderqueer brand of non-ladyship as soon as it comes up that I’m not going to do [insert whatever gender norm thing] for them just so they’ll feel “more comfortable”. Cisgender women who simply refuse or cannot conform to gender norms have a similar problem with this. This is just the way it is for many women, trans* women, and genderqueer people.

It gets better for some people. It doesn’t get better for everyone. That’s a hard fact we have to face. But that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for equality in every area of culture and politics. I’m going to keep fighting even though I know that I won’t win. The next generation or the generation after that might win, though. And it’s for them as much as it is for my own personal need to try to maintain my human dignity and protect my human rights that I keep going.

As a queer and trans*/genderqueer person, I’d also like to make note of the fact that Dan Savage, while having a few good nuggets of advice, is notoriously transphobic, fatphobic, ableist, and a rape apologist. Other LGBTIQ activists have glitter bombed him in protest of his discrimination, so if I could humbly suggest a disclaimer when you quote Dan Savage? As in, “we know he’s a douche canoe, but he did say this one good and accurate thing”, maybe? I’m not sure if you were aware of Savage’s reputation before.

Also, I realized that I used a different name here, but this isn’t the first time I’ve commented. So let me reiterate here that I really enjoy the blog with the exception of some (accidental but nonetheless harmful) white-centric viewpoints. Of all the predominantly white-run feminist blogs on the internet, this one makes fewer mistakes in that regard, which allows me to have a small amount of hope that some privileged people can and want to learn to be respectfully all-inclusive. Do your research! Don’t stop trying!

Thanks.

A person’s love or loyalty should never be questioned just because they chose to uphold their boundaries and stick to their comfort zone.

Yes, absolutely, and that’s something we should probably all have printed on a t-shirt or in a laminated card we carry in our wallets for when we need to be reminded. If I had said to my boyfriend, “you know, that would just be painful and unpleasant and I don’t want to do it,” he would have dropped the matter entirely. But not all men are like that; I have definitely had boyfriends who nagged me to do certain things (growing my hair long was a real flashpoint with one of them, for example) and I had to reinforce those boundaries pretty hard. It’s always worth reminding that we have an absolute veto on whatever we DON’T want to do, no matter how much society or our boyfriends or the media tells us it’s sexy or pleasurable.

One of Dan Savage’s GGG principles is that if either party says “Nope, that’s not for me, I don’t want to do that,” the other party has to back off. I’m a huge believer in that.

I can honestly say I’ve never known a straight guy of any age – and my friends and I discuss sex very openly – who was willing to experiment with something that made him uncomfortable for the sake of his beloved’s sexual gratification.

I think this may be a function of the difference in our ages, which I say not to be patronizing, but more as a “it gets better” statement (sorry, I’m totally shouting out to Dan Savage again). I’m 37 and my boyfriend is 47, and as both men and women age and have more serious relationships they tend to get more comfortable with experimenting and taking suggestions. It also helps when you’re in a truly intimate relationship (I have not, historically, gone the extra mile for dudes who were just casual sex partners). My experiences in my early to mid 20s were pretty much as you describe yours and your friends’, but they definitely improved as I aged. It helps that I’ve tried to be thoughtful about all these issues, which means that in my sex life I probably—both consciously and unconsciously—tend to select for guys who are less hung-up and more GGG. You probably will too, with good results.

the part where you seem to say that your boyfriend’s foot rubs, chore-doing, tech assistance, buffness, overall good-boyfriend-ness, etc = your willingness to experience severe pain and bodily discomfort. It was kinda like… these things that he should be doing anyway just because that’s what decent people in healthy relationships do (except for the part where he’s manscaped and buff, which as you said, is his choice) earned your boyfriend sexual favors/your bodily “sacrifice” (to use his word).

Maybe I didn’t phrase that as well as I might have because that was definitely not the message I was going for. It’s not that I was willing to suffer a full wax as a quid-pro-quo for getting foot massages and him fixing the dishwasher, etc. Because, yes, you’re totally right that no one should get a cookie for being a good partner—they’re supposed to be a good partner. And I really loathe that whole “He mowed the lawn/bought me jewelry so now he gets a blowjob” narrative that pops up in advertising and on sitcoms all the time. What I think I was going for is that my boyfriend is really committed to making me happy in ways big and small, and my being happy and feeling cherished and supported creates the kind of emotional environment where it’s easy to be GGG.

For the record, my boyfriend is also willing to experiment and do things physically for my pleasure which are GGG and not things he’s done before, but out of respect for his privacy, I didn’t want to describe them in the OP.

Guys don’t need cookies just for being nice people and therefore doing the things they should be doing, anyway.

This is also something that should be trumpeted loudly on t-shirts and billboards and $2 million per minute Superbowl advertising. Too often we hear from “nice guys” who think that they’re entitled something—nearly always sex—from women just because they’re not total douchebags. Which is usually a clue that those guys are, in fact, total douchebags. So yeah, what you said.

Thanks again for the comment. I know that was your first comment, so please come back again!

I’m in my early/mid twenties and I hear the “We’re in a loving relationship, so will you show me (read: prove to me) that you love me by doing [insert body-and/or-sex-related thing you're mildly-to-extremely uncomfortable with] just once?” a lot in my peers’ relationships. That, and the shy but sincere confessions such as the one your boyfriend admitted. And many, many women I know have felt pressured to do things that they really, really didn’t want to do simply because their man expressed a wish albeit in a very non-pressure-y way. My women friends have told me before, during, or after of their discomfort, unease, reluctance, pain, regret, full-out trauma, sadness, insecurity, and/or feelings that because their partner wasn’t explicitly pressuring them that they felt bad about not obliging. And therein lies the double standard and harmful socialization of women. That a woman should feel guilty and ashamed for even just wanting to say no just because her fella is a really decent guy. A woman’s body and comfort zone are still her own no matter how awesome her partner is. And men’s fantasies generally take higher priority in our society, so I think that a woman has to be really comfortable with herself just to feel like she’s allowed to say no to “no expectations” and/or hopeful suggestions /in addition to/ outright rude demands. It’s one of those Choosing Your Choice issues. It’s not that a woman can’t make a fully informed choice in these instances, it’s just that there’s a lot of personal and cultural pressure to do what a man wants.

I can honestly say I’ve never known a straight guy of any age – and my friends and I discuss sex very openly – who was willing to experiment with something that made him uncomfortable for the sake of his beloved’s sexual gratification. I’ve also heard plenty of stories about guys admitting to a fantasy “without expecting anything” and then later pressuring their partner with increasing whininess and even hostility when she says, “No. I’m happy to know you more intimately by you sharing your sexual fantasies with me. But no thanks to that one.”

Again, you and many if not most of the readers know this. But as you can probably tell, this is a hot button issue for me. I could be wrong about your intention (I think you just meant that your boyfriend is equally willing to care for/cater to/pleasure/etc you), but the part where you seem to say that your boyfriend’s foot rubs, chore-doing, tech assistance, buffness, overall good-boyfriend-ness, etc = your willingness to experience severe pain and bodily discomfort. It was kinda like… these things that he should be doing anyway just because that’s what decent people in healthy relationships do (except for the part where he’s manscaped and buff, which as you said, is his choice) earned your boyfriend sexual favors/your bodily “sacrifice” (to use his word). There’s the sexual activity that we want to do because we want and/or love each other, and there’s the sexual activity we do because we want to pleasure our partners and we’re comfortable with whatever that entails,… and there’s the sexual activity we do because we want to pleasure our partners AND we feel like they deserve it or “earned” it despite our discomfort (and our comfort zone “matter less” because “but he’s a great guy”). The lattermost one seems problematic to me because it goes against the idea that sex should involve the full enthusiasm of each partner, thereby making sex fair, equal, and, well, pleasurable.

And I know it’s YOUR body and YOUR sex life, of course, so I’m loathe to make judgements and I’m honestly not trying to judge. It’s just that reading that sorta squicked me out. I think it would have bothered me less if it didn’t feel like your boyfriend’s niceness earned him a cookie. Guys don’t need cookies just for being nice people and therefore doing the things they should be doing, anyway.

Alert your fans that I would be perfectly happy to view your sacrifice as a one-time thing. The fact that you did it even once speaks VOLUMES for how much you love me. If you ever did it again for a special occasion . . . well, that would just be icing.

Best boyfriend ever, y’all. And Drahill, he loved the Sweeney Todd reference!

*DYING*

I have found that if I use a hair clipper first and then use a fresh “men’s” razor blade, it doesn’t give me even three quarters of the bumps I used to get just using the Venus. I also have thick, coarse hair that’s even darker than the drapes.

Oh the things I’ll share in the same of discourse….