Female Sexual Pain

Among the most distinctive features of second-wave feminism was its insistence that women take ownership of their sexuality. Thus, it began with consciousness raising groups where women could talk about their sexuality. It brought forth mega-bestsellers like The Hite Report and Our Bodies, Ourselves.  It promoted college women’s studies courses about the varieties of sexual pleasure and insisted on abortion rights and free contraceptives. Sex positive feminists promoted hookups and sexting. After all, women would not only own their sexuality and have complete freedom to do what they wanted with their bodies, but they would be able to have sex like men.

To the point where the nation has been engaged in a national conversation about women’s sexuality for the past five decades. When Teen Vogue can run an article called “A Guide to Anal Sex” and where Seventeen Magazine can teach high school girls how to paint their fingernails to look like vaginas and where American women are out marching in pussy hats, no one can really say that the world is ignoring female sexuality. Women have liberated their sexuality. Presumably they have more sex and more sexual pleasure than any other generation of women in human history. And yet, if such were the case, feminism would be crowning itself in glory.

As for ownership, we now discover that we have gotten that one wrong. Lili Loofbourow has written a much praised article explaining that women suffer in pain through a large number of their sexual encounters but that they are too afraid, too timid, too weak to say anything about it. Those of us who thought that women were enjoying their newfound sexual freedom have apparently missed the point. Those of us who thought that feminism was making women strong and empowered will also have to revise our views. It turns out that feminism gives women more bad sex and less strength and power.

Not only that, but today's women suffer in silence. Surely, none of this is a good thing, but Loofbourow, good feminist that she is, does not bother to make the connection with the current state of female sexual pain and the feminist revolution. Five decades of non-stop feminism and we get Harvey Weinstein and women who suffer painful sex in silence. Considering all of the exhortations for women to assert themselves, even to lean in, one has a right to be surprised at such a failure to assert.

As it happens, Loofbourow’s article is intellectually deficient. You expect as much from ideologues pretending to think. In particular, she does not differentiate between hookups and sex that exists within the context of a relationship, what we have been calling: sex with someone you know. At which point we must ask ourselves whether the women who are undergoing these painful experience and who cannot manage to utter the least discouraging word are hooking up—as happened with the women who recently accused Aziz Ansari of sexual insensitivity—or are involved in a constituted relationship.

One can only wonder how much of the pain Loofbourow informs us of exists because women are engaging in random, anonymous sexual encounters. After all, everyone knows, or should know, that male and female sexualities are fundamentally different. Women and men do not function sexually in the same way. To expect that they will, to try to act as though they do might place women in very difficult sexual positions: consenting to do something that they do not really want to do. And we do not know anything about the influence of STDs—which have become increasingly common among young women.

Now, Loofbourow seems to believe that the problem is that we have not talked about female sexuality enough. This is absurd. She should have said that we have talked about female sexuality too much. Led by feminists we have stripped away modesty and left women feeling exposed to the world. It is not a pleasant or pleasurable posture for most women. In truth, the constant discussion about female sexuality seems to have alienated women from their sexuality, to have turned it from private property into public property. Women no longer own their sexuality—it’s the only rational conclusion to draw from this information.

The ubiquity of pornography has contributed mightily to this process, but the porn purveyors have, in this, been the accomplices of the feminist matriarchy.

Loofbourow is especially torqued about Andrew Sullivan for suggesting that the #MeToo movement should try to understand the differences between male and female sexuality. In particular, Sullivan suggested that testosterone has a significant influence on male behavior. As I pointed out when praising Sullivan’s article, his analysis derives from Darwinian science.

Consider this. Loofbourow offers these statistics to show how painful women find sex. She only discusses vaginal and anal sex, so we are left in the dark about the potential pain caused by oral sex:

Research shows that 30 percent of women report pain during vaginal sex, 72 percent report pain during anal sex, and "large proportions" don't tell their partners when sex hurts.

If anal sex is that consistently painful, why do it at all? Why consent to it? Do women consent to anal sex because they think it makes them more liberated and sophisticated? Or do they consent to it because they think it makes them more like gay men? Shouldn't Loofoburow asked a gay male like Andrew Sullivan about his views on the topic? Shouldn't the author call out Teen Vogue for encouraging practices that are likely to be painful?

I am willing to accept Loofbourow’s conclusion, that women have a lot of bad and painful sex. But, she ought at least to understand that modern feminism has a good part of the responsibility. If its goal was to give women ownership of their sexuality and to make them more confident and assertive, it appears that it has produced just the opposite. If that doesn’t spell failure, I don’t know what does.