Care and Feeding of an East Coast Liberal

Antiprincess posed an intriguing question...

I guess that’s the real meat of the discussion – does being wildly sexually adventurous, pushing sexual boundaries in many different directions, being as they say “polymorphously perverse”, transgress - or uphold - or transcend power?

The full post is here.

Here's my answer:

You know, I always find the porn arguments interesting, because in my partnership, I have always been the one watching the porn. The BF? He dislikes it (with varying degrees of intensity, depending on the quality of the porn). We both tend to find what we see (since I don't go out looking for it actively) pretty run-of-the-mill.

So I always find the perspective that he would force me to do things because of porn very... weird. First of all, while the positions sometimes look cool, we both agree that there's just no way it would be physically possible for us; secondly, the ones that are, we had tried long before I started watching porn.

From that perspective, I think that breaking out of the idea that sex is run-of-the-mill is important.

I've never watched pornography with DP, or read erotica containing it, but I was - quite independently - fantasizing about it no more than a year after I started masturbating. Not by men, but by a woman with toys. Men came into it later.

I think that maybe there is something to the idea that people are and can be influenced by ideas-not-their-own, and that some people will absorb certain cultural messages with those ideas. ("Hot sluts beg for cum on their face!" turns into "Men will like me if I let them cum on my face," etc.)

BUT, I think the solution to that is to teach self-esteem and sexual education early in life, both to boys and girls. If we teach girls how to distinguish the things they want from the things they think they should want, that goes far further than destroying the porn industry ever would. Same goes for boys. If we teach frank discussion, without all the silly giggly embarrassed-ness that tends to surround sex, I think the problem would shrink dramatically.

So I think that pushing sexual boundaries is awesome, in general. I think there are people that can't do it, out of fear or out of shame, and relieving them of that fear and shame should be our goal.

And I don't think it exactly meshes onto the idea of "power" that is usually meant in these conversations. A mentor has "power" over her protegée, but only in that experience is generally seen as a more powerful position than naivete. But she isn't wielding her power against the protegée; she's... donating it, sharing it.

And if the protegée takes that power and uses it to push and test her boundaries until she finds her comfort zone, then, well, success is achieved, and both the mentor and her protegée should, ideally, be joyful about it.

And I think that we're all both roles to everyone, or should be. That's why sharing experiences is important. To learn about others as students, and teach others about ourselves as mentors.

To me, anyway.

posted by Alex @ 4:10 PM