Tuesday, July 31, 2007

From Nyphomania To Normal

Lately, I've come across a string of blogs written mostly by women in their twenties which focus on the author's sex lives. These authors write very openly about everything from how to give excellent oral sex to whether foursomes are more rewarding than threesomes. Judging from their blogrolls, there are quite a few such blogs, although I've only managed to read a half dozen or so. Still, that's enough blogs to get me wondering how such blogs could change our attitudes towards female sexuality if increasing numbers of women choose to blog honestly and openly about their sex lives.

It wasn't too many decades ago that women were widely assumed to have little or no real interest in sex. The prevailing notion was they participated in sex only to please their spouses. Either that, or they suffered from a psychological illness: nymphomania. Although some of that old view lingers with us, most folks today seem at least willing to admit women have sexual desires and needs.

When you get down to it, that's not much of an admission.

Yes, we admit women have sexual desires and needs, but we still largely think of those desires and needs as rather tame -- at least for "normal" women. Doesn't every woman, for instance, deeply want to convert her every sexual encounter into a long term meaningful relationship? Aren't women more timid and less experimental than men? Isn't there something profoundly wrong with any woman who can -- even at times -- find satisfaction in sex alone?

If more women start blogging about their sex lives, then we might seem some of those notions overturned. For the truth might well be that women have richer, more complex sexualities than men.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah... maybe.

From some experience in a chat setting I'd say some women are more powerfully driven by erotica. They're more creative, possibly darker, and drive some of the environments of sexual obsession on the internet.

Sex is always kind of a double edged knife though. I wonder how many of these women bloggers have found, as I have discovered, that talking about sex garners massive attention? Choosing that topic to blog about, while I think it's honest to express sexuality from time to time as part of the human experience, if you have a 'sex blog', as a woman, youre pandering to a voyeuristic appetite. It's kind of a way to objectify yourself, and I dont think that that does anything to enrich understanding between the genders.

For the minds feeding off of that, it probably doesn't make them respect the female more, they come back to get off.

So. I think of sex blogs kind of like porn. titillating, sure, but in all honesty I only check them out to get a thrill and I'm not even a little interested in their honesty or their humanity. I can get that at a lot of excellently written blogs where they aren't serving up their bodies for public consumption.

Eryn Leigh said...

I'm glad someone finally recognized the rampant female sexuality in the blog scene as a good thing, and not the downfall of society.

One of my favorite websites in that hesitant area is BAGGAGE RECLAIM
http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/ .

I haunt this website, because it fills that void that was left when I had to make myself stop reading Cosmopolitan magazine.

As amuirin noted, women who talk about sex are often attracting some pesky attention, from those who consider the topic an invitation to take out their penis, photograph it, and email it off to the ladies.

Baggage Reclaim once had a Penis Parade in the forums, asking all women who had recieved such revolting emails to send in the images and create a cesspool of "Not Interested, Thanks".
While not very functional, it was amazing to see how many (I'm talking hundreds) images were submitted within a few hours.

As a writer, who is female, and 20, and single, I tend to write about sex a lot. I catch myself talking about it in public.
If I was the type to constantly think of what my mother would say were she present, that might bother me.

As it stands, I'm glad women are able to be as open and forthcoming about their sex lives as men have been for some time now.
*round of applause*

The Geezers said...

Hmmm. Why do I think your noble post is mostly driven by a desire to hear women talk dirty.

Not that I blame you for this. But let's be honest, shall we?

Paul Sunstone said...

I'd much rather confess to a desire to hear women talk dirty, Mystic, than confess to my geeky tendency to think like an anthropologist when I hear women talking dirty.