The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] Porn, Relationships, and What It’s Reasonable to Ask For

When you’re beginning a relationship, is it reasonable to ask your partner not to watch porn?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column here about porn. I was writing in response to an advice column by Scarleteen, an answer to a letter from a young woman who was upset because her boyfriend watched porn. I posed the question, “In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner not to watch porn?” And I concluded that it was not. I concluded that people have the right to watch whatever they want when they’re by themselves and on their own time, and that asking a partner not to watch porn is no more defensible then asking them not to watch reality TV or read true crime. I concluded that trying to regulate your partner’s private cultural pleasures — pornographic or otherwise — is like trying to regulate their imagination.

But some readers thought I’d misread Scarleteen’s advice. They said Scarleteen’s point wasn’t that people have the right to ask their existing partners not to watch porn . . . but rather that if someone objects to porn, they should spell that out at the beginning of a relationship. And on re-reading the Scarleteen column, I think they’re right. In my defense, the situation I was writing about was, in fact, the situation described in the letter — dealing with an existing partner who watched porn, and trying to decide what to say to them. But I do think I misread Scarleteen’s intention in their response, and for that, I apologize.

So now I’m going to address the position Scarleteen took: that people who object to porn and are beginning to date someone should spell out their position early, and should state clearly that they don’t want to be involved with someone who watches it.

And I’m basically going to stand by my original position.

Which is that this is an unreasonable, overly controlling thing for an adult to ask another adult. It’s somewhat less unreasonable than asking it of a partner you’re already involved with, someone who’s already gotten emotionally invested in your relationship before you dropped your “It’s me or the porn” ultimatum. But I still think this is seriously pushing the line between “reasonable negotiation of desires and limits in a relationship,” and “controlling attempt to regulate not only your partner’s behavior, but their imagination.”

Here’s why.

Like I did in the previous column, I’m going to take this question out of an erotic context, to give it some perspective. (I am, however, going to keep it gendered for the moment, since much of the previous conversation was about gender and sexism.)

Let’s say a single straight woman has objections to televised sports. She thinks they’re immoral, or politically objectionable, or she simply finds them upsetting. (Which some women do — as do some men.) And let’s say she tells all her potential partners, “I just don’t want to be involved with someone who watches sports. Ever. Even when I’m not around. Even on their own time. Even if it’s just when they’re hanging around with their friends. If we’re going to get involved, you have to be someone who doesn’t like watching sports on TV, and you have to promise never to do so.”

Would that be a reasonable thing to ask?

I would argue No.

And I’d argue it pretty darned strongly.

At my most sympathetic and calm, my response to that would be, “You should know that an awful lot of men watch sports on TV. And plenty of those men don’t fit the stereotype of the sports-obsessed Neanderthal. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV, and whether those men could share your basic values — assumptions that really aren’t warranted. If you’re going to rule out all men who ever like to watch sports on TV, you’re going to limit yourself to a very small dating pool indeed . . . without a very strong or reality-based reason for doing so. You might want to rethink this. You might want to look more carefully at why you feel so strongly about sports — and at whether there might be a better way to handle those feelings than refusing to be involved with anyone who enjoys them.”

If I were feeling less sympathetic and calm, my response would be, “Are you out of your mind? What difference does it make what your partner watches on TV when you’re not around? How is that any of your business? Again — you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV . . . assumptions that really aren’t warranted. What on earth makes you think that’s a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another?”

And frankly, if I were dating that woman, I’d end things as soon as I could after that conversation — even if I didn’t like sports. I’d see it as a huge red flag that she had a very controlling side of her. I’d see it as a huge red flag that she was a seriously insecure person — one who dealt with her insecurities by expecting her partner to tiptoe around them. I’d be out the door as fast as I could — even if I never planned to watch another sporting event in my life.

Why should porn be different?

If watching porn didn’t carry the stigma that it does — if any and all pursuits of sexual pleasure didn’t carry the stigma that they do — would we see these two situations as any different? If it weren’t the case that sports are a generally accepted cultural activity and porn is emphatically not, would we even be having this conversation? If there weren’t a stigma around porn, would anyone seriously consider asking their partner never to watch it . . . and if there weren’t shame around porn, would anyone who was asked not to watch it take the request seriously?

Now. To be fair, it’s certainly true that in relationships, we get a few “I know I’m being irrational, but I feel strongly about this, so can you please just humor me?” free passes. I think we do, anyway. But when we ask for those free passes, I think we need to acknowledge that that’s what we’re doing. I think we need to acknowledge that we’re asking for something unreasonable, above and beyond the call of duty — and not act as if we have the moral high ground.

And we need to recognize that not everyone is going to say Yes. We need to recognize that a lot of smart, thoughtful, decent people are going to turn us down. Especially when the activity we’re asking our partners to forgo is something that’s both ridiculously common and generally harmless.

Like watching sports on TV.

Or watching porn.

Does my hypothetical woman have the right to ask her potential partners not to watch sports on TV, even when she’s not around? Sure, she has the right to ask. We have the right to ask for pretty much anything. We have the right to ask our potential relationship partners to not smoke, to tie us up on a semi- regular basis, to take Argentine tango lessons, to watch the entire DVD set of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in a one-weekend marathon, to wear polka dotted underwear every Friday without fail.

But does that make it a reasonable thing to ask?

Is “don’t ever watch sports on TV, even when I’m not around” a reasonable thing for one adult to ask of another? Is it reasonable to expect that people will say Yes? Is it reasonable to expect people to even take this request seriously?

I don’t think so.

There are lots of things that we have the right to do, which are still not right or reasonable for us to do. We tend to make that mistake a lot: the mistake of thinking that because we have the right to do something, we should therefore just charge on in and do it. It’s not clear thinking. We have the right to scream bigoted epithets on the street corner, too. That doesn’t make it right or reasonable to do it.

Now.

I will qualify all this by adding: If someone is very firm in their anti-porn position — if they’ve thought it through carefully after being exposed to many sides of the debate about it, and their feelings against it are still as strong as ever — then yes, they should warn their partners up front that this is the case. I don’t think it’s a reasonable thing for them to ask . . . but reasonable or not, if it’s a dealbreaker for them, then by all means, they should ask it. If I were dating someone who felt this way, I sure as hell would want to be warned upfront, before I’d invested a lot of time and emotional energy in the relationship. I’d want to run screaming sooner rather than later.

But here’s the thing. In this particular letter, in the letter to Scarleteen that started this whole conversation, I did not get that impression at all. Nothing about this letter gave me the impression that it was from a confirmed, hard-core anti-porn feminist who was familiar with feminist arguments in favor of porn and had rejected them. Everything about it seemed to be from a young person who was upset by porn, and who ascribed much her of her upset to the supposed sexism of porn . . . without ever really thinking about it carefully, and without ever being exposed to feminism that enjoys and supports porn. (Scarleteen seems to have gotten the same impression, since they made sure to tell her that being anti-porn wasn’t the only way to be feminist, and they provided links to a wide variety of feminist writings on porn.)

So my advice to her would not be, “If you’re opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to spell that out early in a relationship.”

My advice would be, “If you’re opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to seriously rethink whether that’s a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another. If you’re assuming that a shared opposition to porn means you’ll have shared values about sex and gender and politics, you need to seriously rethink that assumption. You need to be aware that there are a lot of pro-porn feminists in the world — women and men both — and that opposition to porn isn’t the default feminist position. You need to be aware that an awful lot of men watch porn, and it doesn’t automatically make them sexist objectifiers of women. You need to be aware that refusing to be involved with any man who watches porn is going to seriously limit your dating opportunities — and is likely going to rule out a fair number of men who might otherwise be great for you. You need to be aware that asking someone to limit what they do and don’t watch when they’re not with you is likely to come across as insecure and controlling . . . even to people who share your basic tastes. And you need to be aware that since there’s so much shame and stigma around porn, a lot of men aren’t going to feel comfortable standing up for their right and desire to watch it, and you may not get a straight answer about it. You might want to think about whether there’s a better way to deal with your insecurities than asking your potential partners to never even look at erotic photos or videos of other women.

“And if, after all of that, you’re still opposed to porn, to the point where you’re not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it — then yes, you need to spell that out early in a relationship. But you need to be aware that you’re asking for a lot. And you need to not take the moral high ground about it.”

Being a feminist means, among other things, recognizing people’s right to sexual autonomy. Women’s and men’s. If you’re going to deal with your bad feelings about porn by expecting your partners to forgo a private sexual activity that doesn’t involve you in any way, you need to consider whether that’s really consistent with your feminism.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] Is Monogamy Fair?

In any romantic/ sexual relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to limit their sexual activity in any way?

Weird question, I know. Here’s why I’m asking it.

In my last column, I talked about porn in relationships. I asked, “In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?” And I concluded that it was not. I argued that, for the same reason people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to watch reality TV or read true crime — on their own time, when they don’t have any obligations and their partner isn’t around — people don’t have the right to expect their partners not to enjoy porn. I argued that people have some basic rights to privacy and autonomy — yes, strangely enough, even when they’re in serious committed relationships — and that the things people do on their own time, in ways that don’t have any significant impact on their partner, are entirely their own damn business.

But when I was writing this, I realized that some non-monogamist hard-liners would say the same thing about any sort of sexual activity outside a relationship. Some non-monogamy advocates — not many, but some — would argue that the right to make your own decisions about how to spend your own time extends to having sex with other people. I wrote that people had no more right to expect their partners not to watch porn than to expect them not to watch reality TV . . . and as I wrote it, I could hear voices in the back of my head saying, “But how is sex different from porn? If watching porn is no different from watching reality TV, then how is having sex with someone outside the relationship any different than seeing a basketball game with someone outside the relationship?”

Now, as you may have guessed, I don’t agree with those voices. I do, however, think this is a harder question than it might seem on the surface, and a murkier one, without an obvious place to draw the line. (To some extent, this is one of my “thinking out loud” pieces, and I’m not sure I’ve got the answer quite right.) Ultimately, though, I do think there’s a difference — even if it’s a murky and non-obvious difference — between watching depictions of other people having sex, and actually having sex with other people.

The difference is . . . well, other people.

I think non-monogamy changes a relationship, in a way that porn does not. I think non-monogamy changes a relationship — because it brings other people into it.

For starters, those other people have desires of their own, and limits of their own, and rights of their own . . . desires and limits and rights that have to be taken into consideration.

The porn video doesn’t care if you don’t see it for months at a time. The dirty novel doesn’t have a special new kink that it really wants to explore with you. The book of French postcards doesn’t have a preference about whether or not you discuss it with your partner. The adult comic book doesn’t get hurt if you throw it away without so much as a phone call. Other people do. And they have the right to expect that their cares and kinks and preferences and feelings will get some attention. From both partners in a relationship — not just the one they’re boffing.

Which means that non-monogamy changes the relationship. For everyone in it. Even if you have the simplest, most limited kind of non-monogamous relationship — say, the “You and I are a primary couple, we can have sex with other people but only on our own time, and those other people won’t get involved in our romantic or social life” kind — the other people you’re involved with are still living, breathing, autonomous people, with lives and selves of their own. So both partners in that relationship have to treat the outside person’s desires and limits and rights as if they matter . . . even if only one of those partners is getting the outside nookie.

Plus, other people have emotions of their own — emotions that aren’t always predictable. Porn isn’t going to get obsessed with you and stalk you, or fall in love with you even though you clearly said upfront that that wasn’t an option. And you probably aren’t going to fall in love with your porn. Okay, yes, some people do get fixated on porn to an unhealthy degree. People can get fixated on anything to an unhealthy degree, from weightlifting to “Star Trek” to collecting porcelain pigs. But sexual relationships with other people carry a degree of risk that sexual relationships with books or photos or Internet videos just don’t. (And that’s not even mentioning the physical risk of STI’s and whatnot.)

Finally — for now, anyway — other people change. They change in ways you can’t expect, and ways you have to adapt to. The only way your copy of “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle” is going to change is when it comes out in a new 30th anniversary edition loaded with DVD extras. (We hope!) But with other people, you can have a nice, neat arrangement that makes everybody happy . . . and then what does that other person go and do but be human, and want something more than they used to, or something less, or something different. Which you then have to accept, or reject, or re-negotiate.

All of which means that non-monogamy requires a level of involvement and negotiation and processing that porn simply doesn’t demand — involvement and negotiation and processing that can have a significant impact on your relationship. It can be a good impact, mind you: a great impact even, an impact that keeps communication open and eroticism alive. But it’s an impact, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

I mean, when it comes to porn, what do you have to negotiate? “Don’t look at it when I’m around.” Or, “If you’re going to look at it when I’m around, let’s pick something we both want to watch together.” Or, “If you watch it so much that you can’t pay your bills and we never have sex, we’re going to have deep trouble.” Or, “Keep the volume down when I’m trying to sleep.” Your arrangements about it don’t have to be any more complicated than your arrangements about any other book or magazine, TV show or Internet site. And they’re entirely between the two of you. They involve your wants and feelings and nobody else’s, and they only have to change if the two of you change.

So that’s why porn and sex are different.

Now, there is an area where this moderately clear distinction starts to get murky. And that area is sex work: prostitution, stripping, pro domination, other forms of live professional sexual entertainment.

Here’s why sex work is murkier. Sex workers are people, obviously. I hope I’m not going to get any debate about that. But with a few exceptions, they’re people who aren’t going to have expectations or make demands outside the professional encounter itself. They’re, you know, professionals, and whatever feelings they might have about their encounters with you, they’re skilled at drawing boundaries between their personal feelings and their professional responsibilities. With a few exceptions, sex workers aren’t going to ask to see you more often, or ask for something sexually that’s outside your agreement with your partner, or stalk you because they think you’re their soulmate. I’m not saying it never happens — but it’s rare.

So it could be argued that the non-monogamy issues I’m talking about here — the concern that other people have needs, desires, emotions, changes, any of which could affect your relationship — don’t apply to sex workers. And it could therefore be argued that, while it might be reasonable to want your partner to not have (shall we say) amateur sex outside your relationship, it’s not reasonable to expect them not to see strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes . . . since encounters with strippers or pro dominants or prostitutes aren’t likely to seriously affect the relationship.

I don’t know. It still seems somehow different to me. But I’m not sure exactly why. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Thoughts?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] Can Watching Porn Be Cheating?

In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?

There was a recent letter to Scarleteen, the sex advice and information site for teenagers and young people. In this letter, the querant was upset because her boyfriend (a) watched porn, and (b) would soon be going on a road trip with his buddies in which he might be getting lap dances. The querant was upset about this — partly because she was a feminist who thought these activities were sexist, and partly because it triggered insecurities about her own body and made her feel inadequate.

Scarleteen’s reply? Feminism doesn’t automatically mean you’re anti-porn — there’s a wide range of feminist views about pornography — and enjoying porn doesn’t automatically make you sexist. When it comes to the details of your relationship and the agreements you make about sexual activity outside it — from porn/ lap dances/ other sexual entertainment to flat-out non-monogamy — you need to decide what would be your ideal, what would be on your “absolutely not” list, and what you’re willing to compromise on. And you need to recognize that your partner has as much right to their version of this list as you do to yours — and then see if you can negotiate a common ground.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable at first.

And then I started thinking about it.

Normally I adore Scarleteen, and recommend them unreservedly as a source of sex info and advice. And I feel a bit churlish calling them out on this one, since I found out about it because they were kind enough to link to me in their “wide range of feminist views of porn” section. If their advice had been about almost any other form of sexual activity, I would have been right there with them. And when it comes to the lap dances, I think their perspective is valid.

But when it comes to porn, I think they missed the boat.

I’m going to go out on a limb here:

I don’t think anyone has the right to expect their partner not to watch porn.

Why not? Well, let me put it this way. Do people have the right to expect their partners not to masturbate? Or, for that matter, do people have the right to expect their partners not to watch reality TV or read true crime? On their own time, when they don’t have any obligations and their partner isn’t around?

And if not — then why on earth would anyone have the right to expect their partner not to watch porn?

Even in a very close, seriously committed relationship, people have some basic rights to privacy and autonomy. What they do all by themselves, on their own time, in ways that don’t have any significant impact on anybody else — that is entirely their own damn business. Trying to regulate your partner’s porn watching is like trying to regulate what they read, what movies they watch, what art they see. No — it’s not like that. It is that. That is exactly what it is. The fact that the content of the writing or the movies or the art is sexual is irrelevant. Trying to regulate your partner’s cultural pleasures is like trying to regulate their imagination. And that’s just as true of pornographic cultural pleasures — and the sexual imagination.

There are some obvious exceptions. If your partner’s porn-watching is seriously affecting your sex life? If their porn is making them dissatisfied with you, or is creating unreasonable expectations about what sex and bodies are supposed to be like? If they’re watching porn to the exclusion of having sex with you? Or if they’re watching porn so much that it’s interfering with their personal or professional life, or is making them spend themselves into serious financial trouble? That’s different.

But “I feel threatened and insecure when my partner watches porn, therefore I have the right to expect them to stop”? I don’t see it. I mean, would it be reasonable to expect your partner not to watch “American Idol” because it made you feel threatened and insecure about your own singing ability? Even if your partner loved your singing, and made that clear in word and deed, and continued singing with you as much as they ever did?

And if not — then why is porn any different?

If you feel insecure and bad about your body and your sexuality — I completely sympathize. I’ve been there, I’m still there sometimes, and it sucks. But there are better ways of dealing with that insecurity and inadequacy than expecting your partner to forgo private, independent activities that don’t involve anyone else, and that have nothing to do with you. There are reasonable compromises that we can ask of our partners in our relationships. This is not one of them.

•

Now. I know there are non-monogamist hard-liners who would say the same thing about any form of sexual activity — not just porn. I know there are non-monogamist hard-liners who think we have no right to expect our partners to limit their sexual activity in any way that doesn’t directly affect us. I know there are non-monogamist hard-liners who would call me a hypocrite for drawing a line between porn — which I don’t think people have any right to expect their partners to consider forgoing — and lap dances, which I do.

I do think there’s a difference. But I will cheerfully acknowledge that the difference isn’t a clear or obvious one. It’s subtle, it’s complex, and it’s not easy to draw the line.

Which means it’s the topic of next week’s column.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] No-Strings Sex, Disappointing Love, and Asking the Wrong Questions

If you’ve given up on romantic love, is no-strings sex a viable option?

I don’t usually write this column as an advice column. But I make occasional exceptions. And last week, someone wrote a comment in this blog asking for advice . . . a comment that I (a) felt compelled to answer, and (b) couldn’t answer in just a few words. (Third comment from the top on this piece.)

The commenter had responded to a call for sexually-themed New Year’s resolutions by saying that she’d had a terrible experience with someone she met on the Internet, someone she’d traveled across the world to be worth who turned out to be, shall we say, unworthy of her affections. She had vowed to never get emotionally attached to a man again. And she asked this:

So this puts me in a quandary: how “palatable” to a potential male partner would I be if I told him I just wanted some awesome sex without a relationship or any bullshit “I love you’s” that we both know he probably doesn’t mean anyway, and if he does, he only means it when it’s convenient for him to truly love me?

For the moment, I’m going to set aside the question of whether it was wise for this commenter to uproot her life for the sake of an Internet romance with someone in another country thousands of miles away. (Actually . . . no, I’m not. I’m going to address that question right now; it’s a moot point for this particular questioner, but it may not be for someone else reading this. No, this is not a wise move. Internet romances can be great and do sometimes lead to successful physical-world romances; but they have to be treated with great skepticism, serious caution, and very careful timing. And the farther you have to travel for them, the more true that is. As Dan Savage has said: If you fly across the country or across the world to meet the virtual love of your life, don’t treat it as romantic destiny — treat it as an adventure, and frame it so you’ll have a good time on your trip even if your lover turns out to be a loser. If you uproot your entire life for someone in another country you’ve never met . . . well, it sucks if they turn out to be a jerk, but you’re the one who uprooted your life for someone you didn’t really know, so yes, you do bear some responsibility. Also, play it every bit as safely as you would if you were meeting an Internet date in your home town: meet in public for the first time, and make sure someone you know knows where you are and how to reach you.)

Anyway. Back to the question at hand. If the question were simply, “Are there men who want casual, non-romantic sex with no strings attached?” the answer would have to be a vigorous, “Yes! Of course! What planet have you been living on that you even have to ask that question? The world is loaded with men who would treat this offer as a gift from every god they’d ever imagined. And while some of these men are selfish game-players, others are decent, ethical men who’ll be as honest with you as they can about what they do and don’t have to give. Be careful — but go for it.”

But I don’t think that’s the right question here.

I don’t think that’s the question I should be answering.

The question I think I should be answering is one that this commenter didn’t ask. It’s one that she assumed she knew the answer to. And I think the answer she’s come up with is wrong — seriously wrong.

The question I think I should be answering is, “Since I got my heart broken by a lying jerk, should I assume that love is always a lie, give up on romantic love forever, and just get my sexual needs met with no-strings sex?”

The answer to that question is a vigorous “No.”

First of all, this assumption is just flatly not true. Not every man who says “I love you” is lying, and not every man pursues love purely for their own convenience. Not even most men do that. It sucks that this happened to you; but as they say in the sciences, you can’t draw a general conclusion from just one data point. It probably makes sense for you to hold off on an LTR right now, while you’re still feeling raw and demoralized — but vowing to never again get emotionally attached to a man because of one crummy experience is a recipe for unhappiness. (If nothing else, you’ll get hosed by confirmation bias — your assumptions will lead you to ignore decent men who treat women well, and focus your attention on selfish, deceitful schmucks.)

But more pertinently to the question at hand:

This assumption is going to seriously interfere with a satisfying no-strings sex life.

For no-strings sex to work, you need to feel happy about sex. You need to feel happy — at least potentially happy, willing and able to be happy —- about the people you’re having sex with. And you need to feel happy about yourself. You need to see no-strings sex as something positive you’re pursuing for its own benefits, and for your own reasons. You can’t treat no-strings sex as second-rate, something you’re settling for because you’ve given up on what you really want. Not if you want to have a good time doing it.

Let me put it this way. Back in my late twenties and early thirties, I did some serious catting around. I was happily single, and I made it clear to everyone I dated that, while I was interested in sex and even friendship, a serious romantic relationship was out of the question. I wasn’t just happy to meet women who wanted no-strings sex — I only wanted women who wanted no-strings sex.

And yet, if I’d dated a woman who was looking for no-strings sex because she’d been so badly burned by love that she’d vowed never to try that again? If I’d dated a woman who only wanted no-strings sex because she knew that love was bullshit, and that if I said “I love you” I’d only be lying anyway, so she didn’t want to hear it?

Every single one of my red flags would have gone up.

That doesn’t sound like any fun at all.

I am entirely in favor of no-strings sex for people who genuinely want it. I think there are lots of excellent reasons to want no-strings sex. I even think that “I recently got out of a relationship, and I want sex but I’m not ready for another big commitment right now” is a pretty okay reason. And while I am a great lover of love, I don’t think serious romantic relationships are right for everybody all the time. I think there are people who would be happier being single — some temporarily, some permanently. We don’t all have to do relationships the same way.

But if you’re pursuing no-strings sex out of bitterness, cynicism, anger, hurt feelings, and a generally bleak view of romance, sex, and the gender(s) you’re attracted to . . . the chances of it resulting in “awesome sex” are very slim indeed.

At best, you’re going to have some sad, disconnected, unsatisfying sex. You’ll probably get a lot of rejection, too: from guys who are insulted at the assumption that they’re probably liars, and/or who find the prospect of sex with disappointed, pessimistic women to be less than alluring. And at worst, you’re going to make yourself vulnerable to some serious assholes. (Think of the kind of guy who’ll meet you and think, “Hey, she’s bitter and unhappy about men and has given up on love — I bet she’ll put out.” Is that the kind of guy you want to be sleeping with? Forget whether they’d be safe or trustworthy — do you think they’re going to be any fun in the sack?)

In a lot of ways, no-strings sex can be emotionally harder than long-term relationship sex. At least, it’s a different kind of hard. You have to date more people, put yourself out into the world more. You have to date a lot of frogs . . . and you have to date a lot of people who are going to think you’re a frog. You have to be willing to suffer a lot of rejection — and to do a lot of rejecting yourself. You have to be in a pretty strong, self-confident place for that to work.

And it doesn’t sound like you’re in that place right now.

I don’t think you need no-strings sex.

I think you need a therapist, a vibrator, and time.

Not necessarily in that order.

Photography by Yock (Yoshitaka Kawakami)

Greta Christina, copyright © 2010. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] My Sexual Resolutions

I’m one of those scary people who makes New Year’s Resolutions and takes them fairly seriously. I like having an annual tradition of taking stock of my life and my goals, thinking about what I want to accomplish in the coming year and deciding what I need to do to make that happen. I think it’s my hyper-responsibility gene kicking in. (”Happy New Year! Are you really living up to your potential?”) I even follow through on my resolutions more often than not.

Usually my resolutions have to do with my writing career: finishing a book proposal, contacting new publishers, etc. But this year, I’ve decided to take my own advice about making sex a priority. I’m going to put some conscious thought into what I want my sex life to look like in the coming year — and what actions I need to take to make that happen.

If this inspires you to make some sexual resolutions of your own — speak up in the comments and tell me what they are!

I resolve to proposition at least three people this year. You might not think it, but I’m very shy and lacking in confidence about hitting on people, and I have a bad habit of waiting for the other person to make the first move. But that’s not fair. Being the one to speak up and say, “So are we just flirting, or do you actually want to boff?” is a scary, risky thing to do, and it’s not fair to always expect other people do it. Plus the waiting game doesn’t get me laid nearly as much as I’d like. So I’m resolving to get over my shyness, and to be the one to speak up and make that first move. At least sometimes.

I resolve to do my Kegels more regularly. This one speaks for itself. At the risk of sounding like a ’70s feminist consciousness- raising seminar: I love my vagina. I want to take better care of it.

(Oh, speaking of Kegels: This is something of a tangent, but I thought y’all would appreciate it. There’s a very funny scene in an episode of “Futurama”: they’re in a gym, with various weird aliens on weird gym equipment, and there’s a passing shot of a woman sitting on a Nautilus-type weight machine. You can only see the upper half of her body, and the weights in front of her torso going up and down — and then you see that the name of the machine is the “Kegelcisor.” I’m totally in awe of how they got that one by the censors. I strongly suspect that the censors had no freaking idea what Kegels were.)

Anyway. Kegels. Important. I resolve to do them for a few minutes every day.

And expanding on that theme:

I resolve to continue taking better care of my physical health. I realize this is a pretty standard New Year’s resolution: the iconic one in fact, well past the point of cliche. But the changes I’ve made in my health in the last year or two — going to the gym more regularly, bulding my muscles and my flexibility, losing weight, taking care of my bad knee, getting something vaguely resembling enough sleep — have had a massive impact on my libido and my sex life. I feel friskier more often; I have more sexual stamina; my body has the strength and limberness to do more of what I want it to.

So while this is an embarrassing cartoon cliche of a New Year’s resolution, for the sake of my sexuality I’m making it anyway: Keep walking. Keep going to the gym two to three times a week. Keep counting calories and managing my weight. (I know weight loss isn’t important or necessary for everyone — but it is for me.) Keep up my physical therapy regimen on my bad knee. (If I can get my bad knee into good enough shape that I can stay on my knees for more than a few minutes, I’ll be a very happy camper.) Go to the doctor when I have a health concern, instead of toughing it out. Don’t get less than six hours of sleep more than twice a month. Remember that my body is a source of pleasure and joy — and treat it as such.

I resolve to try at least three sexual variations that I’ve never done before. This is more of a challenge than you might think: I’m in my late 40s, and I’ve already tried most of the sexual variations that I’m seriously interested in.

But not all of them. There’s more than a handful of variations that would make me very sad if I died without ever having tried them. And there’s far more than a handful that I have only a passing interest in but wouldn’t mind checking out. You never know when today’s idle curiosity will turn into tomorrow’s frantic obsession. (That’s what happened to me with “Mad Men.”)

It’s true that one of the great advantages of middle age is that I’ve already figured out a lot of what I do and don’t like in bed . . . and I can now spend my time just doing it. But in the same way that I don’t want to become someone who only listens to the music I liked in my twenties, I don’t want to become someone who only has the sex I liked in my twenties. I want to keep my sexual options open . . . if only so I don’t turn into a crank, griping about how sex isn’t like it used to be and young people these days are doing it all wrong.

Besides, sexual desires can change with time. Just last year, I stumbled on a sexual kink that used to be completely off-limits and has now become a favorite in the regular rotation. So I don’t just want to keep my mind open to things I’ve never tried before. I also want to keep my mind open to things I tried and rejected years ago. If I could rediscover and reclaim Led Zeppelin after years of scorning them, maybe I can rediscover and reclaim deep throating, too.

So those are my sexual resolutions.

What about yours?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] All Boy-Boy Action

The topic for today’s sermon:

Women who like gay male porn.

And people who are surprised by this.

We’ll start with the facts: There are some women who like gay male porn. I’m one of them. And I’m not the only one. Look at the widespread phenomenon of slash fanfic: erotic fiction about fictional characters, typically about two or more male characters, and typically written by and for straight women. (Kirk/Spock, anyone? Or are you more of a Snape/Draco girl?) And it isn’t just written porn: there are women who like gay male porn videos, photos, comics. There’s even an entire genre of Japanese comics and graphic novels, yaoi, devoted to gay male love and/or sex stories created for a female audience. (If you’re one of these gay- porn- lovin’ women, btw — please speak up in the comments! I know more or less what I get out of gay male porn, but I’d love to hear what you get out of it.)

It’s true that this desire hasn’t been reflected very much in the video porn industry — and video porn is what a lot of people default to when they think about “porn.” But “women don’t like gay porn” isn’t a very good explanation for this. (Some better ones: Women on average are more interested in written porn than videos. And the video porn industry can be idiots sometimes: they’re terrified of putting something on screen that might turn off straight guys; they largely ignore the potential of the women’s market; and even when they try to cater to women’s tastes in porn, they tend to get it laughably wrong.)

So those are the facts: Some women like gay male porn. Enough so that there are entire porn genres that cater to it.

And yet, many people seem deeply surprised by this. Many people assume that this phenomenon doesn’t exist, and will ponder the question of why women don’t like gay porn when so many guys love the girl-girl stuff And many people are entirely baffled when they hear about women who like all boy-boy action, wondering, “What on earth do they get out of it?”

So if you’re surprised by the fact that some women like to watch/ read about two men doing it, let me ask you this:

Are you surprised by the fact that some men like to watch/ read about two women doing it?

“Girl-girl action” is so common in heterosexual video porn, it’s not even considered a fetish. It’s a completely standard menu item, like fucking and sucking. As for all girl-girl videos, they’re all over the “hetero” porn market like a cheap suit. And nobody seems the least bit surprised by any of this.

So if you’re puzzled by why some women are into porn with two guys, ask yourself: Why are some men — indeed, a whole lotta men — so excited by porn with two girls?

The answers vary, of course. Some men like girl-girl porn because they’re not attracted to men. Some are actively turned off by the sight of men; others really just prefer to look at women. They get off on femaleness — and they like to see a lot of it, undiluted by the maleness that they’re just not that into.

Well, that’s true for some women, too. Some women like gay porn because they’re hot for guys, not girls, and guys are who they want to look at/ read about. They want to enjoy maleness, and male sexuality. And even those of us who appreciate both women and men in our porn sometimes like to enjoy just one or the other. I, for one, like lots of different kinds of porn — but one of them is definitely the kind that’s all about hard cocks and hard muscles. Undiluted by soft breasts and pussies.

Moving on: Some men like girl-girl porn because they like the fantasy of a three-way (or four-way, or five-way, or whatever) that includes them. They like to watch two (or more) women do it because then they can project themselves into the scene. They like to look at all this delightful female pulchritude . . . and then imagine themselves as the center of it all.

Well, that’s true for some women, too. Some women like to watch/ read about two or more guys . . . so they can imagine themselves as the center of a whole lot of hot male attention. The delicious meat in a Kirk/Spock sandwich, if you will.

And some men like girl-girl porn for the exact opposite reason: they like the alien-ness, the difference, of women, and of lesbians. They don’t want to project themselves into the scenario at all. They see women as excitingly mysterious, exotic even. They see lesbians in particular as enticingly out of reach. And they don’t want that mysterious allure tainted by the quotidian familiarity of men.

And again, that’s true for some women, too. For some women, gay male porn is alien, exotic. Forbidden fruit, even. It’s like the key to the secret garden; a keyhole peep into a world we’re not supposed to see.

I’ve read other explanations for why women like boy-boy porn — explanations as varied as the women themselves. Some women like the fact that gay porn features seriously good-looking guys, while straight porn all too often succumbs to the “ugly guys with big dicks” phenomenon. Some like kinky porn, and they’ve found gay kinky porn to be harder and kinkier. Some like kinky porn with male tops, but aren’t comfortable watching women they don’t know get beaten and humiliated. Some like to watch intense butt-sex, and gay porn has plenty to spare. Etc. Etc. Etc. (And yes, for the record: The reasons some men like to watch girl-girl porn are wildly varied as well.)

I’m not sure what my point is here. I think my point is just this:

Yes, Virginia, some women like boy-boy porn. Exclusively, primarily, or as one of many porny varieties. And this fact is entirely unsurprising. Or it should be. The fact that some women like boy-boy porn should be no more surprising that the fact that some men — okay, lots of men — like girl-girl porn.

And if our culture took female sexual desire seriously, nobody would blink an eye at it.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] Why Did Gayness Evolve?

So why, from an evolutionary perspective, are there gay people at all?

In my last column, I speculated wildly on the question of why there are so few people who are equally attracted to both women and men; why the distribution of human sexual orientation tends to clump into “more or less heterosexual” and “more or less homosexual” camps. But this intriguing and currently unanswered question begs a much larger, even more intriguing question:

Why — from an evolutionary perspective — are there gay people at all?

Current research seems to be suggesting that homosexuality is a trait people are born with. At least partly, if not mostly or entirely. The jury is still out, but that’s the direction the evidence is currently pointing to. And while it’s possible that gayness is inborn but not genetic — it could be caused by in-utero environmental factors, for instance — it’s looking like genetics are, at the very least, a significant part of the picture.

But when you accept the idea that homosexuality is genetically wired, you get faced with a very puzzling question:

Why would that be?

Why, from an evolutionary perspective, would a not-insignificant number of us have been born wanting to boff people we have zero chance of reproducing with?

Why wouldn’t that trait have been selected out long ago?

There are lots of hypotheses as to why this might be. I’m not going to argue for or against any of them here (if for no other reason, it would make this piece way too long). Instead, I want to point a very important and often overlooked fact about evolution:

To ask “What is the evolutionary reason for (X)? Why did (X) evolve?” is often the entirely wrong question.

There are many, many traits of humans and other living things that are incidental by-products of evolution. They’re not the traits that were selected for. They’re incidental by-products of the traits that were selected for.

Let me give an example. Let’s ask the question, “Why did bones evolve to be white? What is the selective advantage of bones being white?”

As you can probably guess, this is a completely misleading and even silly question. There is no selective advantage whatsoever of bones being white. Bones could be hot pink with zebra stripes for all evolution cares. Bones are white because, due to an assortment of evolutionary pressures and accidents, bones are made of calcium — and calcium is white. The fact that bones are white is an incidental by-product of the fact that they’re made of calcium.

Or, to bring it back to the more interesting topic of sex: Let’s look at the question, “Why do men have nipples?” There is no selective advantage to men having nipples. There is, however, an obvious selective advantage to women having nipples, what with keeping offspring alive and all. And there’s a selective advantage to having women and men grow with the same basic blueprint, with only relatively minor differences. So women and men are both born with nipples . . . nipples that develop in women to serve an important function, and that in men exist only for, shall we say, entertainment.

And it’s been suggested — controversially, but with good evidence to back it up — that the female orgasm works this way as well. According to this hypothesis, there’s no evolutionary reason for women to have orgasms; they play no significant role in our survival or reproduction. (The fact that many women have orgasms so unreliably, and with such difficulty, and that a good number of us don’t have them at all until later in life and in some cases not at all, is some of the strongest evidence for this.) Female orgasms are like male nipples: women have orgasms because men have orgasms, and women’s and men’s biological blueprints are similar enough that a reproductively useful function in one may still be present in the other even if it serves no evolutionary purpose.

Now, whether or not you agree about female orgasm, the general principle applies: Not every trait — not even every trait that’s passed on genetically — has been selected for by the process of evolution. Some are incidental by-products of the traits that were selected for.

And homosexuality could easily be one of these.

There’s a concept in architecture (stay with me, I promise this isn’t a tangent) that’s been swiped by evolutionary biologists — the concept of the spandrel. In architecture, a spandrel is the triangular space under a staircase (or a similar space between two arches). And obviously, it isn’t something an architect will intentionally design. An architect may try to design a staircase so the spandrel is attractive, or so it impinges on the space as little as possible. She may even try to make the spandrel useful (as storage space, for instance). But the spandrel is not the thing that was intended. The staircase is the thing that was intended. The spandrel is only there because the staircase is there . . . and because, with a very few exceptions (such as a spiral staircase), you can’t have a staircase without a spandrel.

Evolutionary biologists have swiped this concept for obvious reasons. There’s no design or intention in evolution, obviously. But the principle is the same: a useful feature with positive benefits will sometimes carry an incidental side effect, a feature that doesn’t have any advantages in itself but that has to be there for the selected feature to exist.

So even if homosexuality is inborn — even if it’s genetic — it may not be the trait being selected for.

Homosexuality may be a spandrel.

It’s possible that there is a positive evolutionary benefit in some people being gay. Some scientists have suggested that there is. But it’s also possible that being gay is an incidental by-product of some other adaptive trait that we need to survive and reproduce. It could be, for instance, that a preference for boffing women (or men) is inborn . . . and that it’s evolutionarily more advantageous for that preference to occasionally show up as same-sex desire than for it to never show up at all. Or the reverse could be true: it could be that in humans and some other animals (homosexual behavior is hardly limited to the human species), there’s an advantage to having our “identify someone you can reproduce with” wiring being more — oh, let’s not say “promiscuous,’ instead let’s say “broad.” With this evolutionary strategy, we may have a lot of sex that doesn’t result in successful reproduction . . . but the chance that we’ll reproduce with somebody becomes rather higher.

I’m not going to speculate on the likelihood of any of these specific hypotheses. I just think it’s important to remember the general principle: Not every trait serves an evolutionary purpose of survival or reproduction. Some are incidental, spandrels. Homosexuality would seem like an odd trait to have evolved, something of a barrier to reproduction that needs some serious explaining . . . but that doesn’t mean the explanation is, “Homosexuality serves (X) purpose.” The explanation could be, “(Y) serves (X) purpose . . . and homosexuality is connected in some way with (Y).”

And I think it’s important to remember this as well:

Homosexuality isn’t as much of a barrier to reproduction as people often think.

Very, very few people are entirely, 100% homosexual. Just like very, very few people are entirely, 100% heterosexual. Our behavior tends to slant more or less in these two directions, possibly due to social constraints as much as natural ones . . . but most people have the capacity to be sexually involved with both/ all genders, at least to some degree. So while homosexuality may seem like kind of a weird trait from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s really not. Unless you’re a 100% completely same-sex oriented Kinsey 6 type gay person, homosexuality is only a moderate liability in the Evolutionary Sweepstakes. (Speaking for myself: Effective modern birth control is way more of a factor in my not reproducing than being a dyke.)

Finally, I want to say this:

I know some gay people won’t like this idea one bit. Some gay people won’t like the idea of gayness being an evolutionary accident or afterthought. To them, I want to say two things.

First: We can’t reject scientific hypotheses simply because we don’t like them. That’s exactly what the homophobic religious right does: they reject the extensive evidence that queers are healthy, stable, responsible contributors to society and family, purely because it doesn’t fit their worldview. If we’re going to demand that they accept reality as it is, then we don’t get to reject reality (or possible hypotheses about reality) just because we don’t like it. There are some good arguments against the spandrel hypothesis of homosexuality . . . but “it isn’t nice to gay people” is not one of them.

Second: If we are an evolutionary spandrel . . . there’s a serious upside.

And that’s that we’re not going anywhere.

If homosexuality is an independent trait that has been selected for (or not selected against) due to some reason of its own . . . it could eventually be selected out. It does confer some selective disadvantage, after all, if not a massive one . . . and as society becomes more gay-accepting and more people are comfortable with entirely same-sex oriented sex lives, that disadvantage only gets more pronounced.

But if homosexuality is a spandrel — an incidental by-product of evolution, hitching a ride on some useful and important trait that our species needs to survive and reproduce — it’s a lot more likely to stick around.

And I, for one, am in favor of us sticking around.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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