I want to know exactly how tall they can stack bullshit in the Globe and Mail newsroom.

I think if sex didn't have a stigma then everyone in their late teens and twenties could really experiment with different partners and once find love and someone who makes them sexually happy, we'd be better off overall. But no sex is yucky and only supposed to be done with one person forever.

A) drunken people in general aren't going to be as good at sex as people who are sober enough to know where they're sticking things,
and B) that no one is actually born a sex god or goddess. It actually takes practice, just like any other skillset, and learning from your mistakes and successes. Oh, and C) the more you practice with the same person or people, the more quickly you'll figure out what makes it good for them.

Countess: You are a great lover! Boris: I practice a lot when I'm alone.

that is such a quotable flick - any time it's referred to - it makes my day

If it's all about you, it's about nothing! It's only great when it's about both of us.

Other than the fact that the columnist is using the word?

Sorry, I am too lazy and uninspired to click through. But I find the attempt to connect actual feminist theory to this article about how some young woman had some not-very-good consensual tipsy sex rather dumb and click-baity. This isn't 1973, and serious feminism isn't much about orgasms.



#firstworldproblems

that free sex was not all that it was promoted to be. Too often they ended up the loser.

Feminism and the free sex movement in my mind were two different issues.

Actually, it began before that but its most recent incarnation began in the Age of Enlightenment with such poor misguided fools as Mary Woolenstonecraft. What a loser she was!

think for themselves and own/control their own wealth etc. She also objected to arranged marriages etc.

But I don't exactly see her advocating free sex with a couple of drunken partners. I see her more in line with feminist issues of economic rights and equality.

She wrote extensively about women controlling their own sexuality.

Young people make mistakes (as do old people). Also, people aren't always great at things the first few times they try it. And some people are bad at sex. Better a young woman find out what makes her happy through trial and error then just marrying the first guy she wants to fuck - because that often works out MUCH worse.

Although they didn't exactly have a conventional marriage.

Her 1st daughter Fanny was Imlay's child. Fanny committed suicide as a teenager. Mary's daughter Mary married the poet Shelley. I think the first Mary died in childbirth.

...I can truthfully say, (excuse the pun) "it ain't all what it's cracked up to be".

In time, you find it empty and shallow....and unfulfilling.

Watching Girls, listening to 'elders' like Margaret - who assumes that the young woman was led astray by evil feminists - none of that takes the place of experience.

Everyone must decided what's best for themselves. I'm sure there are some women as there are men who really enjoy casual sex with strangers. I'm sure there are those who think it might be fun then after trying it, decide it's not for them. I'm also sure there are those who don't think it will be fun and will never try it.

The holier-than-thou moralists who for whatever reason think they can tell others how to behave sexually need to take a look in the mirror and figure out why they feel a need to do so. Then they need to shut the hell up.

sex, in that I think people should be free to do what they want to do as long as nobody is hurt or abused.

That being said, I really don't see much wrong with this article, despite the fact that it was written by a "conservative feminist". The statement "But most women are only able to have good sex with men they feel connected to and trust; for most men, that’s not the case." is kind of at the core of this in that one night stands are usually good for men, but it's not always true for women.

Women don't always have orgasms with partners they don't know well or who aren't invested enough in trying to figure out what pleases them. That's why it's different. For men, if they get off, it was good. For a lot of women, sex with someone we don't know or who doesn't know or care enough to please us can be pretty disappointing. It's just not worth it if its not good for us too.

Oxytocin is the love or bonding chemical. We secrete it sooner. I don't know that it comes into play with one-night stands, but with casual relationships, yes. Not that women aren't capable of casual relationships, but it is biologically harder for us.

YMMV.

I think some people find transient relationships satisfactory. I don't.

stands enjoyable. And some men and women during different times in their lives are a certain way at one point and then another way at another point. It was just a generalization, but not meant to apply across the board.

The generalization useless?

they were after, the stereotype/generalization would change. But they don't because they think that other men would think of them as "Un-manly" (which is a joke), however women would find the revelation refreshing and encouraging.

I'm in my 50s and had dozens of partners before I married. Some LTRs. Some one nighters - drunk, stoned, and sober.

Personally, the best sex was/has been with people I have established some emotional relationship with.

It's kind of like Oscar Wilde's quip, "Youth is wasted on the young."

Close though; both were Irish.

"Bitterness"?

Wente was born in 1950 and at university by the late 60s. I assure you, we who were there had all the sex we wanted, whether that was none or nightly one-night stands.

Observing the sex lives of today's student-age population, I find little to be bitter about, myself, so I can't think what Wente would have. Much as I dislike what she had to say, I would not characterize it as you have.

Basically, she will hop on whatever horse is convenient, to take a charge at feminists and feminism. This is just the latest.

And again, to know what she is talking about, it is important to read the piece she is purporting to critique. Wente is not the originator of the bad-sex thesis she is critiquing; she is rejecting the thesis of the young feminist who wrote it:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/10/why-consensual-sex-can-still-be-bad.html?wpsrc=nymag

like a young woman does, or could. Most people of the age of majority have always been able to have lots of sex. Then we get older and then we get less sex, for lots of reasons. If she doesn't understand that, then she's the clueless one here. And if she understands it and is complaining, then there you go, bitterness.

And the charge that young feminists are generally clueless about sex is sheer silliness, if taken at face value. They know much about sex.

I have no difficulty at all "getting it".

You, unfortunately, don't seem to have "got" what either Wente or the author she was disagreeing with was saying, given that nothing you are saying appears to have anything at all to do with anything either of them said.

Just for future ref, dismissing someone's ideas and ascribing emotions to them based on their age, even someone right-wing and anti-feminist, is not really wise.

for reasons which should be obvious to any observer. Good-bye!

Not my experience at all.

Who did that? Where? On what planet? Granted my teen years were back in the 80-90s but...um...what the hell is she talking about? Most of us as teens were just happy to HAVE sex. I don't really think we gave it a single thought as to if it was going to be enjoyable - it was SEX! Everything society had pressured us into thinking was the only important thing that exists! SEX!

Puritans need to shut up and mind their own business, evidently they ALWAYS have bad sex and it pisses them off.

SORRY, not my problem. Maybe try a new outlook on life? Still plenty of time.

but never identifies who told them all that stuff.

I suppose it was the godless, immoral liberal central committee or something.

rather than just her slant on it. Coincidentally, I read it a few days ago.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/10/why-consensual-sex-can-still-be-bad.html?wpsrc=nymag

So it was only natural that when feminism was resurrected by young women creating a new movement, it was self-consciously sex friendly, insouciant in its approach to the signs and symbols of objectification. No one would ever mistake these feminists for humorless harridans or frigid dick-rejectors. But the underpinning philosophy had shifted slightly. Sex positivity was originally a term used to describe a theory of women, sex, and power; it advocated for any kind of sexual behavior — from kink to celibacy to conscious power play — that women might enjoy on their own terms and not on terms dictated by a misogynistic culture. Now it has become shorthand for a brand of feminism that was a cheerleader for, not a censor of, sex — all sex. Feminism’s sexual focus narrowed in on one issue: coercion and violence. Sex that took place without clear consent wasn’t even sex; it was rape.

In this line of thinking, sex after yes, sex without violence or coercion, is good. Sex is feminist. And empowered women are supposed to enjoy the hell out of it. In fact, Alexandra Brodsky, a Yale law student and founder of anti-rape organization Know Your IX, tells me that she has heard from women who feel that “not having a super-exciting, super-positive sex life is in some ways a political failure.”

Except that young women don’t always enjoy sex — and not because of any innately feminine psychological or physical condition. The hetero (and non-hetero, but, let’s face it, mostly hetero) sex on offer to young women is not of very high quality, for reasons having to do with youthful ineptitude and tenderness of hearts, sure, but also the fact that the game remains rigged.

It’s rigged in ways that go well beyond consent. Students I spoke to talked about “male sexual entitlement,” the expectation that male sexual needs take priority, with men presumed to take sex and women presumed to give it to them. They spoke of how men set the terms, host the parties, provide the alcohol, exert the influence. Male attention and approval remain the validating metric of female worth, and women are still (perhaps increasingly) expected to look and fuck like porn stars — plucked, smooth, their pleasure performed persuasively. Meanwhile, male climax remains the accepted finish of hetero encounters; a woman’s orgasm is still the elusive, optional bonus round. Then there are the double standards that continue to redound negatively to women: A woman in pursuit is loose or hard up; a man in pursuit is healthy and horny. A woman who says no is a prude or a cock tease; a man who says no is rejecting the woman in question. And now these sexual judgments cut in two directions: Young women feel that they are being judged either for having too much sex, or for not having enough, or enough good, sex. Finally, young people often have very drunk sex, which in theory means subpar sex for both parties, but which in practice is often worse (like, physically worse) for women.

The author's approach may have sounded very conservative, sexist and even reactionary, but there was a point there in all her moralizing and generalizing and I think the 4th paragraph above pretty much explains it.

Wente was very conservative etc. (It's interesting to note from her history - I have seen her before - that she is pro-choice ... but takes every opportunity to criticize the pro-choice movement.)

What I quoted was from the author with whom she disagreed.

Wente's thesis is that girls are just different, we need dinner dates and hugs and diamond rings in order for sex to be good.

The original author's thesis is that what we need is a culture in which we are not the means to men's sexual gratification.

Wente herself rejected that thesis.

I'm with the original author. We don't need love & marriage every time. We need to be the subjects of our own sexuality and sexual acts, not the objects of men's. That is the precondition to "good sex".

Funny thing is that the author of the original piece is critiquing what "feminists", i.e. modern-day whatever-wave feminists, have said ... by using the arguments the second wave of feminism introduced against the very same problem of male-defined and male-entitled sex.

you, I agree with the original author in NY mag, not Wente's article. Just that some of the points about one night stands not necessarily being empowering for women, even though both authors had different reasons for this being the case.

I think I need to read Wente's article a little more critically, sometimes we take one part of a message that we want to hear and dismiss the rest of the message and how it's delivered.

The moral of this article: "Women are too promiscuous and are suffering because of it. Back in the old days, it was never like this!"

Last time I looked, we're able to choose who we have sex with. Regretting the previous night (especially when drinking) is a normal part of life. It's not because women have been sold one night stands. It's because of booze and being horny - e.g. a normal part of life. Saying, "I probably shouldn't have done that" the next day is a normal part of life too, and is nothing new.

good even if it involves your own sister LOL" straw woman, but the language is directed against the neo-Victorian types who insist that sex is some sort of calamity (at least the sort of sex involving the Devil's Joystick) and who don't have real experience for that same reason

There are definitely some problems with it, but I am sure she intended this article to get people riled up.

1. It is stupid of her to assume all feminists are promiscuous and/or endorse female promiscuity. We are all different and have different attitudes toward sex based upon our personal desires/sexual ethics. It's mostly the Millenials engaging in this behaviour and many of them do not identify as feminists at all. The point is, your sexual behavior in no way determines how much of a feminist you are or whether you are even one at all.

2. I think people are seeing this a very conservative, prudish message and getting very angry about any message that tells people they might want to look at their sexual behavior and whether they are going along with the crowd or following their own personal wishes and desires. It's seems as though a lot of men are just having a knee-jerk reaction to this article because it might mean that if women take this advice (highly unlikely) it would mean less easy sex for them. They are reacting purely from a place of self-centered need.

3. Some of what she says does make sense. Many women do not find promiscuous drunken, one-night stands very fulfilling. Some of us know what we are talking about and are the exact opposite of prudish. Maybe greater selectivity in sexual matters would lead to more fulfilling sex lives for both men and women. I think right now people are having a lot of sex, but a lot of it isn't good, and in the opinion of most women I know, if it isn't good, it wasn't really worth it at all so there is point to being more selective in choosing a partner, even if it is just for a fling.

Women have been insisting on having sex on their own terms for a couple hundred years at least and sexless, joyless husks have been saying, "but I hear the sex is bad and these women are easy unhappy dirty sluts" for just as long.

The unlucky men who aren't being chosen for sex are angry and lately, they've been shooting at people.

Some people hook up with people who are bad at sex. Some people hook up with people who are good at sex. Some people like a casual hook up; some people don't. What one older lady "has heard" isn't what everyone is doing or experiencing but makes a mighty fine excuse for her to wag her finger.

It really is worth reading the original piece, rather than just Margaret Wente's commentary on it.

Personally, I would not say that Wente being an "older lady" has as much to do with her response as her being a contrarian egotist of a right-wing bent.

I mean, speaking as an "older lady" who agrees with the actually feminist thesis in the piece Wente was taking issue with.

I absolutely agree that it is important to look at the predictable offspring of the culture of male entitlement: the woman killers, of all varieties.

I wonder, though, whether women's desperation for affirmation of their desirability, by focusing their casual sex activities on the men who, being most desirable, are most able to provide that affirmation, isn't hurting people of both sexes. Perhaps it creates "losers" who would not otherwise be: the resentful "nice guys" we hear so much from.

Not, please be sure, that I blame women for this. But not all men are winners in the male entitlement culture.



edit - for a good snapshot of Wente as egotistical contrarian, google found this

http://www.readersdigest.ca/magazine/7-things-you-can-t-say-canada-0/

Even way back in college and in my single youth, I didn't enjoy one night stands that much. The sex pretty much rated "C" or "D" grades.

I always preferred serial monogamy where you really learned another person's personality and likes/dislikes. That sex was A+ mostly.

We have the mating instinct, we have the sex instinct, and we have the realities of modern life, in which it is very difficult for young people to settle down with a stable partner early.

I don't think this is just a feminist problem.