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[FONT=Arial][B]The Myth of Penetrative Sex (Inspired by Warren Farrell)[/B][/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I recently read Warren Farrell's [I]The Myth of Male Power - Why Men are the Disposable Sex[/I] and found it absolutely seminal. I wasn't even aware that there was any kind of discourse pertaining to the issues that men are now facing as feminism continues to gather momentum and pulls more and more ground out from under our feet. Farrell’s arguments encapsulate exactly how I feel about our supposedly "patriarchal" society and if anyone here's not read it, I urge you to seek it out. I'm not saying that the text is the perfect anti-misandrist or even masculist manifesto, but Farrell is [I]mostly on the ball[/I]. It's not men who have power and it hasn't been for a long time, if indeed it ever was. We're worked day and night, in increasingly stressful environments, forced to give away our earnings and, if we try and escape this wage slavery, pursued through the courts and financially crippled. Our ability to pursue sexual relations has been completely stripped from us, leaving us too terrified to make a first move in case we wake up slap bang next to a fifteen year prison sentence. Meanwhile the media increasingly depicts us as incompetent wrecks incapable of surviving without the aid of an infinitely benevolent woman. How any young boy growing up with the feminazi propaganda that litters the average soap opera is supposed to develop any sense of self is beyond me. And when men - young men in particular - react to their growing impotence and disenfranchisement with the only response they're biologically trained to perform, the feminists are there to point out our innate bestiality.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Reading Farrell’s book sent my thoughts spinning down many avenues. His chapters relating to sexual relationships and rape were particularly thought provoking and I'd like to dwell here on one aspect of sex - and the way sex is framed within the cultural sphere at large - that Farrell doesn't cover and yet ably demonstrates his arguments about male powerlessness. I'd like to call my musings 'The Myth of Penetrative Sex'. What does it mean that sex is continually referred to as a "penetrative" act? What is the ideological function of attaching the adjective "penetrative" to the noun "sex" and how precisely does this pairing support Farrell’s assertions by constructing a veneer of power over what is actually a state of male power[I]lessness[/I]? [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]What does the noun phrase 'penetrative sex' evoke, exactly? Feminist discourse loves to construct a version of sex where the man is the subject and the woman the object, the former performing the actions, the latter a container or receptacle, acted upon. As the woman lies motionless, gracefully tolerant of the barbaric act that is about to take place, the man moves down from above and [I]penetrates[/I] her, his sexual organ transformed via this discourse into a weapon, like a needle or a knife breaking into skin. What we are continually told is the fundamental nature of sex, its penetrative aspect, is used by feminists to justify their "all sex is rape" agenda. Indeed, when sex is described so, it’s hard to argue! It sounds a horrible burden that any man should be grateful to a woman for allowing. I'm sure we're all familiar with the tired scenes of male characters begging for sex, while the woman performs reticence and then gives in, offering it as a favor to keep her partner quiet. Sex, the media teaches us, is something women give in order to placate our moaning and, when they do, we should be eternally grateful. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The problem is that women enjoy sex too. This much is obvious to any man with experience. And yet when do we see female characters, desperately horny, begging their partners for some action? Rarely, if ever, and certainly not on the mainstream programs that the average teenager is likely to encounter and internalize during those formative years when his belief systems are solidifying. Scenes of this nature would reveal the fact that women like sex and, thus, completely destabilize the mechanics of female control.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]This is the true purpose of 'The Myth of Penetrative Sex'. The Myth hands women total power in the bedroom by constructing sex as an experience innately unpleasant for them. If sex were pleasurable for women, they would ask for it too, and therefore men would themselves be able to use it as a bargaining tool, as a means of making the opposite sex grateful. But it is men, not women, who are supposed to remain locked in a state of eternal gratitude, and so the Myth perpetuates. The power women gain from withholding sex is well documented and the Myth is where this power originates.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The easiest way of demonstrating that the construction of sex as "penetrative"

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