Penetration Politics

Putting penis pleasure primary

One of the most common questions I get sent via the Naked Grapefruit Instagram page is ‘how do I teach myself to cum by penetration?’. Or ‘I can’t cum via penetration, what’s wrong with me?’. ‘When he penetrates me, I don’t really feel much – have I desensitized myself?’ Penetration, penetration, penetration. Everyone wants to figure it out, everyone wants to master it, and everyone wants that hallowed, superior penetrative orgasm. And I get it. 

It would be a much easier world for mediocre men who can’t find the clit (Matts of the world, Brads of the world, looking at you) and the women who sleep with them (looking at… me I guess) if it was somewhere up your fanny, right? He sticks his dick in, gets it wet, you both get off, bish bash bosh. What a fantasy… The thing is, considering that between 83% and 91% of women report that they cannot orgasm from penetration alone, it’s wild that that we’re still clinging to the fantasy world where people with vaginas orgasm based on what is convenient for the Matts and Brads of the world.

Medieval Matt’s Inside-Out Willy

The fictional idea that all women could cum from penetration alone was invented way back in the day in the 13th century. Medieval Matt decided that women’s sexual organs were exactly the same as his shrivelled willy, except inside out. Even though his sexy sexy imagination was able to cook up sex pest gods like big dick Priapus, Medieval Matt couldn’t envisage the female genitalia as anything except for him, but like, opposite. And the inverse-willy vagina of Medieval Matt’s dreams also orgasmed just like a man’s; he went as far as to imagine that female orgasm was *absolutely necessary* to conceive…

Sounds great, huh? Those medieval ladies cumming all the time? Unfortunately, they weren’t, because imagining a vagina as an inverted penis is a recipe for bad, jabby sex. Double unfortunately, the idea of the female orgasm was mostly used to justify rape – that if you were raped and fell pregnant, you must have orgasmed, so it wasn’t really rape… right. Gross.

Doctor Brad Goes Buzz-Buzz-Buzz

Fast forward like, a couple of centuries to the 1800s and you’ve got doctors absolutely gagging to cure women of their ‘hysteria’ and ‘wandering wombs’ (it’s exactly what it sounds like, women getting all tense because their wombs were wandering all over their bodies. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s sometimes how I feel when a man is rubbing everywhere on my body EXCEPT my clit, desperately, desperately searching for a lady bit to touch…). This lead to Victorian fuckboy medics inventing the vibrator so that doctors wouldn’t have to spend all day fiddling with women’s lady bits, god forbid (jokes). Big win for sexually frustrated hysterical women who got to get off I guess, but not really a big win in terms of patriarchy, because no one was putting two and two together and clocking that the clit was the star of ~sexual pleasure~ and not like, a medical quick fix for a bossy wife. 

Freud went so far as to describe the clitoris as an ‘amputated penis’ and described orgasming that way as ‘immature’ and mentally ill, and that only ~real women~ could cum from penetration. (Raise your hand if you, like me, have discovered that you’re actually a platypus in a woman-suit just because the inside of your fanny isn’t as excitable as your clitty. Welcome to the fuck-you-Freud club, thrilled to have you.) Freud, like Medieval Matt, wasn’t interested in exploring the anatomy of an actual vagina, probably because no woman in their right mind would have let him near theirs. Instead, he was just wondering aloud about how he could justify his beliefs that vaginas were gross and inferior to willies, and like, come up with some sexist theories.

What Now?

We’ve known since Alfred Kinsey’s sexy survey in the 1940s that most women orgasm for the first time masturbating and touching their clit, but still the desire to cum through penetration persists. Why are we still hanging on so desperately to the penetrative orgasm, the idea that a woman’s body should orgasm in the same way as a penis but opposite?

If I said that someone with a willy should orgasm by eating me out just because that was how I orgasmed, you’d think I was nuts, or at the very least, super selfish, right? Most of us don’t expect male bodies to cum in random ways we demand, just because we said so. We acknowledge that they want to be touched differently than our fannies. We know that rubbing the spot low-key above the willy wouldn’t do it for a dude in the same way that the spot just above the vag (the cl*t*r*s!!!!!) feels super magic to us. So let’s stop expecting vaginas to act how penises wish they would. 

Orgasms are incredible. Like, so good. They improve mood, help regulate our menstrual cycles, improve brain function, boost white blood cells. Some studies show that they help with pain and the immune system. And also, orgasms are so nice, so fun. 10/10 feeling, sure I don’t have to sell you on it. Whether that’s clitorally, through penetration (I guess), with hands, with a vibrator, with a shower head. Instead of policing our bodies and dictating how they get there, let’s start focussing on making sure they get to orgasm as much as they fucking want. After this many years of women’s bodies being misunderstood and reduced to weird willy bastardisations, you owe it to yourself to get some. 

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