No Sex Please! We're British!

By far, one of the behaviours that I see the most and one of the behaviours that gets me seriously, seriously angry, whether it is from kinky men or vanilla men (and let's face it, we are all on the spectrum somewhere) is the hunt.

A male friend, a true male friend, said to me once when I asked why men seem so keen then disappear.

"Well it's the chase, it's the hunt. Once they know they have you, they lose interest. Yes, it's juvenile and immature but that's the way a lot of men are."

Heh. You ain't kidding bud.

It is too simplistic to say that the hunt is all men's fault. It isn't. The reasons for it are undoubtedly complex. I believe it is part biological and partially the way society itself is wired.

Let's consider the biological part first. This is Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The need for sex, or intimacy, lies directly on top of the need for security. It is placed slap bang in the middle of the pyramid. Hence it is a pretty big driver when it comes to a human's basic needs. Sex, therefore, is incredibly important and those that say they can live without it do so at their peril. Maybe they can but can their partner? And of course—sweeping generalisation alert—men tend to have greater levels of testosterone.

So the two factors together drive men in their quest for cunt.

But I also believe there is a third driver, the way that society conditions men.

Talking to a female kink friend last week about vanilla attitudes to sex, she said, "But I sometimes wonder if us kinksters have had what is normal for us shifted too far away from what is normal for vanillas and we accept things as a matter of fact which would horrify them."

Exactly the same thought had crossed my mind as well. We've become incapable of understanding what "normal" is.

So with that in mind, over the last couple of weeks, I decided to inhabit a few vanilla female-centric message boards. Primarily the sex ones and read the threads on there. It was an intriguing experiment.

I didn't just read them of course, I popped a few answers on there. Making it explicitly clear that I was coming from a kink perspective. Then I sat back and watched. And read.

It was both heartbreaking and tremendously disappointing in both measures.

Here is a sample from memory:

What's a cock ring?What's squirting — it's just pee isn't it?I don't know how to give oral.

And my personal favourite:

How do I initiate sex?

Part two. A woman who had all her shit together was using sex-centered sites to hook up. Didn't want love. Had a house, good career, lovely nieces and nephews, etc. A man had popped up in her inbox. When she checked out his profile, it was clearly of him and another woman. The woman had been poorly cropped out of the picture. When she asked who it was, the reply?

"That's my wife." Urm, does she know you're on here?

"No! But she'll never find out!"

Appalled at this, she started a thread and said how utterly angry she was. How disrespectful. The responses were truly shocking.

Well, what do you expect if you are on a sex site?You are too immature to handle it! Don't go on there!You're mentally unwell!You must have very low self-esteem OP :-(Sex should always be inside a loving relationship.

Etc., etc.

But not one, at least until later, agreed that it was appalling behaviour. Then the pile on of women (including me) started and pointed out the fucking rampant misogyny. Don't condemn the man for his behaviour, blame the woman for putting herself on that site in the first place!

And finally the third part.

My husband/partner never uses pornography.My husband/partner would never cheat.My husband/partner has been sexting other women but I know he's not cheated. He wouldn't do that to me.I have a low sex drive but he doesn't mind. It's just not that important to me/us.

Shocking right? So simplistic. The utter naivety of and, let's face it, the majority of women in society.

Even personally, whilst in the middle of a difficult emotional and sexual entanglement, talking to a female friend about another mutual friend: "Oh don't worry about her, she's very experienced sexually. She knows what oral sex is you know!"

I almost fell off my fucking chair. No. She. Isn't. She probably thinks she's as kinky as fuck 'cos she's licked a cock a few times. Ten minutes on Fetlife would seriously disabuse her of that notion. Hell! Ten minutes with me personally and I would tell her stories that would give her a heart attack.

So men. Marginalised by society. Their needs and desires overlooked. Sex squashed into a slot on a Sunday morning. Porn late at night. Fucking used by women as a bargaining chip. No idea how to raise the fact that they want specific things without being called a depraved pervert. No wonder they hunt! No wonder they are so single-minded! It's because us, women, are also driving them to it. Just as sure as any hormone or any basic primal need. We scream we are sick of the hunt and yet we also scream that sex is STILL something to be hidden. No sex please, we're British!

I'm not sure what the answer to this is. Except, perhaps, education.

So this is my message to women. The ones that do get it. The ones that understand, is this. We need to talk about sex. We need to talk about kink. In many ways, our generation is sexual pioneers. If we want the hunt to slow down, to stop, we have to effect that change.

Be the change we want to see.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs