Dream Of A Bachelor-Party Pussy-Eating Class

I wanted to read this article by sex educator and burlesque performer Fancy Feast about her time working in sex toy sales because she billed it on social media as “a rant about sex positivity under capitalism” which is at least a little bit in the ErosBlog wheelhouse. It’s a good and wide-ranging article, too; you should go read it. I’m not even going to attempt to summarize, characterize, bloviate, or respond.

I do, however, want to highlight one paragraph of imagery that holed me below the waterline. We may think that we’ve come a long way in terms of gender equality, but socially? Naw. She’s talking about a point in her career where she was head of educational programming for the sex-positive sex toy store she worked for, mostly selling blow job workshops. But even though people would ask for cunnilingus workshops, they couldn’t sell enough tickets for the classes to make. She explains that most of the classes for the blowjob workshops were women who had been somehow convinced they need BJ skills to get and keep a man. Then she points out that women also worry about the oral sex they receive. But do men worry about giving it? It’s not a question she tries to answer per se, but what she does say is telling:

I try to imagine a bachelor party coming into the store for a celebratory cunnilingus event, the groom-to-be adorned in a crown of stylized, glittery cunts. Each man gingerly entering the room, wrapping a hand around a complimentary craft beer for the comfort of a familiar object. Each of them nervous that there is some secret out there to pussy eating that the other men aren’t telling, each of them worried that their girlfriends and wives or Tinder dates will leave them for someone who sucks clit better. I imagine each participant – the groom’s brother, his fiancé’s best guy friend, his cousins – adorned with vulva necklaces, sucking on ripe peaches and juicy mangoes, sitting on foldout chairs in a room of men, howling with laughter and cheering each other on as they practice tongue techniques. Thinking about this makes my heart ache.

Yeah. That’s like, so not happening. By which I mean, of course, that in my calcified imagination I can’t see it happening in what remains of my lifetime. Although it’s also true that we live in an age of wonders, and I am astonished every day…

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Defining Sex Positivity

Franklin Veaux has set off on a bold stroll through the minefields of sex positivity, with this post that mostly expounds on what sex positivity is not. As somebody who has long used the term, I found his disquisition useful. I didn’t quite agree with his one paragraph on what “sex positive” actually is, though:

Sex positivity at its core is simply the recognition that there is more than one “right” way to have sexual relationships. It is an acknowledgement that human sexuality is incredibly diverse, that different people have different tastes and relate to sexuality in different ways, and that as long as everyone is having sex with consenting adult partners, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with sex, regardless of the way people relate to it. In short, it’s a deliberate refusal to place one’s own sexuality on a pedestal and proclaim it the “right” way to have sex.

My thought upon reading that was that I’d just boil that down to “Sex positivity is about being non-judgmental about consensual sexual choices.” But upon reflection, I decided that’s not enough.

Franklin’s paragraph, and my sentence, are statements that establish a space by bounding it and excluding things from it. In my sentence, the word “non-judgmental” is key; “acknowledgment that … there is nothing wrong” and “deliberate refusal” are key phrases in his paragraph.

At best, we’re describing a lack of sex-negativity with phrases like these. I think being genuinely sex-positive requires something more. Franklin’s post details many specific things sex positivity is not; mostly, these are specific sexual propositions or arguments that have been claimed to underlie, and be necessary to, the sex-positive position. And I agree with him that none of these, individually, are necessary to sex-positivity.

However, I do think you can’t be sex-positive without — risking tautology here — being positive about some sex. Being “not negative” doesn’t quite get you there. Being “not negative” probably suffices to unsubscribe you from the armies of the anti-sex culture warriors, but you’ve got to take a positive position and celebrate sexuality in some way, I’d argue, to be sex-positive.

Do you have to celebrate all the sex? Of course not. If you’re like most people with pronounced tastes and opinions, some of the sexual propositions and subcultures out there will strike you as boring, frightening, risible, or worse. No matter. Sometimes being non-judgmental doesn’t require much more from you than keeping your mouth firmly shut. “It’s not for me” doesn’t make you judgmental, but if you examine your motives for expressing that sentiment, there’s usually a parcel of judgment to be found. Sex positive people, I’ve found, spend a lot of time celebrating what they are into, and waste very few words talking about the sex that doesn’t appeal.

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