all men should allow themselves to be sexually penetrated at some point. His reasons for this seem to primarily hinge on how this experience is able to make men "understand and appreciate what women go through their whole life."
In a recent interview with GQ Magazine to discuss his new film, designer and director Tom Ford offered the observation that"It's such a vulnerable position to be in," he told journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner, "and it's such a passive position to be in...there's such an invasion, in a way, that even if it's consensual, it's just very personal."
![Ford is right that more men should endeavour to understand what it's like to be a woman, but will penetrative sex do that?](/web/20161210151912im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/7/1/9/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt6wnl.png/1481189255961.jpg)
I agree with Ford to an extent about men and the potential avenues (heh) of vulnerability that being penetrated would open up (double heh) for them, but not for the reasons he mentions. Being penetrated will no more teach cisgender men what it's like to be a woman than penetrative sex will teach women what it's like to be a gay man.
Additionally, the view that female cis-heterosexuality is inherently passive simply because it facilitates penetration by a phallus is both ignorant and insulting. The clitoris alone boasts the highest number of nerve endings of anywhere on the body, doubling those that exist in the penis. It's also the only part of the human body whose sole purpose is to provide pleasure. Stimulation of the clitoris is far more likely to result in an orgasm than penetration of the vagina, yet Freudian theory dismissed such experiences as 'infantile'. The mature woman would orgasm through penetration, Freud argued, and anything else was a sign of frigidity.
![Amercian designer and director Tom Ford said all men should be sexually penetrated at some point.](/web/20161210151912im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/l/3/i/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt6wnl.png/1481189255961.jpg)
If passivity is a feminised state of being (in so much as this is a construct forced on women by a broader social narrative), sex is only one small part of that. In fact, it is the fear of women's sexuality that has forced passivity onto us, in acts executed by people and power structures who consider our sexuality too dangerous a force for us to wield ourselves.
Indeed, one could argue that if women's sexuality is passive, it isn't because we've been penetrated by penises but rather that we've been incessantly f---ed over by pricks.
Ford's misconception almost certainly stems from a more populist view of sexual penetration and the people who are "supposed" to experience it. For example, the virginity of noblewomen might have once been fiercely protected as a means of safeguarding property lines (because how can paternity be assured with a woman who invites multiple men into her bed?), but equal weight has also always been given to the notion of "purity".
As popular abstinence campaigns still regularly remind us, a woman who invites multiple men into herself is disgracing the temple that she's told is her body. In this nonsense ideal, consensual sexual encounters are reframed as women allowing men to degrade and use them. Our bodies are discussed via metaphors. We are cars whose resale values plummet as the number of our owners increase. We are pieces of sticky tape catching the debris of those people and things we stick to, becoming less adhesive in the process.
Even the act of heterosexual consent is frequently discussed as a kind of relenting: we "let" men f--- us and "give in" to pressure, because we are the gatekeepers of our bodies - and who wants to buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
The practice of shaming cisgender women for having heterosexual, penetrative sex (whether vaginal or oral) has always perplexed me. Throughout history, the phallus and what it supposedly represents (power, strength, beauty) has been revered. And yet, penetration with this powerful, beautiful, revered object is akin to being defiled. What a curious paradox that is.
But a word on those noblewomen, because herein lies some of the problem. The cultural narrative only concerns itself with defending some women from untimely sexual penetration and the associated "deflowering" that comes with it (that word alone should tell you all you need to know about how mainstream society views a vagina that has been explored by a dick.)
Society is scandalised when the Miss Lydia Bennets run off with scurrilous young Wickhams, not when the Darcys have their way with the chambermaids. This repulsive narrative takes the view that only some women have a chastity worth saving, while the rest - the poor women, the women of colour, the fat women, the disabled women, the old women - exist to service the needs of the men who invest in the chastity of others.
Ford is right that more men should endeavour to understand what it's like to be a woman, and being penetrated might form a part of that intellectual journey. But it isn't because the act gives them previously unexplored insight into a passive, vulnerable state of being: framing it in this way only demonstrates how very little Ford understands women himself.
Rather, it's that doing so might force men to confront the cultural conditioning that equates the act of being penetrated with being weak and passive, and how this in turn informs a domineering, obnoxious masculinity that oppresses everybody.
Oh, and there's also the fact that they might like it. Just a thought.
3 comments
New User? Sign up