Category Archives: sexism

Sex Lessons from Mom and Dad

Even when girls and boys get the same negative message about sex, girls seem to come out worse.

Many young people only get silence from their parents on the subject. But silence communicates: Sex is unmentionable, shameful.

Parents often worry that raising the subject will lead kids to have sex. Actually, when parents talk, their children are less likely to become sexually active, and more likely to behave responsibly.

“Don’t touch yourself there.” Another message linking sex and filthiness.

The advice doesn’t always work as hoped. Sex therapist Lonnie Barbach tells of one little girl who, “put that extraordinarily dirty place directly under the faucet of the tub in order to wash it more thoroughly and was pleasantly surprised to find that the water created a most intense sensation which culminated in orgasm.”

Other little girls aren’t so lucky.

Here’s the downside to the parental rebuke. Touching yourself is exactly what sex therapists advise when women have trouble achieving orgasm. Because they often don’t understand how their bodies work.

In fact, while parents may scold both boys and girls, the reproach seems to have a more negative impact on girls. Boys who don’t touch themselves, and who don’t have sex, will have wet dreams because their bodies need regular ejaculations to create fresh sperm. This clues boys in to how their bodies work.

Girls don’t always figure out how the clitoris works. It’s an organ that’s small and hidden, and girls’ bodies don’t force orgasms. Women can go their entire lives, having many babies, without ever experiencing one.

Most young men masturbate, but only half of young women do. Perhaps this is why.

But parents give boys more positive messages about sex, too. “Never waste a boner,” a male student volunteered when I asked what sorts of parental advice they’d heard.

Girls probably won’t hear anything remotely similar.

We’ve all heard how boys are told to sew their wild oats before marriage, while girls are encouraged to abstain. Some dads have even taken their daughters to “purity balls” and vowed “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” A little extreme. And the notion of “covering” a daughter seems a little creepy. But it reflects the larger society’s concern with girls’ “sexual cleanliness.”

Girls and boys get different messages on sexuality from parents. And even when they don’t, girls’ sexuality can be more damaged.

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Why Is the Right-Wing Attacking Women?

While protecting Big Oil and billionaires, right-wingers brazenly push cuts to programs – many life-saving – that largely affect women: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition programs for women and children (WIC), and prenatal care. A woman’s right to choose is under intense attack with Planned Parenthood and Title X on the chopping block, despite providing low income women with birth control, cancer screenings, and tests for STDs, including H.I.V. And then there’s Rep. Joe Pitts’ proposed bill allowing hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancy even to save a woman’s life. All famously reported in a New York Times piece entitled “The War on Women.” Nothing’s gotten any better since.

Why attack women?

Balancing the federal budget on the backs of the middle-class and poor (where so many women reside) so that wealthy interests and campaign contributions may thrive seems like a good deal to many politicians.

But why the laser-like focus on limiting women’s reproductive rights? Not a lot of money in that. But it’s a vote getter. Still, why is this stance so appealing?

Karen McCarthy Brown, Professor of Anthropology of Religion at Drew University, suggests that limiting women’s reproductive rights creates a sense of stability and empowerment for many. In command of the bodies of women, the power of the flesh, and life, itself, it’s a big deal. Plus, those who value order and stability benefit by “understanding” that men are men and women are women, each in separate spheres, and each knowing their place. So the world becomes simpler and more manageable in black and white. It can all be a huge psychological relief to those doing the controlling and for those who feel the world is under control.

Pretty sad that some coerce others to gain this relief. Surely there’s a better way.

Relatedly, on an interpersonal plane, men who seek to feel empowered by dominating their partners sometimes destroy contraception, hoping their wives or girlfriends will feel more trapped and dependent by the need to care for children.

And then there are your political tyrants. Steven Conn, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State, tells us that in the 20th century the most despicable regimes were fixated on controlling women’s reproductive lives. Outlawing abortion and closing family planning centers were among the Nazis’ first moves. Eventually abortion became a capital offense. Stalin outlawed abortion in 1936.  Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu banned contraception in 1966. By 1986 miscarriage became a matter of criminal investigation. China still coerces women into abortion and sterilization. Interesting that Conn  observes:

The day after the evil Ceausescu had been executed, the National Salvation Front issued two decrees; it lifted the ban on the private ownership of typewriters, and it repealed the laws that policed pregnant women.

The eerily similar workings of right-wing extremists lend an ironic twist to their claim of being all about freedom through free markets. Women must be controlled, but markets must be free?

But what’s a little nonsensical hypocrisy among right-wing despots?

This post is part of a web carnival promoted by a coalition of women’s organizations to discuss the current attacks on historic gains for women and mobilize women voters in 2012. See the Twitter hashtag #HERvotes.

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Beautiful Women’s Hips Are Thinner Than Their Heads?

Are women more beautiful when they are thin, thin, thin?  Are they more beautiful when their hips are thinner than their heads?

Ralph Lauren apparently thinks so. Check out these images of model, Filippa Hamilton before and after photoshop:


         Before photoshop                       After photoshop          

Ok, I’ve definitely been duped by insane notions of beauty. But these go too far.

I don’t care how much the camera gazes at this eerie image, telling me it’s beautiful, I don’t buy it.

Oddly, this bizarre figure is making me rethink the attractiveness of considerably less touched-up photos.

Does Britney Spears really look better thinner? Many will say yes, but (surprising even myself) I don’t. I’m happy to report that I think Britney looks just as beautiful smaller or “bigger” (she’s not really that big).

Google images

Recently the new Duchess of Cambridge, Catherine Middleton, was photoshopped making her tiny waist appear impossibly thin. Is the new wasp-waist more lovely? I think not.

Kate Middleton's waist was slimmed down on the cover of Grazia magazine. Photos by Getty Images; Grazia.

Fortunately, Germany’s most popular women’s magazine, Brigitte, has chosen to stop using professional models, keeping to real, non-starving and non-photoshopped women. What a breath of fresh air! They may be more attractive, taller, and thinner than average, but at least they’re not abnormal.

      Click to view image       Click to view image

Who’s more beautiful, a Ralph Lauren fake lady or a Brigitte real woman?

I vote for the real woman, any day!

A version of this piece was originally published Nov. 1, 2010.

Bad news to update ladies. Looks like two years late Brigitte recanted their decision. Kinda sucks.

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Ways of Seeing: Ravaged or Ravishing?

By Robert Rees

We are bombarded with thousands if not tens of thousands of images every day. Occasionally, two images come into such sharp contrast that they can’t be ignored. Such was the case when I opened the New York Times on Sunday, May 2. On page ten of that issue is a color photo of a 23 year old Congolese woman. The caption says her lips and right ear have been cut off by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Her shorn head, the blackness of her face, the swollen pink oval around her mouth where her lips had once been (like the exaggerated lips of “Sambo” or minstrel characters once popular in American culture), and the sideway glance of her eyes as someone (perhaps her mother) touches her remaining ear with what seems tenderness. It is an image so heartbreaking as to make one weep.

In Ways of Seeing John Berger says, “The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains is distributed over the whole context in which it appears.” Thus . . .

Immediately across the page from this photo is a full page Lord & Taylor ad of a beautiful white woman with long flowing dark hair, green eyes, perfect lips and two ears from which dangle long bejeweled earrings. She is arrayed in such opulence—necklace, pendant, bracelets, a giant opaline or turquoise ring, that the contrast with the Congolese woman is shocking. The juxtaposition of the two images is heightened by the fact that the Congolese woman wears a simple hand-crafted red and black blouse whereas the model wears what looks like an expensive hand-knitted ivory-colored chemise over a pink lace skirt. She holds in each hand a knitted handbag (“only $89”), each covered with roses and each holding a small dog, so laden that she seems barely able to hold them up. This cornucopia of luxury, this picture of desire would never be found in the Congo, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The ad’s caption—“We all have our creature comforts. . . Some of us more than others”—is so ironic as to be almost beyond irony. The motto compounds the irony: “Shop more. Guilt less.”

Again, John Berger, “A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste—indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. . . . To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.”

The Congolese woman, like the Greek Princess Philomela whose husband Terus cut out her tongue so she could not reveal that he had raped her, has likewise likely been raped and brutally silenced. The severing of her left ear compounds the violation. She will be so disfigured that probably no man will ever touch her again and no compassionate god will turn her into a nightingale.

The woman in the Lord and Taylor ad will be ravaged by the eyes of a million men who will yet never touch her skin except in their imaginations. And yet in her wildest imagination this white goddess could never see herself in the place of the black tongueless Congolese woman, nor the Congolese woman ever imagine herself in such a space as the woman in the ad inhabits.

Both of these images are part of the world we live in, although we tend to keep them in separate compartments of our consciousness. The one is horribly real, the other an unreal arrangement by Madison Avenue designers. On another day when they are not juxtaposed, we might consider each separately, but when they are thrust before us in such stark relief, we can turn from neither–only ponder what they tell us about how some of us have more creature comforts than others and how we can remain “guilt less”—and that we are somehow complicit in both.

Robert A. Rees teaches at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

This piece was first posted Sept. 17, 2010

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Sex: Saying “Yes” When You Don’t Want To

Many women agree to sex they don’t want. University of Texas, Austin researchers say the reasons vary. Some consent to maintain relationship. Others think it’s the “nice” thing to do. Some are just doing what they think is expected. A few want to avoid a fight. This can be a problem. Or, unexpected benefits may arise. Today, let’s look at the downside.

Some women are pleasers, uncomfortable saying no. Ironically, one woman’s religion got her saying yes by encouraging passivity and keeping her naïve. “Persistence from a partner, emotional games, alcohol, passivity, and difficulty saying no were all important factors,” she said. “I felt nervous, unsure and confused. I didn’t want to make the other person angry with me. When things didn’t go the way I trusted them to I didn’t know what to do. These experiences all occurred before age 19, after which I got stronger and wiser.”

Some fear rejection. “I had a friend in high school who made it seem like the only way I could be cool was if I shunned everything I thought was right,” one woman lamented. “I would have sex just so she would have more respect for me. I hated every experience I was having.”

More commonly, women fear losing boyfriends. “I was stupid and thought sex would keep my boyfriend around,” one woman explained. “I was 17 years old and it didn’t work.”

Others try to compete with the fireworks of internet porn, which too often brings distress.

A few seem more coerced than consenting. “When I was 17, I dated a guy who was 26. I didn’t want to lose him, so when we made out, he would force my head down for oral. He would hold my head there for a long time, even if I was crying.” Yet she voluntarily continued to see him because she “figured this was part of what I needed to do to be datable.”

Saying yes when we’d rather say no becomes a problem when the motive is avoiding negative or painful outcomes, say the UT researchers. Performing acts that repel us, that go against our values and that create feelings of self-betrayal – damaging self-respect – weigh heavily. Desperation, shame and remorse arise.

These relationships are best left behind.

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Polygamy is Heavenly says Pedophile Prophet

Warren Jeffs, 55-year-old “Prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, whom he had recently added to his harem of nearly 90 “plural wives.”

When Texas Rangers raided his compound in 2008, many were outraged at the infringement on his sect’s religious rights. And Jeffs repeatedly insisted his religious freedom was violated at trial.

Yet the raid, prompted by a prank call to an abuse hotline, provided evidence that more than one-quarter of Jeffs’ “wives” were underage. And in several journal entries, Jeffs said God told him to take more and more young girls as brides “who can be worked with and easily taught.” And, since 105 males are born for every 100 females, you do have to marry younger to do polygamy.

Yet Jeffs claims it the highest form of marriage, bringing exaltation in heaven.

As if pedophilia weren’t problem enough, there’s more trouble in paradise.

Girls and women are basically property. Jeffs writes of summoning the parents of one 14-year-old and informing them “of their girl belonging to me.” He describes wives as “honorable vessels, property of your husband’s kingdom and the Kingdom of God on Earth.” Fathers gave their daughters to him and were rewarded with young brides of their own.

Wives were expected to serve him. Much evidence against Jeffs came from a wife-training tape instructing girls how to please him sexually and win favor with the Lord. He quoted revelations from God as he instructed wives on becoming comfortable nude, grooming their body hair, and group sex.

You have to know how to be excited sexually and to be excited to administer that comfort and strength. And you have to be able to assist each other. No one sits around, everyone assists each other.

On assisting each other, it might help if roughly ninety-five percent of women weren’t straight.

While Jeffs was “appointed” by God to engage in this behavior, other FLDS men were not. “If another man, not appointed, were to do this,” he said, “they would lose priesthood.” He warned his wives to tell no one of this “higher order.”

The wife-training tape seems to include sounds of sobbing. Were the girls less pleased at their call to sexual service than their husband was?

Girls reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away.

But young men were driven out of the community, as well, on trivial charges like watching “inappropriate movies.” If you’re going to be polygamous in a world with equal numbers of women and men, you’ve got to subtract a few men.

Jeffs also reassigned the property and families of men he found threatening, breaking up around 300 families. Ross Chatwin had been fine with polygamy, until this happened to him. “Polygamy is not the problem here,” Chatwin insisted, “It’s the dictatorship.”

Interesting that Chatwin had no problem so long as he had plenty of wives and possessions. He remains blind to the troubles of girls, women, and boys sent away.

Here we find patriarchy in the old sense: older, powerful men wielding control over women and younger and more powerless males.

All-powerful and living without limits, Jeffs seems never satisfied. On the wife-training
tape he says, “OK, six ladies. I wish I had a seventh.” At another point he exclaims, “I need more than one wife to be with me at a time.” Ninety wives and counting… Monogamous men may wish they had more. Apparently, nothing’s enough for polygamous men, either.

Meanwhile, his wives must share just one man, and not one they’re necessarily attracted
to. His pleasure at their expense. A friend of mine wrote a book on 19th century Mormon polygamy. Any wonder he titled it In Sacred Loneliness?

Jeffs indulges his ravenous appetite, ultimately unquenchable, as his wives gain little gratification.

Is polygamy really so heavenly, Mr. Jeffs?

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Norway Terrorist is also Misogynist. What’s the Connection?

The Norwegian terrorist who killed scores of people in late July was motivated by racism, particularly Islamophobia. But he is also a misogynist. It’s not unusual for racism and sexism to go hand in hand. But why?

David Futrelle, who blogs about misogyny on Manboobz.com, points out Anders Behring Breivik’s deep sexism on the Ms. Magazine Blog, highlighting quotes like this:

It’s the destructive and suicidal Sex and the City lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) [that] we are taught to revere as the truth. In that setting, men are not men anymore, but metrosexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticizing soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess.

Futrelle says Breivik’s rants are typical of “manosphere” blogs, which his manifesto
plagiarizes in part. When a prankster posted his quotes anonymously, they got the “thumbs-up” – at least until his identity was revealed.

Other obsessions of Breivik/the manopshere include no-fault divorce, STDs, and women
manipulating men with their feminine charms. Worried that Islam will out-breed Westerners, Breivik advocates limiting contraception, banning abortion, and discouraging women from education and full-time careers, which “will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate.”

In his video, “Call to Arms” Breivik displays big-breasted women in tight T-shirts wielding assault weapons. Reduced to sex-object parts plus firearms, she’s the sexist terrorist’s dream girl.

Breivik’s misogyny doesn’t surprise Michael Kimmel, a feminist who studies men, and who says that racist and sexist right-wing movements are largely about manhood. Men who are drawn to them feel emasculated by “Nanny States” that demand equal rights for everyone and whose taxes prevent people from making a free and independent living, as they see it.

These same men also feel that feminism makes men “wimpy, more pacifist, less authoritarian, more ‘sensitive’, less competitive, more androgynous, (and) less possessive.” The merging of masculine and feminine is a problem because how can men be superior if women and men are similar, or equal?

They add racism to further inflate their self-worth. As Kimmel describes it:

White Protestants are set against various “others” who aren’t men the way they are – blacks, Jews, gay men, other non-white immigrants – who are variously depicted as either “too” masculine (rapacious beasts, avariciously cunning, voracious) or not masculine “enough” (feminine, dependent, effeminate).

Bringing sexism and racism together, “real men” can feel “better-than” everyone else.
And by “protecting” white women from (so-called) non-white beasts, they may earn
women’s love and admiration, and further reclaim their manhood.

Breivik and men like him are desperate to feel like they are better than everyone else.

Even when they so clearly are not.

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Why Some Guys Want to Screw You

It’s really confusing. Every week you have some dorm seminar on sexual assault, and
a constant buzz about what’s appropriate. Then you go to a party on the weekend and it’s everything they said to avoid. Get girls drunk so they’ll have sex with you. Lying to them or telling them how interested you are in them and how much you like them, when it’s completely not true. All you really want to do is have sex with them and then get the hell out of there.

                          –  One man’s take on male/female relations on college campuses

While there are a lot of really great guys out there, unfortunately for women today, some guys still want to screw you.

Take hookup culture. Women and men play the same game. But by different rules. Intercourse means the man wins, or “scores,” and the woman loses. He gains status. His reputation is enhanced. But “sluts,” as they’re called, “give it up,” meaning both sex and reputation. Hence, the vague meaning of “hookup” – ranging from “we kissed” to intercourse, so that she’ll keep playing the game.

Still, after sex she may beg, “Don’t tell.” But telling is the main goal. As one guy put it:

When I’ve just got laid, the first thing I think about – before I’ve even like “finished” – is that I can’t wait to tell my crew who I just did.

Why would a guy screw a girl just so he can brag? And why’s that more important than sexual pleasure?

All of the quotes above are from Guyland by sociologist, Michael Kimmel, one of the leading experts on men and masculinity. What’s his take on why some men treat women so poorly?

As Kimmel sees it, it boils down to personal identity. A preoccupation with proving “manhood.”

In America, as elsewhere, men are still thought superior. So they must constantly prove they deserve the high status.

Has anyone ever heard of “proving womanhood”? But then, why put effort into demonstrating you are lesser-than (as the culture sees it)?

Seeking to demonstrate manhood, men must be aware of what they wear or drive, or how they walk, talk, eat, stand, sit… Some meet stupidly dangerous challenges. A few may act cruelly, showing no fear or vulnerability.

Those who don’t conform may be named:

Sissy, wimp, faggot, dork, pussy, loser, wuss, nerd, queer, homo, girl, gay, skirt, mama’s boy, pussy-whipped.

Yet women aren’t afraid of being called tomboy or daddy’s girl. And when women are told, “You the man!” that’s good!

But then, when men act like women they are seen as lowering themselves. Women are not seen as putting themselves down by taking on masculine traits.

Unfortunately, some men think that f’ing women is a means of displaying “manhood” – or certain notions of what that means.

When manhood is seen as powerful, dominant, aggressive, violent, and potent, screwing women – whether they want it or not – can make men feel “they are all that” as they conquer women, getting them to submit sexually, as in competition, or war. These men aren’t vulnerable to women. They don’t have “girly” emotion-filled relationships, or experience emotional dependence. No. They are REAL men.

Even words that some men use for sex can sound violent. Here’s a list some young men in my classes made: Screw, f-, bang, nail, ram, smash, smack that, beat those, cut, boning, git-in-em-guts.

Really, when guys try so hard to be tough, they are probably bellowing to hide insecurity. So busy figuring out who they are and wanting to believe they are men, the drive for basic self-worth looms larger than sex, safety or shame in cruelty.

Michael Kimmel says guys can feel torn between proving manhood and expressing their humanity, but says they don’t need to choose. Real manhood, he says, is marked by honor, respect, integrity, emotional resilience, and doing the right thing despite the costs.

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Woman, Not the Sum of Flawed Parts

By Linda Bakke

Star Magazine. Full of faces covered by question marks, bodies sliced up. Women diminished to the details of their flaws, circled in bold. A dissection of celebrities’ body parts.

I was working as a receptionist at a hair salon when I discovered Star. I picked it up and paged through. It was awful. I could not put it down.

One article divulged a star’s “hairy secret,” detailing the frequency of her waxing regimen and suggesting her pubic area was overly hairy. A two page spread highlighted shameful “sausage fingers.” Another asked who had the worst toes.

It all oddly evoked the serial killers who keep articles – or worse, dismembered body parts – as trophies.

And what is the triumph here? A sensed superiority over the goddess’ faults as we lie in judgment?

And who can blame us? Their supposedly error-free bodies stress us out! Destroying them and their presumed perfection just might lift our spirits.

But maybe scrutinizing them only returns scrutiny to us, as the judgments tell us we must correct our own “blemishes,” whether buttocks, breasts, fingers or toes.

The message: women’s imperfections cannot be tolerated.

As we eat it up, we fail to see how we become victims, too, unconsciously nodding agreement that this treatment of women is acceptable.

While the pictures and text underline our preoccupation with facade over character, men’s bodily foibles are untouched by these tabloids. Who can imagine placing a man in such light?

Hopefully one day we will take on realistic and healthy expectations so that women will no longer be seen as the sum of flawed parts.

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Should Women Give Men The Porn Star Experience?

A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] … and plenty of women are more than happy to provide. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.

That’s from Sadie, a real estate agent, talking about what women do for men who find “normal” sex dull after extreme online porn.

Davy Rothbart blames porn for his own difficulties enjoying real sex with real women:

For a lot of guys, switching gears from porn’s fireworks and whiz-bangs to the comparatively mundane calm of ordinary sex is like leaving halfway through an Imax 3-D movie to check out a flipbook… (So women) willingly play along by a new set of rules in order to keep their men interested.

Should women give men the porn star experience?

If they’re both loving it, why not?

But should women undergo pain to supply their men over-the-top pleasure?

Robert Jensen, a University of Texas professor and feminist who speaks on pornography, says women frequently ask him whether they should fulfill their guys’ disturbing requests. Or they ask why men want them to perform acts that they find upsetting, whether

ejaculating on her face, anal sex, a threesome with another man or woman, rough sex or role-playing that feels inauthentic to her.

“I love him,” they say, “and I want to be a good partner. Should I do it?”

Here’s the perspective of this thoughtful feminist man.

Some women are game, he recognizes, but those who are not are under no obligation, no matter the level of commitment, to participate in any sexual activity that causes pain, discomfort or distress.

It’s great to honestly discuss desires and be open, he adds, but partners should also be clear about what crosses the line.

Asked, “Why does he want to do that to me?” Jensen points out that, “In patriarchy, men are socialized to understand sex in the context of men’s domination and women’s submission.” Pornography, he says, isn’t “images of ‘just sex,’ but sex in the context of male dominance” that includes “little recognition by men of the potential for pain, discomfort or distress in their women partners.”

Ejaculating on a woman’s face is largely about humiliation. Rough sex often enacts male dominance, and threesomes can be seen as male ownership of sex-object women who fawn over him.

Next, women wonder why their men can’t understand that they don’t want to do certain things.

Jensen says strong sexual desire plays a role. But so does an absence of empathy – the ability to imagine what another person is feeling. These men think the acts sound exciting and they can’t envision their partners not feeling the same way.

A lack of empathy may be a warning sign when people are unwilling to grow, for healthy relationships require it.

Jensen recommends a vision of equality and moving away from objectifying women to overcome these problems.

Bottom line for women: Stay true to your values and to who you are.

Men and women might also want to have a conversation about what they want in their relationship and how these sort of experiences fit into that – or don’t.

And, I’m guessing that most men are into sex enough to be able to enjoy things that their partners also enjoy, even if that doesn’t include threesomes, facials, etc.

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