The Men and Sex Blogs Debate Continues
Steve counters:
I’d ask the author, in between regaling us with his tales of threesomes, how many times has he written about his honest feelings on sex and sharing his partner. Not the “I saw them kissing” but the real emotions, the places in your heart that you barely admit exist, and that desperate longing not to share, not to be part of anything outside that relationship? Men tend to take an unusually aggressive stand in these matters and miss the grace and beauty women seem to have when they write about sex. Which is why their frankness is refreshing , because it is mixed with their emotions. Men tend, no matter how the boast, to give us a travelogue. What they did, and where, and with who, not how they felt or what they were thinking. The penises are always erect, the women always willing, no one ever gets uncomfortable or twists the wrong way.
The passage above makes me wonder whether Steve even glanced at posts like this, or was simply too busy staring at the boobs at the top of the page. Anyone coming here to read about uncomplicated sex encounters will be sorely disappointed. It strikes me that Steve views the Naked Loft Party as thoughtless and heartless only because I reach different conclusions about sex and love than he does. My approach to intimacy is radically different than what Steve and many others are willing to accept—it is the net result of a good deal of heartfelt exploration. Writing unflinchingly about sex does not make me fucked up or emotionless—if you bother reading the site, you’ll see the penises aren’t always erect, the women aren’t always willing, and there’s plenty to get uncomfortable about. I’ve always written from the heart, which is probably why the NLP strikes a chord with so many readers, male and female alike.
Debra also had a response for Steve:
Tug of War: It started with Erosblog and then Naked Loft Party noticing something Steve Gilliard said about male sexblogging. Now he feels compelled to answer at length. Good. Men are talking. It doesn’t matter to me that they aren’t agreeing; I’m simply glad they’re blogtalking. I certainly appreciate Steve’s opinion that he’d rather talk about sex with women than men—presumably, on my part, within a relationship—but my experience is that if people talk openly about sex in mixed company, the playing field of ideas becomes pretty evenly pretty quickly, largely because we appreciate each other’s openness and eagerness. I have friends both local and long distance with whom I talk about sex routinely and it’s a joy. Quite fun. I have one long-time male friend whom I lunch with and we spend 90% of our time talking about our sex lives. For me, throwing discretion to the wind opens up a whole new avenue of pleasure, one that doesn’t take place between the sheets even though it focuses them.
Men can talk about sex—or blog about it enjoyably—without being pigs, but maybe I should pose this idea: Maybe the reason many don’t is not solely because of public perception but because basic heterosexual attraction is inherent in how men respond to women writing about sex. It’s not just the critical examination, Steve; it’s because you’re attracted to women in the first place.
There’s a lot to be said for opening the lines of communication. And I agree with Debra that Steve’s preference for female blogs has everything to do with his heterosexuality. A guy reads a female blogger and feels she’s speaking to him on some level. He can fantasize about her, maybe salivate over a few pictures of her boobs. He has her all to himself. This too, is the appeal of most porn: it’s crafted with a cold remove that allows the viewer to indulge in his own fantasies. A guy comes here, though, and realizes he’s inside my head. He glosses over my thoughts and feelings because those things are not of concern to him—what he’s trying to do is put himself in my place. But my thoughts keep intruding on his fantasies. His ego kicks in and he gets cranky.
Finally, the venerable Bacchus emailed the following thoughts:
I thought your essay was interesting, and had a lot of truth in it. Perhaps your take is a little more metrosexual than Steve’s; I know a lot of unreconstructed real men, without the scare quotes around real, who don’t talk about sex simply because they were raised to think that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Some of these guys are as far from vaginized as you could imagine.
But thanks for pegging Steve’s bit as a rant; I thought his observations were interesting, but his thinly veiled disgust at the whole idea of a sex blog was pretty tough to observe without commenting on.
Essentially, I agree. A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Neither does a lady. Or rather, they don’t tell just anyone. Even Steve admits he talks to his closest friends about sex. But there’s a world of difference between writing an anonymous sex blog, wherein names are changed to protect the innocent, and gossiping with any old acquaintance about “that slut so-and-so.”
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