I’m being interviewed later today by a journalist about an erotic massage I received three and a half years ago. That same erotic massage was also once reported on (badly, I might add) by The Sun.
Thinking about these two weird facts, it’s hard not to arrive at the conclusion that female pleasure – and particularly, female pleasure that has been actively pursued by its recipient – is still stigmatized and still somehow not as common as it could or should be, despite the prevalence of theatrical female orgasms in mainstream porn and even some mainstream movies and TV shows. (“Theatrical” does not equal bad or unethical or worthy of shaming, by the way, and some of those orgasms are real. But the point still stands.) It is still considered remarkable that I paid some people to touch my bits and get me off – so remarkable that a journalist reached out to me to ask me about it literally years later. Can you even imagine a cis man’s erotic massage being spotlighted and marvelled upon in this way?
On the other hand, though, there are men’s rights advocates and other “manosphere”-dwellers who would argue that this evidence suggests the opposite of what I’m saying: that male pleasure is seen as unimportant, while female pleasure is worth revering, talking about, writing step-by-step guides about, and dissecting in an article years after the fact. That’s a fair point too. I actually think we’re both right, in some ways: male pleasure, including male masturbation, orgasm, and patronage of sex workers, is taken as par for the course, as natural and normal as the progression of the seasons, whereas female pleasure is simultaneously marginalized and pedestalized. There are similar-but-not-identical phenomena surrounding the pleasure of anyone who’s not a cis man, I think, but of course I’m a cis woman so I can only really draw on those experiences when discussing these issues.
The phrase “how to make her cum” brings up 1.3 million results on Google; “how to make him cum,” only 1.1 million. (Apologies to my nonbinary friends; “how to make them cum” brings up only 191,000 results. *womp womp*) A 2017 study found that women’s orgasms bolster their male partners’ masculinity and self-esteem, especially for men with “high masculine gender role stress.” The study authors suggest this means that the “focus on women’s orgasms, though ostensibly for women, may actually serve men” and that “women’s orgasms do function—at least in part—as a masculinity achievement for men.” Hmm.