My Response to Clarisse Thorn's "The Myth of the Sex-Crazy Nympho Dream Girl"

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I just read a great article by Clarisse Thorn entitled, The Myth of the Sex-Crazy Nympho Dream Girl.The article is posted on The Good Men Project which is a website I've been following a lot lately.

Thorn, starts off by telling us that, "There’s this cultural image of what it means to be female, and good in bed. The image includes being young and thin and cisgendered of course, and that can be problematic. But it also includes a lot of behavioral stuff: the way you squirm, the way you moan, being Super Excited about everything the guy wants to do, and Always Being Up for It—whatever “It” is. When people think about “good in bed,” for a woman, that’s often what they think."

Thorn confesses that, "what still occasionally makes me feel weird about sex—is how easy it is to perform what I was supposed to look like while I had sex. I don’t even know how I internalized those images: some of them through porn, I suppose, or art or erotica or what have you; some of them by reading sex tips on the Internet or hearing the ones whispered to me by friends. But I can definitely assure you that before I had any actual sexual partners, I knew how to give a good blowjob. I also knew how to tilt my head back and moan, and I knew how to twist my body, and I knew what my reactions and expressions were supposed to look and sound like—I knew all those things much better than I knew what would make me react."

Thorn doesn't elaborate about porn influences but I will offer my two-three-four cents here.  I don't doubt that the other theories Thorn threw up as reasons to why she has been able to perform so convincingly may be accurate. They can definitely contribute. My viewpoint is that porn in particular sends out the message (as does mainstream media) that a woman's sexuality is limited to expressing pleasure a certain way. Porn tells women that they are to respond to a man's touch (we are talking about heterosexual porn here of course) by offering nothing but excitement and willingness for more. Sure it's fantasy and in our fantasies we want our partners to be pleased. But, porn is harmful in that it inflates the male ego by offering women up as play things that bow to a man's every whim. In hetero porn the woman always does whatever the man wants her to do and the woman is always willing and up for more more more.

I had never witnessed porn in any sense before I entered my first relationship with a man. Even so, I knew how I was "supposed" to respond to a man when he touched me sexually. It was because of this knowledge that I actually consciously avoided any moaning or wiggling around. I wasn't able to receive very much pleasure with my first boyfriend anyway, but never the less, I wanted to make SURE that I didn't give any sign that I was no longer in a place of control.

My fear was that if I were to breathe heavy my boyfriend would suddenly think that he was the MAN. I feared that he would think that it was he alone which caused me to receive pleasure, rather than the two of us as a respectful unit creating pleasure. I didn't want to inflate his ego and I feared that his intentions did not come from genuine sensitivity.

This fear stemmed not from porn as I just mentioned but from the degrading ways in which I heard men speak. Not all men fell into this category of course but I did find myself surrounded by friends, friends of friends, acquaintances and strangers who spoke about women as if the women were meat and they were wolves. It made me feel unsafe emotionally.

Even when I was able to let my guard down a bit, I never wanted to fake it. I didn't want to give my partners the satisfaction of thinking that they had created this great response when really they hadn't. Again, I do not suggest that my ability to experience pleasure relies solely on my partners. That's illogical. A woman's pleasure also depends on her own mind set, comfortability and trust. Being that I feared the male ego, I had a difficult time relaxing.

At one point in the article, Thorn tells us it is sometimes hard to believe that, "a guy will like me as much, if I try to be honest about what I want. Honesty means that sometimes I’m confused, and sometimes we have to Talk About It; honesty means that sometimes I say no, it means that sometimes I’m not Up for It. Something in me is always asking: Surely he’d prefer the sexy, fake, plastic dreamgirl shell? It’s not true, I know it’s not true, I swear it’s not true—I don’t have such a low opinion of men as that. I know this is just a stereotype, the idea that men are emotionally stunted horndogs with no interest in how their partners feel."

I can say truthfully that I am more comfortable telling men how I feel than I was in my hazy teenage days.  And I have lived in this comfortable space for a long time now. Sure, it's not ALWAYS easy but I think early on I became tired of having to hide and keep quiet.

I will say though, in terms of my figure, sometimes when I am in a relationship I wonder if my partner is simply accepting my body rather than embracing it. That as Thorn puts it, "surely he'd prefer the sexy, fake, plastic dreamgirl shell." Is this my insecurities talking or is there a smidge of truth to this? Perhaps both? Whatever it is, it just means that it is a topic for discussion. And while we girls may not think that discussing insecurities fits into that dreamgirl shell. Well, it doesn't. And that's what's so great about it.

I think the issue of either performing or fearing that a man surely wants the "sex-crazy nympho dream girl" leaves us all in the dark about what one wants and what is truly genuine and authentic.