The Madonna AND the Whore

I’ve been sitting on this post for about 2 years now. Sex is such a dynamic topic and I tend to get very personal about it. But every so often I end up in an interaction that so grating in its anachronistic nature, that I’m forced to revisit this topic. Today’s catalyst was this tweet: https://twitter.com/It_Chioma/status/1239799286239559680?s=20 that continues to support the notion that a man needs another woman with whom to explore his sexual proclivities:

Historically and even to this day, boys and men are given leave to explore sex (although often not sexuality) with a level of wantonness that is withheld from girls and women. It’s not just allowed, it is encouraged and celebrated. It is discussed and facilitated. However, the commercialization of virginity and chastity by the patriarchy served to compress the space for girls to indulge our curiosity. A girl’s value was found in her lack of experience and a temperament that made no sexual demands. We were challenged to suppress our sexual urges in order to secure a successful transition from being the property of our fathers to being the property of our husbands. Our role was functional: keep house, bear children, be quiet. 

The focus on sexual pleasure was centered on men. To this day there are some myths that prevail in many cultures and these continue to be a detriment to women’s sexual exploration and identity. I’m frankly quite tired of them and I know a lot of women are as well. Many of us have been subsumed into the ideology that we are not sexual beings and that we are providers of sex for the purposes of procreation and of sexual pleasure for the satisfaction of men; we do not realize that we are participants in the act of sex rather than simply vessels for male pleasure. 

I credit my level of exposure through reading with my long held understanding of sex as a mutual act, a symbiotic relationship. But I also learned about the belief that a wife and her preferred and perceived chastity was more palatable to men and that sexual exploration and pleasure should, ideally, happen outside of the marriage. To this day, I cannot imagine how such unmitigated bullshit was allowed to thrive in man-woman relationships. In this, the 21st century, with all that we have learned, heterosexual women are still struggling to experience sexual pleasure in relations and relationships, while men continue to be prioritized in the act. Women are still repressing our sexual urges, some genuinely still believing that sex is something that we give to men rather than something we participate in. Both genders (especially in the context of heterosexual and heteronormative relationships) still fall victim to the outdated view of woman as Madonna or whore, virgin or slut, chaste or loose. Conversations abound regarding where men should explore their kinks, fetishes and fantasies and too many of them conclude that this should take place outside of the marriage. The wife, even (maybe especially) when she is a mother, is still expected to exude chastity and modesty. 

A big part of the reason is that we still see sex, and consequently sexual exploration as something that is taboo and dirty. It’s a necessary evil for the propagation of the species but outside of that, we’re expected to either hide or completely suppress our proclivities. Various religious figures still take vows of celibacy because sex is viewed as something that taints and devalues us, especially women. But, because we’ve been sold on the belief that men have a greater desire for sex, allowances are made for them to exercise (or maybe exorcise) their needs in secret with mistresses (side chicks in the modern day) and prostitutes in order to support the maintenance of the chastity of the wife (or other long term partner).

We also refuse to believe that sex is a basic need. The presence of hormones and their known functions are scientific indicators that both men and women have base, visceral sexual urges that peak and plateau with the levels of each. It starts at puberty, it doesn’t really stop until we’re dead. So the rubbish (and rubbished) notion that one gender has any monopoly on sexual desire needs to go.  Science is also now conclusively showing that there are mental, emotional, psychological and physiological benefits of sex for both men and women and a large part of those benefits are hinged on the pleasure that is (should be) derived from the act.    

Sex education also mainly focuses on boys, their sexual development, their sexual journey even their sexual pleasure, but glances over girls and the development of our capacity to breed, That’s all we get. A reminder that we are receptacles and vessels. Incubators for the continuation of the species…We’re not taught about how our own reproductive system makes sex pleasurable for us, how our clitoris is packed with nerves and how we have multiple erogenous zones that can create orgasm. I was in my 30s when I learned about the A-Spot (yes that’s an actual thing and it’s how women have orgasms from penetration, which is very possible and quite easy contrary to what we’ve been told) and we’re still debating about the location, function and resulting response from stimulation of the G-Spot. But nope, not with any urgency, because while men need to ejaculate in order to impregnate us, we don’t need to enjoy the act of sex in order to become pregnant. The female orgasm has never been necessary so female pleasure has never been a focus. 

And so, women who expect and demand sexual pleasure are a bother to society. We’re too much work. We’re loose. We’re untrustworthy. Our value, for many men, is found in being a distraction from the tedium of reproductive sex that he engages in with his chaste wife. A woman who is willing to explore the pleasurable aspects of sex cannot inhabit the same spaces as a woman who is willing to carry out her role as wife and mother. They couldn’t possibly be the same person. A woman willing to stick a penis in her mouth could never possibly be trusted to speak in the dulcet tones of a mother. I daresay one willing to allow one into her anus couldn’t possibly deserve to sit at the same tables as the wife who with her legs properly crossed, entertains and cares for the family unit. The Madonna can never occupy the same spaces as the whore, and even less so, be two sides of the personality of the same person. Or can she…?

As the conversations come further into the light, we learn that many of these women, who have suppressed their sexual urges, have in fact been longing for the same freedom giving to their more liberated counterparts. Something like this: https://twitter.com/ambrosia_omG/status/1231307490412974081?s=20. They’ve been cloistered in the roles and robes of virginal white, often forgoing sexual pleasure while yearning for the things they’ve only heard about from their less than chaste acquaintances or read about in the pages of their ‘guilty pleasure’ novels. As more women talk about our sexual experiences, desires, preferences, there has been an awakening, a new consciousness, a possibility that a woman, the same woman, can be both a wife in the streets and a freak in the sheets… A concept!

And as the concept evolves, men’s insecurities, fears and misconceptions are also brought to light. The fear that a woman who enjoys sex as much as he does will behave in much the same way he does in the pursuit of it; never mind that we will always have more self control as a result of upbringing. Having never had to exert much effort into the acts of delivering pleasure, he must now contemplate that he may not be able to please his partner or will actually need to spend time learning her body in order to provide what she now expects. It is also a challenge to the belief that women have a weaker libido and thus having to admit that his own woman/wife/partner may actually be just as or even more sexually demanding and he may not be able to meet those needs… It’s a lot for them to process after so many eons of illusions and denial. 

But that doesn’t mean that we should keep pretending. That doesn’t mean that we should keep suppressing. That doesn’t mean that we should resign ourselves to pretending that we don’t prefer to be pleased. We shouldn’t be afraid to express and explore our own kinks and fetishes. It doesn’t mean that we should continue this myth that a woman is either a wife or a gyal fi win’ (I love how that song evolves). If you are so inclined, let your partner know that as a multifaceted, dynamic, sexual being you have the capacity to be both Madonna and whore…