How Women Are Shifting Paradigms in the Bedroom

It’s time for the way we talk about and experience intimacy to reflect women, not just men

I can’t do it anymore. I cannot acknowledge the word “foreplay” in any way. I absolutely refuse.

What the hell is foreplay? Is it not sex?

Do you know why we started using this word? It came into popular use in the 60s to describe all the parts of heterosexual sex that didn’t involve a man thrusting his penis into his partner’s vagina. The word eventually came to have an agenda: teaching men that pushing a dick inside a woman the moment you hit the sheets typically does not feel good to her, nor will it help her achieve orgasm during a sexual experience.

And, I suspect it had another purpose, as well: to center and validate the heterosexual experience, while simultaneously devaluing any sexual act that didn’t fit into that mold.

I cannot continue to pretend that foreplay is not sex — because I cannot continue to pretend that only penis-in-vagina sex is actual sex. Doesn’t it seem a little…oh, I don’t know…androcentric? Or perhaps, more accurately, phallocentric? Like sex doesn’t happen until a dick enters a vagina?

Doesn’t it feel a little dismissive of women’s experience and women’s pleasure in the bedroom to define sex by the one act that most satisfies men and define everything else as mere “foreplay?”

Can we just be honest here and admit that absolutely everything about sex has, in patriarchal history, revolved around men? And that the ways in which we talk about it, describe it, define it, and measure it, even today, are almost entirely through a male lens?

For instance, look at the way we talk about desire. I’ve been dreading getting into middle age because so many men have written to me in the past few years telling me their wife has absolutely no sex drive whatsoever. These men haven’t had sex in years — sometimes decades. A woman, they tell me, loses all interest in sex once she hits 40.

I found myself both puzzled and horrified. Puzzled because my early forties were, if you’ll excuse my crassness, the horniest years I ever experienced. Horrified because I don’t want to lose my sex drive — it’s been such a huge part of my experience in this body that I can’t imagine not having it.

I realized there were likely lots of reasons that caused these dead bedroom scenarios. Sure, menopause might have changed some of those women’s libido, but ultimately, there are so many more factors involved.

I wrote about it. I did research on it. I’ve closely observed my own evolving sex drive as I get closer to 50.

And then I started to realize that perhaps I had missed the point all along.

Do you know what these men always say to me? Their greatest disappointment and heartbreak in life has been the fact that they have maintained a “healthy sex drive” into their sixties and seventies, but their wives no longer experience the same.

Did you notice the wording there? A healthy sex drive.

Men are defining a “healthy” sex drive simply by comparing their wives’ libidos to their own. Pretty ballsy, right?

Do you know how the medical community defines a “healthy” libido? Anything that makes a person feel sexually fulfilled.

Do you realize what that means? Prepare to have your mind blown: Most of these wives that men so often talk to me about are likely perfectly happy with their sex lives (or lack thereof) and their sex drives are, indeed, healthy.

And for the husbands who would argue that their wives used to want to have sex so much more often, so therefore, it must be a problem with her body, her libido, I’d offer this for consideration: Perhaps she made herself more willing to meet her husband’s sexual needs in the early years of her marriage, but in middle age is now joyfully exploring new boundaries about how she wants to sexually engage — or not engage, at all.

I think that’s one of the gifts of middle age for women. We finally learn how to experience our sexuality with ourselves, instead of men, at the center.

You know what else I’m done with? The term “penetrative sex” has got to go. I’ve talked about this before and I think I’m ready to make the switch.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t like it. I find it aggressive. A little bit violent. And entirely centered on a man’s body and experience.

Two people are having sex, but one is active, the other is passive. One is doing something to the other.

It turns women’s bodies into a vehicle for men’s pleasure. An object to allow them to reach sexual fulfillment. A literal sheath for their sword.

I’m sorry, but I don’t go to bed with a man to be acted upon by his penis. If I’m going to take a penis into my body, it’s going to be because I invited it in. I allowed it in. I enveloped it.

Not because someone penetrated me. Hell no.

It’s 2023. Why are we still defining sex in a way that only centers a man’s perspective and turns women into a passive object? Why are we still using violent, dominating language?

“Envelopmental sex” is a term that includes both parties, using language that implies consent, equality, and mutual pleasure.

As with the term foreplay, I’d also like to propose the retirement of the term “penetrative sex.” It’s long past time for women to be languaged into the sexual conversation.

As I mentioned earlier, my sex drive has experienced massive change in the past 18 months. In some ways, it is unrecognizable to me. But it’s not “gone,” as so many men told me it would be.

I definitely do not feel a desire to engage in sexual activities with other people at this point, but I still feel desire and arousal on a regular basis — it’s how I choose to experience those feelings that has changed — not my actual sex drive.

If I had a male partner right now, I would likely not want to engage in sex as often as I used to. And he would likely say the same thing so many men have told me: that he still has a healthy sex drive and I…well, don’t.

Except that I do because a woman’s sex drive doesn’t need to match a man’s in order to be “healthy.” My sex drive is healthy because I’m satisfied. I feel sexually fulfilled. That’s it. That’s all that’s needed to qualify for “healthy.” Me. Not a man’s definition of sex or healthy sexuality.

I find myself grateful to be single at this point in my life. Because I don’t have another second to waste on this. I’ve been engaging with phallocentric sexuality my entire life. And while there’s nothing wrong with men experiencing their sexuality with themselves at their center, it’s not okay that our culture taught us all that women have to center men in sex, too, or that the way we talk about sex, define sex, and experience sex has to be through the male lens.

We are ready to center ourselves in our own experiences and change the narrative around sexuality so it includes everyone.

© Yael Wolfe 2023

Yael Wolfe is a writer, artist, and photographer. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com.

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