Howl

The Importance of Exploring Sexuality Beyond Our Gender

What would it be like to live in a culture that supported the full spectrum of sexual energy?

Have you ever thought about penises? I mean really thought about them? I’m guessing yes. God knows, I think about them all the time. Could they be any more fun or interesting?

But the truth is, I think of them in ways more expansive than that: not just imagining all the fun things I could do with a penis in my bed, but what I could do as the owner of a penis.

I mean, let’s face it — they seem like they bring a lot of joy to their owners, right? What fun appendages.

My theory was yet again confirmed after reading Benjamin Davis’s Has the Arcwave Ion Reinvented Male Masturbation? By the end of his review, I had massive penis envy.

Don’t freak out that a feminist just used that phrase. I think it’s entirely healthy to like sex so much that you want to know what it feels like with every possible sexual organ. So I’m reclaiming the term “penis envy.” I’m not less than or lacking because I have something other than the almighty penis. (I have the almighty clitoris, so trust me, all is well here.)

I have penis envy because I’m a curious sexual being who wants everything.

I’ve always been aware of my feminine sexual energy. Even though I’ve struggled to be “in” my body, it’s been impossible for me to ignore the force that is my sexual energy and the way it is shaped by my femaleness.

I love the feeling of my feminine sexual energy. I love how it turns my body into infinite space, infinite need, infinite longing. I love the way it flows inward in soft tides or crashing waves, trying so hard to bring everything into me, curious to touch and hold and experience. I love the feeling of openness and the desire to let go and surrender.

But that’s not the only form of sexual energy I have felt. Sometimes, I feel something very much the opposite. There are times when I feel a surging sexual energy — not a drawing in, but a pushing out. It’s an overwhelming need to move toward and into something. To be enveloped.

In the past, I didn’t pay much attention to this energy, or how it made me more inclined to take on a dominating role during sex. I just figured I was feeling particularly frisky.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to pay closer attention to my sexual energy — that it cycles through different iterations. Today, I identify these as masculine and feminine expressions of sexuality.

To put it simply, sometimes I want to fuck. And sometimes, I want to be fucked.

I have always been curious about male sexuality. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to have sex as a penis owner.

I can remember a few boyfriends giving me a bewildered look when, a few minutes after they’d climaxed during our very first sexual experience as a couple, I excitedly and breathlessly asked, “What was it like for you? What does it feel like to be inside me? How does it feel to ejaculate?”

I want to know every little detail. And honestly, I’d love for a male lover to ask me the same kind of questions. What’s it like to be filled? What does it feel like to press breasts against a lover? What does an orgasm feel like for someone with a vagina?

What I’ve learned, however, is that asking a man to share his experience after sex isn’t the best idea. Mostly, the response has been, “Good,” followed by a quick cat nap.

And I’ve found that — to my surprise — male lovers aren’t generally curious about female sexuality. Actually, let me be very specific here: my male lovers haven’t been curious about female sexuality. And from what I’ve observed, there seems to be little curiosity about female sexuality in our culture, in general.

I can’t help but wonder if men imagine what it might be like to have female parts and how that would affect their sexual experiences. In fairness, though, they haven’t been encouraged to do so. In this culture that centers male pleasure and sexuality, I’ve been taught to be curious about their experience. And of course, men have been encouraged to be curious about their own experience.

So why on earth would they feel inclined to wonder what it would be like to experience sex as the owner of a vagina the way I daydream about what it would be like to have sex as the owner of a penis?

Recently, a friend sent me a link to a porn video that she said I should watch. “You’ll get why when you see it,” she said.

It was an amateur video of a hetero couple having sex in a pool. The majority of it was shot from the bottom of the pool, beneath them, which was actually quite artful and beautiful, the way it captured the shape of their bodies coming together with the sun shimmering on the surface of the water.

But it was the end that I realized my friend wanted me to see. Predictably, the encounter ended with the female partner giving the male partner an underwater blow job, releasing his penis just before he came, and then, for a full 90 seconds, the camera followed his semen floating through the water.

There was something about it that illustrated our culture’s absolute obsession with male sexuality and it overwhelmed me.

The woman in that video did not have an orgasm. She was faceless except in the shot where his dick was in her mouth. The entire video followed his journey to sexual fulfillment, and not only that, but it ended with 90 seconds of following his cum, the encore of his orgasm.

I often think about how many times men have been exposed to this dynamic in porn. A recent study revealed that male participants, on average, view porn 3–4 times per week for 15–30 minutes. Look at that over the course of a lifetime and count up the hours these men have spent watching the glorification of their own pleasure with, typically, none of the same for the women in these videos.

I don’t watch much porn, but by middle age I’ve seen quite a bit of it. Guess how many times I’ve seen a porn scenario that has spent 90 seconds following the shimmering spread of a woman’s secretions across her labia and inner thighs? Never. How many times have I seen a woman orgasm in porn? Two times, that I can recall.

It’s overwhelming to think of the consequences of this constant exposure to male sexuality and gratification over the course of a lifetime. And while you might think my only objection is as a feminist who insists on our culture making room for female sexuality, I actually have a secondary agenda: to see men achieve the freedom of experiencing the full spectrum of their sexuality as I am learning to do.

Because let’s face it — that’s good for all of us.

I still haven’t found a male lover who is particularly eager to get into the nitty gritty details about what it feels like to climax inside the soft, slippery insides of another person’s body, or to try to describe what it feels like to ejaculate, in general. I’ll adjust my timing on those questions and see where that gets me. Maybe if I ask before we start rolling around, I might get a better result, with arousal loosening his tongue.

And wouldn’t it be amazing to find a man who had similar questions about women? To maybe, as we’re getting more and more worked up, pause for a moment between every touch, to whisper, “What does that feel like?” “And that?” “And that?” And to really, really want me to answer in great detail.

And what would it be like to have a male partner who is so aware of his sexual energy that he can tell me when he’s in a more “feminine” mode, that he wants me to take charge, that he wants to draw me in and let me be the one to press my energy against and into his body.

I find such joy in exploring the full spectrum of my sexuality — I can only imagine how much better the world would be if we insisted on celebrating this spectrum within each of us. If we didn’t deify masculine sexuality but human sexuality, instead. If we supported men in feeling and expressing their feminine sexual energy.

If you really think about it, anything less is a half-experience. And as sexual beings, we deserve all of it — a wholeness of experience that reflects the wholeness of who we are.

This article was written for Howl by Yael Wolfe, a weekly column. © Yael Wolfe 2021

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