“When men were left to their own insane sexual devices, we had a huge AIDS epidemic. Gay men have yet to fully comprehend that they were a part of consentual mass murder, when the cause of the disease became widely known. This is the U.S. version of AIDS. All because penetration kills!”

Are you fucking blaming GAY MEN for AIDS? Are you out of your mind? What the….? Do you recall the 80s, when no one knew what it was or what caused it or how one might get it, gay or straight? It wasn’t *consensual” mass murder. NO ONE KNEW WHAT CAUSED IT for years. NO ONE KNEW how to prevent it for years. Blame the patriarchy, blame Ronald Reagan, blame a monkey in Africa, I don’t give a shit, but do not blame dead men for AIDS. That shit is just W R O N G.

Cheezus H. Christ on a Cracker.

Cool. Language is such a bloody awkward tool, isn’t it? Pity we have nothing else to communicate with.

please look at my comments above, especially responding to Bitch Esq., we’re on the same page.

I was using the term “usual” ironically, actually, and I qualified it with straight, thereby keeping my queer brethren out of it. I should probably have used quotes, now that I think of it.

As far as I’m concerned, sex will only be free when there is no more patriarchy (that is to say, never.) Until then, it is certain to be based on a system that thrives on dominance and submission. With luck and foresight, a woman can choose a good partner and escape a few of them ramifications of this paradigm. But no one can escape it entirely. It’s the sea we swim in.

This comment has the flavour of blaming gay men for AIDS. Maybe that’s not what you meant to do, but, just to clarify, gay men are not responsible for AIDS. In fact, all the people in power (politicians, doctors, what have you) who kept silent about AIDS and did NOT tell people how to protect themselves are responsible for the deaths of countless gay men. Gay men were involved in the epidemic, yes, as a large amount of the victims of homophobia and regressive sexual mores.

“Penetration is something I would never ever do. No sex with men ever, and no dildos and dodads ever. Don’t know how many lesbians have this experience, but I believe that women’s power is to be completely free of this sort of thing.

All penetration of women I think is problematic, and the male big penis obsession is amazing to behold.”

This is an interesting idea. I neither agree nor disagree with your dislike of penetration, but it makes me think. I do think there is something very powerful about lesbian sex. I think it has something to do with penetration. My experiences of sex with men are that foreplay is just something you do in order to grease her up for the real game, and the real game only has a purpose of his orgasm. My experience of lesbian sex is that two people pleasure each other in any way each other wishes, and since there is no sexual script for lesbians presented by the dominant culture, they generally decide for themselves what to do without any outside influence. I think this is very empowering, and it definitely moves the focus from penetration to clitoral stimulation, but it can still involve penetration if that’s what she likes.

Now that would be a revolution!

My vision would be of free choice of the participants. I realize we’re conditioned towards certain choices, but we can try to free ourselves from those expectations by trying out lots of other stuff and seeing if we like it better. And I don’t mean anal or whatever the next “frontier” is, of course. In a free world, I think I’d have a pie-chart of sexual activity with maybe 25% of penetrative sex, and a whole bunch of other stuff on there. But I haven’t given myself the freedom to have that choice, since the default whenever I was horny was usual straight sex. I think I’m going to give myself that freedom now, or at least give it a shot, and if it works I expect everything to be more fun for all concerned.

And why am I in no way surprised that a group of men dismissed a woman’s dislike (on grounds of pain) to PVP as a religious hangup? Just the way of the world — if you’re a woman and don’t like PVP, you don’t like sex, and if you don’t like sex, you’re some kind of weird neuter creature that needs therapy.