Why are demands about male sexual performance quite so acceptable?

But you thought they were assholes, right?

Or else the males realize "the sex was bad" will be taken as "I was bad in bed."

Is it? Is it?

That's called BAD sex.

Joking aside…

I don't talk to my friends about sexual specifics in the first place and I would certainly never tell anyone if my partner and I were having difficulties. I have no problem discussing general wants, desires and preferences but I would never reveal things about my partner (past or present) that I thought would upset him or that I thought would change people's perception of him. I would not be embarrassed and I wouldn’t think it was necessarily a result of a weakness in my sexual technique.

I have had some partners who would be considered more technically proficient (I couldn’t think of a better way to put it) than others, just as some of my partners would be considered better looking than others. The only time I have ever had, what I consider to be, bad sex was once when I slept with a chap who thought he was Casanova and seemed to have choreographed every move from the couch to the bedroom. It was bad as he seemed to be ‘getting off on how good he was at having sex’, rather than just ‘having sex’.

To be quite honest, if the guy is physically comfortable with me and treats me tenderly I don’t care whether he’s goodin bed or not. I just want him to be in bed with me. And if he needs to bring a dildo, that’s fine.

This is all to say that demands on male sexual performance tend to be placed there by men.

It's important that we both be fulfilled sexually but not if that involves putting wither of us under emotional pressure. I can't stress this enough.

/shill

I taped a Horizon last night, did anyone watch it?

Growl growl I think my point here wasn't to do some big "how unfair waah waah double standard against men" thing, but it WAS indeed to talk about how men and women approach this issue differently and how that affects the end experience for everyone. I hate that it's impossible to talk about general gender-based differences like this without everyone thinking you're picking on one of the sexes or making some big political point about unfair treatment. I just meant that in my personal experience I do see certain differences in the way men and women approach these things, and I do see some areas where both sexes construe something as something it doesn't have to be (e.g. sex as a male performance) and I'm curious about that.

The only friends of mine who've commented one way or the other on a partner's ability or habits in bed have been female -- but the vast majority of my friends are female, as are all of the closest ones, so I don't think that says anything.

For my part, I've only discussed sex-I've-had with people-I-wasn't-having-it-with twice: once after the first time I had sex (well, the first two times, I guess), to casually/furtively ask an older friend, "So how long does it generally last, anyway?"; and once when my partner was reacting in a way that I thought was strange, which turned out to be probably the foreshadowing of her eventual nervous breakdown. In both cases, the folks I talked to were female, but again, that's just the demographics of my friends.

I tend not to discuss sexual specifics with friends because I realized a long time ago that I really don't want to know about their sex lives (partly because there's so much ... cross-pollination ... among my groups of friends that knowing X insists on Y means knowing Z did Y and therefore C is doing it now -- learn one thing about one person, and I've got a dozen people's sexual histories staring at me) -- so I figure, I won't open the window myself. This gets me a lot of teasing since I write smut for money :)

Bad sex -- there's definitely bad sex and there're definitely bad blowjobs, and I've actually gotten into short-lived arguments about this with male friends ("if you got a bad blowjob, you were doing something wrong!" -- I realize it's not entirely passive to be on the receiving end, but really, without employing props or a theme song, I'm not sure what I could do to completely ruin a blowjob).

Impotence -- am I the first to come out of the impotence closet? How swell. I can do the blustery "it's not my fault" thing, though -- it's a side effect of post-surgical nerve damage which has been slow to heal. Viagra has worked enough wonders that I haven't looked at alternatives (but feel free to suggest some, Colin.) My biggest concern was that it would ruin the spontaneity, but the guessing game of "Am I going to have sex soon? Should I take the pill?" has actually been fun.

Perhaps other girls talk about nothing else, I don't know.

Are you talking about your penis?

Well good golly, now I'm curious. I assume I'll know it when I see the ads ...

No wonder there are so many sad priests.

(Bearing flowers is the oddest impotency cure I've heard of to date, BTW.)

oh...is my husband reading this thread?

Really, Honey, I was just trying to help...

This is so wrong. Male and female mouths, from a kissing point of view, are extremely different. Women, in general, have narrower lips, narrower mouth, softer lips, smaller teeth, teeth closer to lips, less prominent chins, less prominent noses, soft skin around lips, no bristley facial hair around lips, smaller tongues, less inclination towards shoving their tongue down your throat, less likely to attempt to devour you: lips first, less inclination towards sucking your tongue so hard you want to hit them and less likely to kiss brutally at all.

In my experience it is very rare for a women to be a bad kisser and not at all uncommon for males to be.