Your Genitals Will Dissatisfy Someone: A Rant
(NOTE: I generally don’t back-post my essays on FetLife over to my “main” journal, usually because they’re a little too graphic for what I consider my public face these days. But this one took off on Fet, generating over 1,400 loves and 275 comments – and not a negative one in the bunch. And since body positive one is, I think, an important topic, I’m doing the unusual and taking a graphic essay on sex and posting it riiiiight here.)
FetLife’s writings are ablaze with women coming to terms with the fact that their vaginas possess natural odors, and that these scents are not in fact disgusting but outright alluring to many. That is awesome.
What FetLife is not ablaze with, but private sessions are, are men who are secretly worried that their cock is funny-shaped, or too small, or not up to snuff in some way. They’re not gonna volunteer this, because cocks get made fun of enough of on FetLife for being crude avatars, and they’re trying to attract a crowd of women who, as porn has taught us, only want Moby Dick. But I guarantee you: a lot of guys are just as worried.
Sadly, we can extend this terror to every part of the body: My tits aren’t symmetrical. My teeth are weird. My laugh is funny. My skin is the wrong shade. My asshole is too dark. So let’s cover our mouths when we laugh, slather ourselves in makeup, buy bras with special padding, douche maniacally, and buy p3n1S pills from these oh-so-reliable Nigerian doctors.
What many of these sad origin stories have in common is usually one person going, “Guh. That part of your body? I really don’t like that.” And then, because we’re all sensitive to criticism, we extrapolate and go, “Well, person X didn’t like it, so everyone must be disgusted by it.” Sprinkle a little societal terror in brought on by companies who profit richly off your body shame, and pretty soon it feels like everyone in the world vomits at the thought of your squishy bits.
You know what?
Fuck them.
Or, rather, don’t fuck them.
Look, if someone doesn’t like your nethers? That’s just one opinion. It may be a hurtful opinion, if it comes from someone you want to impress… but don’t extrapolate it to the whole world. It’s a big fucking universe, and out there is someone who is mad for exactly what you possess.
Seriously. I know a lot of women who prefer average to smaller cocks because they can fuck for longer without getting it sore and they can take it all the way own their throats. Personally, I love chubby women with strong scent. I’ll admit to imperfections in Little Elvis that I’m not thrilled with, but some have personally adored.
If you look around on FetLife, you’ll see people who do not just tolerate your particular body style, but actively crave it. It’s a big world. You are not unattractive to everyone. You’re deeply attractive to someone.
Now find ’em.
Keep in mind that there are a ton of businesses out there who make money by yelling, “OH, GOD, YOU’RE HORRIBLE!” and then saying, “…but we have this bunch of chemicals that can help you hide this shame, for only $6 a bottle!” These people are not your friends. They are not society, either. They are carpetbaggers hoping to make a buck off of your insecurities, and you should not listen to them.
Life is too short to spend with people who are revulsed by your bits, man. What you have? It’s awesome for someone. It’s a turnon. And I’m not saying your partner is obligated to love every bit of you… but I am saying that you should not read that single person’s preference writ global, and you should not read that preference as a lack of love or attraction for you, either.
Hey, my wife loves Viggo Mortenson and other men with strong chins and calm blue eyes, and yet she fell for Googly-Eyed Mister Potatohead here. Somehow all of my other features add up to sexy for her. I am more than the sum of my parts; it is the whole of me that is sexy, and goddammit on my better days I’ll own that.
That’s cool. What I have is awesome. What you have is awesome, and shame is not a turn-on. Stop spending time trying to hide this natural part of you and let it fucking fly.
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I do think the case for women/vaginas is somewhat different than that for men/penises (or any gender/other body parts), simply because society doesn’t spend huge amounts of time and energy discussing how penises are just inherently disgusting things they way they do about vaginas. At worst, cocks are considered sort of inherently funny-looking, and men worry about whether or not they have a “good” cock; for women the best to be hoped for is a vagina that’s not *too* bad, since we don’t even have a cultural concept of an attractive vulva.
This is not to say that no one *actually* finds vulvas attractive; but rather that you’ll never see vulvar attractiveness promoted in the public consciousness as “turn him on wildly with your gorgeous vulva” instead of “make sure you don’t drive him away in disgust with your hideous vulva”. Phallic imagery treated very differently from vulva imagery, no one sells Cockwash or runs ads implying that women run screaming from the scent of cock, etc.
What in the hell are you talking about?
The cultural issues with each set of genitals may be different, but it’s not as if dicks get by scott free. I mean, we cut the skin off of most of them because otherwise they would stink. Penis size is also discussed to the point of insanity, and if two partners don’t quite fit as snuggly as both would like, it’s almost always the man’s fault.
Even in porn, everyone wants to see vulvas. Why do you think the porn industry sells more than the GDP of most small countries? I assure you, it’s not because people want to see cocks.
Going back to the topic of circumcision, in the US it would be OUTRAGEOUS to talk about chopping off a clit hood or some labia to make a vulva cleaner, but we think nothing of doing it without anesthetic to well over half of infant boys shortly after birth.
I like this. It’s something said too little. My husband is perfectly fine with me not wearing makeup, but there have been women who almost wouldn’t give me the right time of day when I wasn’t but would treat me normally when I was. Interesting, no? Between the lack of makeup and the housewifing I’m not sure if they find me threatening, judgemental, or alien, but they certainly don’t consider me intelligent or worthy of conversation, even if they themselves are housewives as well. Perhaps it’s a question of priorities- obviously how I look isn’t a priority of me if I’m not wearing makeup, and if I don’t redecorate or remodel my house as a hobby? Yeah, all there is to talk about at that point is the kids. It makes me so happy to meet geeky families…
Because I’m a pretty straightforward person, two teenaged boys I knew at conventions once confessed to me that they both had only 5″ penises (no, they did _not_ say “penes”), and they were unsure if that was okay. They were greatly relieved when I pointed out that women _aren’t_ infinitely deep; that the classic porn 12″ would be painful as hell to a lot of us; and that the average penis size is that way _because_ it’s right for the average vagina size.